Epicurus on the Couch

What is the Value of Psychoanalysis?

Friends, life is full of pleasures. Last week I had the pleasure of arguing with my favorite Stoic Massimo Pigliucci. Massimo raised a number of issues with some of my Notes. But the issue I’m most interested in exploring here is that of Jungian psychology. I restacked a post which included a quote by Carl Jung. My Stoic friend took a firm stance. Psychoanalysis is pseudoscience. Why bother with such bunk? 

My purpose here is not to recapitulate that argument but raise the question, what is the value of Jungian psychology? What would Epicurus have to say on the subject, and should the therapeutic value of psychoanalysis weigh in its favor even if Jung’s methods don’t meet the standard of scientific research? Is Massimo falling into the trap of scientism here, or should we all be more skeptical of unscientific therapies? 

Myths and Archetypes

Jung built his psychological framework on a deep study of how ancient cultures - particularly the Greeks - understood the human psyche. The Greek pantheon wasn't merely a collection of stories, but a sophisticated system for understanding different aspects of human experience and behavior.

What caught Jung's attention was how these patterns kept appearing in his clinical practice. Patients who had never studied Greek mythology would describe experiences, dreams, and psychological states that paralleled these ancient motifs with remarkable precision. 

This observation led to his concept of archetypes - recurring patterns in human psychology that manifest across cultures and time periods. Jung saw Plato's theory of Forms as a philosophical precursor to his concept of archetypes. But rather than perfect ideals, Jung viewed archetypes as psychological patterns embedded in the collective human psyche.

Jung's initial work with dreams began during his collaboration with Freud, but he soon departed from Freud's more rigid framework of dream interpretation. Where Freud saw dreams primarily as expressions of repressed desires, particularly sexual ones, Jung's clinical experience led him to view dreams as meaningful communications from the unconscious that could serve a therapeutic function.

Greek Dream Analysis 

This therapeutic approach to dreams, interestingly enough, had ancient precedent that Jung himself studied. Just as Jung would have his patients record and discuss their dreams as part of the analytical process, the ancient Greeks had developed sophisticated practices of therapeutic dream work centuries earlier. The most prominent example was found in the Asclepieia, healing temples that flourished throughout the Greek world from the 6th century BCE onward.

Like Jung's patients seeking psychological healing through dream analysis, ancient Greeks would journey to these temples seeking both physical and mental restoration. 

After ritual purification, they would sleep in special dormitories (abaton), waiting for dreams that might offer healing wisdom. The practice, known as incubation, was an early form of therapeutic practice that recognized dreams as a pathway to healing.

Jung's insight about the therapeutic potential of dreams wasn't entirely new. Rather, he was rediscovering and reframing in psychological terms what the Greeks had understood through religious and cultural practices. 

Where the Greeks often sought direct divine intervention through dreams, Jung saw dreams as communications from the unconscious mind itself - messages that required interpretation but emerged from natural psychological processes rather than supernatural sources.

Epicurean Dreams 

Although the tradition of dream therapy was already ancient when Epicurus was born, he had no interest in such treatments. Whatever therapeutic value they might impart, their methods couldn’t be trusted. Epicurus maintained a strict naturalism in his philosophy, rejecting supernatural explanations for psychological phenomena. This is clearly demonstrated in a surviving letter to his mother, where he dismisses her anxieties about his appearance in her dream, which she worried foretold his death. This was a widely-held superstition at the time. For Epicurus, dreams could not predict the future - they were natural phenomena requiring natural explanations.

Epicurus believed, and here Aristotle agreed, that dreams were merely residual sense impressions - essentially, the mind processing leftover sensory data during sleep. This view has some merit - we often do dream about recent experiences or current concerns. But it struggles to explain several key phenomena: the narrative complexity of dreams, the appearance of novel elements we've never experienced, and most significantly, the recurring patterns that appear across different cultures and time periods.

Yet the Epicurean view contains more subtlety than mere dismissal. In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius develops a fascinating argument about the origins of religion, pointing to the universal human experience of dreaming about gods as evidence for their existence. 

Like Jung centuries later, the Epicureans recognized that shared psychological experiences point to real phenomena worthy of investigation, while insisting that these phenomena must have natural rather than supernatural explanations.

Lucretius goes further, attempting to explain how these shared dream-images arise from the physical structure of reality through his theory of atomic "films" or simulacra. While we might not accept his specific mechanical explanation today, his effort to provide a materialist account of shared psychological experience remains relevant to modern discussions about the relationship between mind and matter.

All this is to say that while Epicurus’s ideas about dreams might not have been totally accurate, nor could they be in any way considered scientific, they were concerned first with being consistent with observations and an epistemology that demystified natural phenomena. The idea that people might be made to feel subjectively better by mystical interpretation of dreams already existed in his world and he refused to countenance the idea. 

Dreaming in German Romanticism

Jung's interpretation of ancient myths and dreams was deeply influenced by German Romantic thought, a movement that saw nature and the human psyche as infused with spiritual meaning. While Enlightenment thinkers emphasized rational observation, the German Romantics sought to understand the deeper spiritual significance underlying natural phenomena. This intellectual heritage shaped how Jung approached both classical mythology and dream interpretation.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach to classical mythology and Friedrich Schelling's Naturphilosophie provided Jung with models for understanding the relationship between nature, spirit, and the human psyche. Particularly significant was Carl Gustav Carus, who developed early theories about the unconscious mind decades before Freud. These thinkers saw mythology not merely as ancient stories, but as expressions of fundamental truths about human nature and consciousness.

This Romantic influence on Jung's thought provides context for Richard Noll's critique in "The Jung Cult." Noll argues that Jung's theories owed more to German Romantic mysticism than to empirical observation. What Jung presented as universal psychological patterns discovered through clinical work might instead be viewed as reflections of a specific intellectual tradition. The archetypes Jung "discovered" in dreams and myths might actually represent patterns he was predisposed to find because of his immersion in Romantic thought.

This criticism cuts to the heart of Jung's scientific credibility. If his interpretations of dreams and myths were shaped more by German Romantic philosophy than by objective observation, how can we trust his conclusions? Yet this critique also raises an interesting question: even if Jung's methods were influenced by his intellectual background, does this necessarily invalidate his insights about patterns in human psychological experience?

Treating Jung Skeptically 

Massimo’s skepticism reflects fundamental concerns about the scientific validity of psychoanalytic methods. For Massimo, the core problem lies in Jung's methodology - there's no way to test or falsify Jung's interpretations of dreams or archetypes. 

When a Jungian analyst interprets a dream about a snake as representing transformation (because snakes shed their skin) or as representing unconscious fear (because snakes can be dangerous), how can we determine if either interpretation is actually correct? The interpretation seems to depend more on the analyst's theoretical framework than on any testable hypothesis.

Moreover, how can we prove that recurring patterns in dreams and myths reflect universal psychological structures rather than simply cultural transmission or coincidence? Jung's work, while intellectually rich, doesn't provide a mechanism for distinguishing between these possibilities.

What Does the Science Say? 

Recent neuroscience and psychology have revealed fascinating insights about dreams and unconscious processes. Studies using fMRI scanning during REM sleep show how dreams activate emotional and memory centers in the brain. Research on sleep and memory consolidation suggests that dreams play a role in processing emotional experiences and integrating new information - lending some scientific support to the idea that dreams serve psychological functions.

Cross-cultural dream research has documented certain universal patterns. For instance, a 2023 study analyzing dream reports from diverse cultures found common themes like being chased, falling, or encountering deceased loved ones. This doesn't validate Jung's specific interpretations, though, as these are all recognizable situations which exist in every culture.

Cognitive science has also validated the existence of unconscious processing. Studies on implicit bias, subliminal perception, and non-conscious decision-making demonstrate that much of our mental activity occurs outside conscious awareness. This lends some support to the basic psychoanalytic insight about the importance of unconscious processes, even if not to specific Jungian theories.

However, these scientific findings don't fully bridge the gap between Jung's theories and empirical validation. While we can measure brain activity during dreams or document common dream themes, there are still no scientific methods to validate specific symbolic interpretations or prove the existence of archetypes as Jung conceived them.

Conclusion

In wrestling with the value of psychoanalysis, we find ourselves in a position that might have resonated with Epicurus himself. While we must reject explanations that can't be verified through observation and reason, we should remain humble about the limits of our current understanding. Jung, for all his methodological flaws, observed patterns in human psychology that still call for explanation. His error wasn't in noting these patterns, but in overlaying them with interpretative frameworks that couldn't be tested or verified.

Massimo Pigliucci is right to insist on scientific rigor. As Epicureans, we should be deeply skeptical of any theory that can't be validated through empirical observation. Yet we should also remember that Epicurus himself, convinced he had discovered fundamental truths about the nature of reality, was working with an incomplete understanding of physics that would have been unimaginable to him.

This suggests a path forward: we can appreciate Jung's observations about patterns in human psychology while rejecting his more speculative interpretations. We can acknowledge that there are aspects of consciousness, dreams, and the unconscious mind that our current scientific frameworks struggle to fully explain, while insisting that any explanations we develop must be grounded in empirical evidence.

The greatest wisdom might lie in maintaining this tension - between rigorous skepticism of unverifiable claims and humble acknowledgment of what remains mysterious. As Epicureans seeking tranquility through understanding, we should neither accept comforting but unfalsifiable theories nor assume that our current scientific understanding represents the final word on human psychology.

After all, true tranquility comes not from believing we have all the answers, but from honestly engaging with both what we know and what remains to be discovered about the nature of the human mind.

Ειρήνη και Ασφάλεια

Peace and Safety