ON KAHNEMAN'S 'THINKING FAST AND SLOW'. (ECONOMICS NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, 2002)

Our time owes so much to Freud, Marx and Nietzsche. Who would dare to disagree

with the overwhelming influence of these three great intellectuals upon

our ways of feeling, thinking and living? Whether we like it or not?

To Nietzsche we owe the unmasking and the scoff of all "absolute" moral, simply because it always hide deep and narrow selfish interests, even if disguised by charitable holy words.

He taught us, therefore, to always and radically suspect the "good intentions".

Karl Marx vehemently denounced the ingenuous  belief in the existence of

neutral ruling classes, whose only interest would be focused on a

lodestar that allegedly  represented the search for "the

common good of our people", or "the general happiness of the nation".

Interestingly, and very revealing, is the fact  that the bourgeois classes from nations all over the world have always uttered these same ideological

cliches to justify the appropriation  of the resources from

the surplus value of labor. "Paradoxically" these ruler classes  have always allied

themselves internationally for the sake of their common petty, often anti-national interests.

From Sigmund Freud came the energetic complaint as well the

deconstruction of over a thousand years of very heavy sexual repression, which he made

possible through the notions of the unconscious (das Unbewusste),  the Id (das Es), the Ego (das Ich) and the Superego (das Über-Ich). By the way, in spite of so ubiquitous, this Latin solution of the 'English' translation is poor.

 Our Viennese 'savior', in addition to his topical description of the

 psyche, has created an prolificous theory on the genesis of the

"diseases of the soul." Thus, he revolutionized  the science of

psychopathology, and the last word in psychiatry in those years near his death (1939) belonged still to him.

Among these three genial great liberators, Freud is, therefore, who

deepest touches the heart of our personal lives, since he restored our

freedom in the so wonderful realm of sexuality, which had remained for

so many centuries execrated, vilified and/or taken for pathological,

demonic, if not deserving the worst of hells.

His method of free association of words is able to show what goes in

deep layers of our minds. And probably always will be so powerful!

However, as illustrated by the episode in which Freud himself warns

against the unwary that a "cigar is sometimes just a cigar" (and not

always a phallic symbol as a beginner in psychoanalysis might think),

there will NEVER be an unambiguous dictionary  of symbols! The symbols

are always dynamic, ie subject to the violent whirlwind of the

associations that come from our contact with the outside world, and

even subject to changes in front of each newly acquired insight, or

even at every interpretation given to a hitheto primary content, ie,

a not yet analyzed. For example: Anna, a girl that has

never been analyzed before, dreams that she smokes a nice cigar to her

boyfriend. In telling this dream to the boy, who happens to be a

Philosophy student, he plays like this: "How wonderful love, you have

dreamed of practicing oral sex on me!" Taken by surprise, in his

conscious Ego (Ich), Anna becomes perplexed  and answers: "What a

nonsense I do not need to disguise my desires this way".

When some time thereafter the image of the cigar happens to repeat in her dreams, it will come as bound to other and new emotions, taking into account the remembrance

of its symbolic meaning as informed by her boyfriend.For example: 

Just over a century ago, in 1907, Sigmund said to be every enthusiastic about

a given disciple who was 19 years younger than him, and that this would

be a great driving force of the psychoanalytic movement. That young doctor also had an excellent impression about his eminent Vienese teacher, and their friendship was an immediate result of their first meeting. However, when they broke up, this is what

Jung wrote to Freud: "... your technique of treating your pupils like

patients is a mistake. Thus it only produces enslaved children or

shameless puppies... I'm smart enough to realize your trick.".

 [I must warn that I am not a "Jungian". These thoughts are not

 intended to fish for anything].

Since free association is an endless task, symbols always refering to a

whirlwind of new symbols, this might quickly unsettle the psychoanalytic

movement. An open interpretive system can be deeply questioned on its

foundations by any newly arrived student? I am prone to think that

Freud was forced to severely hinder the creative impetus of his pupils just to avoid his new theory from disappearing amid chaotic endles questions. And his biographers confirm: the great  Austrian jew adapted to his "school of psychoanalysis" typically Stalinist methods! For the sake of the "greater good", i.e., a final victory against the repressive

obscurantism, and against the anarchic tendencies that seemed destined

 to made from every his followers a founder of a new dissent.

After his death, the best disciples of Freud were in London, whose

Psychoanalytic Society, held the title of "the only one from the

direct line of Freud." (Remember the pope and Peter, the apostle,

regarding the church of Jesus?).

Freud, the great thinker of the twentieth century, however, must not be

regarded as a messiah, nor as the discoverer of a definitive theory of

the genesis of mental illness. If he was a great messianic leader, his

secret ritual would obviously be devoid of any interest to science and

to philosophy!

Freud's ideas were inspired by the works of Schopenhauer and

Nietzsche, which conceived them. The notion of the unconscious as well

as the search of the real forces involved in the decision-making

struggles of our minds were already there in the works of these two

philosophers. Freud has "translated" their works in a new topologic

description of the human mind, as well as in an extensive and very

ambitious theory of the neuroses.

The psychiatry of this XXI century is indeed heir to Freud, as to many other

authors of the past. So many of his concepts were incorporated, and are

the basis of renewed investigations.

There are plenty of Freudian concepts in the newly released books of

clinical psychiatry, as well as in the manuals of diagnostic

classification of "mental disorders" be European or American.

Why, then, we do not think about ourselves. nowadays psychiatrists, as

"Freudian"? Or even, as Professor Eliana Cardoso mentions in his

recent article in the journal

Valor, some say that "Freud is a bad name" among nowadays psychiatrists?

Be sure, reader, the "psychoanalytic movement" is since many decades

divided into numerous different branches, exactly as as Freud did not

want it to happen! It has not been enough the availing of brainwashing

techniques "to Stalinist fashion."

Jung created the Analytical Psychology, Lacan, the Structural Psychoanalysis, American authors have founded several freudian schools... EVERYONE of them are equally legitimate 'psychoanalysts', unless we dare consider brainwashing as a legitimate science divulgation method. [What a sickening, absurd digression!].

Veritable Tower of Babel has followed then. And, of course, science and

Babel languages are and always will be incompatible!

To do science it is necessary to speak a common "language", i.e., to use a same

terminology to describe the phenomena to be studied, bcause otherwise NOTHING useful will be produced. If what you call 'anxiety' or 'depression' is different from what I call, our work together will be completely useless.

 The same is true concerning any descriptive concept of the mind, no matter if mentioned  or not in Freud's works..

Would I be attacking here the "psychoanalytic movement" or even this

or that of its branches? BY NO MEANS!

As a psychotherapeutic tool, that produces  good clinical  results, it is extremely worthy! This is true even when we are not able to recognize its place within the frame of any scientific theories.

Scientific theories must be logically open to empirical tests, which means it

can not be closed on itself, i.e., it must not exclude the possibility of its own refutation. In one word: they must be structurally refutable.

From whence comes the charm that persists in our culture so bound to the

 word "psychoanalysis"?

 I mean such a magic aura, shining in the eyes of those who pronounce this vaguely inaccurate name could be an evocation of the role that Freudism had as a trigger of mankind of sexual freedom. Not without reason!

When we, psychiatrists as well other mental health workers, introduce ourselves, almost always that question comes: "Are

you a Freudian psychoanalyst?".  If we answer negatively, or even when we try

to point out to the complexity behind such issue, it befalls on  the countenance of the

one who hears our answers a frustrated expression denoting the not said thought

"Oh, what a pity". To such a point that sometime maybe one should retort: "But don't

worry, I love Freud, and more than that, I'm crazy about sex, addicted to good sex"

Hahahahahahahah...LOL.

Because of all that is above summarized it seems to me very clear that Kahneman's choices regarding the methodology to be used in his economic behavior enquires

could not be otherwise. Reason, Emotion and Economic Decisions may only

 be grounded in Cognitive Science. Never in subjectivism, peer pressure, fad,

 brainwash, fashion, logically non-refutable assertions, style or brand.