Philosophy 128G: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Winter 2001: Exam Topics Prof. DiSalle

The final exam will be held on Monday, April 30, at 9:00 AM. It will be a three-hour essay exam. There will be (at least) eight questions, and you will have to choose five. Each essay will be worth ten points.

The questions are made up from the following list of topics. In order to study for the exam, you should definitely use the Lecture Notes as a guide. But you can't rely on them completely; they are there to guide you to what is important in the readings, but they don't replace doing the readings. In other words, they are necessary but not sufficient. For each group of topics I have listed the most relevant readings in square brackets.

I. Origins of psychoanalysis

The importance of hypnosis

The analytic technique: repression, abreaction, catharsis

Repressed memories as "pathogens"

Psychology as a scientific study of the causes of neurosis

The deterministic view of psychic causation (analogy with physical causation)

The "seduction theory"

[Cf. Preface to Bernheim. Anna O, Katharina, Project, Draft K, The Aetiology of Hysteria]

II. The "classic theory"

Failure of the seduction theory and origins of the Oedipus complex

Infantile sexuality and sexual development (male vs. female)

Repression as the necessary condition of neurosis

Lifting repression as the necessary condition of cure

Dreams, free associations, and "slips" as neurotic symptoms

Dream-work as transformation of latent content into manifest content

The "topography" of the mind: Conscious, preconscious, unconscious

The ego and the id, the development of the superego

[Cf. Letters to Fliess, The Interpretation of Dreams, On Dreams, "Wolf-man," Repression, The unconscious, The Ego and the Id, Some psychical consequences]

III. Philosophical implications and questions

A. The origins of religion and morality

The struggle of human urges against the restraints of civilization

Psychoanalysis as part of the "scientific world-view"

The problem of human moral freedom

[Cf. Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, The question of a "Weltanschauung"]

B. Psychoanalysis as "natural" science or interpretive ("hermeneutic") practice

Explanation by reasons vs. causes (narrative coherence vs. causal necessity)

Whether contextual-historical explanation is opposed to scientific explanation

Whether Freud's interpretive theory can be separated from his causal theory

The epistemic status of Freud's "master proposition"

The problem of suggestion

The problem of the "placebo effect"

The difficulties of the free association method

[Cf. The question of proof, A century of psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis as science]

C. The possibility of separating analytic understanding from questionable Freudian hypotheses

Insights into irrationality and self-estrangement

[Cf. Paradoxes of irrationality, The question of historical interpretation]