Nietzsche and Freud
Nineteenth Century Intellectuals
Nietzsche and Freud both discovered their own version of the unconscious realm of man. They discovered that man is born with certain instincts and impulses that are stifled by society and religion. They believed that man’s real nature, free from societal restraints, expresses itself in dreams, passions, and in mental illness. They both sought to free man from his programmed life on how to think, act, and live according to society’s wishes and they both believed in a ‘superman’ or ‘ubermenschen’. These are people who have gained control over their own will and have separated themselves completely from their society.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche despised every aspect of nineteenth century society from government to politics to modern industry and the vices of everyday life. He certainly would have rolled over in his grave if he knew that the Nazis would later take his life’s work and turn it into one of their battle-cries for their political ideology (i.e. Triumph of the Will and the ‘superman’ in the form of the Aryan German race). He believed in art as an expression of reality. He rejected Christianity and traditional morals, but he loved life and creative expression. His early works were difficult to read at best and not cohesive. They were more a series of amorphisms.
Nietzsche discovered that, in ancient Greece, there was a wild, instinctual, amoral, but healthy and creative force driving society. This force was later overshadowed by Apollonian forces of logic and self-restraint. He called this Greek force the ‘Dionysian’ energy. He advocated for a return to this ‘Dionysian’ way in his modern society. He also believed that there was no one universal truth that applied to everyone. Truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Nietzsche’s works gave rise to existentialism in the twentieth century and had a profound impact on Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi party.
Sigmund Freud
Freud was a doctor turned psychiatrist. His passion was studying and helping those with mental illnesses. He also rejected Christianity and societal restraints on man. He devised a very controversial and not very popular theory (at the time) dealing with psychoanalysis and, more specifically, the human consciousness and man’s natural drives and instincts. He greatly offended the ‘civilized’ public with his theories on sex that even went so far as to ascribe a certain sexual arousal in infants and toddlers, such as the ‘Oedipus complex’. He believed the unconscious (not the conscious) mind influenced one’s thoughts and actions. In fact, he believed this unconscious determined every move an individual makes. He developed his psychoanalysis to help patients with emotional disorders and, today, Freudian psychoanalysis is still a central component of psychotherapy.
Whether his theories were correct or not is still a topic of fierce debate. However, his views completely upended mankind’s views on childhood, memory, identity, sexuality, and even the general meaning of life. His theories and works also revolutionized the field of psychiatry in the twentieth century.
Winks, Robin and Joan Neuberger. Europe and the Making of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005
Blanning, T.W.C. The Nineteenth Century.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000
What do you think about this article?
More in History
Latest Articles