title: Freud's confrontation with the telic mind.
abstract: Sigmund Freud's relations with four significant figures in his life are traced: Ernst Brücke, Josef Breuer, Wilhelm Fliess, and Carl G. Jung. In each of these relationships, Freud was confronted with the dilemma of wanting to describe people in what is obviously a teleological fashion while simultaneously meeting the strictures of natural-science reductions to the nontelic. Freud initially fell back on a dialectical theory, but later substituted libido theory as a concession to biological reductionism. Strangely enough, in depolarizing libido as the 'power behind the sexual drive' Freud lost the opportunity to portray the clear teleology his theory calls for.
mesh_terms: D001317:Austria; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000209:etiology; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory