British Empiricists vs. Psychoanalysts

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

What would John Locke and David Hume have to say about the theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung?

British empiricists were adamantly opposed to the thought that there ideas innate witing human beings. But Freud’s and Jung’s theories center heavily on the idea of unconcious forces.

Would the great empiricists Locke and Hume (I guess Berekely too, I kind of don’t understand him though) have thought of Freud’s view of the unconcious? Would they be responsive to the idea that we have desires and ideas that are not conciously known to us?

And what of Jung’s collective unconcious? Would they be willing to accept the theory that there are an unconcious archetypes of various things (the anima/animus, the shadow, the God archetype)?

I’m most interested into seeing how all of you think they’d respond to Freud’s unconcious, or the possiblity of unconcious ideas/desires itself. I think Hume, Berkeley and Locke would not accept Jung’s collective unconcious (it smacks of innatism, as it seems to me), but I’m not sure how they’d view unconcious desires/ideas in themselves. This could easily be a thread in the Psychology forum, but I’m really most interested in seeing this treated from a philosophical viewpoint.

2

First, they would laugh, then said laughter would send them curling into helpless convoluted fetal positions. No, they would not agree much on anything (well, unless they were really drunk, or stoned as their unconcious might be susceptible). That word ‘Empiricists’ just knocks the starter out of it, thus rendering it a non-starter. Okay, I’ll stop.

3

Empiricists would reject psychoanalysis because psychoanalysis is the logical conclusion any “empirical” study of consciousness as such yields.

4

Enlightenment thinking would be reviled at any idea of a subconcious because it pokes a giant and very hard to seal hole in the idea of purely objective logic.

P.S. Jung is the shit.