Sartre proposed an existentialist psychoanalysis rejecting Freud’s layered unconscious

Evidence

Towards the end of Being and Nothingness, he had explored the idea that our lives might be arranged around projects that are genuinely ours, yet that we do not fully understand. He also called for a new practice of existentialist psychoanalysis, to be based on freedom and on worldly being. He never accepted Freud’s picture of the psyche as being arranged in layers, from the unconscious upwards, as if it were a slice of baklava or a geological sediment to be studied; nor did he agree on the primacy of sex. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 710

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Sartre’s existentialist psychoanalysis by contrast with Freud’s: oriented to freedom and worldliness, not sexual drive or a stratification of the psyche.
• XREF: Pairs with Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’ and the idea that we flee freedom by misrecognizing ourselves — existentialist psychoanalysis is the method for unmasking such self-deceptions. — connects to: Sartre’s free transparent consciousness leads him to reject the unconscious and all psychological determinism — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 79; Freudian and existential analyses both treat acts as symbols of deeper structures; Existential psychoanalysis rejects the unconscious and makes psychic acts coextensive with consciousness — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1340 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Sartre reinterpreted Freudian primal scenes as exercises of freedom #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 690
• Freud decentered identity by revealing an unconscious inaccessible to introspection #contradicts (0.80)
• Sartre sees the Other’s gaze as falsifying essence-free being #contradicts (0.75) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 632