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.