> "Then there is the theory of the unconscious, which has also seen
better
> days. We all agree that Freud did not 'discover' the unconscious, and
are
> sophisticated enough to see that it has a history that long predates
him: as
> the devil that possessed Christians; as the mesmerism and hypnosis
that
> invoked the split, double and multiple personalities of the 18th and
19th
> centuries; and as the theme of 'doubling' that informed much Victorian
> literature and, today, still informs the dumbest plot lines in
Hollywood and
> in psychotherapy.
This is the sort of criticism that ends up giving creedence to what it attacks. What Dufresne cites as precursors to the Freudian unconscious only bear vague similarities to it; demonic possesion, for example, is another conscious entity within your body, not an ensemble of drives.
That's not to say the Freudian unconscious isn't above criticism--only that what Defresne wrote above is crude. He's a teaching MD, so he probably knows other, more cogent ones. This is cheap grandstanding.