On 18 May 2006 Mike Donnelly wrote: > I am looking for a source on the Freud iceberg quote. You know > the one: "The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh > of its bulk above water."
I haven't been able to trace Freud's use of the "iceberg" analogy, but, as Mike indicates, it originated with Gustave Fechner. According to Ernest Jones in volume one of his biography of Freud, Fechner "likened the mind to an iceberg which is nine-tenths under the water". The citation is: G. T. Fechner (1860), Elemente der Psychophysik, Bd. II. S. 521. (Jones, E., *Sigmund Freud: Life and Work*, Vol 1, Hogarth Press 1953, p. 410. [Pagination in the British edition].) Freud was familiar with Fechner's ideas, and in "An Autobiographical Study" he wrote: "I was always open to the ideas of G. T. Fechner and have followed that thinker upon many important points." (1920, Standard Edition vol 20, p. 59.) In 1879 Francis Galton provided an equivalent analogy to illustrate the importance he placed on unconscious mental process. In an article in the journal "Brain", he described the mind as analogous to a house beneath which is "a complex system of drains and gas and water-pipes... which are usually hidden out of sight, and of whose existence, so long as they act well, we never trouble ourselves." He went on to discuss "the existence of still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the level of consciousness, which may account for such phenomena as cannot otherwise be explained." (Galton, F. [1879]. Inquiries into Human Faculty: Psychometric Experiments. Brain 2, pp. 149-162.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 http://www.srmhp.org/0202/review-01.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=18 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=195 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 13:39:23 -0500 Author: Mike Scholes Subject: Re: Freud iceberg quote: source Body: >Not Freud, but Nietzsche. Michael T. Scoles, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology & Counseling University of Central Arkansas Conway, AR 72035 ------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 13:39:23 -0500 Author: Mike Donnelly Subject Re: Freud iceberg quote: source > Nietzsche, interesting. Any idea which of his works specifically? A brief > Google search didn't turn up much. > > I've seen this analogy attributed to Fechner, who supposedly uses it in > his Elements of Psychophysics (1860). This makes sense to me (without > checking the source) because the Elements was very much about conscious > awareness and sensory thresholds and the like. If true, that would > probably predate Nietzsche. > > Man, that name is tough to spell. --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
