Remembering the Evolutionary Freud

ArgumentThroughout his career as a writer, Sigmund Freud maintained an interest in the evolutionary origins of the human mind and its neurotic and psychotic disorders. In common with many writers then and now, he believed that the evolutionary past is conserved in the mind and the brain. Today the "evolutionary Freud" is nearly forgotten. Even among Freudians, he is regarded to be a red herring, relevant only to the extent that he diverts attention from the enduring achievements of the authentic Freud. There are three ways to explain these attitudes. First, the evolutionary Freud's key work is the "Overview of the Transference Neurosis" (1915). But it was published at an inopportune moment, forty years after the author's death, during the so-called "Freud wars." Second, Freud eventually lost interest in the "Overview" and the prospect of a comprehensive evolutionary theory of psychopathology. The publication of The Ego and the Id (1923), introducing Freud's structural theory of the psyche, marked the point of no return. Finally, Freud's evolutionary theory is simply not credible. It is based on just-so stories and a thoroughly discredited evolutionary mechanism, Lamarckian use-inheritance. Explanations one and two are probably correct but also uninteresting. Explanation number three assumes that there is a fundamental difference between Freud's evolutionary narratives (not credible) and the evolutionary accounts of psychopathology that currently circulate in psychiatry and mainstream journals (credible). The assumption is mistaken but worth investigating

Epistemology · Evolutionary psychology · Evolutionary theory · Mainstream · Neurosis · Psyche · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology

• Transfer of Lamarckisms and emerging ‘scientific’ psychologies

  Open Access•Snait B Gissis•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2020

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• Freud and evolutionary anthropology's first just‐so story

  Open Access•Richard J Smith•Evolutionary Anthropology Issues…•2016

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• Time, trauma, and the brain

  Open Access•Lloyd, Alexandre Larivée•Science in Context•2020

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• The Social Brain and the Myth of Empathy

  Open Access•Alma H Young, Allan Young•Science in Context•2012

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• Darwin, Freud, and the Continuing Misrepresentation of the Primal Horde

  Richard J Smith•Current Anthropology•2016

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