Under construction....
Freud was a biological reductionist. Right from day 1 in Freud's gradual switchover from biology, physics and neurology to psychology, Freud never entirely left biology, physics, and neurology behind but only looked for different ways throughout his almost 50 years of studying the human mind, to take what he learned in psychology -- and bring it back into the realm of what he learned in the earliest part of his career in biology, physics, and neurology.
In some ways, there is nothing wrong with doing this. There is much to be gained by having a good solid knowledge of both the physical and the psychological dimensions of the body and mind. I wish I had a greater knowledge of physics, biology, biochemistry, and neurology. But even with my limited knowledge, I can see a strong parallelism.
Now parallelism is not the same thing as reductionism. In parallelism, we see certain parallels in the way the mind and body work together. We don't reduce all psychology to biology anymore than we would reduce all biology to psychology. But we see similarities in the way that both work -- and integrate together.
For example, we can see a strong parallel in the way that the mind-body puts together its strategy, and the execution of this strategy, in fending off (defending against) what it perceives to be foreign biological invaders, and the way our same mind-body also fends off (defends against) what it perceives to be foreign psychological invaders.
Indeed, the exact same strategies would seem to be in place for both the physiology -- and the psychology -- of defense.
However we describe the 'mechamisms' in the 'physiology of defense' -- by this principle of 'parallelism' we should see the same basic mechanisms at work in the 'psychology of defense'. What are they?
Fight, flight, co-operation, and submission.
To be continued....
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