Freud on the strength of reason and intellect

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

No one has done more than Sigmund Freud to make people aware of the unconscious and instinctual sources of human thought and behavior.

But Freud in some ways was an adherent of Enlightenment ideals of reason. In The Future of an Illusion (1927; James Strachey translation), he wrote:

We may insist as often as we like that man's intellect is powerless in comparison with his instinctual life, and we may be right in this. Nevertheless, there is something peculiar about this weakness. The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest till it has gained a hearing. Finally, after a countless succession of rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points on which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but it is in itself a point of no small importance.

Tags: freud, future of an illusion