‘Freedom within parameters’: Liberalism, (in)determinism, and the politics of instinct in Sigmund Exner and Sigmund Freud

This article explores the relations between politics, science, and personal life in turn-of-the-century Vienna by comparing the psychological work of physiologist Sigmund Exner and his student, Sigmund Freud. Particular attention is given to assessing the role they assigned to instincts as the universal foundation of subjectivity. As will be argued, Exner and Freud brought the concept of instinct as a solution to the sceptical threat still present in the work of their teachers Hermann von Helmholtz and Ernst Brücke. Exner, however, reconceptualized instinct to make it the source of a shared human nature while also removing its strict determinist outlook, thus allowing enough room for the role of experience and education and for human autonomy. Freud originally followed Exner's indeterminist formulation of instinct but reconsidered his early views and progressively conceived instincts along more deterministic lines in his later work. The analysis will highlight how their conceptions of instincts reflected political struggles facing liberalism at the turn of the century, as well as their attempts at negotiating their own personal identity with contemporary politics, so that their use – and, at times, rejection – of instinct were not only reflective of theoretical positions but also of political events taking place in society at the time and, in particular, as a response to the rise of anti-Semitism and nationalism that directly threatened their place in society and forced them to reconsider their identities.