ABSTRACT
A g a in s t t h e historical background sketched in Chapter Four, let us now try to say something of Freud’s treatment of thinking. Broadly, what faces us is an immensely rich store of observation and insight relating to thought treated by Freud as subjectively oriented, and a much less developed and less convincing account of thinking that is objective, in the sense of being enmeshed with the world of external stimulation and shared experience and not immediately subservient to pleasure and pain. It has been a major preoccupation of later analytic writers to scrutinize and develop Freud’s treatment o f ‘reality-oriented’ thought processes. This scrutiny has led some authors, e.g. the late David Rapaport, to argue cogently that some radical modifi cation is required in Freud’s account of the equipment of human nature at the start. There is little doubt in fact that Freud’s con ception o f ‘objective’ thinking cannot be made to work on the basis of the premises with which he began. To this much debated question we will return at the end of this chapter. Meanwhile, let us consider-so far as it can be done briefly-Freud’s delineation of ‘subjective’ thinking. This involves considering first the Project3* and then Freud’s more highly developed views.
