Comparison of Freud and Sartre on the question of human freedom

What is freedom? And are we actually free?

On this subject, many authors discussed over a thousands of years. In this essay, we will
compare opinions of two well known men: Sigmund Freud and Jean- Paul Sartre.
Through the essay, we will show an opinion of psychologist and a philosopher, who had
very opposite statements. But the main question will remain: Are we absolutely free, or
are we driven by some things that we are not aware of?

Sigmund Freud was, how we can often say, father of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is,
as known, a psychological therapy that bases everything on the unconscious part of
human mind. Freuds theory was that every human , every personality, contains of
conscious part ( a part which we are aware of) and unconscious part( a part which we are
not aware of, and which shows itself against our will). That unconscious part is
responsible for most actions that person does. Those actions are unwilling, and they can
be animalistic, ugly, angry, amoral, but the in common thing for all of them is- they are
hidden, we are unaware of them and they sometimes can not be contained: we don’t
control them.
Sigmund Freud saw the humans as a slave of needs, and he did not think that people are
essentially free. The human behaviour are outer manifestation of unconscious part. That
means that humans only have an illusion of being free, and nothing is randomly done.

Jean-Paul Sartre is author of Being and Nothingness, a philosophical opus that

incorporates in self three influences. That three influences are three dominant factors of
Sartre phylosophy. Sartre differs being itself and being for itself.
I ( conscience) sees being itself as non-transparent. It does not understands it, because it
can not understand his cause. It is just simply here, without special reason or cause. On
the other hand, being for itself opposes to conscience, it denies it. Being for itself looks at
itself as emptiness, like some nothing that is put in that non-transparense of being itself. I
am what I am, but that is past that doesn’t exist anymore; I am what I’m not anymore.
On the other hand, I project myself into the future. It is my freedom to choose myself in
the future what makes me being for itself.

Now, when we put these two authors together, we can see quite a number of differences
beetwen them.
Freud was biggest patron of human unfree nature, and Sartre thought that every human is
absolutely free.
Freud said that we have that part of us that we can not control ( moreover, it controles us)
and because of him our actions are hardly ever our will. On the other hand, Sartre
believed in total freedom of everything, and he said that everything we do, we chose to
do. Nothing is controlling us, there is no part of us that we don’t know about, there is
nothing in our nature forcing us to do something we don’t want to do. Freud thought that
wars are inevitable ( because of death drive in human nature), but Sartre believed that war
can be avoided if people choose not to fight. They have freedom to chose will they, or
will they won’t wage war, nothing from inside of them is telling them to do anything. So,
if there is free will, human must choose not to war against each other. Freud said that
agression is too strong and our subconcious will always lead us to do something that we
maybe don’t want to, or we think we want. It has power to make us think we want/ do not
want something. Sartre thought that all we have to do is to choose to go the peacefull
path, and we need to take ( freely) actions that causes good.

From this point of view, I prefer Sartres doctrine. Here are a few reason why. Fist of all,
we must agree that Freud didn’t take into consideration various number of things. There
are many things that differ people from animals, such as culture, civilization,
socialization, education, moral values. All of this processes shape our personality and
’tame’ down our animalistic and basic instincts. So, if we have this factors, we sertainly
can’t blame everything on unconscious part of us, and on death drive. Also, in every
society we have value consensus, and it’s stopping us to do amoral and unacceptable
things. I agree with Sartres belief that we are free to choose our actions, and that we are
aware of them. Nothing is holding us, nothing is forcing us to act in manner that we don’t
want to and we just need to make choises that are bringing good and peace . Human
nature is not fixated. He believed that there is no God, and if there is nothing on the other
side, there is nothing on this side that can determine us. Ergo, we are absolutely free. Our
destiny depends solely on us and our actions. This idea is more realisticall, because
otherwise we have possibility to blame all our bad or agressive actions on nature and
unaware part of personality. In that way, we could avoid taking a responsibillity. And as
Sartre said- man is nothing else but what he makes of himself, he is absolutely
responsible for everything he does.

In conclusion, we considered two very different points of view about the human liberty
and the freedom. We had one author that does not believe in freedom, and one author that
believes in absolut freedom. Both of them had good reasons to believe in their theory.
But, to this day, we still don’t have right and concrete answer to our question. Maybe we
are desiding on our own, maybe we choose to be (or not to be) free.