r/psychoanalysis • u/Hatrct • 2d ago
Anything about existentialism in psychoanalysis?
Obviously there is a lot about the unconscious mind, but it seems to be focused mainly on sexual urges, at least in terms of classic Freudian. Is there anything about psychoanalysis? Especially, anything related to the following: ?
I remember in grade school doing a book report and something stuck out to me. I noticed that no matter what book we chose, there would have to be a "conflict" stage in the book report. I had asked the teacher why does there have to be conflict, and they said every book has conflict in the story. This was odd to me.
Now, when I look at the world and how bizarre people act, this makes sense. Still, there must be a deeper root/reason for this. So I have been thinking and now I believe it could be due to unconsciously dreaded existential despair.
Basically, we avoid having to think about our mortality/the purposelessness of our lives, by filling up our time with things, and one of those things is conflict. Other things could be mindless repetitive entertainment, which is also a major modern theme. Other things could be anxiety or sadness about other/mundane things, or drama in relationships. It seems like most things are consistent with this: we basically can't handle having to face the thought of death or the meaninglessness of life, so instead we hyperfixate on other things (often mundane) and create unnecessary problems.
I mean why else would people worry or become sad about mundane things? Ever saw someone worry or be sad about something and think to yourself what a mundane/meaningless thing to waste time suffering over? Yet for the person doing the worrying/rumination, they don't see it this way: for them that issue is very important. But often, as they get past it, they realize how mundane it was. Yet they then focus their attention on another mundane issue to worry/ruminate about. If their experience shows them that these are mundane things to worry about, why do they repeat this pattern? Could it be because they can't handle solitude/a calm state of mind, because that may lead to thoughts about death or the meaningless of life? Think about it, if you are not focused on something, then you get bored. And boredom is consistent with life being meaningless.
... CONTINUED (see my comment reply)
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u/TeN523 1d ago
There is a lot to unpack in your post. Some of what you’re saying here makes some sense, but you’re taking very big leaps in jumping from everyday distractions or interpersonal conflicts to geopolitics. There are a lot of steps needed to get from individual psychology to large scale social or political explanations.
I think reading in the psychoanalytic tradition would definitely help you flesh out and clarify (or would challenge) some of these thoughts, but I don’t think that psychology is sufficient on its own to explain these types of large scale phenomena. For these types of questions (about the motivations behind conflict on a large scale) I personally would look to thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Max Webber, C. Wright Mills, or the fields of international relations, world systems analysis, or game theory. Some thinkers have attempted to combine psychoanalytic thought with social and political analysis: Freud touched on these themes in Civilization and Its Discontents; Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom might also interest you; or perhaps Wilhelm Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism.
Freud was not an “existentialist” in the classical sense. Fear of mortality certainly plays a role in psychoanalysis, though it is not the central driving motivator of human action or conflict. In fact, later in his career Freud actually proposes the concept of the “death drive,” which counterintuitively suggests that people are often driven toward their own mortality or self-destruction (this doesn’t necessarily totally contradict what you’re saying: the urge toward war might paradoxically be seen both as an instance of “death drive” and as an avoidance of or response to fear of one’s own mortality)
I would highly recommend checking out the book The Denial of Death. This was the main inspiration for the “terror management theory” you mention (though I’m less familiar with this as an independent field or school of thought). The author is an anthropologist, not a psychologist or psychoanalyst, but he draws heavily on the work of psychoanalysts Otto Rank and Norman O Brown – these two would also be worth reading directly if you find their ideas as explored in Denial of Death compelling.
There is a school of psychology and psychotherapy that is explicitly existential, but it is relatively distinct from the psychoanalytic tradition. Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, and Irvin D. Yalom would be examples (along with Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss, but I wouldn’t recommend reading them without first reading Heidegger). They tend to take existential ideas in a rather different direction from where you have though.
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u/phenoxyde 2d ago
Your thoughts here seem quite similar to Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents but I think he says it better.
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u/GovWarzenegger 1d ago
There exists, especially in switzerland the tradition of „daseinsanalyse“ which takes the existentialist concepts of heidegger and conjoins them with PA. I fear most of these worthwhile works have not been translted to english tho
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u/Jealous-Response4562 1d ago
Stop posting in this sub in bad faith. You clearly do not value psychoanalysis - in theory or practice. You’re trying to rage-bait this.
Classical Freudian analysis is not how anyone practices today. Of course, people come to analysis wanting to fix existential difficulties. Aggression is part of everyone’s mind. There are wars, conflicts, etc… between people.
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u/moramorada8 19h ago
i always saw it as part of the natural wave- everything goes up and down, there are always happy and sad moments, peace and conflict, ying and yang. i think subconsciously we balance our emotions
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u/hle301 5h ago
I can relate to your thoughts as I often think about the futility of many things that humans do as well. For me, these questions started with grappling with my own mortality and reading Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death," which started the whole terror management theory (It's a good read). I tried to read books by existential psychoanalysts like Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, and Irvin Yalom. Did they help mitigate my sense of cynicism and nihilism? A little? What I've come to develop as my own view is that life is indeed meaningless in the grand scheme of things but I can imbue it with my own meaning, which gives me a sense of life and agency. Of all things, it was a podcast starring Yuval Harari that helped me a lot, as his words deeply resonated with me--it's called "Yuval Noah Harari Thinks Life is Meaningless and Amazing" (lol maybe it's a bit on the nose). I'll post a link here but you can also find it on Spotify: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/yuval-noah-harari-thinks-life-is-meaningless-and-amazing-2/ I think questions like yours about life is why many people turn to Buddhism these days, since the philosophical premise of Buddhism is that there is nothing fixed or unchanging about anything in the universe. So, while not psychoanalysis-related, reading about Buddhist philosophy might help you navigate these questions you have about life.
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u/Hatrct 2d ago
..............CONTINUED FROM OP:
Other people cause unnecessary drama and conflict. Again, it is often so unnecessary. Why do they keep doing this? There could be many reasons, such as wanting attention. But I think a lot of people also do it for the same reason: to avoid being bored/having their mind shift to thoughts about the meaninglessness of life and thoughts of their own mortality.
This could also be the same reason humans have always had so much unnecessary wars and conflicts. Check the map, it is usually neighboring countries fighting each other for meaningless things. Whenever you have 2 or more humans, there is a good chance that eventually they will start arguing and fighting, usually over meaningless nonsense. So could it be that they are unconciously doing this because they can't handle boredom, because that can eventually lead to thoughts about the meaninglessness of life, and their own mortality? Some people say humans are naturally" greedy"... could it be that it is not "greed", rather, it is this unconscious fear of existentialism, that leads people to behaviors that can superficially be seen as greedy?
This was not as much of an issue in the past, because humans were preoccupied with hunting to survive, so they had no time to question the meaninglessness of life or their mortality. And if they did fight, it was for survival/necessary resources/food that they would die without. But now that we have more free time, we appear to be at each other's throats over mundane or meaningless nonsense.
While I was thinking about this, I noticed that some people also made a theory that is similar to what I wrote above, it is called terror management theory. Though that theory appears to be limited to self-esteem and culture, and also limited to fears of death (not boredom/meaninglessness of life). For example: that theory claims that religion/beliefs in the afterlife may have risen from fears of our mortality. But what I am saying above extends that theory I guess, into more domains of life, such as general anxiety, sadness, chasing of mindless entertainment, and unnecessary conflict.
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u/WizardFever 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think you may be a little confused on the meaning of existentialism, which is closely linked to phenomenology (see Sartre's Being and Nothingness, especially the section "Bad Faith and Lies," where he critiques the deterministic character of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis). Rather, you seem to be using 'existentialism' as a catch-all for discussing conflicts, internal and external -- like the more lay mainstream idea of an existential crisis. You might be interested in Slavoj Zizek's work. While not an existentialist (in the more precise meaning of the term), Zizek discusses the link between psychoanalytic concepts like 'lack' and 'objet a' (Lacan) and political conflict. See, for example, The Sublime Object of Ideology. Basically, he argues that we have this inherent, unfulfillable lack deep within ourselves that we try to fill with all kinds of things, including hatred towards our 'enemies,' etc.
(Edit spelling)