Sigmund Freud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sigmund Freud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
Sigmund Freud
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Freud" redirects here. For other uses, please see Freud (disambiguation).
Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud) May 6, 1856 –
Sigmund Freud
September 23, 1939; (IPA: [ɑziəkmȚnt ɑfȑǤȟt]) was a Jewish-Austrian
neurologist and psychiatrist who co-founded the psychoanalytic school of
psychology. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind,
especially involving the mechanism of repression; his redefinition of
sexual desire as mobile and directed towards a wide variety of objects; and
his therapeutic techniques, especially his understanding of transference in
the therapeutic relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources
of insight into unconscious desires.
He is commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis" and his work
has been highly influential — popularizing such notions as the
unconscious, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism
— while also making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as
literature (Kafka), film, Marxist and feminist theories, literary criticism,
philosophy, and psychology. However, his theories remain controversial
Born
May 6, 1856
Příbor (formerly Freiberg),
and widely disputed.
Austria-Hungary
Died
September 23, 1939 (aged 83)London,
England
Residence
Austria, (later) England
Nationality
Austrian
Ethnicity
Jewish
Field
Neurology, Psychiatry, Psychology,
Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis
Institutions
University of Vienna
Alma mater
University of Vienna
Academic advisor Jean-Martin Charcot, (later) Josef Breuer
Notable students Alfred Adler, John Bowlby, Viktor Frankl,
Anna Freud, Ernest Jones, Carl Jung,
Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, Maud
Mannoni, Fritz Perls, Otto Rank, Wilhelm
Reich, Donald Winnicott
Known for
Psychoanalysis
Notable prizes
Goethe Prize
Religion
Atheist
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Contents
1 Life
1.1 Early life
1.2 Medical school
1.3 Later life
2 Innovations
2.1 Early work
2.2 The unconscious
2.3 Psychosexual development
2.4 Ego, super-ego, and id
2.5 Defense mechanisms
2.6 The life and death instincts
2.7 Social psychology
3 Freud's legacy
3.1 Psychotherapy
3.2 Philosophy
3.3 Critical reactions
4 Patients
5 Notes
6 Bibliography
6.1 Major works by Freud
6.2 Books about Freud and psychoanalysis
6.3 Conceptual critiques
6.4 Biographies
6.5 Biographical critiques
7 See also
7.1 Topics
7.2 People
8 External links
Life
Early life
Sigmund Freud was born to Jewish Parents in Příbor (Freiberg in German), Moravia (then Austrian Empire, now Czech Republic),
on 6 May 1856. His father Jacob was 41, a wool merchant, and had two children by a previous marriage. His mother Amalia was
21. Owing to his intellect, which was obvious from an early stage of his childhood, his parents favored him over his siblings, and
even though they were poor they offered everything to give him a proper education. As a result, Freud did extremely well during his
first 8 years of school, but at the age of 17, he had to move to the University in Vienna because of the strong anti-Semitism in
Austria at the time, at which time his grades plummeted.
Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Medical school
In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics" was seeded with the publication of Lectures on
Physiology by German physiologist Ernst von Brücke who, in coordination with physicist
Hermann von Helmholtz, one of the formulators of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation
of energy), supposed that all living organisms are energy-systems also governed by this principle.
Constructs
During this year, at the University of Vienna, Brucke was also coincidentally the supervisor for
Psychosexual development
first-year medical student Sigmund Freud who naturally adopted this new “dynamic” physiology.
Psychosocial development
In his Lectures on Physiology, Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a
Conscious • Preconscious •
dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply.[1] This was the starting point
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for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the unconscious.[1][2] The origins
Unconscious
of Freud’s basic model, based on the fundmentals of chemistry and physics, according to John
Id, ego, and super-ego
Libido • Drive
Bowlby, stems from Brücke, Meynert, Breuer, Helmholtz, and Herbart.[3]
Transference • Resistance
Later life
Important Figures
Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung
Alfred Adler • Anna Freud
He married in 1886, after the opening of a private clinic,
Karen Horney • Jacques Lacan
specializing in nerve and brain damage. After using hypnosis
Ronald Fairbairn • Melanie
on his neurotic patients for a long period, he abandoned this
Klein
form of treatment, in favor of a better treatment, where the
Harry Stack Sullivan
patient talked through his or her problem.
Erik Erikson • Nancy Chodorow
Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague
Important works
about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung
The Interpretation of Dreams
Group photo 1909 in front of
had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke
Four Fundamental Concepts of
Clark University. Front row:
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, Granville
with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle"
Stanley Hall, C.G.Jung; back
interrupted him and, to Jung's astonishment, proceeded to
row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest
group the contents of Jung's monologue into several precise
Schools of Thought
Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.
categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours
Self psychology • Lacanian
Analytical psychology • Object
together in a more profitable give-and-take. [4]
relations
Interpersonal • Relational
Freud is often rumored to have had an affair with his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays (C. G. Jung
Attachment • Ego psychology
alleged as much), possibly resulting in her pregnancy and an abortion. A hotel log dated August
13, 1898 seems to support the allegation of an affair.[5]
Psychology Portal
In his 40s, Freud "had numerous psychosomatic disorders as well as exaggerated fears of dying
and other phobias" (Corey 2001, p. 67). During this time Freud was involved in the task of
exploring his own dreams, memories, and the dynamics of his personality development. During this self-analysis, he came to realize
the hostility he felt towards his father (Jacob Freud), and "he also recalled his childhood sexual feelings for his mother (Amalia
Freud), who was attractive, warm, and protective" (Corey 2001, p. 67). Corey (2001) considers this time of emotional difficulty to
be the most creative time in Freud's life.
After the publication of Freud's books in 1900 and 1901, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed
in the following period. Freud often chose to disregard the criticisms of those who were skeptical of his theories, however, and even
gained a few direct opponents as a result, the most famous being Carl Jung, who was originally in support of Freud's ideas.
In 1930 Freud received the Goethe Prize in appreciation of his contribution to psychology and to German literary culture. Three
years later the Nazis took control of Germany and Freud's books featured prominently amongst those burned by the Nazis. In March
1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss. This led to violent outbursts of anti-Semitism in Vienna, and Freud and his
family received visits from the Gestapo. Freud decided to go into exile "to die in freedom". He and his family left Vienna in June
1938 and traveled to London.
A heavy cigar smoker, Freud endured more than 30 operations during his life due to mouth cancer. In September 1939 he prevailed
on his doctor and friend Max Schur to assist him in suicide. After reading Balzac's La Peau de chagrin in a single sitting he said,
"My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk. You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is
nothing but torture and makes no sense any more." Schur administered three doses of morphine over many hours that resulted in
Freud's death on September 23, 1939.[6] Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium
during a service attended by Austrian refugees, including the author Stefan Zweig. His ashes were later placed in the crematorium's
columbarium. They rest in an ancient Greek urn which Freud had received as a present from Marie Bonaparte and which he had kept
in his study in Vienna for many years. After Martha Freud's death in 1951, her ashes were also placed in that urn. Golders Green
Crematorium has since also become the final resting place for Anna Freud and her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, as well as
for several other members of the Freud family.
Innovations
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Freud has been influential in two related but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a theory of how the human mind is
organized and operates internally, and how human behavior both conditions and results from this particular theoretical
understanding. This lead him to favor certain clinical techniques for attempting to help cure psychopathology.
Early work
Due to Neurology and Psychiatry not being recognized as distinct medical fields
at the time of Sigmund Freud's training, the medical degree he obtained after
studying for six years at the University of Vienna board certified him in both
Neurology and Psychiatry, although he is far more well-known for his work in
the latter. As far as neurology went, Freud was an early researcher on the topic
of neurophysiology, specifically cerebral palsy, which was then known as
"cerebral paralysis." He published several medical papers on the topic, and
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 Freud's
speculations were confirmed by more modern research.
Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as
analgesic. He wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug
and he was influenced by his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, who
recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis." Fliess
operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients whom he believed to be
suffering from the disorder, including Emma Eckstein, whose surgery proved
disastrous.
Freud felt that cocaine would work as a cure-all for many disorders and wrote a
Sigmund Freud memorial in Hampstead, north
well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues. He prescribed it to his
London. Sigmund and Anna Freud lived at 20
friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him overcome a morphine addiction
Maresfield Gardens, directly opposite the statue; the
house is now a museum dedicated to his life and
he had acquired while treating a disease of the nervous system. Freud also
work. The building behind the statue is the Tavistock
recommended it to many of his close family and friends. He narrowly missed out
Clinic, a major psychiatric institution.
on obtaining scientific priority for discovering cocaine's anesthetic properties
(of which Freud was aware but on which he had not written extensively), after
Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, presented a report to a medical society in 1884 outlining the ways in which cocaine
could be used for delicate eye surgery. Freud was bruised by this, especially because this would turn out to be one of the few safe
uses of cocaine, as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world. Freud's medical reputation
became somewhat tarnished because of this early ambition. Furthermore, Freud's friend Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of
"cocaine psychosis" as a result of Freud's prescriptions and died a few years later. Freud felt great regret over these events, which
later biographers have dubbed "The Cocaine Incident."
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. According to some of his successors, including his
daughter Anna Freud, the goal of therapy is to allow the patient to develop a stronger ego; according to others, notably Jacques
Lacan, the goal of therapy is to lead the analysand to a full acknowledgment of his or her inability to satisfy the most basic desires.
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, transference, the patient can reenact and resolve repressed conflicts, especially childhood conflicts with (or about) parents.
The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to Joseph Breuer. Freud actually credits Breuer with the
discovery of the psychoanalytical method. One case started this phenomenon that would shape the field of psychology for decades to
come, the case of Anna O. In 1880 a young girl came to Breuer with symptoms of what was then called female hysteria. Anna O.
was a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman. She presented with symptoms such as paralysis of the limbs, split personality and
amnesia; today these symptoms are known as conversion disorder. After many doctors had given up and accused Anna O. of faking
her symptoms, Breuer decided to treat her sympathetically, which he did with all of his patients. He started to hear her mumble
words during what he called states of absence. Eventually Breuer started to recognize some of the words and wrote them down. He
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then hypnotized her and repeated the words to her; Breuer found out that the words were associated with her father's illness and
death.
In the early 1890s Freud used a form of treatment based on the one that Breuer had described to him, modified by what he called his
"pressure technique". The traditional story, based on Freud's later accounts of this period, is that as a result of his use of this
procedure most of his patients in the mid-1890s reported early childhood sexual abuse. He believed these stories, but after having
heard a patient tell the story about Freud's personal friend being the victimizer, Freud concluded that his patients were fantasizing
the abuse scenes.
In 1896 Freud posited that the symptoms of 'hysteria' and obsessional neurosis derived from unconscious memories of sexual abuse
in infancy, and claimed that he had uncovered such incidents for every single one of his current patients (one third of whom were
men). However a close reading of his papers and letters from this period indicates that these patients did not report early childhood
sexual abuse as he later claimed: rather, he arrived at his findings by analytically inferring the supposed incidents, using a procedure
that was heavily dependent on the symbolic interpretation of somatic symptoms.
The unconscious
Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud made to Western thought was his argument for the existence of an unconscious
mind. During the 19th century, the dominant trend in Western thought was positivism, which subscribed to 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 as proposed by Freud was considered by some to be groundbreaking in that he proposed that
awareness existed in layers and that some thoughts occurred "below the surface." Nevertheless, as psychologist Jacques Van Rillaer,
among others, pointed out, "contrary to what most people believe, the unconscious was not discovered by Freud. In 1890, when
psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology, examined the way Schopenhauer,
von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious'".[7] Boris Sidis, a Jewish Russian who
escaped to the USA in 1887, and studied under William James, wrote The Psychology of Suggestion: A Research into the
Subconscious Nature of Man and Society in 1898, followed by ten or more works over the next twenty five years on similar topics
to the works of Freud.
Moreover, the historian of psychology Mark Altschule wrote: "It is difficult - or perhaps impossible - to find a nineteenth-century
psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance."[8]
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 from the logic of conscious thought. Freud developed his first topology of the psyche
in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) in which he proposed 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.
Crucial to the operation of the unconscious is "repression." According to Freud, people often experience thoughts and feelings that
are so painful that they 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.
Later, Freud distinguished between three concepts of the unconscious: the descriptive unconscious, the dynamic unconscious, and
the system unconscious. The descriptive unconscious referred to all those features of mental life of which people are not subjectively
aware. The dynamic unconscious, a more specific construct, referred to mental processes and contents which are defensively
removed from consciousness as a result of conflicting attitudes. The system unconscious denoted the idea that when mental
processes are repressed, they become organized by principles different from those of the conscious mind, such as condensation and
displacement.
Eventually, Freud abandoned the idea of the system unconscious, replacing it with the concept of the Ego, super-ego, and id
(discussed below). Throughout his career, however, he retained the descriptive and dynamic conceptions of the unconscious.
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Psychosexual development
Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and thus turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for
comparative material. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus complex after the famous Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex 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 (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality). He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people 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.
Freud originally posited childhood sexual abuse as a general explanation for the origin of neuroses, but he abandoned this so-called
"seduction theory" as insufficiently explanatory, noting that he had found many cases in which apparent memories of childhood
sexual abuse were based more on imagination than on real events. During the late 1890s Freud, who never abandoned his belief in
the sexual etiology of neuroses, began to emphasize fantasies built around the Oedipus complex as the primary cause of hysteria and
other neurotic symptoms. Despite this change in his explanatory model, Freud always recognized that some neurotics had been
sexually abused by their fathers, and was quite explicit about discussing several patients that he knew to have been abused.[9]
Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object, a process designed by the concept of
sublimation. 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 develop, they become 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 evacuating his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage. Freud argued that children then passed through a stage
in which they fixated on the mother as a sexual object (known as the Oedipus Complex) but that the child eventually overcame and
repressed this desire because of its taboo nature. (The lesser known Electra complex refers to such a fixation on the father.) The
repressive or dormant latency stage of psychosexual development preceded the sexually mature genital stage of psychosexual
development.
Freud's way of interpretation has been called phallocentric by many contemporary thinkers. This is because, for Freud, the
unconscious always desires the phallus (penis). Males are afraid of castration - losing their phallus or masculinity to another male.
Females always desire to have a phallus - an unfulfillable desire. Thus boys resent their father (fear of castration) and girls desire
theirs. For Freud, desire is always defined in the negative term of lack - you always desire what you don't have or what you are not,
and it is very unlikely that you will fulfill this desire. Thus his psychoanalysis treatment is meant to teach the patient to cope with his
unsatisfiable desires.
Ego, super-ego, and id
In his later work, Freud proposed that the psyche could be divided into three parts: Ego, super-ego, and id. Freud discussed this
structural model of the mind in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and fully elaborated it in The Ego and The Id
(1923), where he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (conscious, unconscious, preconscious).
Freud acknowledges that his use of the term Id (or the It) derives from the writings of Georg Grodeck. It is interesting to note that
the term Id appears in the earliest writing of Boris Sidis, attributed to William James, as early as 1898.
Defense mechanisms
According to Kirrilee Arb, the defense mechanisms are the methods by which the ego can deal with conflicts between the super-ego
and the id. The use of defense mechanisms may attenuate the conflict between the id and super-ego, 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 she credited Sigmund with defense mechanisms as he began the
work. The defense mechanisms include denial, reaction formation, displacement, repression/suppression (the proper term),
projection, intellectualization, rationalization, compensation, sublimation and regressive emotionality.
Denial occurs when someone fends off awareness of an unpleasant truth or of a reality that is a threat to the ego. For example,
a student may have received a bad grade on a report card but tells himself that grades don't matter. (Some early writers argued
for a striking parallel between Freudian denial and Nietzsche's ideas of ressentiment and the revaluation of values that he
attributed to "herd" or "slave" morality.)
Reaction formation takes place when a person takes the opposite approach consciously compared to what that person wants
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unconsciously. For example, someone may engage in violence against another race because, that person claims, the members
of the race are inferior, when unconsciously it is that very person who feels inferior.
Displacement takes place when someone redirects emotion from a "dangerous" object to a "safe" one, such as punching a
pillow when one is angry at a friend.
Repression occurs when an experience is so painful (such as war trauma) that it is unconsciously forced from consciousness,
while suppression is a conscious effort to do the same.
Psychological projection occurs when a person "projects" his or her own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, feelings
— basically parts of oneself — onto someone or something else. Since the person is experiencing particular desires, feelings,
thoughts, or anxieties, s/he is more prone to attribute those same characteristics to the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of
others.
Intellectualization involves removing one's self, emotionally, from a stressful event, by focusing on rational and factual
components of the situation.
Rationalization involves constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different
mental process. For example, Jim may drink red wine because he is an alcoholic, but he tells himself he drinks it because it
has some health benefits, in order to avoid facing his alcoholism.
Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behaviour because one cannot accomplish another behaviour. 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, an aggressive or homicidal person
may join the military as a cover for their violent behavior.
The life and death instincts
Freud believed that humans were driven by two conflicting central desires: the life drive (Eros) (incorporating the sex drive) and the
death drive (Thanatos). Freud's description of Eros and Libido included all creative, life-producing drives. The death drive (or death
instinct) represented an urge inherent in all living things to return to a state of calm, or, ultimately, of non-existence. The presence of
the Death Drive was only recognized in his later years, and the contrast between the two represents a revolution in his manner of
thinking. The death instinct is also referred to as the Nirvana Principle.
It should be added that these ideas owe a great deal to both Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Schopenhauer's
pessimistic philosophy, expounded in The World as Will and Representation, describes a renunciation of the will to live that
corresponds on many levels with Freud's Death Drive. The life drive clearly owes much to Nietzsche's concept of the Dionysian in
The Birth of Tragedy. Freud was an avid reader of both philosophers and acknowledged their influence.
Social psychology
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Freud gave explanations of the genesis of religion in his writings, included in a
reflection on crowd psychology. In Totem and Taboo (1913), he proposed that humans
originally banded together in “primal hordes”, consisting of a male, a number of
females and the offspring of this polygamous arrangement. According to Freud’s
psychoanalytical theory, a male child early in life has sexual desires for his mother – the
Oedipus Complex – which he held to be universal. Ethnologists would later criticize
this point, leading to ethno-psychoanalytic studies. According to Freud, the father is
protective, so his sons love him, but they are also jealous of their father for his
relationship with their mothers. Finding that individually they cannot defeat the
father-leader, they band together, kill and eat him in a ritual meal, thereby ingesting the
substance of the father’s hated power – but their subsequent guilt leads the sons to
elevate their father's memory and to worship him. The super-ego then takes the place of
the father as the source of internalized authority. A ban was then put upon incest and
upon marriage within the clan, and symbolic animal sacrifice was substituted for the
ritual killing of a human being.
In Moses and Monotheism (1939) Freud reconstructed biblical history in accord with
his general theory, but many biblical scholars and historians would not accept his
account since it defied commonly accepted views on the history of Judaism and of
dynastic Egypt. However, this book remains interesting as an interpretation of
leadership based on charisma and mass psychology, using the Prophetic figure of
Moses. His ideas about religion were also developed in The Future of an Illusion
(1927). When Freud spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantastic
structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his
Freud boarding a Lufthansa flight in the
treatment of the unconscious he moved toward atheism. In this sense, Freud approached
1930s. (Memorial to the German Resistance,
the Marxist theory of alienation. Freud isolated two main principles: Thanatos is the
Berlin)
drive towards the dissolution of all life, whereas Eros is to strive towards stopping that
drive. When one goal is reached, the other becomes out-of-reach, and vice versa.
In "Group Psychology and Ego Analysis" (Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analysis, 1920), Freud explored crowd psychology,
continuing Gustave Le Bon's early work. When the individual joins a crowd, he ceases repressing his instincts, and thus relapses
into primitive culture, according to Freud's analysis. However, crowds must be distinguished into natural and organized crowds,
following William McDougall's distinction. Thus, if intellectual skills (the capacity to doubt and to distance oneself) are
systematically reduced when the individual joins a mass, he may eventually be "morally enlightened". Prefiguring Moses and
Monotheism and The Future of an Illusion, he states that the love relationship between the leader and the masses, in the Church or
in the Army, are only an "idealist transformation of the conditions existing in the primitive horde". Freud then compares the leader's
relationship with the crowd to a relation of hypnosis, a force to which he relates Mana. Pessimistic about humanity's chances of
liberty, Freud writes that "the leader of the crowd always incarnates the dreaded primitive father, the crowd always wants to be
dominated by an unlimited power, it is grasping at the highest degree for authority or, to use Le Bon's expression, it is hungry for
subservience".
According to Freud, self-identification to a common figure, the leader, explained the phenomenon of masses' obedience. Each
individual connected themselves vertically to the same ideal figure (or idea), each one thus has the same self-ideal, and hence
identify together (horizontal relation). Freud also quoted Wilfred Trotter's The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1914).
Along with Moses and Monotheism, Massenpsychologie... would be one of the articles most quoted by Wilhelm Reich and the
Frankfurt School in its Freudo-Marxist synthesis.
Freud's legacy
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Psychotherapy
Freud's theories and research methods were controversial during his life and still are so today,
but few dispute his huge impact on psychologists and the academically inclined.
Most importantly, Freud popularized the "talking-cure"--an idea that a person could solve
problems simply by talking over them, something that was almost unheard of in the 19th
century. Even though many psychotherapists today tend to reject the specifics of Freud's
theories, this basic mode of treatment comes largely from his work.
Freud on the Austrian 50-Schilling
Most of Freud's specific theories--like his stages of psychosexual development--and especially
Note
his methodology, have fallen out of favor in modern experimental psychology.
Some psychotherapists, however, still follow an approximately Freudian system of treatment. Many more have modified his
approach, or joined one of the schools that branched from his original theories (see Neo-Freudian). Still others reject his theories
entirely, although their practice may still reflect his influence.
Psychoanalysis today maintains the same ambivalent relationship with medicine and academia that Freud experienced during his life.
Philosophy
While he saw himself as a scientist, yet failed to employ any aspect of the scientific method, he greatly admired Theodor Lipps, a
philosopher and main supporter of the ideas of the subconscious and empathy.[10] Freud's theories have had a tremendous impact on
the humanities--especially on the Frankfurt school and critical theory. Freud's model of the mind is often criticized as an
unsubstantiated challenge to the enlightenment model of rational agency, which was a key element of much modern philosophy.
Rationality. While many enlightenment thinkers viewed rationality as both an unproblematic ideal and a defining feature of
man, Freud's model of the mind drastically reduced the scope and power of reason. In Freud's view, reasoning occurs in the
conscious mind--the ego--but this is only a small part of the whole. The mind also contains the hidden, irrational elements of
id and superego, which lie outside of conscious control, drive behavior, and motivate conscious activities. As a result, these
structures call into question humans' ability to act purely on the basis of reason, since lurking motives are also always at play.
Moreover, this model of the mind makes rationality itself suspect, since it may be motivated by hidden urges or societal forces
(e.g. defense mechanisms, where reasoning becomes "rationalizing").
Transparency of Self. Another common assumption in pre-Freudian philosophy was that people have immediate and
unproblematic access to themselves. Emblematic of this position is René Descartes' famous dictum, "Cogito ergo sum" ("I
think, therefore I am"). For Freud, however, many central aspects of a person remain radically inaccessible to the conscious
mind (without the aid of psychotherapy), which undermines the once unquestionable status of first-person knowledge.
Critical reactions
Although Freud's theories were quite influential, they came under widespread criticism during his lifetime and afterward. A paper by
Lydiard H. Horton, read in 1915 at a joint meeting of the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of
Sciences, called Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and noted that "rank confabulations...appear to hold water, psycho
analytically". A. C. Grayling, writing in The Guardian in 2002, said "Philosophies that capture the imagination never wholly
fade....But as to Freud's claims upon truth, the judgment of time seems to be running against him." Peter D. Kramer, a psychiatrist
and faculty member of Brown Medical School, said "I'm afraid [Freud] doesn't hold up very well at all. It almost feels like a
personal betrayal to say that. But every particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, infantile sexuality."
A 2006 article in Newsweek magazine called him "history's most debunked doctor."[11]
According to Richard Webster, author of Why Freud Was Wrong (1995):
Freud made no substantial intellectual discoveries. He was the creator of a complex pseudo-science which should be
“ recognized as one of the great follies of Western civilisation. In creating his particular pseudo-science, Freud
developed an autocratic, anti-empirical intellectual style which has contributed immeasurably to the intellectual ills
of our own era. His original theoretical system, his habits of thought and his entire attitude to scientific research are
so far removed from any responsible method of inquiry that no intellectual approach basing itself upon these is likely
”
to endure.[12]
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Sigmund Freud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
Other critics, like Dr. Frederick C. Crews, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of
The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (1995), are even more blunt:
He was a charlatan. In 1896 he published three papers on the ideology of hysteria claiming that he had cured X
“ number of patients. First it was thirteen and then it was eighteen. And he had cured them all by presenting them, or
rather by obliging them to remember, that they had been sexually abused as children. In 1897 he lost faith in this
theory, but he'd told his colleagues that this was the way to cure hysteria. So he had a scientific obligation to tell
people about his change of mind. But he didn't. He didn't even hint at it until 1905, and even then he wasn't clear.
Meanwhile, where were the thirteen patients? Where were the eighteen patients? You read the Freud - Fleiss letters
and you find that Freud's patients were leaving at the time. By 1897 he didn't have any patients worth mentioning,
and he hadn't cured any of them, and he knew it perfectly well. Well, if a scientist did that today, of course he would
be stripped of his job. He would be stripped of his research funds. He would be disgraced for life. But Freud was so
brilliant at controlling his own legend that people can hear charges like this, and even admit that they're true, and yet
”
not have their faith in the system of thought affected in any way.[13]
Another frequently criticized aspect of Freud's theories is his model of psychosexual development. Some have attacked Freud's claim
that infants are sexual beings, and, implicitly, Freud's expanded notion of sexuality. Others have accepted Freud's expanded notion
of sexuality, but have argued that this pattern of development is not universal, nor necessary for the development of a healthy adult.
Instead, they have emphasized the social and environmental sources of patterns of development. Moreover, they call attention to
social dynamics Freud de-emphasized or ignored, such as class relations. This branch of Freudian critique owes a great deal to the
work of Herbert Marcuse.
Freud has also come under fire from many feminist critics. 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 are a kind of mutilated male, who must learn to
accept their "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 "castration anxiety" contributed to discouraging women from entering any field
dominated by men, until the 1970s. Some of Freud's most criticized statements appear in his 'Fragment of Analysis' on Ida Bauer
such as "This was surely just the situation to call up distinct feelings of sexual excitement in a girl of fourteen" in reference to
Dora being kissed by a 'young man of prepossessing appearance'[14] implying the passivity of female sexuality and his statement "I
should without question consider a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited feelings that were
preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable"[14]
On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, 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.
Another feminist who finds potential use of Freud's theories in the feminist movement is Shulamith Firestone. In "Freudianism: The
Misguided Feminism", she discusses how Freudianism is essentially completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail:
everywhere that Freud wrote "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
Dr. Jurgen von Scheidt speculated that most of Freud's psychoanalytical theory was a byproduct of his cocaine use.[15] Cocaine
enhances dopaminergic neurotransmission increasing sexual interest and obsessive thinking. Chronic cocaine use can produce
unusual thinking patterns due to the depletion of dopamine levels in the prefrontal cortex.
Finally, Freud's theories are often criticized for not being real science.[16] This objection was raised most famously by Karl Popper,
who claimed that all proper scientific theories must be potentially falsifiable. Popper argued that no experiment or observation could
ever falsify Freud's theories of psychology (e.g. someone who denies having an Oedipal complex is interpreted as repressing it), and
thus they could not be considered scientific.[17] Some proponents of science conclude that this standard invalidates Freudian theory
as a means of interpreting and explaining human behavior.
Patients
This is a partial list of patients whose case studies were published by Freud, with pseudonyms substituted for their names:
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