(1934).

Psychoanalytic Review, ​21​(1):​1-14

Original Articles

On certain Similarities between Spinoza and Psychoanalysis

Constance Rathbun
That there should exist such a state of apathetic indifference, if not antipathy, between philosophy and
psychoanalysis is scarcely to the credit of either. Admittedly the scope, the methods, and the goals of each differ
widely, yet such a difference does not thereby eliminate the possibility of every other relationship and guarantee
to the adherents of each the right of complete ignorance concerning the activities of the other. Psychoanalysis
both as theory and as technique necessarily presupposes implicitly some philosophical basis, and philosophy
could well profit by the insight into complexities of the human individual offered by psychoanalysis without
thereby losing its value as the progressive differentiation of concepts. This paper, however, is not intended as an
indictment of the deplorable lack of understanding between philosophers and analysts but rather as a suggestion
of certain similarities between Spinoza's philosophy, with special reference to his consideration of emotions, and
the fundamental concepts accepted by psychoanalysis in its study of the unconscious and implied in its treatment
of personality disorders and nervous illnesses.
In all the rather extensive literature concerned with the writings of Spinoza there is very little reference to
this relationship. Although I have not gone over all the commentaries on Spinoza, in those perused there was
only one reference, that of Bernard Alexander on “Spinoza und die Psychoanalysis” in Vol. V of the Chronicon
Spinozanum. As to the same lack in the multiplicity of writings about psychoanalysis, I take B. Alexander's
word, quite confirmed
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by my own experience, “über die Trieblehre bei Spinoza, über sein Theorie der Affekte und Leidenschaften bei
den Psychoanalyse kaum ein Wort.”​1​ To this statement there appears to be only one exception, that is, the article
of M. Hamblin-Smith on “Spinoza's Anticipation of Recent Psychological Developments” in the ​British Journal
of Medical Psychology​, part 4, 1925. Perhaps this may be explained in part by realizing that the general
immediate reaction to the stimulus word-Spinoza's philosophy-is rationalism and absolutism while to that of
psychoanalysis is unconscious, libido, instincts, in fact nearly everything that is opposed to the Spinozistic ​sub
specie aeternitatis.​ But this gulf seems to me to be not as unbridgable as casual thought implies; and any
judgment that places the two in mutual opposition alone, succeeds in doing justice to neither and in increasing
the misunderstandings of which there are quite enough already.
Alexander believes that there is no way, either direct or indirect, from Freud to Spinoza.​2​ Obviously they
started from quite different points with equally divergent ends in view; Spinoza developing by rigorous
mathematical method a philosophy “whose discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous,
supreme, and unending happiness,” Freud constructing his theories almost secondarily from his attempts as
physician to heal nervous illnesses and from his earlier collaborations with Breuer.​3​ The philosophy of Spinoza
was thoroughly unified, expressing itself not only in metaphysics and epistemology but as well in ethics and
psychology, in all of which are evident the same basic categories of thought even though all are not organized
into a thoroughly consistent whole. Freud might have studied Spinoza's analysis of emotions but apparently he
did not, preferring instead to free himself from any attachments of philosophy. Yet in so far as the psychology of
Spinoza is isolated from his total philosophy and is compared with the analytic and dynamic psychology, they
are seen to be alike in the sense of being synthetic psychologies attempting to present the mental processes of
the individual as a relatively unified whole and not merely as an aggregate of elements. According to Alexander
“sie suchen nicht die Elemente des Seelenlebens auf, um dieser einzeler zu erforschen, sie suchen ein
Gesamtbild der Psyche zu erfassen.”​4​ Secondly,
—————————————

1​ ​Alexander, B. Spinoza und die Psychoanalyse. ​Chronicon Spinozanum​, Vol. V, p. 103​.

2​ Ibid., p. 96.

3​ Spinoza. On the Improvement of the Understanding. Scribner's Ed., p. 1.

4​ Alexander. Op. cit., p. 97.

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both assert unequivocally a thorough-going determinism; Spinoza explicitly through a psychophysical

parallelism of attributes, and psychoanalysis much less explicitly without Spinoza's conception of attributes and
without his assertion of determination through the whole of substance as well as through preceding states.
Thirdly, there appears to be a striking resemblance between Spinoza's doctrine of the conatus or impulse toward
self-preservation which constitutes the essence of every man and what was originally called the libido by
analysts containing both the sex and the ego impulses. What is not found in Spinoza's concept of the conatus is
what Freud terms the death instinct. There are, however, for Spinoza those passions which decrease and lessen
the activities of the body and which in a sense imply a regressive turning inward of the conatus and thus might
be said to foreshadow the, theory of the death instinct.​5​ Fourthly, the concept of ambivalence which is an
integral part of psychoanalytic theory was certainly recognized by Spinoza though of course not under that
name. Throughout Book III of the Ethics and again in Book IV there is reference to the real possibility of having
two opposed emotional attitudes toward one and the same object, and to the fact that often emotions which
appear to be quite opposed to each other, actually proceed from the same source. Fifthly, there is an agreement
between Freud and Spinoza that integration, happiness, or blessedness can be achieved only through a process of
intellectuali-zation of the emotions, not in the sense of external coercion through pure reason but through such
understanding whereby adequate organization and expression is secured. Finally, there is the question of
whether in Spinoza's thought there can be found any parallel to, or incipient beginnings, or implications of the
concept of the unconscious which plays so essential a rôle in analytic theory. While Spinoza never mentions the
unconscious as such, there is the possibility that in Spinozistic terminology the unconscious is a collection of the
most confused and inadequate of ideas, especially those which correspond to unperceived bodily movement.
Thus the problem for psychoanalysis of how the unconscious becomes conscious is for Spinoza the problem of
how confused ideas are transformed into clear and distinct ideas.
—————————————

5​Alexander prefers to correlate with Spinoza's theory of diminished bodily activity the concept of repression, recognizing
that Spinoza never uses the term itself; “der geist danach strebt, sich vorzustellen, was das Handlungs-vermögen des
Körpers mindert oder hemmt, dann strebt er, sich an Dinge zu errinern, die Existenz von jenen ausschliessen.” Op. cit, p.
101.
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I
To classify Spinoza as an absolutist implies that the category of unity is fundamental to his thinking.
Substance is one quantitatively, even if containing within itself qualitative differentiations. Since the universe
from the point of view of being can be dichotomized into substance and modes, all that there is of finite reality
must be contained in substance. Man, then, as a finite entity is not composed of two different kinds of reality,
thought and extension, but is one real being possessing these two essential aspects, each of which expresses the
whole of him from a different point of view. Such a unity is no bare abstraction; that Spinoza thought it to be a
complexly differentiated one is shown by his discussion of emotions and passions, yet it is a unity continuously
striving to maintain and to preserve its own equilibrium and balance.
In spite of the fact that no organized system of psychology existed in the seventeenth century, Spinoza
evidently possessed a rather keen insight into the mechanisms of the human mind. His analytic approach to the
nature of emotions remains far more valuable in the light of present day psychology than the then accepted
Cartesian account of passions and affections. The schematology which led him to assert an exact parallelism
between levels of knowledge and levels of the affective life is not essential to an adequate psychological and
philosophical theory, but his emphasis on the activity of man as a whole, behaving as a relatively integrated
being, self-directed rather than at the mercy of every whim, desire, and compulsion, is of permanent value.
Although there is a certain difference of emphasis of concepts among psychoanalysts, it is nevertheless the
purpose of all to view the man in the totality of his relationships, as the nexus of a complex interplay of libidinal
factors, rather than to resolve his psychic life into a set of fixed elements. Certainly the technique of analysis
proceeds on the assumption that none of the aspects of behavior, none of the apparently insignificant tangents of
thought are to be considered as unimportant and meaningless; to acquire an understanding of the nature of the
individual as a whole, all must be included. Since every act, every aspect of psychic life is determined wholly by
preceding states, there is no such thing as a completely inexplicable act. Hence any psychology of the total
personality must take into consideration, as far as possible, all phases of activity as internally related to one
another. Spinoza seems to be saying the same thing in asserting that what is real is the essence of the individual,
his
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activity in all its forms and stages of development as a concrete individual. To view man as a differentiated
dynamic unity it is requisite to see him not simply as a rational social being but also as one possessing impulses,
desires, feelings, without which rationality would become the emptiest of abstractions.

II
Determinism Spinoza considers seriously as a ​sine qua non​ of both metaphysics and ethics. In the universe
the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things; in the self no changes occur
in the body which have not their correlated changes in the mind, and conversely.​6​ By this assertion is eliminated
chance in the physical universe, freedom of will in the finite self, and any causal interaction between mind and
body. Thus the illusion of a real choice between alternatives is due simply to ignorance concerning the causes
and motivations of acts. And since each act is determined strictly by preceding acts, there can be nothing which
is arbitrary or contingent.​7​ It is just this theory of rigid determinism, according to Hamblin-Smith, which has
been the cause of so much opposition to both Spinoza and to Freud.​8​ Neither Spinoza nor the analysts have any
use for an abstract function of willing since both have attempted to dispel the common notion of “will power,”
though from somewhat different points of view. For Spinoza what is given in experience are particular volitions
or ideas so that actually the intellect and the will are one and the same thing. The analyst, while not asserting
such a thorough-going identification of the two, does interpret “strength of will” as simply the domination of the
self by one particular impulse or set of impulses or by the pleasure principle or the reality principle rather than
as activity of mind set over and against judgment. Rooted in this concept of determinism is the analyst's belief
that no phase or aspect of an individual's life is without its cause and explanation even though the precise mode
of determination may be exceedingly difficult or impossible to discover because of the internal resistances
directed against bringing unconscious materialinto consciousness.
On the basis of a strict logic, a thorough-going determinism should eliminate all differences in value. Such a
conclusion would be impossible of acceptance by either Freud or Spinoza as not providing
—————————————

6​ Spinoza. Ethics, Bk. II, Pr. VII, p. 149.

7​ Ibid., Bk. II, Pr. XLIX, Sch. pp. 197-199.

8​ Hamblin-Smith. Op. cit., p. 258.

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a working basis for living. Actually the effect of determinism on Spinoza's system of thought is to give to ethics
a subordinate place in the sense that distinctions in moral values are not final and absolute. What is real is the
concrete thing as it actually is, and the assertion that it ought to be something else is utterly irrelevant. And
whatever is, is good in that it proceeds from and is contained in God.​9​ The intellectual acceptance of such a view
provides an admirable antidote for sticky sentimentality, and the emotional acceptance leads one to be quite
wary of attaching tags of approval or disapproval to most of the situations encountered in this finite life. Such an
attitude implies for neither Spinoza nor the psychoanalyst that one should thereby give up the ghost, be absolved
from all responsibility, and at the same time be inundated by reality. On the contrary, even at the expense of
being criticized as inconsistent, both assert that there is a direction and goal to life, this goal beingthe complete
life. The rational life is then a continuous process of amalgamation and integration, of the acquisition of more
essence, and of the escape from external compulsion through inner determination.​10​ For Spinoza such a life is
found only in the intellectual love of God which alone constitutes blessedness; for Freud it is found through
self-knowledge by which alone we can meet and accept reality.

III
Actually man is not a thoroughly rational creature living continuously ​sub specie aeternitatis.​ As he is an
active being so does he tend to affirm his own essence and to preserve his own individual being so far as it is
possible.​11​ And the mind as a complex of inadequate and adequate ideas is aware of this outward push of its
energies over extended temporal intervals. Thus is to be found desire at the basis of all emotional life.​12​ This
desire, Spinoza makes clear, is simply the consciousnessof appetite and consequently belongs exclusively to
neither the mind nor the body but rather to both; considered as bodily activity it must appear under the form of
motion, considered from the point of view of the consciousness of that motion, it is a striving or drive forward
and outward. So whatever affects the body in any way must at the same time affect the mind, such a change
being in one of two possible directions; either through heightened
—————————————

9​ Spinoza. Op. cit., Bk. II, Pr. XXIII, p. 121.

10​ Ibid., Bk. V, Pr. XXV, p. 386.

11​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. VII, p. 215.

12​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. IX, p. 216.

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activity to increased perfection or obversely through decreased activity to lessened perfection.​13​ Through a
consideration of the direction and the degree of such changes, relative to their external causes, Spinoza arrives at
a detailed classification of passions and emotions, the passions being necessarily confused ideas through which
the body suffers rather than acts.​14
Such a classification of emotions in terms of bodily activities with accompanying ideas is not particularly
useful for contemporary psychology of any school. Psychoanalysis has substituted for Spinoza's conatus the
term libido, the creative outgoing life force of the individual, expressing itself in the form of ego and sex
impulses. Finding this particular classification inadequate for practical purposes, Freud proposed the schema or
mental apparatus of id, ego, and super-ego. These are not to be conceived in terms of separate components of
psychic life but rather as possessing distinctive characteristics and functions. The id is primarily the source of
energy, unconscious, illogical, timeless, and asocial, dominated wholly by the desire for immediate pleasure and
gratification; “the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world
acting through the perceptual consciousness” and has “the task of bringing the influence of the external world to
bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle
which reigns supreme in the id”; the superego is to be identified largely with conscience, acting as a critic of the
id though often in unconscious alliance with it and so producing a sense of guilt.​15​ At first glance such a cross
section of psychic life seems to bear no resemblance to that constructed by Spinoza. There is, however, an
interesting parallel between Spinoza's conception of the body as the primary object of the mind and Freud's
conception of the ego as primarily a body object. According to Spinoza the actually existing thing, the first
object of the mind without which it could not exist, is the human body; according to Freud the body is the source
of that internal and external perceptual system constituting the ego so that the latter is to be regarded as “a
mental projection of the surface of the body.”​16​ That there are obvious differences between Spinoza and Freud
is due largely to the dominance of the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalytic theory, but there are
—————————————

13​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. XI, p. 218.

14​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Def. Ill, p. 207.

15​ Freud. The Ego and the Id, pp. 29-30.

16​ Ibid., p. 31.

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also certain similarities. The life of the id is essentially what Spinoza means by the life of a man whose
knowledge is on the level of perception and imagination, who suffers from passions, who knows only confused
ideas, and who ignores the possibility of achieving the eternal quality of life in favor of the satisfaction of
particular desires just as they arise. Such a being suffers from exaggerated emotional attitudes such as hatred,
contempt, remorse, envy, humility, or despair and thus is not free in the sense of being self-determined and is
not capable of adult rational behavior or of leading a truly virtuous life.​17​ The ego, being that part of the self
which is in contact with reality, would be for Spinoza the self that acts with a clear recognition of motives and
understanding of the mechanisms of behavior and is guided by reason rather than by desire alone.​18​ And since
virtue is grounded in rationality, such a self would be acting virtuously. The super-ego being formed largely by
the early prohibitions of parents and by the imposition of environmental standards is in part unconscious and so
for Spinoza would be a complex of confused ideas. It always bears the parental imprint so that God, according
to Freud, becomes the projection of the paternal imprint which forms part of the super-ego whereas for Spinoza
God is identified with substance and can be known intuitively by clear and adequate ideas. In so far as a sense of
guilt is derived from the critical faculty of the superego, in so far as it causes us pain, it would find but little
approbation in Spinoza's thought. Repentance and remorse are thoroughly futile attitudes of mind, distinctly not
to be cultivated.​19​ The virtuous life is not one which is dominated by the super-ego but is one in which the
irrational confused ideas of the super-ego are transformed into clear knowledge by critical evaluation.​20
Since for Spinoza pleasure is the increased perfection of the mind and pain the decrease in such perfection,
the root of emotional life lies in pleasure and pain. Whatever tends to increase the activity of the mind is good
and whatever decreases it is bad so that a knowledge of good and evil is to be cultivated to secure a satisfactory
—————————————

17​ Spinoza. Op. cit, Bk. Ill, Pr. LIX, The Affects.

18​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. XX, p. 303.

19​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. XVII, p. 271; Pr. XXVIII, p. 273.

20​The division of mind-body cuts across that of id-ego-super-ego and is not as inflexible in Freud as in Spinoza. Yet both
recognized the close correlation between the physical and the psychical; Spinoza by asserting that emotions are the ideas
accompanying bodily changes in invariable sequence, Freud by the recognition of the frequent conversion of mental
conflicts into bodily symptoms which may give rise to organic neuroses.
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emotional life.​21​ Such a doctrine combined with that of the conatus, the impulse toward self-preservation or the
life instinct, would seem to lead ethically directly to egoistic hedonism and psychologically to a life governed
wholly by the pleasure principle. Such is only apparently the case since “to act virtuously is nothing but acting,
living, and preserving our being as reason directs and doing so from the ground of our own profit.”​22​ Spinoza is
no misguided altruist but he does perceive that such profit can not result from an egocentric predicament but
only from a cooperative life in which the good is common to all.​23​ Since men who live in conformity to reason
agree in nature and are separated only through emotions and passions, a thorough-going egoism could not be the
basis of an adequate life for “it is indeed the case that far more advantages than disadvantages arise from the
common society of men.”​24​ Those impulses, then, that can find only an asocial or anti-social expression can not
be incorporated into a completely satisfactory virtuous life.

IV
Of all the comparisons between Spinoza the rationalist and mystic, and psychoanalysis, the latest step-child
of psychology, the most striking is to be found in the common recognition of the rôle of ambivalence in the
emotional life. The term, a distinctly modern one originating with Bleuler, is used to denote “contradictory
emotional attitudes toward the same object, either arising alternately or existing side by side without either one
interfering necessarily with or inhibiting the expression of the other.”​25​ Traditional psychology, especially the
structural school, found no room for such a concept, probably because it could hardly be subjected to exact
quantitative treatment. But if one goes back far enough historically one finds this same thought expressed by
Spinoza in language that is not very different. All emotions are derived from the three fundamental passions,
pleasure, pain, and desire, and differ according to the proportion of these elements contained and according to
the objects toward which they are directed. Seldom is the self affected with pure pleasure untinged with any
pain, though both elements may not be
—————————————

21​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. VIII, p. 294.

22​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. XXIV, p. 306.

23​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. XXXVI, p. 316.

24​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. XXXV, Cor. 2, Sch., p. 315.

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equally clear in consciousness. Spinoza also recognized the possibility of transferring one's emotional attitude
toward objects which resemble in any way the original object concerned, and thus added (not chronologically)
to the theory of association of ideas through similarity, the theory of association of emotions. This mechanism of
displacement operates “if we have been affected with joy or sorrow by anyone who belongs to a class or nation
different from our own, and if our joy or sorrow is accompanied with the idea of this person as its cause, under
the common name of his class or nation, we shall not love or hate him merely but the whole class or nation to
which he belongs.”​26​ This promiscuity of emotional attachment Spinoza illustrates in his definitions of
sympathy and antipathy for both of these emotions are directed toward objects without any apparent cause.​27
Not only are there no definite limits to the objects of the emotions and thus no limit to the variety of
emotional attitudes that can be experienced but the same objectis capable of arousing, through association,
opposed emotions. In Pr. XVII of Bk. Ill Spinoza says “if we imagine that a thing that usually affects us with the
affect of sorrow has any resemblance to an object which usually affects us equally with a great affect of joy, we
shall at the same time hate the thing and love it.” And again in Pr. XLVII “the joy which arises from our
imagining that what we hate has been destroyed or has been injured is not unaccompanied with some sorrow.”
The explanation for this is found in the likenesses existing between individuals so that in so far as that which is
destroyed is like ourselves, we are necessarily affected painfully.​28
Spinoza evidently was not aware of the source of the factors giving rise to ambivalent attitudes. It remained
for Freud to work these out in his discussions of the conflicts between love and hate, between the life instinct
and the death instinct, and between different stages of development of the same impulse. The concept of
ambivalence has been transformed by Freud from a somewhat unnecessary character of certain emotional states,
according to Spinoza,
—————————————

25​ Healy, Bronner, Bowers. The Structure and Meaning of Psychoanalysis., p. 20.

26​ Spinoza. Op. cit., Bk. Ill, Pr. XLVI, p. 249.

27​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. XV, Sch., p. 222.

28​Here Spinoza seems to be using the mechanism of identification which has been made explicit by psychoanalysis for in
Pr. XXVII he adds that “whatever like us is affected by any affect, so too are we affected by the same.” To a certain extent
this appears to contradict his premise that it is only through reason that men are alike and that it is through emotions that
they are separated and opposed to each other.
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into an inescapable dualistic principle governing all affective life. Spinoza was limited likewise by his
philosophic conviction that nothing outside the self is known directly. All changes and modifications must take
place in the body. So all one knows immediately are the states of one's own body and external things are
perceived only mediately as they affect the body. Yet such a view does not place too determinate limits to
personality since the human body can be affected by external bodies in a multiplicity of ways so that “different
men may be affected by one and the same object in different ways and the same man may be affected by one
and the same objectin different ways at different times.”​29​ His analysis of the constituent elements in certain
emotions led him to the conclusion that there is a much closer resemblance between apparently polar emotions
than is generally supposed. Both he and Freud would agree that all pride contains an element of envy and is at
the same time closely related to despondency, and that all of these attitudes arise through great self-ignorance.​30
Although ambivalence can not be eliminated entirely from the rational life, the nature of man being as it is, it
can be prevented from bringing about more disintegration of the personality by the use of clear insight and
intelligent direction.

V
Thus the object of the rational life is not a stoic denial of the life of impulse and passion but rather is the
continuous transformation of passive non-resistance into active clear knowledge. It is only through such a
process that real freedom can be won, freedom as the action of a self-determined being rather than as arbitrary
irrational choice. Such freedom is at the same time an escape from the control of fear and the domination of one
part of the self by another part, and is, according to Spinoza, the only kind of freedom worth having and possible
to have. To hold, then, that true virtue consists in living according to the guidance of reason alone does not
imply that thereby one should adopt the ascetic, isolated, contemplative life. What it does mean, at least, is to
acquire sufficient insight into one's own nature and into external reality so that opposition between them is no
longer operative and is replaced by such an intellectual and emotional experience of unity that the eternal
becomes truly a quality of this life.
That this can be achieved only by an integrated personality and
—————————————

29​ Ibid., Bk. Ill, Pr. LI, p. 252.

30​ Ibid., Bk. IV, Pr. LVII, Sch., p. 336.

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that the object of psychoanalytic therapy is to bring about an increasing harmony of the conflicting elements of
personality through reality testing, does not imply that Spinoza and psychoanalysis would concur on all points
relative to such a goal. Yet in spite of the fact that the concept of integration has been rather overworked, that it
is not immune to criticism, nevertheless the process of making explicit the implicit, of verbalizing the
unconscious, of intellectualizing the emotions would, I think, be accepted by both Spinoza and psychoanalysis
as essential to any intelligent adult life. That there would be a difference of emphasis on the relative importance
of reason and emotion, that the means to such an end would obviously differ, can not be disputed. For Spinoza
the mind's power over the emotions consists in an attempt to substitute inner for outer causes of emotions, this
power expressing itself in the transformation of emotions into clear ideas through active knowledge, in the
recognitionof the common properties of things, in the cultivation of active emotions whose causes lie in these
common properties, and in the organization and analysis of the interrelationships of emotions.​31​ So the function
of knowledge in relation to the passions is not to destroy them but to prevent them from occupying too great a
portion of the mind.
Psychoanalysis uses in its investigation of “the dynamics of mental life” methods unknown to Spinoza; free
association, dream analysis, the interpretation by the analyst of material offered by the patient in the course of
analysis, and positive and negative transference. The object of these methods is identical; to strengthen the ego,
to modify the super-ego, to bring as much of the unconscious material into consciousness as is possible, and so
to enable the individual to achieve a satisfactory adjustment to reality through insight into his own character.
This is perhaps not exactly what Spinoza meant by the intellectual love of God, yet such intellectual love can
never be based upon self-deception and must be grounded in self-knowledge.

VI
The exact nature of the unconscious is a question that has been decided by no means satisfactorily to all
analysts and to other psychologists. Though there is an agreement that spatial terms are inapplicable to it and
that it is an essential hypothesis to explain behavior, still it can not be defined accurately but only described by
its most general characteristics. It is true that there is in Spinoza's philosophy nothing which answers even
approximately such a description.
—————————————

31​ Ibid., Bk. V, Pr. XX, p. 381.

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There still remains the possibility that there may be something which, expressed in philosophic terminology,
plays a rôle similar to that of the unconscious in psychoanalysis. B. Alexander seems to find a certain
unconscious likeness between Freud in “The Ego and the Id” and Spinoza. Freud raises the question as to what
is the nature of the unconscious and assumes that “das Unbewusste eigentlich nur das unmerklich Bewusste ist,”
and follows this with the query as to how the unconscious can become conscious.​32​ His answer is “durch
Verbindung mit den entsprechenden Wortvorstel-lungen “thus establishing as the peculiar sense origin of the
unconscious what he calls “die akustischen Wamehmung.”​33​ For Spinoza, however, the question was never
raised as to what precisely are thoughts without words. Here Alexander puts forth the hypothesis that the third
level of intuitive knowledge is a knowledge without words and not only without but also “ausser den Worten,
wie wir hinzufugen können, vor den Worten.”​34​ This suggestion of an identification, even though partial,
between the unconscious of psychoanalysis and the intuitive knowledge of Spinoza seems to me to be
contradictory to the latter's whole epistemology. It would imply a backward regressive movement since
knowledge on the level of reason which is less adequate and true than that of intujtion is certainly knowledge by
means of words or concepts. If, then, intuitive knowledge were actually “vor den Worten” either temporally or
logically, it would mean that in some sense the third level preceded the second which is quite contradictory to
Spinoza's meaning.
If the concept of ambivalence which is accepted by Spinoza can not be explained adequately without
reference to an unconscious, or to a conflict between the id and the super-ego, then one must admit either that
Spinoza had no idea of the implications and of the genesis of such a double emotional attitude and thus felt no
need in his psychology for anything resembling the unconscious, or that what the analyst means by the
unconscious is what Spinoza means by confused ideas accompanying unperceived bodily movement. Such a
—————————————
 32​ Alexander, B. Op. cit., p. 100.

33​Ibid., p. 100. Freud does make a distinction between the unconscious and the preconscious idea; “the former is worked
out upon some sort of a material which remains unrecognized, whereas the latter has in addition been brought into
connection with verbal images.” As verbal images are derived primarily from auditory perceptions, the latter become,
strictly speaking, the sensory source of the preconscious’ rather than the unconscious. Freud, op. cit., pp. 21-22.

34​ Alexander, B. Op. cit., p. 101.

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hypothesis is at least consistent with his doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism and, while it can not be
confirmed, is at least a real possibility. There can be no bodily changes without concomitant ideas, but when we
are not aware of these changes they certainly must be contained in the thought aspect of substance as a whole,
but at the same time they may remain in the periphery of consciousness of the finite self. Whenever the self
becomes aware of such changes and recognizes them as happening in necessary determinate order, then they are
translated verbally into clear ideas and so the unconscious or preconscious is made conscious.
Such similarities as these appear to exist between the thought of Spinoza and the generally accepted
concepts of psychoanalysis. There is, I think, no probability of historical influence, but there is a closer alliance
of Spinoza's psychology with psychoanalysis than there is with any other modern school of psychology. Such a
view of the general relations between these two systems is intended simply as a suggestion rather than as literal
proof that the rationalism of Spinoza does not exclude wholly the empiricism of psychoanalysis.