Sigmund Freud and Max Weber
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1. Sigmund Freud and Max Weber offer contrasting views of the motivations of the social actor and the social institutions that actor confronts. Freud sees the social actor as being ruled by his irrational or unconscious impulses, and the task of the social institutions is to control, shape and channel these impulses so that complete catastrophe does not ensue. The psychoanalyst's role can be seen in this context as a means of discovering the roots of the individual the actor's traumas in order to free him to act consciously and responsibly, to help that actor to learn to adapt successfully to society and to the problems society presents, and to act more effectively with the institutions of society. Without social institutions controlling the individual actor who is ruled otherwise by unconscious forces beyond his knowledge and his control, that actor will respond mechanically and without real freedom to social conflict. The social relationship with the analyst, then, can be seen as a means whereby the client learns to become an effective social actor. To Weber, the individual is a social creature who has more freedom than Freud posits, and more power to act in society as an independent person. However, Weber does not believe that the individual, although more conscious, free and rational than Freud would have it, is often successful in bringing about the results he seeks through his selected actions. This is because there are powerful forces at work which restrict that free
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institutions of society is not to free the individual to do as he pleases, but to prevent the law of the jungle from prevailing: "This replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community constitutes the decisive step of civilization" (Freud 49). Of course, with psychoanalysis, the individual will not truly be as free as he can be, but without social institutions psychoanalysis would not be possible in the first place. Freud at least offers with psychoanalysis some additional freedom for the individual actor in society, whereas Weber seems to suggest that the Protestant/capitalist paradigm "in its highest development [in the U.S.], stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions" (Weber 182). Because the world aspires to be like the U.S., this can hardly be seen as a hopeful sign for the future of society or of individual actors in it.
2. Unintended consequences in social theory have to do with latent results from social action. Broom and Selznick write that one way for sociology to probe beneath the surface for hidden motivations and other forces "is to look for unintended meanings and effects." The sociologist studies what people "actually do and what
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1554
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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