Contributions to the History of Psychology: LVIII. Freud's Dualistic Mind-Body Interactionism: Implications for the Development of His Psychology

Abstract

Freud's views on the mind-body question are reviewed. It is argued that, throughout his career, Freud was consistent in adopting a dualistic-interactionist view of the mind-body relationship. This position was the prerequisite for his development of a psychology which sought the determinants of consciousness in dynamic, unconscious mental processes, without concern for correlations with an underlying neural substrate.

El Pensamiento Precientifico Sobre La Salud Y La Enfermedad

“…El proceso evolutivo en las aplicaciones de la psicología al logro del bienestar humano fue gradual y sujeto a una gran cantidad de vaivenes históricos y culturales. La psicología clínica inició su camino institucional con no pocas deudas conceptuales hacia los criterios que defi nieron al dualismo fi losófi co. Para algunos campos como el psicoanálisis de Sigmund Freud (1856-1939, que perfeccionó una forma de dualismo interaccionista (Silverstein, 1989), esta vinculación llegó a resultar especialmente notable. En el extremo opuesto se sitúan el conductismo originario de John B.…”

A Follow-up Note on Freud's Mind-Body Dualism: What Ferenczi Learned from Freud

“…Since contemporary interpreters of Freud cannot agree on the meaning of Freud's statements, this addendum to Silverstein (1989) submits for consideration a bir of alternative evidence that Freud was a dualist-interacuonist, a summary of Freud's mind-body stance by Freud's intimate collaborator for 25 years, Sandor Ferenczi. I have never seen Ferenczi's statement cited.…”