While Sigmund Freud was not really writing on the issue of anthropology, it may be posited as he bequeathed us with more or less a revised and yet novel anthropology.  Writing at the end of the 19th and into the 20th century, Freud inserted a new angle of understanding human beings, which used to consider men and women as simply entities of body and soul.  Freud boldly asserted that men and women are clearly sexual beings, and their development is similarly sexual.  He similarly held that human beings are in the state of evolution – as Darwin believed, too – but psychically – clearly preempting de Chardin.  Further, Freud’s literature would also tell his belief that men and women are actually determined, having tripartite psyche composed of the ego, the id and the superego (mirroring opaquely Plato).

Interestingly, Karol Wojtyla began his anthropology with similar assertion: that human beings are sexual beings, apart from their having body and soul as constitutive elements.  But, immediately, he deviated from Freud as he passionately believed the inherent dignity of the human person, which has made his anthropology more reasonable and more positive in its tone.

In his seminal work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud stated the need for avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure.  In his later works, he moved forward to and from the pleasure principle – that is, he did not abandon it; he modified it.  Introducing the reality principle, he was trying to bring out that there is actually more to human beings than pleasure and pain.  In fact, men and women would sometimes forego pleasure for particular reasons that go beyond the pleasure principle, which is just sensory.

In formulating his developmental theory, Freud delved into the psyche, the mind, the unconscious, and called humans sexual beings.  Accordingly, infants are in their oral stage where they derive sexual pleasure from being at the breast; and, the children are in their phallic stage where they are fascinated with the male genitalia, go through the time of the Oedipus or Electra Complex where the male children sexually desire their mothers and the females their fathers.  Then, children move into a latency period, where sexuality is not apparent but which is revived with puberty and maturity in adulthood.

Freud similarly subscribed to Darwinian (and Lamarckian?) evolution.  This is apparent in his ideas about omnipotence of thought, or the over-estimation of psychic processes as opposed to reality.  Evolving in phases, Freud believed that the primitive phase of human development is characterized by animism in which the primitive men and women project spirit culled from themselves onto all others.  With this, human being is held to be the omnipotent one.  This phase must make one reminiscent of Plato and his theory of forms and belief that everything has spirit.  The succeeding phase is religious, where the projection of spirit moves to a being(s) that is/are greater than human beings (who is/are obviously the more omnipotent one).  Finally, there is the phase of science which eliminates altogether the notion of spirit and the omnipotence.  In contradistinction, though, to Darwin, Freud saw human evolution not as physical but as psychic.  That is, human evolution according to Freud has to do with man’s relation to the world around him.  Anyone who’s familiar with Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere would detect some degree of preemption here.

There is no doubt that Freud was materialist and determinist.  In fact, he did deny all metaphysics as he believed that everything was determined by the laws of science.  His thoughts on determinism were contained by his thoughts on the unconscious, on account of which people is not able to explain rationally (even to themselves) practically rendering them determined as they lose their power or will over themselves.

Too, the unconscious/conscious chasm is Freud’s another anthropological derivation from the dualism of Plato and Descartes.  The tension between consciousness and unconsciousness, which consists of the former asserting itself in reality causing neuroses and other problems that the latter has no capacity to address, handle or solve, characterizes Freud’s reductionist view of human beings.  In positing that what religion and primitive peoples called the soul is actually the unconscious, which is within the brain being the faculty of remembering and representing (the object) that is withdrawn from the conscious perception, Freud was making a claim that there is indeed no human soul or spirit.

Freud’s tripartite division of the human psyche is similarly reminiscent of Plato’s division of the soul.  Of course, Freud’s construction is different.  His ego is the starting point, being the institution in the mind regulating all its own constituent processes.  The ego is grounded on perception.  The id is the appetitive part and, as such, it houses the desire of food and sex.  The task of the ego is to keep the id under control.  Freud provides an imagery of the charioteer.  The ego (which represents reason or sanity) is the charioteer, and the id (passions) is the powerful horse.  The charioteer holds in check the superior strength of the horse.  The superego is the conscience; it is the font of religious convictions.  These three divisions are cooperative within the mind.  Neurosis, accordingly, begins when one is overpowered by the other.

Karol Wojtyla, the Great John Paul II, had a completely different background, which is defined by his definite Christian bias.  To begin with, Wojtyla’s anthropology is personalistic – that is, he centers on the person, on the person’s dignity, the person’s free will, the objective subjective of the person, and the sexual person.

He held that human being is by nature a sexual being, as he/she belongs from birth to one of the two sexes.  Besides, he observed that a person’s existence has a particular orientation showing itself in his or her actual internal development.  This is not far from Freud’s psycho-sexual development theory, although obviously there are striking differences between these two thinkers’ views on, say, child development.  Freud’s focus was on the sexual urge; Wojtyla understood sexual urge as a natural drive in human beings, calling it an interior source of specific actions imposed in advance providing a certain direction in the life of the human being that is implicit in human nature.  Wojtyla further believed that sexual urge is not determined.  It may be a property of human existence, but it demands responsibility.  With this, Freud is out for Wojtyla.  And, understandably so, because Freud held that sexual urge is not purely libidinistic, but existential in nature.  For his part, Wojtyla posited that human beings simply cannot abandon to instinct the whole responsibility for the use of the sexual urge and merely make enjoyment his sole aim.  Further, he held that human beings must assume full responsibility for the way in which sexual urge is used.  In short, Wojtyla believed that everything cannot rely solely on the principle of utility, and pleasure cannot be the end of man as it is contingent and not necessary.

To order one’s existence to contingency leaves one unsatisfied.  Subsequently, it leads to problems of extreme egoism because one is always directed to one’s own pleasure.  More importantly, if one holds to the pleasure principle, there is a danger that human dignity gets eventually degraded.

Speaking of human dignity – it is observably the cornerstone of Wojtyla’s personalism.  He understood person as objective subject.  The human person is, accordingly, a subject in that he/she is unique and irreducible.  In other words, each person has his/her essence. 

However, there cannot be pure subjectivity.  The subject is concomitantly objective.  That is, the person is related to the “some-bodies” and “some-things” outside of him-/herself.  The person, in other words, is in reality.  He/she stands above all empirical things.  Human beings use objects, but they are above these things.  And this is accounted for by the dignity of human person.

Aside from human dignity, Wojtyla believed that human beings are self-determined.  Human beings have free choice or free will.  This runs counter to Freud’s determinism, obviously.  Impliedly, Wojtyla maintained that even the unconscious is not determinate for the retrieval of repressed experiences takes an act of the will either from the patient or from the psycho-analyst.

Wojtyla saw the person as sexual.  As human beings are either male or females, he held that human beings are equal. That is, no one is more of a person than another.  Freud, however, showed some indications of negative view of women.  According to Freud, the inferiority of women starts early in the developmental stages, where – firstly – the mother as a woman is the object of desire for the much younger male child (Oedipus complex).  One may infer that this is a degradation of her dignity as an object of desire.  Besides, in the phallic stage of the girl, Freud held that she has penis envy.  Clearly, man is the envied individual; man is the more important of the sexes.

Wojtyla asserted the uniqueness of being woman.  He showed the connection of motherhood to the mystery of life, making women rise to an attitude toward human beings. 

The former Pontiff similarly taught that sexes have their individual qualities as masculine or feminine, allowing attraction and an object of love (not [just] of desire).

Now, about love, which Wojtyla sees from the perspective of the Gospel.  For him, love is the personalistic norm.  For a person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.  In love, one reaches to the other person in a self-donating manner.  Freud on the other hand viewed love from the viewpoint of the broken experience of male/female intimate relationships.  For him, love goes with conditions.  There’s a need for an injured third party, because a pure woman is less desirable and deserving of love than a promiscuous woman.  Freud stated, too, that the man or the woman is a love-object (which is countering the ideal of the personalistic norm).  As love-object, the person is stripped of his or her subjectivity as well as his or her dignity.  For Freud, love is merely psychological and physiological.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Different systems of anthropology can have powerful influence on post-modern societies.  Freud, despite its peculiarities, has had a lasting influence on Western culture.  Fortunately, we have Wojtyla, whose positive anthropology serves as a bright and shining light in the darkness of Freudian anthropology.