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Freud and Sexual Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David Carr
David Carr
Affiliation:
Dunfermline College, Edinburgh
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Extract

The common or lay view of the contribution of Freudian and psychoanalytic theory to our understanding of human sexual conduct seems to be that it is essentially subversive of traditional or conventional sexual morality. For does not the psychoanalytic discovery of psychological causes over which we have no direct control reveal that whatever we may be inclined to do from sexual motives is not a matterfor guilt or shame? Does it not show that much of the sexual guilt and shame that we do experience is merely the product of inhibitions and repressions which are the result of dubiously rational social taboos and parental prohibitions? The main impact of Freudian or psychoanalytic views on modern popular thought about sexual morality andconduct would appear to amount to little more than a collection of such vague beliefs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 62 , Issue 241 , July 1987 , pp. 361 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1987

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References

1 S., Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; Part III: ‘The Transformations of Puberty’, in On Sexuality (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1977), 127.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 127.

3 Ibid., 127.

4 S., Freud, On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love, II), in Oti Sexuality (Penguin:Harmondsworth, 1977), 251.Google Scholar

5 For example: A., Maclntyre, The Unconscious (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1958); R. S., Peters, The Concept of Motivation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); and C., Taylor, The Explanation of Behaviour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965).Google Scholar

6 See expecially Donald, Davidson, ‘Paradoxes of Irrationality’, in Philosophical Essays on Freud, R., Wollheim and J., Hopkins (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

7 Among recent defenders of a more naturalist perspective in ethics are P., Foot in Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978Google Scholar) and P. T., Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge University Press, 1977).Google Scholar