Sigmund Freud

:Freud redirects to here. For other Freuds, see Freud (disambiguation)

Freud's innovations

Freud has been influential in two related, but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind and human behavior, and clinical techniques for attempting to help neurotics.

Related Topics:
Mind - Behavior - Neurotic

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Early work

A lesser known interest of Freud's was neurology. He was an early researcher on the topic of cerebral palsy, then known as "cerebral paralysis". He published several medical papers on the topic. He also showed that the disease existed far before other researchers in his day began to notice and study it. He also suggested that William Little, the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during the birth process being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were only a symptom of the problem. It was not until the 1980s that his speculations were confirmed by more modern research.

Related Topics:
Neurology - Cerebral palsy - William Little - Oxygen - 1980s

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Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine (see Freud and Cocaine). He wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug, and he was influenced by his friend and confident, Wilhelm Fleiss, who recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis." Fleiss operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients whom he believed to be suffering from the disorder. Emma Eckstein underwent disastrous nasal surgery by Fleiss.

Related Topics:
Cocaine - Antidepressant - Wilhelm Fleiss - Emma Eckstein

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Freud hoped that his research would provide a solid scientific basis for his therapeutic technique. The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring to consciousness repressed thoughts and feelings, in order to allow the patient to develop a stronger ego. Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness is brought about by encouraging the patient to talk in "free association" and to talk about dreams. Another important element of psychoanalysis is a relative lack of direct involvement on the part of the analyst, which is meant to encourage the patient to project thoughts and feelings onto the analyst. Through this process, called "transference," the patient can reenact and resolve repressed conflicts, especially childhood conflicts with (or about) parents.

Related Topics:
Consciousness - Ego - Unconscious - Free association - Transference

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The unconscious

Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud has made to modern thought is his conception of the unconscious. During the 19th century the dominant trend in Western thought was positivism, the belief that people could ascertain real knowledge concerning themselves and their environment and judiciously exercise control over both. Freud, however, suggested that such declarations of free will are in fact delusions; that we are not entirely aware of what we think and often act for reasons that have little to do with our conscious thoughts. The concept of the unconscious was groundbreaking in that he proposed that awareness existed in layers and that there were thoughts occurring "below the surface." Dreams, which he called the "royal road to the unconscious", provided the best access to our unconscious life and the best illustration of its "logic", which was different than the logic of conscious thought. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud both developed the argument that the unconscious exists and described a method for gaining access to it. The Preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought—that which we could access with a little effort. Thus for Freud the ideals of the Enlightenment, positivism, and rationalism could be achieved through understanding, transforming, and mastering the unconscious, rather than through denying or repressing it.

Related Topics:
Unconscious - Dream - The Interpretation of Dreams - Preconscious

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Crucial to the operation of the unconscious is "repression." According to Freud, people often experience thoughts and feelings that are so painful that people cannot bear them. Such thoughts and feelings—and associated memories—could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind, but could be banished from consciousness. Thus they come to constitute the unconscious. Although Freud later attempted to find patterns of repression among his patients in order to derive a general model of the mind, he also observed that individual patients repress different things. Moreover, Freud observed that the process of repression is itself a non-conscious act (in other words, it did not occur through people willing away certain thoughts or feelings). Freud supposed that what people repressed was in part determined by their unconscious. In other words, the unconscious was for Freud both a cause and effect of repression.

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Psychosexual development

Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object. He argued that humans are born "polymorphously perverse," meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued that, as humans developed, they fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of development—first in the oral stage (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in controlling his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage. Freud argued that children then passed through a stage where they fixated on the parent of the opposite sex and thought the same-sexed parent a rival. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus Complex after the famous Greek tragedy by Sophocles.“I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood,” Freud said. Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification. (see Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.)

Related Topics:
Libido - Oral stage - Anal stage - Phallic stage - Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

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Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid. He thus turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material. Freud used the Greek tragedy by Sophocles Oedipus Rex to point out how much he believed that people (young boys in particular) desire incest, and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.

Related Topics:
Greek tragedy - Sophocles - Oedipus Rex - Incest - Anthropological - Totemism - Oedipal conflict

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No discussion of Sigmund Freud is complete without some mention of his highly influential and controversial views on the role and psychology of women. Freud was an early champion of both sexual freedom and education for women (Freud, "Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness"). Some feminists, however, have argued that at worst his views of women's sexual development set the progress of women in Western culture back decades and that at best they lent themselves to the ideology of female inferiority. Believing as he did that women were a kind of mutilated male, who must learn to accept her deformity (the lack of a penis) and submit to some imagined biological imperative, he contributed to the vocabulary of misogyny. Terms such as "penis envy" and "castrating" (both used to describe women who attempted to excel in any field outside the home) contributed to discouraging women from obtaining education or entering any field dominated by men, until the 1970s. On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is essentially related to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism. Freud's views are still being questioned by people concerned about women's equality.

Related Topics:
Misogyny - Nancy Chodorow

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The id, ego and superego

Freud sought to explain how the unconscious operates by proposing that it has a particular structure. He proposed that the unconscious was divided into three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego. The Id (Latin, = "it" = es in the original German) represented primary process thinking — our most primitive need gratification type thoughts. The Superego (überich in German) represented our conscience and counteracted the Id with moral and ethical thoughts. Freud based the term Id on the work of Georg Groddeck. The Ego (ich) stands in between both to balance our primitive needs and our moral/ethical beliefs. A healthy ego provides the ability to adapt to reality and interact with the outside world in a way that accommodates both Id and Superego. The general claim that the mind is not a monolithic or homogeneous thing continues to have an enormous influence on people outside of psychology.

Related Topics:
Id, Ego, and Superego - Georg Groddeck

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Freud was especially concerned with the dynamic relationship between these three parts of the mind. Freud argued that the dynamic is driven by innate drives. But he also argued that the dynamic changes in the context of changing social relationships.

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Defense mechanisms

According to Freud, the defense mechanisms are the method by which the ego can solve the conflicts between the superego and the id. The use of the mechanisms required eros, and they are helpful if moderately used. The use of defense mechanisms, may attenuate the conflict between the id and superego, but their overuse or reuse rather than confrontation can lead to either anxiety or guilt which may result in psychological disorders such as depression. His daughter, Anna Freud, had done the most significant work on this field, yet credited Sigmund with Defense Mechanisms as he began the work. The defense mechanisms include, denial, reaction formation, displacement, repression/suppression (the proper term), projection, intellectualisation, rationalisation, compensation, sublimation and regressive emotionality.

Related Topics:
Eros - Anna Freud

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• Denial means that someone will not (deliberately) admit to the truth. For example, a student may have received a bad grade on a report card but tells himself that grades don't matter.
• Repression occurs when someone cannot remember a past traumatic experience, while suppression is a conscious effort to do the same.
• Intellectualisation involves removing one's self, emotionally, from a stressful event. Intellectualisation is often accomplished through rationalisation rather than accepting reality, one may explain it away to remove one's self.
• Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behavior because one cannot accomplish another behavior. For example, the second born child may clown around to get attention since the older child is already an accomplished scholar.
• Sublimation is the channeling of impulses to socially accepted behaviours. For instance, the use of a dark, gloomy poem to describe life by such poets as Emily Dickinson.
• Reaction formation takes place when someone takes the opposite approach consciously compared to what he wants unconsciously. For example, someone may engage in violence against another race because, he claims, they are inferior, when unconsciously it is he himself who feels inferior.

The life and death instincts

Freud believed that humans were driven by two drives, libidinal energy/Eros and the death drive/Thanatos. Freud's description of Eros/Libido included all creative, life-producing drives. The Death Drive represented an urge inherent in all living things to return to a state of calm, or, ultimately, of non-existence.

Related Topics:
Eros - Thanatos

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Psychology of religion

Freud gave explanations of the genesis of religion in various of his writings. In Totem and Taboo he applied the idea of the Oedipus complex (involving unresolved sexual feelings of, for example, a son toward his mother and hostility toward his father) and postulated its emergence in the primordial stage of human development.

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In Moses and Monotheism Freud reconstructed biblical history in accord with his general theory, but biblical scholars and historians would not accept his account since it was in opposition to the point of view of the accepted criteria of historical evidence. His ideas were also developed in The Future of an Illusion. When Freud spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his treatment of the unconscious he moved toward atheism.

Related Topics:
Illusion - Fantasy - Maturity - Unconscious - Atheism

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Freud's view of the idea of God as being a version of the father image and his thesis that religious belief is at bottom infantile and neurotic do not depend upon the accounts of prehistory and Biblical history with which Freud dressed up his version of the origin and nature of religion. Authoritarian religion, according to Freud, is dysfunctional and alienates man from himself.

Related Topics:
God - Father - Infantile - Neurotic

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Excerpts / Reviews

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