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On Sigmund Freud On Sigmund Freud I came across a wonderful book, “Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World”, by Stephen Trombley. I have read a few of the chapter’s and found them insightful. I came across a chapter on Sigmund Freud. There is a wonderful biography of “Freud: A Life for our Time” by Peter Gay. Here are parts from the book that I found interesting. “Sigmund Freud is a member of the great triumvirate of revolutionary nineteenth-century thinkers that includes Charles Darwin and Karl Man Each provided a map of essential contours of the human situation Darwin offered a scientific explanation of how man evolved; Mall provided the theoretical tools for man to locate and create himself in an historical context; and Freud provided a guide to man's psyche, and an explanation of the dynamics of his psychology. Freud was a revolutionary because he led the way to overcoming taboos about sex by identifying human beings as essentially sexual.(It is impossible to imagine the 'sexual revolution' of the 1960s without Freud.) He posited the existence of the unconscious, a hitherto secret territory that influences our decisions, a place where secrets and unexpressed desires hide. But he also argued that analysis could reveal the workings of our unconscious. Along with Josef Breuer (1842-1925 and Alfred Adler (1870-1937) Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud was a prolific author, whose books and essays range from the theory of psychoanalysis to reflections on society and religion. His joint work with Breuer, Studies on Hysteria (1895), described hysteria as the proper object of psychoanalytic method. The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) claimed to take psychoanalysis into the realm of science. Other key works that develop the theory of psychoanalysis include Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1917) and The Ego and the Id. (1923). Almost from the start, Freud began to apply his psychoanalytic method beyond the treatment of patients to include a discussion of larger social phenomena. Important works of this kind include The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) and Moses and Monotheism (1939). Freud trained as a physician and a neurologist. While a medical student he was influenced by the German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Briicke (1819-92), who developed the theory of psychodynamics or dynamic psychology, which recognized the role of the subconscious in human behavior, and employed the metaphor of the first and second laws of thermodynamics to describe the behavior of psychic energy. Freud also spent some months in Paris studying with Jean- Martin Charcot (1825-93), a pioneer in neurology who used hypnosis to treat www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 1 On Sigmund Freud cases of hysteria. A third key influence was Josef Breuer, Freud's friend and colleague, who famously treated the patient 'Anna O' by the psychoanalytic method. Anna O suffered from hysterical symptoms such as paralysis; when she talked to Breuer about them, they disappeared, hence the term 'talking cure' to describe psychoanalysis. Freud's mental topography In his topography of the mind Freud identified three components: idego and superego. The id is the instinctual part, driven by the pleasure principle to avoid anxiety. It is composed of two elements which he labels Eros and Thanatos. Eros is the life force, driven by the libido; Thanatos represents the death instinct, which is a cause of aggression. The ego is the rational part of the self that takes notice of the reality principle, translating instincts into socially acceptable behavior. The superego is the internalization of external authority and the site of conscience and morality. A function of the ego is to mediate between the impulses of the id and the suppressive action of the superego. Freud's mental topography further characterized three aspects of consciousness: the conscious, preconscious and subconscious. The smallest region of the mind is the conscious part, where our day-to-day logical thoughts occur. A larger component of mind is the preconscious, where the kinds of memories that can easily be brought back into consciousness reside. The largest area of the mind is the subconscious, which is not readily available to us, except through psychoanalysis. This is the place where the actions of the id, ego and superego occur. It is the place where traumatic experience is hidden to memory; it is the home of savage impulses. It is where our monsters, our nightmares live. These ideas weren't published until relatively late in Freud's career, in the essays 'Beyond the pleasure Principle' (1920) and 'The Ego and the Id' (1923). Psychoanalysis: the talking cure Freud and Breuer's great therapeutic discovery was that by unlocking the subconscious one could treat hysterical symptoms. An early classic case of successful psychoanalysis was that of the patient known as Dora, whose hysterical symptom was aponia or loss of voice: she couldn't speak. Through dream analysis Freud led Dora to understand that what troubled her was her unspeakable sexual desire for her father, and a couple for whom she was a babysitter. Psychoanalysis developed as a method for dealing with neuroses resulting from various imbalances in the www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 2 On Sigmund Freud relations between id, ego and superego. When this happens, Freud argued, certain hidden mechanisms come into play. For instance, excessive desire can lead to repression, a mechanism by which desires or actions are lost to memory (but may be revealed by psychoanalysis). Numerous defense mechanisms are identified by Freud, including regression (to a less threatening, perhaps infantile state); projection of one's own feelings on to another; denial; displacement (turning anger to an object other than its true one, for instance); and sublimation, in which impulses (such as sexual ones) are displaced to another activity (for instance, writing a book about philosophy). Freud's defense mechanisms have penetrated the language as deeply as the symbols of Christianity. For instance, while Christianity gives us angels ('she's an angel'), saints ('she has the patience of a saint'), crosses ('it's a cross she has to bear') and the devil ('oh, she's a little devil') Freud gives us regression (an adult indulging in a childish activity or pastime), projection ('he's just projecting his anger on to you') and denial ('she is totally in denial about her drinking'). As Freud developed the psychoanalytic method he discovered structural relations that emerge between the analysts and analyzed. Among these, transference is the best known and most important. Generally, transference in psychoanalysis means the transference of the feelings one has for a particular person towards another. In the context of analysis, the therapeutic context is made problematical because the person to whom the feelings are transferred is the analyst – who becomes the object of a patient's sexual desire, for instance. To further complicate the procedure, the analyst can direct feelings toward: patient, in the phenomenon of counter- transference. Freud's contemporaries Freud's contemporaries in psychoanalysis included Carl Jung (1875-1961), who identified ruling archetypes in psychology; Otto Rank (1884-1939), for whom legend, myth and art were also important to psychoanalysis; and Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), for who orgasm was of central importance to mental health. Freudians explored a wide range of ideas from alchemy to rain-making, which, in the eyes of some sceptics, reveals just how eccentric and undisciplined were these early psychoanalysts. However, Freud's thought was not only original and revolutionary in an intellectual sense, it was also useful psychoanalysis worked. Some patients were relieved of debilitating systems that had made their lives a misery; others were curious about themselves and their motivations, and so welcomed the insights that could be gleaned from psychoanalysis. The self-obsessed found it a perfect opportunity to talk about themselves, and so we have analyses that go on for a lifetime, in contrast with the brief and successful analysis of Dora. The astonishing spread of Freud's ideas owes much to the efforts of two Englishmen. James Strachey's www.capitalideasonline.com Page - 3 On Sigmund Freud (1887-1967) excellent English translations of Freud's works helped to make London and New York early and enduring centres of psychoanalysis (there would Soon be more psychoanalysts in New York than in the whole of Austria. neurologist Ernest Jones (1879-1958) was the first English-speaking psychoanalyst, and he was responsible for its further development beyond Austria. Jones helped to ensure Freud's legacy with his masterful three-volume Life and Works of Sigmund Freud (1953-7). In an increasingly schismatic world of competing psychoanalytic schools (just as Marxism splintered into countless groups), Jones protected the purity of Freud's teaching in his roles as President of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association. The cultural and intellectual legacy of Freud The adoption and manipulation of Freud's theories by French philosophers has led to their application in philosophy and the development of critical theory as applied to literary and other 'texts'. It was Freud's influence that caused Jean-Paul Sartre to characterize human existence and its orientation towards the word as primarily sexual. But it was the French analyst and theorist Jacques Lacan, who gave weekly seminars on Freud at the Sorbonne from 1953 to 1980, who was chiefly responsible for making Freud relevant for the late twentieth century. Lacan's primary focus was on the role of language in psychoanalysis, a move which made Freud attractive to the post-structuralist concern with texts. Lacan's student Julia Kristeva (b. 1941), a practising psychoanalyst, employs Freudian ideas in her philosophical essays, but she also believes in their curative power.
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