Posted by Claus B. Storgaard on April 28, 2003 at 04:29:03:
In Reply to: HELP! How does Orwell Feel towards Sigmund Freud's theories? posted by Jenny Skourletos on April 15, 2003 at 22:22:51:
In Orwell's Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters there in all three instances where Freud is mentioned. Two of them concern not Freud as such but "freudian errors" - what is problably what we call "freudian slip" today, i.e. a slip of the tongue that is motivated by and reveals some unconscious aspect of the mind
The only "real" reference to Freud occurs in the essay "Raffles and Miss Blandish" in which Orwell deals with the development in the moral attitude in the crime novel in the first half of the 20th century, exemplified by the Raffles stories from around 1900 with James Hadley Chase's "No Orchids for Miss Blandish" from 1932 (I think).
Both have the criminal as the hero, or at least see things from the criminal's point of view, but although Raffles has no morals at tall he is after all a gentleman and there are still things that "are just not done", whereas in "Miss Blandish" takes place in a world where morals have deteriorated to simple lust for power over others. (Admittedly a very superficial summary of the essay.)
However, Freud turns up in the concluding remarks in which Orwell says that with "Miss Blandish", Machiavelli and Freud have entered the suburbs.
As this apparently is the only instance of Freud being mentioned by Orwell I think it is save to say that Orwell couldn't care less about Freud's teories.