On Feb 10, 2015, at 12:18 PM, Mike Palij <[email protected]> wrote: > So, we were left with the questions > of whether Hall had used the iceberg metaphor elsewhere > (which Chris Green has now answered) and did he use it in > describing Freud's theory (we still don't know the answer to > this question). Hall seems to be the most reasonable person > to make such a connection but we have no evidence that he > did.
It seems to me that the most interesting point here is that Hall used the iceberg in reference to the division between the conscious and unconscious PRIOR to Freud’s work was much developed on this point. If _Interpretation of Dreams_ is considered to be the starting point of psychoanalysis, then Hall may have simply beaten Freud to the punch. Of course, there is Freud’s earlier book with Joseph Breuer. It has been a long, long, long time since I looked at it (but there were lots of people talking about the possibility of unconscious mentation before Freud — not least of all Helmholtz and Wundt). It would also be very interesting to know just who Hall is referring to when he criticizes the “ego-theorists.” Nowadays, the term “ego psychology” is associated with a group of post-psychoanalytics, but apparently it had a meaning before anyone (in the English-speaking world, anyway) knew very much about Freud (and decades before he divided the mind into id, ego, and super-ego. It would also be interesting to look anew at the work of Pierre Janet, who engaged in a lengthy literature dispute with Freud over priority for unconscious motivation (as I recall — again, it has been a while). Finally, I got some new information relevant to this investigation this morning (thanks to my colleague Thomas Teo for help with the German). There is no mention of Eisberg (iceberg) anywhere in Fechner’s Elemente. If you look closely at Jones’ reference to Fechner, he quotes Fechner on another matter (cited as Elemente, vol. 2, p. 521) and only then, in his own voice, characterizes Fechner’s position as being akin to an iceberg. In other words, the iceberg reference may be Jones’ own gloss of Fechner, not a direct quotation of Fechner. That’s all old. What is new is that Fechner does twice use the term Wellenberge (literally “wave mountain,” though it has been meaning of the crest of a wave — usually in mathematical terms, though Fechner mentions the sea as well). He uses the term on pp. 458 and 529. He also includes a drawing of sine waves on p. 529. It is important to recall that Fechner’s point is really quite separate from Freud’s. Fechner is only saying that sensation is sometimes below the threshold of consciousness, and sometime above. There is no special importance to unconscious sensation here — e.g., it does not secretly motivate something else — other than its not being consciously experienced by the person. We may have a straight-up example of Jones misinterpreting Fechner here. Or, of his confusing in memory Hall’s mention of consciousness being like and iceberg with Fechner’s claim that sensation undulates above and below the threshold of consciousness like a sine wave. Chris ….. Christopher D Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo ………………………………... --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=41991 or send a blank email to leave-41991-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
