Madam, - I welcome Prof William Reville's article on Freud (Science Today, September 23rd) because it explains the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis well. It also makes the case for Freud's rehabilitation in that, as Dr Reville points out, neuroscientific findings are beginning to validate key Freudian insights into the nature of the human mind.
However, there are two errors and one problematic expression in his contribution.
It is problematic to refer to "our subconscious minds", as Prof Reville does. Freud rejects this term as being misleading. The correct term would simply be "unconscious", to be used here as an adjective.
The two errors are these: Freud (unlike Jung) was not a psychiatrist, as Prof Reville describes him in his opening paragraph. He was a neurologist.
Secondly, towards the end of his article Dr Reville speaks of "the conscious ego". For Jung, the ego is the complex of consciousness. However, for Freud, the ego is partly unconscious. He makes this clear in his post-1923 theorising. For Lacan, his faithful French follower, the ego is the "monumental construct of man's narcissism". Iris Murdoch calls the ego "fat, lying and illusion-making".
Psychoanalysis, at least in its Lacanian variety, shares much in common with religions and some philosophies in its insistence that the ego should die. That is what is supposed to happen in meditation and prayer, and in psychoanalysis too. - Yours, etc.,
Dr STEPHEN J. COSTELLO,
Dartmouth Terrace,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.