SINGER'S FIVE CRITICISMS
In the end, Singer seems to have raised five major objections to Freud's theory of love. These are what he perceives to be (1) its empirically and logically unwarranted doctrine of child development as inherently sexual in form and content; (2) its emphasis on a kind of normative essentialism rather than the pluralism that Singer himself prefers in sexual affairs; (3) its dualism; (4) its conceptual confusion; and (5) its inadequacy due to an exclusive focus on "evaluation" to the neglect of the aspect of "bestowal" developed by Singer in his own works on love. I will discuss each of these assessments in turn, indicating the extent of my agreement or disagreement.
Beginning with the last, I believe that Freud did indeed include within his theory something similar to Singer's concept of bestowal. In Civilization and its Discontents, he explained how a small minority of people do, in fact, achieve the ability "to make themselves independent of their object's acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally"#9 This may not quite accord with Singer's concept, but it does seem to describe a human capacity for bestowing love as distinct from either the present sensation of value associated with receiving it, or the valuing associated with selecting a love object.
The conceptual confusion apparent to Singer is considerably obviated once the philosophical premises informing Freud's work are taken into account. There is a logic relating and making sense out of his entire structure, but it is a logic now largely invalidated and (one would hope) increasingly foreign to modern thought. It is the Hegelian logic of the dialectic. I intend to discuss it in some detail a little later.
I think Freud's dualism is likewise more apparent than real. If one means by dualism a belief in the existence of two realms of reality corresponding to the old mind/body and sacred/secular division -- or a belief that human beings are different in kind rather than degree from other animal species -- Freud has to be judged innocent. There are just too many indications throughout his writings of what Singer himself has called his relentless commitment to a "mechanistic" biology.
Singer's accusation of essentialism raises many intriguing questions. In the first place -- as in the case of dualism -- I have a problem with his definition. He writes, "By essentialism I mean the belief that there is a single structure that defines the instinctual being of men and women."#10 He views Freud's idea of a fixed progression of developmental stages programmed within the human instincts as objectionably essentialist. But surely this is an empirical proposition requiring either confirmation or falsification -- not to be written off because one objects to the idea as being too biologically deterministic! It is not simply a matter of aesthetic or political preference; nor does it depend on whether philosophical essentialism or pluralism is the order of the day.
Clearly, Singer prefers an explanation of sexual development and orientation that relies more on environmental than biological programming. He is probably right, but Freud was perfectly justified in presenting his instinct theory as a possible scenario. The problem with Freud's proposition is not its contention. The problem is that he expressed it as a doctrinaire postulate to be proven by circular logic, rather than as a tentative hypothesis requiring confirmation by evidence.
Singer's negative assessment of Freud's exclusive focus on sex as the defining element in human development from infancy onward is scarcely debatable. It is possible, however, to appreciate some of Freud's observations and to recognize behavioral patterns identified by him without accepting his bizarre explanations for those regularities. B.F. Skinner has done a masterful job of giving Freud credit for these while explaining them in a much simpler and common-sense way. For example, he suggested that what Freud called the Oedipus Complex would no doubt disappear with the advent of equality for women. The asymmetrical relation of the female parent was probably at the root of it all, combined with a culture in which punishment was paramount. "Is it possible," asked Skinner, "that the so-called Oedipal relations to mother and father are simply mythical representations of positive and negative reinforcement? The boy longs, not to sleep with his mother, but to be close to the one who positively reinforces his behavior. He longs, not to kill his father, but to escape from or destroy one who punishes."#11
