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CHAPTER THREE Psychic Determinism and Motivational Principles FREUD AND DETERMINISM Ethical decision-making requires a degree of autonomy and the capacity for free decision and choice in the ethical agent. We are immediately confronted, therefore, with the problem of determinism in psychic actions and the extent to which choice and autonomy can exist under conditions of psychic determinism.1 We can envision a split in this respect between the theoretical Freud and the clinical Freud. The theory, to which he had committed himself and on which he staked his scientific reputation, demanded that everything the patient did or said had to be determined, that is, in some sense caused. But at the same time, clinical experience made it evident that unless the patient achieved some degree of autonomy, some level of selfdetermination , and free self-mastery in the interest of overcoming neurotic dispositions and conflicts, the prospects for therapeutic change were dim at best. With what mind-set, then, was Freud to engage his patient? Should it be Freud the scientist, or Freud the humanist-clinician? True to his scientific weltanschauung, Freud declared his uncompromising faith in scientific determinism—he referred to the “strict determination of mental events” (1923c, p. 238), “the illusion of Free Will” (1919b, p. 236), and remarked that “psychoanalysts are marked by a particularly strict belief in the determination of mental life” (1910a, p. 38); and again, “you nourish a deeply rooted faith in undetermined psychical events and in free will, but that this is quite unscientific and must yield to the demand of a determinism whose rule extends over mental life” (1916–1917, p. 106). These formulas sound decisive and unequivocal, but there are fringes of uncertainty. Did Freud always adhere to his avowed scientific principles? It seems not. As with equality (“some are more equal than others”), there 53 is determinism, but some determinisms are more deterministic than others. The form of “hard” or complete determinism of physical science may not allow room for any degree of freedom or responsibility, but the same cannot be said of “softer” forms of determinism allowing space for freedom of choice necessary for moral action. The problem in interpreting the freudian texts is whether Freud at any point is speaking the language of hard scientific determinism or something else. Where hard determinism prevails , it undermines the basis for ethical judgment and action; many interpreters read Freud in exactly this sense. However, a claim can be made (Wallwork 1991) that “Freud never makes as clear a commitment to determinism in the hard sense that rules out there being any responsibility as most secondary interpreters seem to think” (p. 52). Nor is it difficult to understand the reasons for this qualification, since clinical praxis would become meaningless and irrelevant without such capacities. Freud’s discussions of determination have to be placed alongside his insistence that, among the goals of therapeutic psychoanalysis, were growth and increase of the patient’s freedom, autonomy and initiative, particularly freedom to decide between conflicting motives and courses of action (1912a, 1921a, 1923a). Freud struggled to resolve the contradiction—a kinder term would be tension—between hard and soft determinism. Hard determinism, even cast in the extreme terms of physical causality, seemed mandatory for his ideas to gain scientific credibility;2 but at the same time the nature of the phenomena and the complex conditions of motivation and choice he encountered clinically made application of such rigid determinism problematic. Freud settled for an ambiguous compromise, retaining hard determinism for theoretical formulations in his metapsychology, particularly in regard to drives and drive forces, and allowing for softer determinism in his clinical discussions.3 Resolution of this unsatisfactory ambiguity of questions related to choice and motivation require reconsideration of the meaning of determinism in the theory of motivation and the capacity for free choice.4 I have argued (Meissner 1995a,b,c; 1999a,b; Rizzuto, Meissner, and Buie, in process) that these considerations and the understanding of motivation and intentionality in general are inconsistent with a theory of drives and drivedeterminants , and that the metapsychological underpinnings of analytic theory need to be readdressed and recast in more consistent and humanly meaningful terms. My theoretical effort to resolve these difficulties separates psychic causality and motivation,5 locating the source of causal efficacy and action in the self-system, specifically in the self-as-agent (Meissner 1993), and retaining the motivational components as separate and distinct considerations unrelated to drive energies or forces. This separation of 54 Psychic Determinism and...

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