Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian
neurologist, who became interested in hypnotism and how it could be used to
help the mentally ill. He later abandoned hypnotism in favor of free
association and dream analysis in developing what is now known as "the
talking cure." These became the core elements of psychoanalysis. Freud was
especially interested in what was then called hysteria, and is now called
conversion syndrome.

Freud, his theories, and his treatment of his patients were controversial in
19th century Vienna, and remain hotly debated today. His ideas are often
discussed and analyzed as works of literature and general culture in
addition to continuing debate around them as scientific and medical
treatises. As one critic put it in 2003, the followers of Sigmund Freud
consider him "... a great medical scientist who uncovered important truths
about human psychology...", while others (especially in competing fields
such as psychiatry) see him as a "...philosophical visionary who re-imagined
human nature and helped us confront taboos, but whose theories, offered as
science, fail under scrutiny".

His life

He was born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in Freiberg, Moravia (now known as
Pribor in the Czech Republic). In 1877, he abbreviated his name from
Sigismund Schlomo Freud to Sigmund Freud.

Little is known of Freud's early life as he twice destroyed his personal
papers, once in 1885 and again in 1907. Additionally, his later papers were
closely guarded in the Sigmund Freud Archives and only available to Ernest
Jones, his official biographer, and a few other members of the inner circle
of psychoanalysis. The work of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shed some light on
the nature of the suppressed material.

In 1938 following the Nazi German Anschluss of Austria, Freud escaped with
his family to England. He died in England in 1939.


Freud's daughter Anna Freud was also a distinguished psychologist,
particularly in the fields of child and developmental psychology. Sigmund is
the grandfather of painter Lucian Freud and comedian and writer Clement
Freud, and the great-grandfather of journalist Emma Freud, fashion designer
Bella Freud and PR man Matthew Freud.

Freud's Innovations

Freud has been influential in two related, but distinct ways. He
simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind and human behavior, and
a clinical technique for helping unhappy (i.e. neurotic) people. Many people
claim to have been influenced by one but not the other.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud has made to modern thought
is his conception of the unconscious. During the 19th century the dominant
trend in Western thought was positivism, the claim that people could
accumulate real knowledge about themselves and their world, and exercise
rational control over both. Freud, however, suggested that these claims were
in fact delusions; that we are not entirely aware of what we even think, and
often act for reasons that have nothing to do with our conscious thoughts.
The concept of the unconscious was groundbreaking in that he proposed that
awareness existed in layers and there were thoughts occurring "below the
surface." Dreams, called the "royal road to the unconscious" provided the
best examples of our unconscious life, and in The Interpretation of Dreams
Freud both developed the argument that the unconscious exists, and developed
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. (The term
"subconscious" while popularly used, is not actually part of
psychoanalytical terminology.) Although there are still many adherents to a
purely positivist and rationalist view, most people, including many who
reject other elements of Freud's work, accept the claim that part of the
mind is unconscious, and that people often act for reasons of which they are
not conscious.

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

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

Freud was especially concerned with the dynamic relationship between these
three parts of the mind. Freud argued that the dynamic is driven by innate
drives. But he also argued that the dynamic changes in the context of
changing social relationships. Some have criticized Freud for giving too
much importance to one or the other of these factors; similarly, many of
Freud's followers have focused on one or the other.

Freud believed that humans were driven by two instinctive drives, libidinal
energy/eros and the death instinct/thanatos. Freud's description of
Eros/Libido included all creative, life-producing instincts. The Death
Instinct represented an instinctive drive to return to a state of calm, or
non-existence and was based on his studies of protozoa. Many have challenged
the scientific basis for this claim.

Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its
object. He argued that humans are born "polymorphously perverse," meaning
that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued
that as humans developed they fixated on different, and specific,
objects—first oral (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing),
then anal (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in controlling his or her
bowels), then phallic. Freud argued that children then passed through a
stage where they fixated on the parent of the opposite sex. 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 need gratification.

Freud's model of psycho-sexual development has been criticized from
different perspectives. 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).

Freud hoped to prove that his model, based primarily on observations of
middle-class Viennese, was universally valid. He thus turned to ancient
mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material. Freud used
the Greek tragedy by Sophocles Oedipus Rex to point out how much we
(specifically, young boys) 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 an tribal Oedipal conflict
(see Totemism and Taboo). Although many scholars today are intrigued by
Freud's attempts to re-analyze cultural material, most have rejected his
specific interpretations as forced.

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

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

Freudian theory and practice have been challenged by empirical findings over
the years. Some people continue to train in, and practice, traditional
Freudian psychoanalysis, but most psychiatrists today reject the large
majority of Freud's work as unsupported by evidence and best used for
inspiration or historical study, if at all. Although Freud developed his
method for the treatment of neuroses, some people today seek out
psychoanalysis not as a cure for an illness, but as part of a process of
self-discovery.

Freudian Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Psychiatry

Freud trained as a medical doctor, and consistently claimed that his
research methods and conclusions were scientific. Nevertheless, his research
and practice were condemned by many of his peers. Moreover, both critics and
followers of Freud have observed that his basic claim, that many of our
conscious thoughts and actions are motivated by unconscious fears and
desires, implicitly challenges universal and objective claims about the
world (proponents of science conclude that this invalidates Freudian theory;
proponents of Freud conclude that this invalidates science). Psychoanalysis
today maintains the same ambivalent relationship with medicine and academia
that Freud experienced during his life.

Clinical psychologists, who seek to treat mental illness, relate to Freudian
psychoanalysis in different ways. Some clinical psychologists have modified
this approach and have developed a variety of "psychodynamic" models and
therapies. Other clinical psychologists reject Freud's model of the mind,
but have adapted elements of his therapeutic method, especially his reliance
on patients' talking as a form of therapy. Experimental psychologists
generally reject Freud's methods and theories. Like Freud, Psychiatrists
train as medical doctors, but—like most medical doctors in Freud's
time—most reject his theory of the mind, and generally rely more on
drugs than talk in their treatments.

Freud's psychological theories are hotly disputed today and many leading
academic and research psychiatrists regard him as a charlatan. Although
Freud was long regarded as a genius, psychiatry and psychology have long
since been recast as scientific disciplines, and psychiatric disorders are
generally considered diseases of the brain whose etiology is principally
genetic. Freud's lessening influence in psychiatry is thus largely due to
the repudiation of his theories and the adoption of many of the basic
scientific principles of Freud's principal opponent in the field of
psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin. In his book "The Freudian Fraud", research
psychiatrist E. Fuller-Torrey provides an account of the political and
social forces which combined to raise Freud to the status of a divinity to
those who needed a theoretical foundation for their political and social
views. Many of the diseases which used to be treated with Freudian and
related forms of therapy (such as schizophrenia) have been unequivocally
demonstrated to be impervious to such treatments.

Freud's notion that the child's relationship to the parent is responsible
for everything from psychiatric diseases to criminal behavior has also been
thoroughly discredited and the influence of such theories is today regarded
as a relic of a permissive age in which "blame-the-parent" was the accepted
dogma. For many decades genetic and biological causes of psychiatric
disorders were dismissed without scientific investigation in favor of
environmental (parental and social) influences. Today even the most extreme
Freudian environmentalists would not deny the great influence of genetic and
biological factors. The American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual" (the latest edition of which is the DSM-IV), the
official standard for diagnosing psychological disorders in the USA,
reflects the universal adoption of the neo-Kraepelinian
scientific-biological approach to psychiatric disorders, with its emphasis
on diagnostic precision and the search for biological and genetic
etiologies—largely ignored during the earlier Freud-dominated decades
of the twentieth century.

Criticism of Freud

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, psychoanalytically". (See the full
paper at Scientific Method in the Interpretation of Dreams.)

Anthony Grayling, Reader in Philosophy at the University of London, and a
Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, 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."

Freud's Patients and Analysands

Patients whose case studies were published by Freud, with pseudonyms
substituted for their names:

   * Anna O. = Bertha Pappenheim (1859 - 1936)
   * CŠcilie M. = Anna von Lieben
   * Dora = Ida Bauer (1882-1945)
   * Frau Emmy von N. = Fanny Moser
   * FrŠulein Elizabeth von R.
   * Frau Katharina = Aurelia Kronich
   * Fraulein Lucy R.
   * Little Hans = Herbert Graf (1903-1973)
   * Rat Man = Ernst Lanzer (1878-1914)
   * Wolf Man = Sergius Pankejeff (1887-1979)

People on whom psychoanalytic observations were published but who were not
patients.

   * Moses
   * Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911)
   * Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Other patients:

   * H.D. (1886-1961)
   * Emma Eckstein
   * Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (1846-1891)
   * Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Freud's "Disciples"

Freud had many well-known colleagues who shared his interest in
psychoanalytic theory. Ultimately, many of those associated with him came to
a parting of the ways over matters related to psychoanalytic dogma. Other
psychologists were influenced by Freud's thought, though they were not
professionally associated with him.

   * Alfred Adler
   * Anna Freud
   * Ernest Jones
   * Carl Jung
   * Otto Rank
   * Wilhelm Reich
   * Melanie Klein