The freudian discourse on education: considerations on the intellectual inhibition

Abstract

Freud had different positions on education, sometimes criticizing it as a trigger for neurosis, sometimes bringing it closer to psychoanalysis as an impossible profession. This article, besides pointing out these different moments of Freud’s thoughts, it discusses the concepts of inhibition and desire for knowledge. When relating knowledge to the Oedipus complex and treating inhibition as an output of anxiety, Freud makes it possible to move the concept of intellectual disability to the psychic field, avoiding the reductionism of organismic explanations. This is a literature review of qualitative character. By including psychoanalysis in the discussions on intellectual disability there could be an opening to think critically about the classical concepts of normality and pathology, as this theory emphasizes the uniqueness of the subject.