Freud and His Discontents

"The only time Freud's name comes up in discussion is when we talk about slips of the tongue," shrugged Columbia psychology professor Robert Krauss. "Every time you say 'unconscious motivation,' you don't cite Freud, just like any time you say 'gravity,' you don't cite Newton."

While Freud and Newton may personify their respective fields to comparable degrees, Krauss's analogy presupposes that the two currently have equal standing in the academy. The Physics Department may be explicitly grounded in Newton's scholarship, but the Psychology Department has had a significantly more fraught relationship with its ideological father figure. Most psychology professors and neuroscientists today tend to regard Freud as a character trapped within the confines of the history of science—brilliant for his time, but a modern anachronism. "Freud is really a historic figure," said Krauss, who teaches a class in the Psychology Department called Communication Theory. "He's a figure in the history of the field who made a certain contribution, and I think to a certain extent the field has assimilated these contributions and moved on," he said.

Rebecca Abbott, C'08, a religion and neuroscience double-major, agrees with Krauss that references to Freud's theories—if they are made at all—omit their Freudian origins. Professors "would never say 'Here's Freud's theory of denial,'" she said, "but they would talk about things like cognitive dissonance that can relate to his theory." Nonetheless, Abbott believes that students of psychology would benefit from a direct discussion of Freud and the influence of his work on the field. "I kind of wish that there was a little bit more psychoanalysis because I do think that it's valid," Abbott continued. "The only discussion that I can remember about Freud has been in my CC class."

Over the years, Freud's theories—and their epistemological and practical considerations—have receded deeper and deeper into the psychology faculty's collective unconscious. But they've been reappearing in various theoretical forms in humanities courses—curiously, with the scientific texts lately supplanting the more philosophical writings—and like all repressed traumas and desires, their manifestations are often distorted.

Professor Barbara Woike, chair of Psychology at Barnard, identified herself as one of a handful of professors in her department willing to teach Freud. Woike explained that while most professors will make general allusions to Freud in an introductory class, their view is that his arguments are not scientifically verifiable, and therefore not deserving of further analysis. "A lot of professors and students erroneously thought that his theories aren't of value because they're obsolete, because it's like comparing what we know now with what he knew one hundred years ago about psychology," she explained. "We don't want to criticize his theories based on what we know today, but to think of them as radical ideas."

Echoing this view is Dr. Jules Kerman, a practicing psychiatrist who teaches a graduate course in the Psychiatry Department entitled Sigmund Freud: Thinking and Theorizing. He admitted that while psychoanalysis is no longer embraced by academic psychology, it commanded considerable theoretical attention for the first half of the twentieth century. There was a sea-change in the 1960s with the advent of modern neuroscience, eventually leading to a steady decline in the study of Freud's theories of psychoanalysis in both the Barnard and Columbia psychology departments.

Kerman's own class is a microcosm of this phenomenon: the Thinking and Theorizing class is officially taught at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, which is a subdivision of the Department of Psychiatry. "Tension is putting it mildly," he said of the attitude of the Psychiatry Department toward the inclusion of psychoanalysis. Out of a love for the material and a strong belief in its validity and importance, Kerman teaches the yearlong course free of charge to pre-professional analysts willing to go the extra mile—literally—to the Medical School on 168th Street.

He attributes the decline of instruction in psychoanalysis to the introduction of psychotropic medications—drugs like painkillers, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers—and the demand that they inspired for analysis-free quick fixes. He also cites economic conditions' contribution to the rejection, and eventual vilification, of psychoanalysis: many insurance companies refuse to pay for treatment, which understandably leads doctors and patients to the conclusion that the field has been invalidated. Moreover, the drop-off in analysis (with its emphasis on individualized patient care and the talking cure) has resulted in what Kerman described as physicians "coming out of psychiatry residences much less able to listen to patients and respond to them the way patients deserve to be responded to."

If students want a serious, thorough study of Freud's work, they're going to have to leave Schermerhorn's psychology labs in favor of Hamilton Hall seminars. But the treatment of Freud in history, art, and literature classes is an instrumental one. It's not often a face-value reading of Freud, but an effort to apply his theories of sexuality, human development, and brain function in the service of a variety of pedagogical aims.

Many modern art history classes will read Rosalind Krauss' Freudian reading of artist Donald Judd's work. Twentieth-century art history classes frequently use theories of psychoanalysis to inform their interpretations of surrealist, feminist, and minimalist works. The Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department is currently offering a class that pairs Freud's readings with those of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, but the class is more an exercise in Derrida's practice of deconstruction than in understanding Freud's theories or beliefs. Across Broadway, castration anxiety and the Oedipal complex have become staple catchphrases in Margaret Vandenburg's Modernism class.

The study of Freud can also be found in the basement of Barnard's Lehman Hall, in a European history course called Vienna and the Birth of the Modern. The course dedicates an entire meeting to a discussion of selections from Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. The class, taught by Associate Professor Deborah Coen, has not been tasked with determining the validity of any of Freud's theories themselves—though Coen does admit that she's "sympathetic to the charge that [Freud's theories] are not scientific."

To inform a reading of Interpretation of Dreams, the class turned to its primary text, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna by Carl Schorske. Students in the class were quick to point out how Schorske invoked his subject's methods, contextualizing Freud by psychoanalyzing him. Schorske postulated that the reasons for Freud's theories may have been his insecurity as a Jew in turn-of-the-century Vienna or his belief that he was a disappointment to his father.

In fact, Schorske used the term "psychological defense" to attempt to draw a coherent narrative of Freud's work and life choices. Mirroring Freud's reading of the Oedipus myth as a statement about the universality of childhood sexuality and the taboo of incest, Schorske compared Freud to Hannibal to trace Freud's personal and political motivations. His essay reduced Freud to a paradigmatic character in human history from whom conclusions could be drawn about the Viennese cultural elite, just as Oedipus was to Freud an icon for the development of humanity, both as a species and individually. But it was agreed that Schorske's book, though certainly a successful catalyst for class discussion, did not employ modern historians' practices. The application of Freud's theories was as alien to them as it would have been to Freud.

Freud's work has been in the Core for years, and it has been included to further CC's mission—to illustrate the organization of social, political, and religious communities—rather than as a freestanding text to be read on its own. "I ask my students to treat reading Freud like they would the Bible or the Koran," said Professor Michael Stanislawski, the Chair of Contemporary Civilization. It was a sunny Tuesday, and professors had assembled in the Core Curriculum conference room to discuss pedagogical approaches to the works of Freud in the CC classroom. Stanislawski sat at the head of a long conference table, around which there were at least twelve chairs, but many of his professors, like students in a seminar who hadn't quite finished the reading, chose the chairs clustered against the wall.

"Controversially, I suggest that we give ourselves permission to do what we did with Kant: That is, not to attempt to—what seems like a grave sin in CC—understand every word of the text. At some point they're almost impossible to understand. But get the main point; get a good sense of the argument and overarching theory. I, as the chair of CC, give you permission." Nods of understanding and muffled laughter spread through the crowd.

Stanislawski suggested that Contemporary Civilization professors start their in-class discussions on Freud with three caveats: first, an acknowledgment that Freud, like Plato, believed that males were the paradigms of human beings and of human sexuality; second, that Freud considered himself an empirical scientist whose ideas were subject to revision, unlike modern neuroscientists; and lastly, that it is not the aim of the class to evaluate the scientific merit of any theory.

This year marks a significant change on the Core Curriculum syllabus: CC classes have begun reading Freud's more scientifically explicit, less philosophical texts: Civilization and Its Discontents, deemed "low Freud," "too Nietzschean" and unpopular with students, was thrown out of the syllabus in favor of The Libido Theory, Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning, and On Narcissism. The last of which, Professor Stanislawski said with a smile, "is a hugely important discussion at a place like Columbia University."

The book-swap might seem like just a typical shift in the CC syllabus, an event that everyone in line for the Hamilton elevator occasionally witnesses. But in the context of the goal of CC—understanding oneself in terms of one's position in a community—turning inwards to understand the self through psychoanalysis is a fairly substantial change. The syllabus will, of course, return to a discussion about broader social functioning in the following week (when students read W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk), but students will enter it armed with self-awareness gleaned from technical, jargon-heavy books about psychoanalysis.

Meanwhile, whether it realizes it or not—and because we're discussing Freud, it's safe to assume the latter—the id of CC is signaling a desire to return to teaching Freud for Freud's sake, a desire to study the material without context and without a historical subtext. What would Freud have thought? Although no one can know for sure, psychoanalysis would most likely reveal that it's what he would have wanted, too.