Models of the Mind: René Descartes and Sigmund Freud
by Alex Boican
by Alex Boican
René Descartes, a 17th-century French rationalist philosopher, is famous for the statement: I think, therefore I am.
He aimed to resolve disputes about truth by applying mathematical reasoning — especially geometry — rather than relying on divine revelation, as was common at the time.
How can we determine what is true when we’re faced with a multitude of conflicting opinions, customs, and beliefs rooted in experience or revelation?
Descartes began by doubting everything — including the senses and even the body itself — on the basis that we might be deceived, for example, by an evil demon. If all else can be doubted, one thing remains certain: the act of thinking. The very fact of doubt proves the existence of a thinking entity. Hence, cogito, ergo sum.
From this, Descartes argued we are dual beings: an immaterial mind (capable of truth) and a material body (prone to error). But since the physical world — including our bodies — is extended in space and time, we can use reason and mathematical logic to understand it. This laid the groundwork for modern science.
His ideas also helped shape concepts of individual freedom and equality, sparking wide social and political consequences.
Rational thinking, Descartes argued, was more trustworthy than sensory experience. For example, although dolphins look like fish, scientific investigation reveals they are mammals. The earth appears flat, but science proves otherwise. Can you think of other examples?
Descartes reduced the world to an inert object to be measured and ruled by science. His distrust of the body has theological roots: the mind, seen as pure and godlike, is favoured over the corruptible body.
This brings us to Sigmund Freud, a 20th-century Austrian medical doctor and founder of psychoanalysis. Freud is now a controversial figure—often accused of reducing everything to sex and promoting patriarchal views like penis envy
. Yet, he was crucial in establishing psychology and psychiatry as sciences.
Unlike Descartes, Freud was an atheist and a materialist. He rejected any spiritual or immaterial dimensions to the mind. For Freud, mind and body were one. Still, like Descartes, he believed in science’s power to explain human experience
How can we explain physical symptoms—like blindness or paralysis—when there’s no physical damage?
His answer: the mind causes these symptoms. He introduced two major models of the psyche.
The unconscious stores instincts, desires, fantasies, and past experiences that shape the conscious mind without us realising it.
Freud saw the mind (or psyche
) as a network of bodily sensations—what he called the libidinal economy. At birth, sensations like hunger circulate freely. As children grow, they encounter reality and adapt to social norms, learning language and behaviour. Desires and memories that don’t fit this new order are repressed into the unconscious.
So, where Descartes saw thought as a sign of immaterial existence, Freud viewed it as the result of how bodily sensations are shaped by language. There is no thought outside the body. The entire body, not just the brain, is part of the mind. That’s why mental states can affect the body directly — for example, when emotional distress causes physical symptoms.
Freud later developed a more nuanced structure:
The Ego's task is to satisfy the Id&apo;s desires without breaking the rules of the Superego. It navigates the tension between instinct and social expectation. In today’s world, with increasing pressures and demands, the Ego is under constant strain — perhaps contributing to rising mental health issues. Maybe instead of expecting individuals to adapt endlessly, we should question the social structures that generate this pressure.
The current obsession with brain science/neurology, while it helps us better understand brain physiology, is a peculiar refusal of Freud and a return to Descartes. It tries to explain the mind as a series of bioelectrical impulses structured by mathematical logic. But maybe the mind is not only an abstract mathematical structure, but also a concretely sensuous one.