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Preface 1. We might point out that there are other compelling reasons for writing a book on Freud and the existential phenomenologists than those previously listed. For example, the preponderance of philosophical books on Freud have been written within the Anglo-American analytic tradition dominant in this country. As a result alternative, and what are arguably more unified approaches to Freud, have been marginalized. As we shall demonstrate, such approaches have a great deal to contribute toward a deeper understanding and appreciation of Freud’s worldview. 2. In particular, it will also enable us to be in a stronger position to evaluate the cogency of the criticisms of Freud that are raised specifically by the existential phenomenologists. 3. It is also the case that Freud himself often failed to acknowledge and appreciate the synthesizing nature of his work. On several occasions, he denied that his project involved a pursuit of a synthesis at all. For example, in reaction to James Jackson Putnam’s metaphysics Freud wrote, “I feel no need for a higher synthesis in the same way that I have no ear for music” (Nathan G. Hale, ed., James Jackson Putnam and Psychoanalysis; Letters Between Putnam and Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, William James, Sandor Ferenczi, Morton Prince, 1877–1917, trans. Judith Bernays Heller [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971], 105). And again, in a letter to Putnam, Freud wrote: “For my part I have never been concerned with any comprehensive synthesis, but invariably with certainty alone.” In a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, Freud wrote: “Naturally I do not always agree with you. I so rarely feel the need for synthesis. The unity of this world seems to me so self-evident as to not need emphasis” (Ernst Pfeiffer, ed., Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters, trans. William and Elaine Robson-Scott [New York: W. W. Norton & Company , 1972], 32). 4. With Jean-Martin Charcot as the obvious exception to this general point. 5. Freud was also greatly influenced by ideas neither specifically scientific nor philosophical. However, we shall not treat the literary influences on Freud— Shakespeare, for example—since our interest is in rediscovering/uncovering the much neglected philosophical influences which provided much of the intellectual resources leading to the development of psychoanalysis. 6. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, vol. I (London: Hogarth Press, 1960), Notes 367 xvi. Citations from the Standard Edition (hereafter abbreviated as SE) are by volume and page number. 7. When forced to leave his home in Vienna due to the German invasion during World War II and antisemitism, Freud was required to be highly selective in what he would retain for his library. Among those books chosen were an impressive array of philosophy books! See Harry Trosman and Roger Dennis Simmons, “The Freud Library,” in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 21 (1973), 646–87. 8. Ernest Jones, The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 2 (New York: Basic Books, 1955), 415. 9. Richard Rorty, “The Challenge of Relativism,” in Debating the State of Philosophy : Habermas, Rorty, and Kolakowski, ed. Jozef Niznik and John Sanders (Westport , Conn.: Praeger, 1996), 52. 10. Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989), xiii. 11. Sigmund Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, trans. Eric Mosbacher and James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1954). 12. To borrow Ricoeur’s usage of the term. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 439–58. Introduction Epigraphs: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, trans. Peter Hutchinson (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), No. 537; Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 179–80; Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1966), 179; SE XXII, 73; Martin Heidegger , Zollikon Seminars, trans. Franz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 183. 1. Various strains of “Eastern philosophy” have, of course, pursued such domains as well—for example, “Brahman” in Hinduism, the “Tao” in Taoism— though these transcend the scope of this book. 2. Heraclitus believed that one cannot know the psyche regardless of how endless the search: “The soul is undiscovered, though explored forever to a depth beyond report” (Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, trans. Brooks Haxton [New York: Viking Penguin, 2001], 45). It...