1904 Books

“Writing on this subject in 1904 Freud gave the reason for our unshakable conviction of freedom of choice. He remarked that it is far stronger with trivial decisions than with weighty ones; with the latter we commonly feel that our inner nature compels us, that we really have no alternative. With the former, however, for example the arbitrary choice of a number, we discern no motive and therefore feel it is an uncaused act on the part of our ego. If we now subject the example to a psycho-analysis we discover that the choice has after all been determined, but this time the motive is an unconscious one. We actually leave the matter to be decided by our unconscious mind and then claim the credit for the outcome. If unconscious motivation is taken into account, therefore, the rule of determinism is of general validity. Freud never wavered in this attitude and all his researches into the workings of the mind are entirely based on a belief in a regular chain of mental events. He would have endorsed the views of the great anthropologist Tylor that 'the history of mankind is part and parcel of the history of Nature, that our thoughts, will and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the motion of the waves'. When enumerating the essential elements of psycho-analytical theory, in 1924, he included 'the thorough-going meaningfulness and determinism of even the apparently most obscure and arbitrary mental phenomena.”
― Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud Volume One: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries 1856-1900