Abstract
William James and Sigmund Freud shared some important views about psychology as a natural science: they were both trained in medical studies, and accepted the leading ideas of evolutionary physiology and biology; they both reacted against some aspects of German systematic psychology, and against the English associationist school as well. Both James and Freud approached the experimental study of the psyche from a deterministic point of view. The present paper stresses Freud’s radical determinism, as stated in his early Essay on psychology and elsewhere, as opposed in principle to James’ dichotomy between the requirements of cause-effect connection in the method of psycho-physiological research, and his “dilemma of determinism” concerning moral responsability and free-will.
A more detailed Version of the present paper has been pubished in Italian in [3].
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Casini, P. (2003). James and Freud on Psychical Determinism. In: Benci, V., Cerrai, P., Freguglia, P., Israel, G., Pellegrini, C. (eds) Determinism, Holism, and Complexity. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4947-2_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4947-2_29
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