William James and Sigmund Freud on the Mind Saving Subjectivity

Each asked, can the mind be scientifically characterized? While Freud thought that psychoanalysis had established a science of the mind, James maintained that the subjective could not be objectified, and psychology was left with only "the crumbs" of analysis. Tauber's presentation of a conjured philosophical confrontation occasioned by their first and only meeting in 1909 uncovers the clashing philosophies of mind underlying their respective positions. In comparing their opposing portraits of the psyche, persistent questions about self-knowledge, personal identity, and moral agency are presented at their fin de siècle origin. In this setting, the James-Freud dispute offers a unique perspective about our own contemporary dilemmas swirling around selfhood, consciousness, and the subjectivity of human experience.
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