Freud, Goodman and Their Splits

In this section we present a short and dense psychological essay by Paul Goodman, in which the author compares it critically with Freud’s theory of mind. Goodman focusses in this paper on the split between oneself and the world, drive and object, ultimately, between me and the other. To this he contrasts his own (and Perls) conception of a unified and dialectically structured field, a concept whose points of departure he finds again and again in the work of Freud. In the annexed comment to the theme, Bernd Bocian hints to the fact that today’s so-called "elational turn" in psychoanalysis was anticipated by Perls and Goodman. In this respect, a very important role was played by their common vision of what Freud called primary and secondary processes, as well as by the subsequent continuation adopted by Perls and Goodman both in theory and in practice of radical currents of psychoanalysis. The character analysis of Wilhelm Reich could be seen, in this connection, as a transitional phase between the tradition of critical social psychoanalysis and Fritz Perls.

Keywords: Paul Goodman, Freud’s theory of mind, the split between self and world, primary and secondary process as a unit, Fritz Perls, radical psychoanalysis, character analysis as a transitional phase.

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Bernd Bocian, Freud, Goodman e le scissioni in "QUADERNI DI GESTALT" 1/2012, pp 121-138, DOI: 10.3280/GEST2012-001012