Freud's epistemological cut

the Unconscious-Continent

Abstract

The present study intends to outline the theoretical revolution that Freud's discovery implied for the “humanities”. Freud's discovery of the unconscious represents a break with past knowledge. Thus, using the Althusserian theoretical framework, an attempt is made to mark an epistemological cut derived from the discovery of the very object of psychoanalysis, the unconscious. The article demonstrates that the unconscious, as the object of a newly created science, is a total break with what was produced in the past. Freud, like Marx, discovered a new continent of human knowledge: the latter, the “History-Continent”; and the former, the “Unconscious-Continent”. Thus, psychoanalysis should be understood not as a continuation of the myth of homo psychologicus or a derivation of the biologizing “theories” of human thinking, but as a break with this old “knowledge”.