Spinoza and Psychoanalysis

In the history of psychoanalysis, several philosophers became subjects of a privileged confrontation with Freud. One such philosopher was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). From the 1920s intellectuals noted correspondences between Freudian thought and Spinoza's philosophy (Smith, 1924; Alexander, 1927). This discussion continues to more recent times (Bodei, 1991; Ogilvie, 1993). Freud himself rarely spoke of Spinoza. Although he referred to Spinoza in Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood (1910c), he did not explicitly mention...