Sacks on Luria and Freud

I am taken by the generosity of spirit that inhabits this account.

Here, it seems to me, is the key to Luria's early enthusiasm for psychoanalysis, for Freud; here, too, the permanent heuristic effect of Freud on his thought, whatever reservations and differences were later to appear. Freud offered a principle — the general principle Luria needed, the only tenable principle for a scientific, human psychology. And this principle was, in essence, an orientation which faced two ways: one which looked down into the biological depths of human nature, but equally and simultaneously up into the events and interactions of social life, a science that looked equally into nature and culture.

Goldberg, Elkhonon, ed. Contemporary Neuropsychology and the Legacy of Luria. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990. Contains: Sacks, Oliver. Luria and “Romantic Science”, pp. 181-194.

And so for day 708
20.11.2008