Freud and the Steam Engine

Barbara Adam points out that the leading metaphors for nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were mechanical. Creation was a clock. By the nineteenth century, though, steam technology had taken over the European imagination, and metaphors of “letting off steam” and “safety valve” were applied to social and psychological realities, not least by Freud.

Perhaps: No steam, no Freud.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Rome and the Church in the United States

George Weigel

Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…

Marriage Annulment and False Mercy

Luma Simms

Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…

Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry

Jonathon Van Maren

On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…