The quest to understand human nature dates back to ancient times, and the 19th century saw the convergence of science and humanities through Freud’s psychoanalysis. Modern science and technology have taken this further, helping to predict human behavior and address mental health issues, which is crucial to human happiness and progress.
People are where all our questions end up. The phrase “Where did we come from, who are we, and where are we going”, which Gauguin used as the title of his work, describes the academic orientation that humanity has been pursuing. People have tried to discuss the metaphysical nature of human beings mainly from the perspective of philosophy and other humanities, and the material nature of human beings from the perspective of science. However, the metaphysical approach was soon criticized as nothing more than fancy talk, and the approach to the material nature was criticized as nothing more than technology that only simulates our appearance. Bringing the two together was nevertheless very difficult.
The 19th-century scientist Sigmund Freud was one of the last people to try to reconcile the metaphysical and material approaches, and he did so with considerable success. Freud was a physician who studied neuroscience. He enjoyed using a rigorous scientific methodology and valued the pursuit of universals, but at the time, the mind was not an object of quantification or analysis through the scientific method. The mind has been discussed in philosophy, but the results of such discussions have not been able to function as more than a guide to thought and behavior. It was impossible to find out what the mind itself was, or what psychological states would lead to, through thinking that originated in the mind. So Freud studied the behavior of different groups of people to see where certain mental factors originated and what their consequences would be, and this became the discipline of psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis is an understanding of human behavior as the expression and harmonization of inner and social needs, and it attempts to verify this through case studies. Psychoanalysis had a significant impact on modern philosophy by postulating the existence of the unconscious and establishing the concept of the self as an uncontrollable entity. While psychology is the study of the conscious part of the human mind, psychoanalysis is the study of the parts of the mind that are repressed by consciousness.
Freud’s psychoanalysis was a groundbreaking achievement. Plato argued for the Ideas and said that matter and spirit could never be united, and Descartes argued for a pineal gland to somehow connect mind and matter, but he reached his logical limit. Although these examples are somewhat different from Freud’s work, the material and mental worlds were difficult to unite. Freud was able to make this difficult connection. Although psychoanalysis is currently criticized as lacking in evidence because it attempts to interpret a subject that is difficult to analyze scientifically using only a limited number of cases, it is certainly valuable for its attempt to introduce statistical and case-analytical methods to modern psychology.
In recent years, the term “integration” has been in vogue, and interdisciplinary studies have become the norm. The myriad factors that make up our world and make us who we are as human beings are too difficult to approach from the perspective of any one discipline. If we go back in time, we can trace the origin of interdisciplinarity back to Freud. Unlike Aristotle, who merely studied a number of disciplines, Freud sought to combine them all, and can be considered the founder of the modern discipline itself. The way he broke down the barriers of thought and discipline to get closer to the truth, to understand what it means to be human, is something that all scholars and students should aspire to.
In modern times, the boundaries between humanities and science are becoming more and more blurred. Advances in artificial intelligence and big data analytics are making tremendous contributions to predicting human behavior and identifying individual tendencies. These technologies are giving us a more concrete, quantitative approach to the understanding of the human psyche that Freud sought. For example, machine learning algorithms learn human behavior patterns and create predictive models based on them. This is a further development of the scientific approach to psychoanalysis that Freud envisioned.
As you can see, advances in science and technology are providing new answers to humanistic questions. It’s not just about understanding the human psyche, but also about solving complex problems in human society. For example, the convergence of psychological research and data science is becoming an important tool for addressing mental health issues, which contributes significantly to improving the quality of life of individuals.
Therefore, we should continue to deepen and broaden the journey of human understanding that began with Freud’s psychoanalysis by fusing it with modern science and technology. This will eventually lead to the understanding of human beings themselves and contribute to the happiness and development of humanity as a whole.
