Good Essay About Freud And Descartes' Cases For Selfhood

Since at least the time of Socrates, Western thinkers have attempted to define identity and selfhood. A number of thinkers' arguments merit consideration for their efforts. However, Sigmund Freud and Rene Descartes (widely-considered to be the Father of Modern Philosophy) posited theories of identity that have withstood the rigors of both experience and analysis. Upon a more closer examination, Freud's theories of selfhood are more epistemologically-sound, and reflect more concern with a scientific description of selfhood, thus making them a more accurate definition of identity and selfhood.
Both Freud and Descartes were scientific thinkers. They were both less concerned about questions of aesthetics, or virtue. They focused their line of inquiry on the reasoning process. Both Freud and Descartes refused to accept authoritarian definitions of selfhood. Rather, they used scientific observation, explanation, and empiricism to support their arguments. That is, they both had trained their minds to think in an analytic, scientific manner. Both men were especially adamant about not committing themselves to knowledge that they could not verify without testing it for themselves.
Both men emphasized the importance of thinking and reason in order for the self to know the self. For Descartes, this awareness of self-awareness was best summed up by his affirmation: Cogito, ergo sum. "I think, therefore I am." For Descartes, the definition of identity stood upon a foundation of self-identity and self-consciousness. To think, or reason, is the essence of having an identity. Similarly, Freud stresses reason as being the fundamental aspect of identity.
However, Freud advanced the idea of a multi-layered identity. Composed of the conscious and the unconscious, the unconscious self is hedonic and ruled by the "pleasure principle," whereas the conscious self is ruled by what Freud called "the reality principle." Unlike Descartes, Freud observed and studied people in a clinical setting, using empirical methods. His views did not invoke a separate immaterial, eternal soul, as did the ideas of Descartes.
Freud studied people who suffered from various neuroses, and formulated his theories of the conscious and unconscious mind based upon his clinical observations, which included the interpretation of dreams, "slips of the tongue," and free association. Freud employed these techniques in order to decipher the messages from the unconscious mind. Descartes primarily studied himself in order to formulate his philosophy of identity. While Freud was not considered a philosopher during his lifetime, his theories would later influence philosophic lines of inquiry, as well as the social sciences.
While Freud acknowledged that reason -- or the ego -- was a key building block of identity, he also ascribed a great deal of importance to the id, an unconscious structure that contains buried memories and emotions and is the agency of sex and aggression. Freud theorized that unresolved traumas from infancy and childhood could manifest themselves as maladaptive responses in adulthood -- neuroses. Descartes was not a clinician by training, and his philosophy, while objective and scientific, was not oriented towards the treatment of psychological illnesses.
Freud was more intent on focusing on the dynamics between the conscious and the unconscious, especially the fluidity between the two sides of consciousness. He later posited a model of consciousness that included the superego.
Although both Descartes and Freud's epistemology are very similar (rigorous observation, experimentation, and analysis), their metaphysics of identity are remarkably different. Freud never advanced a concept of the immaterial and eternal soul, whereas, to Descartes, this was a very important point. The mind, he insisted, the awareness of self-awareness, was unchangeable and formless -- similar to Socratic and Platonic thought. Freud did not concern himself with metaphysics per se, but the unconscious mind bears many similarities to what many philosophers considered to be the soul. For example, the unconscious, in Freud's structural dynamic, is shapeless and formless. Moreover, it does not occupy a particular space. While both men attempted to formulate a unified concept of identity, they both nonetheless ended up with a dualistic concept of identity. For Descartes, that concept was the division of the body and the soul. For Freud, duality was represented by the parsing of consciousness into the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. Despite the drawbacks to Freud's psychodynamic theory, it worked well enough at the time to treat individuals who suffered from neurosis.
Thus, both Descartes and Freud were trained, scientific thinkers who used their reason to penetrate the mysteries of identity and selfhood. Freud focused his reason not only on formulating a new theory of identity, but on helping patients with mental illness as well. Despite their striking differences, both of their scientific work ended up awash in duality, a duality that could not be reconciled in the hopes of explaining identity in a more unified manner. Nonetheless, Freud's psychoanalytic approach has proved to be beneficial in "curing" many types of neurosis.