# Psychoanalysis and Humanity - URL: https://alisanburak.com/en/psikanaliz-ve-insanlik - Language: en - Last updated: 2026-08-15 - Page title: Psychoanalysis and Humanity | Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alişan Burak Yaşar > Psychoanalysis is a crucial cornerstone in the foundations of modern psychology and psychiatry. In the years before the convenience of accessing thousands This page was translated automatically from Turkish. [Read the original](https://alisanburak.com/psikanaliz-ve-insanlik) [← Back to blog](https://alisanburak.com/en/blog) # Psychoanalysis and Humanity October 19, 2020Writings and Talks Psychoanalysis is a crucial cornerstone in the foundations of modern psychology and psychiatry. In the years before the convenience of accessing thousands of books and articles with a single click, Freud brought about an undeniable revolution with his book Düşlerin Yorumu (The Interpretation of Dreams), which we might call the discovery of psychoanalysis, and his subsequent theoretical and clinical work. In fact, before the book was written, many literary figures, whom Freud openly acknowledged as sources of inspiration, had written extensively about the unconscious and the functions of consciousness. Yet Freud brought all of this together through scientific and academic work and formulated the theory of psychoanalysis—an achievement that remains just as significant today. Indeed, he provided dozens of references in the reference section of Düşlerin Yorumu. 1. Freud, one of the century’s most important thinkers, made a revolutionary contribution by offering a new way to explore the human mind. A. Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, one of the other forms of psychotherapy that has emerged as an alternative to psychoanalysis and has been the subject of countless studies, and …. had also trained in psychoanalysis. Although there are now many approaches to mental disorders other than psychoanalysis, traces of psychoanalysis can be found in each of them. In fact, psychoanalytic terms have become so deeply embedded in popular culture and everyday language that we frequently encounter terms such as the subconscious, the unconscious, and the ego in daily life. Although these terms are often used incorrectly by the public, we can say that psychoanalysis has become established both in other forms of psychotherapy and in everyday language, acquiring cultural significance as well. …. Even before it was explained, apples fell to the ground and gravity existed. But after … explained it, people understood it better and became able to apply it scientifically. Evidence of Freud’s theory, too, is constantly before our eyes in daily life. Before discussing where we encounter psychoanalysis in everyday life, I would like to quote Freud’s own account of this revolution. **Three Blows to Narcissism*** #### Sigmund Three Blows to Narcissism* Sigmund Freud *The following passages, taken from four separate works by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), present this great Viennese psychologist’s principal views on human nature and destiny. These four works are Psikanalizin Zorluklarından Biri (A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis) (1917), Psikanalist için yeni Giriş Dersleri (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis) (1933), “Sınırlandırılabilenin ve Sınırlandırılamayanın Analizi” (Analysis Terminable and Interminable) (1937), and Uygarlık ve Hoşnutsuzlukları (Civilization and Its Discontents) (1930).* (...) I shall describe how humanity’s general narcissism, its love of itself, has so far been wounded three times by scientific research. When human beings first became curious about the world they inhabited, they believed it to be the center of the universe, with the sun, moon, and planets revolving around it. In this belief, they were naively following the dictates of their own sensory perceptions, for they did not feel the earth moving, and wherever their view was unobstructed, they found themselves at the center of a circle, with the entire world around them. Their central position on earth was, to them, a sign of their dominion over the universe, and it fitted perfectly with their tendency to regard themselves as masters of the world. It was Kopernik and his work in the sixteenth century that destroyed this narcissistic illusion. (...) When these findings gained general acceptance, humanity’s self-love suffered its first blow: the cosmological blow. In the course of cultural development, human beings had gained a dominant position over the other creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with this superiority, however, they began to create a gulf between their own nature and that of animals. They denied animals the faculty of reason, attributed an immortal soul to themselves, and claimed a divine origin that would sever their kinship with the animal kingdom. We all know that a little over half a century ago, the research of Charles Darwin, his collaborators, and his predecessors put an end to this human presumption. Human beings were neither different from nor superior to animals: they themselves descended from animal stock, more closely related to some species and more distantly to others. Their subsequent proliferation could not erase the evidence of similarities in either their physical structure or their mental constitution. This was the second, biological blow to human narcissism. The third blow, the psychological one, was probably the most wounding. However modest human beings may be in their relations with the outside world, they feel sovereign within their own psyche. Somewhere at the center of the ego, they have developed an agency of observation to monitor their impulses and actions and determine whether these comply with its demands. If they do not, the impulses are firmly prohibited and restrained. Their internal perception, their consciousness, brings the ego news of all the important events in the workings of the mind, and the will, set in motion by these reports, carries out the ego’s commands and modifies tendencies seeking to realize themselves independently. (...) But two discoveries (made by psychoanalysis)—that the life of the sexual instincts cannot be entirely restrained, and that mental processes are in fact unconscious and reach the ego, and thus come under its control, only through incomplete and unreliable perceptions—revealed that the ego is not master in its own house. These two discoveries inflicted a third wound on humanity’s self-love, which I call the psychological blow. It is hardly surprising that the ego dislikes psychoanalysis and persists in refusing to believe in it. * Sigmund Freud, Toplu Makaleler, çeviren Joan Riviere, cilt IV, s. 350-352, 355. The Hogarth Press Ltd. [← Previous Daring to Look into the Darkness: Psychoanalysis](https://alisanburak.com/en/karanliga-bakmaya-cesaret-etmek-psikanaliz)[Next → Recommendations for Clinicians](https://alisanburak.com/en/klinisyenlere-oneriler) --- Kaynak / Source: https://alisanburak.com/en/psikanaliz-ve-insanlik İletişim / Contact: Bağdat Caddesi, Veli Güneysu Apt. No:453 K:4 D:9, Suadiye / Kadıköy, İstanbul · +90 532 642 95 25 · info@alisanburak.com · https://alisanburak.com/bagdat-caddesi-psikoterapi-iletisim