Freud and Philosophy

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Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation

Cover of the first edition
Author	Paul Ricœur
Original title	De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud
Translator	Denis Savage
Language	French
Series	L'Ordre philosophique
Subject	Sigmund Freud
Publisher	Éditions du Seuil, Yale University Press
Publication date	1965
Publication place	France
Published in English	1970
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	528 (Éditions du Seuil edition) 573 (Yale edition)
ISBN	978-0300021899

Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (French: De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud) is a 1965 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, written by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. In Freud and Philosophy, Ricœur interprets Freudian work in terms of hermeneutics, a theory that governs the interpretation of a particular text, and phenomenology, a school of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl. Ricœur addresses questions such as the nature of interpretation in psychoanalysis, the understanding of human nature and the relationship between Freud's interpretation of culture amongst other interpretations. The book was first published in France by Éditions du Seuil,^[1] and in the United States by Yale University Press.^[2]

Ricœur explores what he considers a tension in Freud's work between an emphasis on "energetics", which explains psychological phenomena in terms of quantities of energy, and an emphasis on hermeneutics. He compares Freud to the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche describing the trio as a "school of suspicion" and explores similarities and differences between psychoanalysis and phenomenology. He also compares Freud's ideas to those of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and further develops his ideas about symbols explored in an earlier work, The Symbolism of Evil (1960). In response to criticism of the scientific status of psychoanalysis by philosopher Ernest Nagel, Ricœur argues that psychoanalysis should be understood not as an observational science, but as an "interpretation" that resembles history rather than psychology. He criticizes psychoanalysts who fail to adopt this as their response to arguments that psychoanalysis is unscientific.

One of Ricœur's most noted works, Freud and Philosophy has been compared to the philosopher Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), the classicist Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), the sociologist Philip Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968). Commentators have praised Ricœur's discussions of Freud's theories, his exploration of usually neglected aspects of Freud's work, his comparison of Freud to Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche and his discussion of phenomenology. However, Freud and Philosophy became controversial. The work angered psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who accused Ricœur of borrowing his ideas without attribution; although some scholars rejected the accusation. Freud and Philosophy received positive reviews upon the publication of its English version in 1970. The book was described as one of the most important discussions of psychoanalysis, and Ricœur was praised for his discussion of symbols. He was also credited with convincingly criticizing Freud's views on both religion and symbols generally. However, some critics have argued that Ricœur's views imply the impossibility of scientifically evaluating psychoanalysis.