''"Freud" redirects here. For other uses, please see
Freud (disambiguation).''
'Sigmund Freud' (), born 'Sigismund Schlomo Freud' (
May 6 1856 –
September 23 1939), was an
Austrian
neurologist and
psychiatrist who 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 theory 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, the
Oedipus complex,
defense mechanisms,
Freudian slips and
dream symbolism—while also making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as
literature,
film,
Marxist and
feminist theories,
philosophy, and
psychology. However, his theories remain controversial and disputed by numerous critics, among them one who called him the "creator of a complex
pseudo-science which should be recognized as one of the great follies of Western civilisation".
[1]
Biography
Early life
Sigmund Freud was born on
6 May 1856 to
Galician Jewish[ Dual Allegiance: Freud As a Modern Jew, , Moshe, Gresser, SUNY Press, 1994, ISBN 0791418111 ] parents in
Příbor (),
Moravia,
Austrian Empire, now
Czech Republic. 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. Due to the
economic crisis of 1857, father Freud lost his business, and the family moved first to
Leipzig, Germany before settling in
Vienna, Austria. In 1865, Sigmund entered the ''Leopoldstädter Communal-Realgymnasium'', a prominent high school. Freud was an outstanding pupil and graduated the
Matura in 1873 with honors.
After planning to study law, Freud joined the medical faculty at
Vienna University to study under Darwinist Prof.
Karl Claus. At that time,
Eel life history was still unknown, and due to their mysterious origins and migrations, a racist association was often made between eels and Jews and Gypsies. In search for their male sex organs, Freud spent four weeks at the Austrian zoological research station in
Triest, dissecting hundreds of eels without finding more than his predecessors such as
Simon von Syrski. In 1876, he published his first paper about "the
testicles of
eels" in the “Mitteilungen der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften”, conceding that he could not solve the matter either. Frustrated by the lack of success which would have gained him fame, and disgusted by the blood and gore, Freud chose to change his course of study. Biographers like Siegfried Bernfeld wonder if and how this early episode was significant for his later work regarding hidden sexuality and frustrations.
[2][3][4]
Medical school
In 1874, the concept of "
psychodynamics" was proposed with the publication of ''Lectures on Physiology'' by German physiologist
Ernst Wilhelm 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. During this year, at the
University of Vienna, Brücke served as supervisor for first-year medical student Sigmund Freud who adopted this new “dynamic” physiology. In his ''Lectures on Physiology'', Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a
dynamic system to which the laws of
chemistry and
physics apply.
[ A Primer in Freudian Psychology, , Calvin, S., Hall, Meridian Book, 1954, ISBN 0452011833 ] This was the starting point for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the
unconscious.
The origins of Freud’s basic model, based on the fundamentals of chemistry and physics, according to
John Bowlby, stems from
Brücke,
Meynert,
Breuer,
Helmholtz, and
Herbart.
[ Attachment and Loss: Vol I, 2nd Ed., , John, Bowlby, Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-00543-8 ] In 1879, Freud interrupted his studies to complete his one year of obligatory military service, and in 1881 he received his ''Dr. med.'' (M.D.) with the thesis "Über das Rückenmark niederer Fischarten" (on the
spinal cord of lower
fish species).
Later life
Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886, after opening his own medical practice, specializing in
neurology. After experimenting with
hypnosis on his neurotic patients, Freud abandoned this form of treatment, in favor of a treatment where the patient talked through his or her problems. This came to be known as the "talking cure". (The term was initially coined by the patient
Anna O. who was treated by Freud's colleague
Josef Breuer.) The "talking cure" is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysis.
[6]
Freud held the opinion (based on personal experience and observation) that sexual activity was incompatible with the accomplishing of any great work. Since he felt that the great work of creating and establishing psychotherapy was his destiny, he told his wife that they could no longer engage in sexual relations. Indeed from about the age of forty until his death Freud was absolutely celibate “in order to sublimate the libido for creative purposes,” according to his biographer
Ernest Jones.
Nonetheless, there has been persistent gossip, which has always been staunchly denied by Freud loyalists, about the possibility that around this time a romantic liaison had blossomed between Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896. This rumour of an illicit relationship has been most notably propelled forward by
Carl Jung, Freud's disciple and later his archrival, who had claimed that Miss Bernays had confessed the affair to him. (This claim was dismissed by Freudians as malice on Jung's part.) It has been suggested that the affair resulted in a pregnancy and subsequently an abortion for Miss Bernays. A hotel log dated
August 13,
1898 seems to support the allegation of an affair.
[7]
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.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychotherapist, told a colleague about his first visit with Sigmund Freud in the year 1907. Jung had much that he wanted to talk about with Freud, and he spoke with intense animation for three whole hours. Finally Freud interrupted him and, to Jung's astonishment, proceeded to group the contents of Jung's monologue into several precise categories that enabled them to spend their remaining hours together in a more profitable give-and-take.
[8]
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.
[9]
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
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 led him to favor certain clinical techniques for attempting to help cure
psychopathology.
Early work
Since
neurology and
psychiatry were not recognized as distinct medical fields at the time of Freud's training, the medical degree he obtained after studying for six years at the
University of Vienna board certified him in both fields, 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 well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues. He prescribed it to his friend
Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him overcome a morphine
addiction he had acquired while treating a disease of the nervous system. Freud also recommended it to many of his close family and friends. He narrowly missed out 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 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'".
[10] 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."
[11] Freud's advance was not, then, to uncover the unconscious but to devise a method for systematically studying it.
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.
Psychosexual development
Main articles: 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 whom he knew to have been abused.
[12]
Freud also believed that the
libido developed in individuals by changing its object, a process codified 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 fathers (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 or her insatiable desires.
Ego, super-ego, and id
Main articles: 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 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.
Freud's legacy
Psychotherapy
Main articles: 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.
Most of Freud's specific theories—like his stages of psychosexual development—and especially 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, Freud greatly admired
Theodor Lipps, a philosopher and main supporter of the ideas of the subconscious and empathy.
[13] 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 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". The philosopher
A. C. Grayling has said that "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."
[14] 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."
[15]
Freud's theories are often criticized for not being real science.
[16] This objection was raised 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]
According to Richard Webster, author of ''Why Freud Was Wrong'' (1995):
H. J. Eysenck claims that Freud 'set psychiatry back one hundred years', consistently mis-diagnosed his patients, fraudulently misrepresented case histories and that "what is true in Freud is not new and what is new in Freud is not true".
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:
Among adherents of Freudian thought, a frequently criticized aspect of Freud's belief system is his model of psychosexual development, including Freud's claim that infants are sexual beings. 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 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'
[18] 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''"
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.
[19] 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.
Patients
This is a partial list of patients whose case studies were published by Freud, with pseudonyms substituted for their names:
Freud's couch used during psychoanalytic sessions
★
Anna O. = Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936)
★ Cäcilie M. = Anna von Lieben
★ Dora =
Ida Bauer (1882–1945)
★ Frau Emmy von N. = Fanny Moser
★ Fräulein Elizabeth von R.
★ Fräulein Katharina = Aurelia Kronich
★ Fräulein Lucy R.
★ =
Herbert Graf (1903–1973)
★
Rat Man = Ernst Lanzer (1878–1914)
★
Wolf Man = Sergei Pankejeff (1887–1979)
Other patients:
★
H.D. (1886–1961)
★
Emma Eckstein (1865–1924)
★
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
★
Princess Marie Bonaparte
People on whom psychoanalytic observations were published but who were not patients:
★
Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911)
★
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) (co-authored with and primarily written by
William Bullitt)
Notes
1. Freud and the Judaeo-Christian tradition
2. http://www.expertensprechen.de/
3. http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/archiv/.bin/dump.fcgi/2004/1020/feuilleton/0027/index.html
4. http://www.wno.org/newpages/sci02b.html
5. Freud's Psycho Dynamic Theory and Thermodynamics [1873-1923] - Institute of Human Thermodynamics
6. Freud: A Life for Our Time, , Peter, Gay, , 1988,
7. Hotel log hints at desire that Freud didn't repress Ralph Blumenthal
8. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, edited and abridged by Lionell Trilling and Steven Marcus (New York: Basic Books, 1961), p. 253.
9. Freud: A Life for Our Time, , Peter, Gay, W. W. Norton & Company, 1988,
10. Meyer (2005, 217).
11. Origins of Concepts in Human Behavior, , M, Altschule, Wiley, 1977, , cited in Allen Esterson, Freud returns?
12. Freud: A Life for Our Time, , , , , ,
13. Freud and the history of empathy, , G.W., Pigman, The International journal of psycho-analysis, 1995
14. ''The Guardian'', 22 June 2002 http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,741510,00.html
15. Freud in Our Midst
16. Ludwig, 1973, pg. 93
17. Karl Popper, “Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report,” in ''British Philosophy in the Mid-Century: A Cambridge Symposium'', ed. C. A. Mace (1957), 155-91; reprinted in Karl Popper, ''Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge'' (1963; 2d ed., 1965), 33-65.
18. S.E. 7. pp28
19. Sigmund Freud and cocaine, , Jürgen vom, Scheidt, Psyche, 1973
★ Corey, Gerald (2000). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. 6th ed. ISBN 0534348238
Bibliography
Major works by Freud
★ ''
Studies on Hysteria'' (with
Josef Breuer) (''Studien über Hysterie'', 1895)
★ ''
The Interpretation of Dreams'' (''Die Traumdeutung'', 1899 [1900])
★ ''
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (''Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens'', 1901)
★ ''
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (''Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie'', 1905)
★ ''
Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious'' (''Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten'', 1905)
★ ''
Totem and Taboo'' (''Totem und Tabu'', 1913)
★ ''
On Narcissism'' (''Zur Einführung des Narzißmus'', 1914)
★ ''
Beyond the Pleasure Principle'' (''Jenseits des Lustprinzips'', 1920)
★ ''
The Ego and the Id'' (''Das Ich und das Es'', 1923)
★ ''
The Future of an Illusion'' (''Die Zukunft einer Illusion'', 1927)
★ ''
Civilization and Its Discontents'' (''Das Unbehagen in der Kultur'', 1930)
★ ''
Moses and Monotheism'' (''Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion'', 1939)
★ ''
An Outline of Psycho-Analysis'' (''Abriß der Psychoanalyse'', 1940)
Books about Freud and psychoanalysis
★
Ernest Jones : "The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.", Publisher: Basic Books, 1981, ISBN 0-465-04015-2
★ "The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908-1939, R. Andrew Paskauskas (Editor), Riccardo Steiner (Introduction), Publisher: Belknap Press; Reprint edition 1995, ISBN 0-674-15424-X
★ "The Language of Psycho-Analysis" ,
Jean Laplanche et J.B. Pontalis, Editeur: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974, ISBN 0-393-01105-4
★ "Sigmund Freud and
Lou Andreas-Salome" : Letters" Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 1985), ISBN 0-393-30261-X
★
Lou Andreas-Salome : "The Freud Journal" , Publisher: Texas Bookman, 1996, ISBN 0-7043-0022-2
★
Sabina Spielrein : "Destruction as cause of becoming", 1993,
★
Marthe Robert : "The Psychoanalytic Revolution", Publisher: Avon Books; Discus ed edition, 1968,
★
Bruno Bettelheim : "Freud and Man's Soul: An Important Re-Interpretation of Freudian Theory" Publisher: Vintage; Vintage edition, 1983, ISBN 0-394-71036-3
★
André Green: "The Work of the Negative" by Andre Green, Andrew Weller (Translator), Publisher: Free Association Books, 1999, ISBN 1-85343-470-1
★ André Green: "On Private Madness", Publisher: International Universities Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8236-3853-7
★ André Green: "The Chains of Eros", Publisher: Karnac Books, 2002, ISBN 1-85575-960-8
★ André Green: "Psychoanalysis: A Paradigm For Clinical Thinking" Publisher: Free Association Books, 2005, ISBN 1-85343-773-5
★ John Farrell. ''Freud's Paranoid Quest: Psychoanalysis and Modern Suspicion'' (NYU Press, 1996). A vigorous account of the relations between Freud's logic, rhetoric, and personality, as well as his relations with literary sources like Cervantes, Goethe, and Swift.
★ Rieff, Philip. ''Freud: The Mind of the Moralist'', 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
★ Roazen, Paul. ''Freud and His Followers'' (Random House, 1975). A rich study of the development of psychoanalysis, based upon many personal interviews.
★
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth (1992). ''Freud on Women: A Reader''. Norton. ISBN 0-393-30870-7.
★ Anthony Bateman and Jeremy Holmes, ''Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory & Practice'' (London: Routledge, 1995)
★ Isbister, J. N. "Freud, An Introduction to his Life and Work" Publisher: Polity Press: Cambridge, Oxford. (1985)
★
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, ''The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory'', Ballantine Books (November 2003), ISBN 0-345-45279-8
Conceptual critiques
★ Robert Aziz, ''The Syndetic Paradigm:The Untrodden Path Beyond Freud and Jung'' (2007), a refereed publication of The
State University of New York Press. ISBN-13:978-0-7914-6982-8.
★
Adler, Mortimer J., ''What Man Has Made of Man: A Study of the Consequences of Platonism and Positivism in Psychology'' (New York: Longmans, Green, 1937). (A philosophical critique from an Aristotelian/Thomistic point of view.)
★ Cioffi, Frank. Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1998.
★
Deleuze, Gilles and
Guattari, Félix, ''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'', trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (London and New York: Continuum, 2004). (This first volume of the famous two-part work (also subtitled ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'') ises Freud's argument that the Oedipal complex determines subjectivity. It is also, therefore, a staunch critique of the
Lacanian 'return to Freud.)
★
Henri Ellenberger, ''The Discovery of the
Unconscious: the History and Evolution of Dynamic
Psychiatry'' (London: Penguin, 1970). (An extensive account and sensitive critique of Freudian metapsychology.) (Swiss link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_F._Ellenberger)
★ Esterson, Allen, "Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud." Chicago: Open Court, 1993.
★
Eysenck, H. J. and Wilson, G. D. ''The Experimental Study of Freudian Theories'', Methuen, London (1973).
★ Eysenck, Hans, ''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'' (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1986).
★ Hobson, J. Allan Hobson, ''Dreaming: An Introduction to the Science of Sleep'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ISBN 0-19-280482-0. (Critique of Freud's dream theory in terms of current neuroscience)
★ Johnston, Thomas, ''Freud and Political Thought'' (New York: Citadel, 1965). (One of the more accessible accounts of the import of Freudianism for political theory.)
★
Kofman, Sarah, ''The Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud's Writings'' (Ithaca, NY, & London: Cornell University Press, 1985).
★ Simonsen, Sean "I'm Okay, Freud is a Crackpot: Collected Essays on Denial"
"Stand Like A Rock"
★
Marcuse, Herbert, ''Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud'' (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1974). (Mentioned above. For a good review, see Stirk, Peter M. R., ‘''Eros and Civilization'' revisited’, ''History of the Human Sciences'', 12 (1), 1999, pp. 73–90.)
★ Mitchell, Juliet. ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis'' Originally published in 1974; Basic Books reissue (2000) ISBN 0-465-04608-8
★
Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine & Grunberger, Béla. ''Freud or Reich? Psychoanalysis and Illusion.'' (London: Free Association Books, 1986)
★ Neu, Jerome (ed.), ''The Cambridge Companion to Freud'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). (A good conceptual overview.)
★
Ricoeur, Paul, ''Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation'', trans. Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972).
★ —, ''The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics'', ed. Don Ihde (London: Continuum, 2004). (A critical examination of the import of Freud for philosophy.)
★ Roazen, Paul. Freud and His Followers (New York: Random House, 1975).
★
Szasz, Thomas. ''Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry'', Syracuse University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8156-0247-2.
★ Torrey, E. Fuller (1992). Freudian Fraud: The Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture. New York, NY : HarperCollins.
★
Voloshinov, Valentin. ''Freudianism: A Marxist critique'', Academic Press (1976) ISBN 0-12-723250-8
★ Wollheim, Richard, ''Freud'', 2nd edn. (London: Fontana, 1991). (A good starting point.)
Biographies
The area of biography has been especially contentious in the
historiography of psychoanalysis, for two primary reasons: first, following his death, significant portions of his personal papers were for several decades made available only at the permission of his biological and intellectual heirs (his daughter, Anna Freud, was extremely protective of her father's reputation); second, much of the data and theory of Freudian psychoanalysis hinges upon the personal testimony of Freud himself, and so to challenge Freud's legitimacy or honesty has been seen by many as an attack on the roots of his enduring work.
The first biographies of Freud were written by Freud himself: his ''On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement'' (1914) and ''An Autobiographical Study'' (1924) provided much of the basis for discussions by later biographers, including "debunkers" (as they contain a number of prominent omissions and potential misrepresentations). A few of the major biographies on Freud to come out over the 20th century were:
★ Helen Walker Puner, ''Freud: His Life and His Mind'' (1947) — Puner's "facts" were often shaky at best but she was remarkably insightful with regard to Freud's unanalyzed relationship to his mother, Amalia.
★
Ernest Jones, ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud'', 3 vols. (1953–1958) — the first "authorized" biography of Freud, made by one of his former students with the authorization and assistance of Anna Freud, with the hope of "dispelling the myths" from earlier biographies. Though this is the most comprehensive biography of Freud, Jones has been accused of writing more of a hagiography than a history of Freud. Among his questionable assertions, Jones diagnosed his own analyst, Ferenczi, as "psychotic." In the same breath, Jones also maligned Otto Rank, Ferenczi's close friend and Jones's most important rival for leadership of the movement in the 1920s.
★
Henri Ellenberger, ''The Discovery of the Unconscious'' (1970) — was the first book to, in a compelling way, attempt to situate Freud within the context of his time and intellectual thought, arguing that he was the intellectual heir of
Franz Mesmer and that the genesis of his theory owed a large amount to the political context of turn of the 19th century Vienna. (Swiss link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_F._Ellenberger)
★ Frank Sulloway, ''Freud: Biologist of the Mind'' (1979) — Sulloway, one of the first professional/academic historians to write a biography of Freud, positioned Freud within the larger context of the
history of science, arguing specifically that Freud was, in fact, a biologist in disguise (a "crypto-biologist", in Sulloway's terms), and sought to actively hide this.
★
Peter Gay, ''Freud: A Life for Our Time'' (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988) — Gay's impressively scholarly work was published in part as a response to the anti-Freudian literature and the "Freud Wars" of the 1980s (see below). Gay's book is probably the best pro-Freud biography available, though he is not completely uncritical of his hero. His "Bibliographical Essay" at the end of the volume provides astute evaluations of the voluminous literature on Freud up to the mid-1980s.
★ Breger, Louis. "Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision." (New York: Wiley, 2000). Though written from a psychoanalytic point of view (the author is a former President of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis), this is a "warts and all" life of Sigmund Freud. It corrects, in the light of historical research of recent decades, many (though not quite all) of several disputed traditional historical accounts of events uncritically recycled by Peter Gay.
The creation of Freud biographies has itself even been written about at some length—see, for example, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "A History of Freud Biographies," in ''Discovering the History of Psychiatry'', edited by Mark S. Micale and
Roy Porter (Oxford University Press, 1994).
Biographical critiques
★ Bakan, David. ''Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition'', D. Van Nostrand Company, 1958; New York, Schocken Books, 1965; Dover Publications, 2004. ISBN 0-486-43767-1
★ Crews, F. C. ''Unauthorized Freud : doubters confront a legend'', New York, Viking 1998. ISBN 0-670-87221-0
★ Dolnick, Edward. ''Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis'' ISBN 0-684-82497-3
★ Dufresne, T. ''Killing Freud'', Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003.
★ Esterson, Allen, "Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud." Chicago: Open Court, 1993.
★ Eysenck, H. J. ''The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'', Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington D. C., (1990)
★ Jurjevich, R. M. ''The Hoax of Freudism: A study of Brainwashing the American Professionals and Laymen'' Dorrance (1974) ISBN 0-8059-1856-6
★ LaPiere, R. T. ''The Freudian Ethic: An Analysis of the Subversion of Western Character'' Greenwood Press (1974) ISBN 0-8371-7543-7
★
Lear, Jonathan. ''Freud'' Routledge (2005) ISBN 0-415-31451-8
★
Ludwig, Emil, ''Doctor Freud'', Manor Books, New York, 1973
★
MacDonald, Kevin B. ''The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements'' Authorhouse (2002) ISBN 0-7596-7222-9
★ Macmillan, Malcolm. ''Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc'' MIT Press, 1996 ISBN 0-262-63171-7 [originally published by New Holland, 1991]
★ Scharnberg, Max. ''The non-authentic nature of Freud's observations'', Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993 ISBN 91-554-3122-4
★ Stannard, D. E. ''Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory'' Oxford University Press, Oxford (1980) ISBN 0-19-503044-3
★ Thornton, E. M. ''Freud and Cocaine: The Freudian Fallacy'', Blond & Briggs, London (1983) ISBN 0-85634-139-8
★ Webster, Richard. ''Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, and Psychoanalysis'' BasicBooks, 1995. ISBN 0-465-09579-8
★ Sonia Montero Padilla contributed to this page.
See also
Topics
People
★ Adler, Alfred
★ Breuer, Josef
★ Edward Bernays
★ Charcot, Jean-Martin
★ Erikson, Erik
★ Fliess, Wilhelm
★ Strachey, Alix
★ Strachey, James
★ Stephen, Adrian
|
★ Viktor Frankl
★ Freud, Anna
★ Groddeck, Georg
★ Boris Sidis
★ Wilfred Bion
★ Horney, Karen
★ Jones, Ernest
★ Jung, Carl
★ Klein, Melanie
|
★ Lacan, Jacques
★ Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff
★ Rank, Otto
★ Reich, Wilhelm
★ Silberer, Herbert
★ Darwin, Charles
|
External links
★
Freud Museum, Maresfield Gardens, London
★
Freud Museum, Berggasse 19, Vienna
★
Sigmund Freud Life and Work
★
Scientific Method in the Interpretation of Dreams
★
International Psychoanalytical Association, founded by Freud in 1910
★
Scientist or storyteller?
★
International Network of Freud Critics
★
One Hundred Years of Sigmund Freud
★
Sigmund Freud Biography and Quotations
★
Sigmund Freud's article on Psychoanalysis from the 1926 (Thirteenth) edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica
★
Sigmund-Freud-Institut
★
Freud Archives at Library of Congress
★
''Freud's Unwritten Case: The Patient "E."'' by Douglas A. Davis
★
The Darwin of the Mind
★
★
Website of leading Freud-Jungian scholar/ author, Dr. Robert Aziz
★
Nietzsche y Freud; la ficcion del sujeto y las seducciones de la gramatica by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca PhD
★
La influencia de Nietzsche sobre Freud by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca PhD
★
Essays by Freud at Quotidiana.org
★
Works by Sigmund Freud at eBooks-Library
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