Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian
neurologist
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
and the founder of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
, a clinical method for evaluating and treating
pathologies
Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in t ...
explained as originating in conflicts in the
psyche, through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst.
[
Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the ]Moravia
Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
Th ...
n town of Freiberg
Freiberg is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany. It is a so-called ''Große Kreisstadt'' (large county town) and the administrative centre of Mittelsachsen district.
Its historic town centre has been placed under heritage ...
, in the Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central- Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
. He qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
. Upon completing his habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...
in 1885, he was appointed a docent
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de con ...
in neuropathology
Neuropathology is the study of disease of nervous system tissue, usually in the form of either small surgical biopsies or whole-body autopsies. Neuropathologists usually work in a department of anatomic pathology, but work closely with the clini ...
and became an affiliated professor in 1902. Freud lived and worked in Vienna
en, Viennese
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, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
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, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938, Freud left Austria to escape Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
persecution. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939.
In founding psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference
Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from ...
, establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud's redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to h ...
as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dream
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, al ...
s as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the underlying mechanisms of repression
Repression may refer to:
* Memory inhibition, the ability to filter irrelevant memories from attempts to recall
* Political repression, the oppression or persecution of an individual or group for political reasons
* Psychological repression, the p ...
. On this basis, Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, ego and super-ego
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical con ...
. Freud postulated the existence of libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act ...
, sexualised energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (german: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.Eric Berne, ''Wh ...
, the source of compulsive repetition, hate, aggression, and neurotic guilt. In his later works, Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.
Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial p ...
, and psychotherapy, and across the humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at th ...
. It thus continues to generate extensive and highly contested debate concerning its therapeutic efficacy, its scientific status, and whether it advances or hinders the feminist cause. Nonetheless, Freud's work has suffused contemporary Western thought
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word ...
and popular culture. 1940 poetic tribute to Freud describes him as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives".
Biography
Early life and education
Sigmund Freud was born to Ashkenazi Jewish
Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
parents in the Moravia
Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia.
Th ...
n town of Freiberg
Freiberg is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany. It is a so-called ''Große Kreisstadt'' (large county town) and the administrative centre of Mittelsachsen district.
Its historic town centre has been placed under heritage ...
, in the Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central- Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
(now Příbor, Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. Th ...
), the first of eight children.[Gresser 1994, p. 225.] Both of his parents were from Galicia
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
, a historic province straddling modern-day West Ukraine and southeast Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...
. His father, Jakob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel (1833–1914) and Philipp (1836–1911), by his first marriage. Jakob's family were Hasidic Jews and, although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition, he came to be known for his Torah study
Torah study is the study of the Torah, Hebrew Bible, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature, and similar works, all of which are Judaism's religious texts. According to Rabbinic Judaism, the study is done for the purpose of the ''mitzvah'' ("comma ...
. He and Freud's mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer
Isaac Noah Mannheimer (October 17, 1793, Copenhagen – March 17, 1865, Vienna) was a Jewish preacher.
Biography
The son of a '' chazzan'', he began the study of the Talmud at an early age, though not to the neglect of secular studies. On complet ...
on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as a positive omen
An omen (also called ''portent'') is a phenomenon that is believed to foretell the future, often signifying the advent of change. It was commonly believed in ancient times, and still believed by some today, that omens bring divine messages fr ...
for the boy's future.
In 1859, the Freud family
The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada, and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants and relatives have become well known in different f ...
left Freiberg. Freud's half-brothers immigrated to Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...
, England, parting him from the "inseparable" playmate of his early childhood, Emanuel's son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius born in 1857, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
and then in 1860 to Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
where four sisters and a brother were born: Rosa (b. 1860), Marie (b. 1861), Adolfine (b. 1862), Paula (b. 1864), Alexander (b. 1866). In 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the , a prominent high school. He proved to be an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura
or its translated terms (''Mature'', ''Matur'', , , , , , ) is a Latin name for the secondary school exit exam or "maturity diploma" in various European countries, including Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cz ...
in 1873 with honors. He loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...
and Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
.
Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17. He had planned to study law, but joined the medical faculty at the university, where his studies included philosophy under Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
, physiology under Ernst Brücke
Ernst is both a surname and a given name, the German, Dutch, and Scandinavian form of Ernest. Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Adolf Ernst (1832–1899) German botanist known by the author abbreviation "Ernst"
* Anton Ernst (1975 ...
, and zoology under Darwinist professor Carl Claus. In 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Claus's zoological research station in Trieste
Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into pr ...
, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. In 1877, Freud moved to Ernst Brücke's physiology laboratory where he spent six years comparing the brains of humans and other vertebrates with those of frogs and invertebrates such as crayfish
Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as crawfish, craydids, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, rock lobsters, ...
and lamprey
Lampreys (sometimes inaccurately called lamprey eels) are an ancient extant lineage of jawless fish of the order Petromyzontiformes , placed in the superclass Cyclostomata. The adult lamprey may be characterized by a toothed, funnel-like s ...
s. His research work on the biology of nervous tissue proved seminal for the subsequent discovery of the neuron
A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, electrically excitable cell (biology), cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous ...
in the 1890s. Freud's research work was interrupted in 1879 by the obligation to undertake a year's compulsory military service. The lengthy downtimes enabled him to complete a commission to translate four essays from John Stuart Mill's collected works. He graduated with an MD in March 1881.
Early career and marriage
In 1882, Freud began his medical career at Vienna General Hospital. His research work in cerebral anatomy led to the publication in 1884 of an influential paper on the palliative effects of cocaine, and his work on aphasia
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...
would form the basis of his first book ''On Aphasia: A Critical Study'', published in 1891. Over a three-year period, Freud worked in various departments of the hospital. His time spent in Theodor Meynert
Theodor Hermann Meynert (15 June 1833 – 31 May 1892) was a German-Austrian psychiatrist, neuropathologist and anatomist born in Dresden. Meynert believed that disturbances in brain development could be a predisposition for psychiatric illness a ...
's psychiatric
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial psyc ...
clinic and as a locum
A locum, or locum tenens, is a person who temporarily fulfills the duties of another; the term is especially used for physicians or clergy. For example, a ''locum tenens physician'' is a physician who works in the place of the regular physician. ...
in a local asylum led to an increased interest in clinical work. His substantial body of published research led to his appointment as a university lecturer or docent
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de con ...
in neuropathology
Neuropathology is the study of disease of nervous system tissue, usually in the form of either small surgical biopsies or whole-body autopsies. Neuropathologists usually work in a department of anatomic pathology, but work closely with the clini ...
in 1885, a non-salaried post but one which entitled him to give lectures at the University of Vienna.
In 1886, Freud resigned his hospital post and entered private practice specializing in "nervous disorders". The same year he married Martha Bernays, the granddaughter of Isaac Bernays, a chief rabbi in Hamburg. Freud was, as an atheist, dismayed at the requirement in Austria for a Jewish religious ceremony and briefly considered, before dismissing, the prospect of joining the Protestant 'Confession' to avoid one. In the event a civil ceremony took place on 13 September and a religious ceremony the following day with Freud having been hastily tutored in the Hebrew prayers. The Freuds had six children: Mathilde (b. 1887), Jean-Martin (b. 1889), Oliver (b. 1891), Ernst (b. 1892), Sophie (b. 1893), and Anna (b. 1895). From 1891 until they left Vienna in 1938, Freud and his family lived in an apartment at Berggasse 19, near Innere Stadt
The Innere Stadt (; Central Bavarian: ''Innare Stod'') is the 1st municipal district of Vienna () located in the center of the Austrian capital. The Innere Stadt is the old town of Vienna. Until the city boundaries were expanded in 1850, the In ...
, a historical district of Vienna.
In 1896, Minna Bernays, Martha Freud's sister, became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé. The close relationship she formed with Freud led to rumours, started by Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...
, of an affair. The discovery of a Swiss hotel guest-book entry for 13 August 1898, signed by Freud whilst travelling with his sister-in-law, has been presented as evidence of the affair.
Freud began smoking tobacco
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed ...
at age 24; initially a cigarette smoker, he became a cigar smoker. He believed smoking enhanced his capacity to work and that he could exercise self-control
Self-control, an aspect of inhibitory control, is the ability to regulate one's emotions, thoughts, and behavior in the face of temptations and impulses. As an executive function, it is a cognitive process that is necessary for regulating one' ...
in moderating it. Despite health warnings from colleague Wilhelm Fliess
Wilhelm Fliess (german: Wilhelm Fließ; 24 October 1858 – 13 October 1928) was a German otolaryngologist who practised in Berlin. He developed the pseudoscientific theory of human biorhythms and a possible nasogenital connection that have ...
, he remained a smoker, eventually suffering a buccal cancer. Freud suggested to Fliess in 1897 that addictions, including that to tobacco, were substitutes for masturbation, "the one great habit."
Freud had greatly admired his philosophy tutor, Brentano, who was known for his theories of perception and introspection. Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his '' Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint'' (1874). Although Brentano denied its existence, his discussion of the unconscious probably helped introduce Freud to the concept.[Vitz 1988, pp. 53–54.] Freud owned and made use of Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's major evolutionary writings, and was also influenced by Eduard von Hartmann
Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, was a German philosopher, independent scholar and author of '' Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869). His notable ideas include the theory of the Unconscious and a pessimistic interpretation of the " best of ...
's '' The Philosophy of the Unconscious'' (1869). Other texts of importance to Freud were by Fechner Fechner is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Carl-A. Fechner (born 1952), German documentary filmmaker
* Christian Fechner (1944–2008), French film producer and screenwriter
* Gino Fechner (born 1997), German footballer
* Gu ...
and Herbart, with the latter's ''Psychology as Science'' arguably considered to be of underrated significance in this respect. Freud also drew on the work of Theodor Lipps, who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy.
Though Freud was reluctant to associate his psychoanalytic insights with prior philosophical theories, attention has been drawn to analogies between his work and that of both Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the p ...
and Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ca ...
. In 1908, Freud said that he occasionally read Nietzsche, and was strongly fascinated by his writings, but did not study him, because he found Nietzsche's "intuitive insights" resembled too much his own work at the time, and also because he was overwhelmed by the "wealth of ideas" he encountered when he read Nietzsche. Freud sometimes would deny the influence of Nietzsche's ideas. One historian quotes Peter L. Rudnytsky, who says that based on Freud's correspondence with his adolescent friend Eduard Silberstein, Freud read Nietzsche's '' The Birth of Tragedy'' and probably the first two of the ''Untimely Meditations
''Untimely Meditations'' (german: Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen), also translated as ''Unfashionable Observations'' and ''Thoughts Out of Season'', consists of four works by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, started in 1873 and completed in 18 ...
'' when he was seventeen. In 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death, Freud bought his collected works; he told his friend, Fliess, that he hoped to find in Nietzsche's works "the words for much that remains mute in me." Later, he said he had not yet opened them. Freud came to treat Nietzsche's writings "as texts to be resisted far more than to be studied." His interest in philosophy declined after he had decided on a career in neurology
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
.
Freud read William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
in English throughout his life, and it has been suggested that his understanding of human psychology may have been partially derived from Shakespeare's plays.
Freud's Jewish origins and his allegiance to his secular Jewish identity were of significant influence in the formation of his intellectual and moral outlook, especially concerning his intellectual non-conformism, as he pointed out in his ''Autobiographical Study''. They would also have a substantial effect on the content of psychoanalytic ideas, particularly in respect of their common concerns with depth interpretation and "the bounding of desire by law".
Relationship with Fliess
During the formative period of his work, Freud valued and came to rely on the intellectual and emotional support of his friend Wilhelm Fliess
Wilhelm Fliess (german: Wilhelm Fließ; 24 October 1858 – 13 October 1928) was a German otolaryngologist who practised in Berlin. He developed the pseudoscientific theory of human biorhythms and a possible nasogenital connection that have ...
, a Berlin-based ear, nose, and throat specialist whom he had first met in 1887. Both men saw themselves as isolated from the prevailing clinical and theoretical mainstream because of their ambitions to develop radical new theories of sexuality. Fliess developed highly eccentric theories of human biorhythms and a nasogenital connection which are today considered pseudoscientific. He shared Freud's views on the importance of certain aspects of sexuality – masturbation, coitus interruptus
''Coitus interruptus'', also known as withdrawal, pulling out or the pull-out method, is a method of birth control in which a man, during sexual intercourse, withdraws his penis from a woman's vagina prior to ejaculation and then directs his ...
, and the use of condoms – in the etiology of what was then called the "actual neuroses," primarily neurasthenia
Neurasthenia (from the Ancient Greek νεῦρον ''neuron'' "nerve" and ἀσθενής ''asthenés'' "weak") is a term that was first used at least as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves and became a major diagnosis in North A ...
and certain physically manifested anxiety symptoms. They maintained an extensive correspondence from which Freud drew on Fliess's speculations on infantile sexuality and bisexuality to elaborate and revise his own ideas. His first attempt at a systematic theory of the mind, his ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'', was developed as a metapsychology
Metapsychology (Greek: ''meta'' 'beyond, transcending', and ''ψυχολογία'' 'psychology') is that aspect of any psychological theory which refers to the structure of the theory itself (hence the prefix "meta") rather than to the entity it d ...
with Fliess as interlocutor. However, Freud's efforts to build a bridge between neurology and psychology were eventually abandoned after they had reached an impasse, as his letters to Fliess reveal, though some ideas of the ''Project'' were to be taken up again in the concluding chapter of ''The Interpretation of Dreams''.
Freud had Fliess repeatedly operate on his nose and sinuses to treat "nasal reflex neurosis",[Sulloway 1992 979 pp. 142ff.] and subsequently referred his patient Emma Eckstein to him. According to Freud, her history of symptoms included severe leg pains with consequent restricted mobility, as well as stomach and menstrual pains. These pains were, according to Fliess's theories, caused by habitual masturbation which, as the tissue of the nose and genitalia were linked, was curable by removal of part of the middle turbinate.[Masson, Jeffrey M. (1984) ''The Assault on Truth. Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory''. New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,] Fliess's surgery proved disastrous, resulting in profuse, recurrent nasal bleeding; he had left a half-metre of gauze in Eckstein's nasal cavity whose subsequent removal left her permanently disfigured. At first, though aware of Fliess's culpability and regarding the remedial surgery in horror, Freud could bring himself only to intimate delicately in his correspondence with Fliess the nature of his disastrous role, and in subsequent letters maintained a tactful silence on the matter or else returned to the face-saving topic of Eckstein's hysteria. Freud ultimately, in light of Eckstein's history of adolescent self-cutting and irregular nasal (and menstrual) bleeding, concluded that Fliess was "completely without blame", as Eckstein's post-operative haemorrhages were hysterical "wish-bleedings" linked to "an old wish to be loved in her illness" and triggered as a means of "rearousing reud'saffection". Eckstein nonetheless continued her analysis with Freud. She was restored to full mobility and went on to practice psychoanalysis herself.[
Freud, who had called Fliess "the Kepler of biology", later concluded that a combination of a homoerotic attachment and the residue of his "specifically Jewish mysticism" lay behind his loyalty to his Jewish friend and his consequent overestimation of both his theoretical and clinical work. Their friendship came to an acrimonious end with Fliess angry at Freud's unwillingness to endorse his general theory of sexual periodicity and accusing him of collusion in the plagiarism of his work. After Fliess failed to respond to Freud's offer of collaboration over the publication of his ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' in 1906, their relationship came to an end.
]
Development of psychoanalysis
In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a three-month fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot (; 29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot is known a ...
, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...
. He was later to recall the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience.
Once he had set up in private practice back in Vienna in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work. He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a type of hypnosis that was different from the French methods he had studied, in that it did not use suggestion. The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud's clinical practice. Described as Anna O., she was invited to talk about her symptoms while under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase " talking cure" for her treatment). In the course of talking in this way, her symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of traumatic incidents associated with their onset.
The inconsistent results of Freud's early clinical work eventually led him to abandon hypnosis, having concluded that more consistent and effective symptom relief could be achieved by encouraging patients to talk freely, without censorship or inhibition, about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. In conjunction with this procedure, which he called " free association", Freud found that patients' dreams could be fruitfully analyzed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression
Repression may refer to:
* Memory inhibition, the ability to filter irrelevant memories from attempts to recall
* Political repression, the oppression or persecution of an individual or group for political reasons
* Psychological repression, the p ...
which, he had concluded, underlay symptom formation. By 1896 he was using the term "psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
" to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based.
Freud's development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression, a "neurasthenia" which he linked to the death of his father in 1896 and which prompted a "self-analysis" of his own dreams and memories of childhood. His explorations of his feelings of hostility to his father and rivalrous jealousy over his mother's affections led him to fundamentally revise his theory of the origin of the neuroses.
Based on his early clinical work, Freud postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as Freud's seduction theory. In the light of his self-analysis, Freud abandoned the theory that every neurosis can be traced back to the effects of infantile sexual abuse, now arguing that infantile sexual scenarios still had a causative function, but it did not matter whether they were real or imagined and that in either case, they became pathogenic only when acting as repressed memories.
This transition from the theory of infantile sexual trauma as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for Freud's subsequent formulation of the theory of the Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to h ...
.
Freud described the evolution of his clinical method and set out his theory of the psychogenetic origins of hysteria, demonstrated in several case histories, in ''Studies on Hysteria'' published in 1895 (co-authored with Josef Breuer). In 1899, he published ''The Interpretation of Dreams
''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (german: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what ...
'' in which, following a critical review of existing theory, Freud gives detailed interpretations of his own and his patients' dreams in terms of wish-fulfillments made subject to the repression and censorship of the "dream-work". He then sets out the theoretical model of mental structure (the unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious) on which this account is based. An abridged version, ''On Dreams'', was published in 1901. In works that would win him a more general readership, Freud applied his theories outside the clinical setting in ''The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
''Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (german: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards, it became perhaps the ...
'' (1901) and ''Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
, translator = J. Strachey
, image = Sigmund Freud Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, 1905.png
, caption = Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
, author = Sigmund Freud
, illustrator =
, cover_artist =
, country =Germany an ...
'' (1905). In ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (german: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie), sometimes titled ''Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex'', is a 1905 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advance ...
'', published in 1905, Freud elaborates his theory of infantile sexuality, describing its "polymorphous perverse" forms and the functioning of the "drives", to which it gives rise, in the formation of sexual identity. The same year he published '' Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria'', which became one of his more famous and controversial case studies
A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular ...
. Known as the 'Dora' case study, for Freud it was illustrative of hysteria
Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
as a symptom and contributed to his understanding of the importance of transference
Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from ...
as a clinical phenomena. In other of his early case studies Freud set out to describe the symptomatology of obsessional neurosis in the case of the Rat man, and phobia
A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avo ...
in the case of Little Hans.
Transference is the process by which patients displace onto their analyst feelings and ideas which derive from previous figures in their lives. Transference was first seen as a regrettable phenomenon that interfered with the recovery of repressed memories and disturbed patients' objectivity, but by 1912, Freud had come to see it as an essential part of the therapeutic process.
Early followers
In 1902, Freud, at last, realised his long-standing ambition to be made a university professor. The title "professor extraordinarius" was important to Freud for the recognition and prestige it conferred, there being no salary or teaching duties attached to the post (he would be granted the enhanced status of "professor ordinarius" in 1920). Despite support from the university, his appointment had been blocked in successive years by the political authorities and it was secured only with the intervention of one of his more influential ex-patients, a Baroness Marie Ferstel, who (supposedly) had to bribe the minister of education with a valuable painting.
With his prestige thus enhanced, Freud continued with the regular series of lectures on his work which, since the mid-1880s as a docent
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de con ...
of Vienna University, he had been delivering to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the university's psychiatric clinic.
From the autumn of 1902, a number of Viennese physicians who had expressed interest in Freud's work were invited to meet at his apartment every Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology. This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society (''Psychologische Mittwochs-Gesellschaft'') and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement.
Freud founded this discussion group at the suggestion of the physician Wilhelm Stekel
Wilhelm Stekel (; 18 March 1868 – 25 June 1940) was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil". According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel ...
. Stekel had studied medicine at the University of Vienna under Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work '' Psychopath ...
. His conversion to psychoanalysis is variously attributed to his successful treatment by Freud for a sexual problem or as a result of his reading ''The Interpretation of Dreams'', to which he subsequently gave a positive review in the Viennese daily newspaper ''Neues Wiener Tagblatt''.
The other three original members whom Freud invited to attend, Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler ( , ; 7 February 1870 – 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, family constellation and birth orde ...
, Max Kahane, and Rudolf Reitler, were also physicians and all five were Jewish by birth. Both Kahane and Reitler were childhood friends of Freud. Kahane had attended the same secondary school and both he and Reitler went to university with Freud. They had kept abreast of Freud's developing ideas through their attendance at his Saturday evening lectures. In 1901, Kahane, who first introduced Stekel to Freud's work,[ had opened an out-patient psychotherapy institute of which he was the director in Bauernmarkt, in Vienna.][ In the same year, his medical textbook, ''Outline of Internal Medicine for Students and Practicing Physicians'', was published. In it, he provided an outline of Freud's psychoanalytic method.][ Kahane broke with Freud and left the Wednesday Psychological Society in 1907 for unknown reasons and in 1923 committed suicide. Reitler was the director of an establishment providing thermal cures in Dorotheergasse which had been founded in 1901.][ He died prematurely in 1917. Adler, regarded as the most formidable intellect among the early Freud circle, was a socialist who in 1898 had written a health manual for the tailoring trade. He was particularly interested in the potential social impact of psychiatry.][Gay 2006, pp. 174–75]
Max Graf, a Viennese musicologist and father of " Little Hans", who had first encountered Freud in 1900 and joined the Wednesday group soon after its initial inception, described the ritual and atmosphere of the early meetings of the society:
The gatherings followed a definite ritual. First one of the members would present a paper. Then, black coffee and cakes were served; cigars and cigarettes were on the table and were consumed in great quantities. After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin. The last and decisive word was always spoken by Freud himself. There was the atmosphere of the foundation of a religion in that room. Freud himself was its new prophet who made the heretofore prevailing methods of psychological investigation appear superficial.
By 1906, the group had grown to sixteen members, including Otto Rank, who was employed as the group's paid secretary.[ In the same year, Freud began a correspondence with Carl Gustav Jung who was by then already an academically acclaimed researcher into word-association and the ]Galvanic Skin Response
Electrodermal activity (EDA) is the property of the human body that causes continuous variation in the electrical characteristics of the skin. Historically, EDA has also been known as skin conductance, galvanic skin response (GSR), electrodermal ...
, and a lecturer at Zurich University, although still only an assistant to Eugen Bleuler
Paul Eugen Bleuler (; ; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939) was a Swiss psychiatry, psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", " ...
at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zürich. In March 1907, Jung and Ludwig Binswanger, also a Swiss psychiatrist, travelled to Vienna to visit Freud and attend the discussion group. Thereafter, they established a small psychoanalytic group in Zürich. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status, the Wednesday group was reconstituted as the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (, WPV), formerly known as the Wednesday Psychological Society, is the oldest psychoanalysis society in the world. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status as the international psychoanalytic authority ...
with Freud as president, a position he relinquished in 1910 in favor of Adler in the hope of neutralizing his increasingly critical standpoint.[Gay 2006, p. 219]
The first woman member, Margarete Hilferding, joined the Society in 1910[Gay 2006, p. 503] and the following year she was joined by Tatiana Rosenthal and Sabina Spielrein who were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of the Zürich University medical school. Before the completion of her studies, Spielrein had been a patient of Jung at the Burghölzli and the clinical and personal details of their relationship became the subject of an extensive correspondence between Freud and Jung. Both women would go on to make important contributions to the work of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society founded in 1910.
Freud's early followers met together formally for the first time at the Hotel Bristol, Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label=Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...
on 27 April 1908. This meeting, which was retrospectively deemed to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress, was convened at the suggestion of Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first ...
, then a London-based neurologist who had discovered Freud's writings and begun applying psychoanalytic methods in his clinical work. Jones had met Jung at a conference the previous year and they met up again in Zürich to organize the Congress. There were, as Jones records, "forty-two present, half of whom were or became practising analysts." In addition to Jones and the Viennese and Zürich contingents accompanying Freud and Jung, also present and notable for their subsequent importance in the psychoanalytic movement were Karl Abraham and Max Eitingon from Berlin, Sándor Ferenczi
Sándor Ferenczi (7 July 1873 – 22 May 1933) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
Biography
Born Sándor Fränkel to Baruch Fränkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, bo ...
from Budapest and the New York-based Abraham Brill.
Important decisions were taken at the Congress to advance the impact of Freud's work. A journal, the ''Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen'', was launched in 1909 under the editorship of Jung. This was followed in 1910 by the monthly ''Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse'' edited by Adler and Stekel, in 1911 by ''Imago'', a journal devoted to the application of psychoanalysis to the field of cultural and literary studies edited by Rank and in 1913 by the ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
The ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'' ( English: ''International Journal of Psychoanalysis'') was a German-language psychoanalytic journal, which was published from 1913 to 1937 and from 1939 to 1941 by the International Psychoanal ...
'', also edited by Rank. Plans for an international association of psychoanalysts were put in place and these were implemented at the Nuremberg Congress of 1910 where Jung was elected, with Freud's support, as its first president.
Freud turned to Brill and Jones to further his ambition to spread the psychoanalytic cause in the English-speaking world. Both were invited to Vienna following the Salzburg Congress and a division of labour was agreed with Brill given the translation rights for Freud's works, and Jones, who was to take up a post at the University of Toronto
The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...
later in the year, tasked with establishing a platform for Freudian ideas in North American academic and medical life. Jones's advocacy prepared the way for Freud's visit to the United States, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi, in September 1909 at the invitation of Stanley Hall
Granville Stanley Hall (February 1, 1846 – April 24, 1924) was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on human life span development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American P ...
, president of Clark University
Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in th ...
, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he gave five lectures on psychoanalysis.[
The event, at which Freud was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, marked the first public recognition of Freud's work and attracted widespread media interest. Freud's audience included the distinguished neurologist and psychiatrist ]James Jackson Putnam
James Jackson Putnam (October 3, 1846 – November 4, 1918) was an American neurologist.
Biography
Born in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1866, Putnam went to Europe to study in the co ...
, Professor of Diseases of the Nervous System at Harvard, who invited Freud to his country retreat where they held extensive discussions over a period of four days. Putnam's subsequent public endorsement of Freud's work represented a significant breakthrough for the psychoanalytic cause in the United States.[Gay 2006, p. 212] When Putnam and Jones organised the founding of the American Psychoanalytic Association
The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) is an association of psychoanalysts in the United States. APsaA serves as a scientific and professional organization with a focus on education, research, and membership development.
APsaA comprises ...
in May 1911 they were elected president and secretary respectively. Brill founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society the same year. His English translations of Freud's work began to appear from 1909.
Resignations from the IPA
Some of Freud's followers subsequently withdrew from the International Psychoanalytical Association
The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, from an idea proposed by Sándor Ferenczi.
His ...
(IPA) and founded their own schools.
From 1909, Adler's views on topics such as neurosis began to differ markedly from those held by Freud. As Adler's position appeared increasingly incompatible with Freudianism, a series of confrontations between their respective viewpoints took place at the meetings of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society in January and February 1911. In February 1911, Adler, then the president of the society, resigned his position. At this time, Stekel also resigned from his position as vice president of the society. Adler finally left the Freudian group altogether in June 1911 to found his own organization with nine other members who had also resigned from the group. This new formation was initially called ''Society for Free Psychoanalysis'' but it was soon renamed the ''Society for Individual Psychology''. In the period after World War I, Adler became increasingly associated with a psychological position he devised called individual psychology.
In 1912, Jung published ''Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido'' (published in English in 1916 as '' Psychology of the Unconscious'') making it clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud. To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it analytical psychology
Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...
. Anticipating the final breakdown of the relationship between Freud and Jung, Ernest Jones initiated the formation of a Secret Committee of loyalists charged with safeguarding the theoretical coherence and institutional legacy of the psychoanalytic movement. Formed in the autumn of 1912, the Committee comprised Freud, Jones, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, and Hanns Sachs. Max Eitingon joined the Committee in 1919. Each member pledged himself not to make any public departure from the fundamental tenets of psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...
before he had discussed his views with the others. After this development, Jung recognised that his position was untenable and resigned as editor of the ''Jahrbuch'' and then as president of the IPA in April 1914. The Zürich Society withdrew from the IPA the following July.
Later the same year, Freud published a paper entitled "The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement
''The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement'' (german: Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung) is a 1914 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.
Content
Freud's work is intended primarily as a polemic against the competin ...
", the German original being first published in the ''Jahrbuch'', giving his view on the birth and evolution of the psychoanalytic movement and the withdrawal of Adler and Jung from it.
The final defection from Freud's inner circle occurred following the publication in 1924 of Rank's ''The Trauma of Birth
''The Trauma of Birth'' (german: Das Trauma der Geburt) is a 1924 book by the psychoanalyst Otto Rank. It was first published in English translation in 1929. Especially with its focus on the connection between microcosm and macrocosm, it foreshad ...
'' which other members of the Committee read as, in effect, abandoning the Oedipus Complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytic theory. Abraham and Jones became increasingly forceful critics of Rank and though he and Freud were reluctant to end their close and long-standing relationship the break finally came in 1926 when Rank resigned from his official posts in the IPA and left Vienna for Paris. His place on the Committee was taken by Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
. Rank eventually settled in the United States where his revisions of Freudian theory were to influence a new generation of therapists uncomfortable with the orthodoxies of the IPA.
Early psychoanalytic movement
After the founding of the IPA in 1910, an international network of psychoanalytical societies, training institutes, and clinics became well established and a regular schedule of biannual Congresses commenced after the end of World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
to coordinate their activities.
Abraham and Eitingon founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society in 1910 and then the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the Poliklinik in 1920. The Poliklinik's innovations of free treatment, and child analysis, and the Berlin Institute's standardisation of psychoanalytic training had a major influence on the wider psychoanalytic movement. In 1927, Ernst Simmel founded the Schloss Tegel Sanatorium on the outskirts of Berlin
Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...
, the first such establishment to provide psychoanalytic treatment in an institutional framework. Freud organised a fund to help finance its activities and his architect son, Ernst, was commissioned to refurbish the building. It was forced to close in 1931 for economic reasons.
The 1910 Moscow Psychoanalytic Society became the Russian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in 1922. Freud's Russian followers were the first to benefit from translations of his work, the 1904 Russian translation of ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' appearing nine years before Brill's English edition. The Russian Institute was unique in receiving state support for its activities, including publication of translations of Freud's works. Support was abruptly annulled in 1924, when Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
came to power, after which psychoanalysis was denounced on ideological grounds.
After helping found the American Psychoanalytic Association
The American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) is an association of psychoanalysts in the United States. APsaA serves as a scientific and professional organization with a focus on education, research, and membership development.
APsaA comprises ...
in 1911, Ernest Jones returned to Britain from Canada in 1913 and founded the London Psychoanalytic Society the same year. In 1919, he dissolved this organisation and, with its core membership purged of Jungian adherents, founded the British Psychoanalytical Society
The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British neurologist Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on 30 October 1913. It is one of two organizations in Britain training psychoanalysts, the other being the British ...
, serving as its president until 1944. The Institute of Psychoanalysis was established in 1924 and the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis was established in 1926, both under Jones's directorship.
The Vienna Ambulatorium (Clinic) was established in 1922 and the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1924 under the directorship of Helene Deutsch. Ferenczi founded the Budapest Psychoanalytic Institute in 1913 and a clinic in 1929.
Psychoanalytic societies and institutes were established in Switzerland (1919), France (1926), Italy (1932), the Netherlands (1933), Norway (1933), and in Palestine (Jerusalem, 1933) by Eitingon, who had fled Berlin after Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
came to power. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1931.
The 1922 Berlin Congress was the last Freud attended. By this time his speech had become seriously impaired by the prosthetic device he needed as a result of a series of operations on his cancerous jaw. He kept abreast of developments through regular correspondence with his principal followers and via the circular letters and meetings of the Secret Committee which he continued to attend.
The Committee continued to function until 1927 by which time institutional developments within the IPA, such as the establishment of the International Training Commission, had addressed concerns about the transmission of psychoanalytic theory and practice. There remained, however, significant differences over the issue of lay analysis – i.e. the acceptance of non-medically qualified candidates for psychoanalytic training. Freud set out his case in favour in 1926 in his '' The Question of Lay Analysis''. He was resolutely opposed by the American societies who expressed concerns over professional standards and the risk of litigation (though child analysts were made exempt). These concerns were also shared by some of his European colleagues. Eventually, an agreement was reached allowing societies autonomy in setting criteria for candidature.
In 1930, Freud received the Goethe Prize in recognition of his contributions to psychology and German literary culture.
Patients
Freud used pseudonyms in his case histories. Some patients known by pseudonyms were Cäcilie M.
Cäcilie M. (Anna von Lieben, born Anna von Tedesco; 1847–1900) is the pseudonym of one of Freud's first patients, whom he called in 1890 his “principal client” and in 1897 his “instructress”.
Life
Born into a rich Austrian Jewish famil ...
(Anna von Lieben); Dora (Ida Bauer, 1882–1945); Frau Emmy von N. (Fanny Moser); Fräulein Elisabeth von R. (Ilona Weiss); Fräulein Katharina (Aurelia Kronich); Fräulein Lucy R.; Little Hans ( Herbert Graf, 1903–1973); Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer, 1878–1914); Enos Fingy (Joshua Wild, 1878–1920); and Wolf Man
In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (; ; uk, Вовкулака, Vovkulaka), is an individual that can shapeshifting, shapeshift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropy, therianthropic mythological hybr ...
(Sergei Pankejeff, 1887–1979). Other famous patients included Prince Pedro Augusto of Brazil (1866–1934); H.D.
Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D. throughout her life. Her career began in 1911 after she moved to London and co-founded the ...
(1886–1961); Emma Eckstein (1865–1924); Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), with whom Freud had only a single, extended consultation; Princess Marie Bonaparte; Edith Banfield Jackson
Edith Banfield Jackson (1895–1977) was a child psychiatrist who developed the rooming-in model of maternal and infant care. Jackson was professor in pediatrics and psychology at the Yale School of Medicine from 1936 to 1959. She directed the Yal ...
(1895–1977); Arthur Tansley (1871-1955), and Albert Hirst (1887–1974).
Cancer
In February 1923, Freud detected a leukoplakia, a benign growth associated with heavy smoking, on his mouth. He initially kept this secret, but in April 1923 he informed Ernest Jones, telling him that the growth had been removed. Freud consulted the dermatologist
Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A dermatologist is a specialist medica ...
Maximilian Steiner, who advised him to quit smoking but lied about the growth's seriousness, minimizing its importance. Freud later saw Felix Deutsch, who saw that the growth was cancerous; he identified it to Freud using the euphemism "a bad leukoplakia" instead of the technical diagnosis epithelioma. Deutsch advised Freud to stop smoking and have the growth excised. Freud was treated by Marcus Hajek, a rhinologist
Otorhinolaryngology ( , abbreviated ORL and also known as otolaryngology, otolaryngology–head and neck surgery (ORL–H&N or OHNS), or ear, nose, and throat (ENT)) is a surgical subspeciality within medicine that deals with the surgical a ...
whose competence he had previously questioned. Hajek performed an unnecessary cosmetic surgery in his clinic's outpatient department. Freud bled during and after the operation, and may narrowly have escaped death. Freud subsequently saw Deutsch again. Deutsch saw that further surgery would be required, but did not tell Freud he had cancer because he was worried that Freud might wish to commit suicide.
Escape from Nazism
In January 1933, the Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
took control of Germany, and Freud's books were prominent among those they burned and destroyed. Freud remarked to Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first ...
: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books." Freud continued to underestimate the growing Nazi threat and remained determined to stay in Vienna, even following the Anschluss
The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the Nazi Germany, German Reich on 13 March 1938.
The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "Ger ...
of 13 March 1938, in which Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
annexed Austria, and the outbreaks of violent antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
that ensued.[Gay 2006, pp. 618–20, 624–25.] Jones, the then president of the International Psychoanalytical Association
The International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) is an association including 12,000 psychoanalysts as members and works with 70 constituent organizations. It was founded in 1910 by Sigmund Freud, from an idea proposed by Sándor Ferenczi.
His ...
(IPA), flew into Vienna from London via Prague on 15 March determined to get Freud to change his mind and seek exile in Britain. This prospect and the shock of the arrest and interrogation of Anna Freud by the Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...
finally convinced Freud it was time to leave Austria.[ Jones left for London the following week with a list provided by Freud of the party of émigrés for whom immigration permits would be required. Back in London, Jones used his personal acquaintance with the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, to expedite the granting of permits. There were seventeen in all and work permits were provided where relevant. Jones also used his influence in scientific circles, persuading the president of the ]Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
, Sir William Bragg, to write to the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, requesting to good effect that diplomatic pressure be applied in Berlin and Vienna on Freud's behalf. Freud also had support from American diplomats, notably his ex-patient and American ambassador to France, William Bullitt. Bullitt alerted U.S. President Roosevelt to the increased dangers facing the Freuds, resulting in the American consul-general in Vienna, John Cooper Wiley, arranging regular monitoring of Berggasse 19. He also intervened by phone call during the Gestapo interrogation of Anna Freud.
The departure from Vienna began in stages throughout April and May 1938. Freud's grandson, Ernst Halberstadt, and Freud's son Martin's wife and children left for Paris in April. Freud's sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, left for London on 5 May, Martin Freud the following week and Freud's daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher, on 24 May.
By the end of the month, arrangements for Freud's own departure for London had become stalled, mired in a legally tortuous and financially extortionate process of negotiation with the Nazi authorities. Under regulations imposed on its Jewish population by the new Nazi regime, a Kommissar was appointed to manage Freud's assets and those of the IPA whose headquarters were near Freud's home. Freud was allocated to Dr Anton Sauerwald, who had studied chemistry at Vienna University under Professor Josef Herzig
Josef Herzig (25 September 1853 – 4 July 1924) was an Austrian chemist.
Herzig was born in Sanok, Galicia, which at that time was part of Austria-Hungary. Herzig went to school in Breslau until 1874, started studying chemistry at the U ...
, an old friend of Freud's. Sauerwald read Freud's books to further learn about him and became sympathetic toward his situation. Though required to disclose details of all Freud's bank accounts to his superiors and to arrange the destruction of the historic library of books housed in the offices of the IPA, Sauerwald did neither. Instead, he removed evidence of Freud's foreign bank accounts to his own safe-keeping and arranged the storage of the IPA library in the Austrian National Library, where it remained until the end of the war.
Though Sauerwald's intervention lessened the financial burden of the "flight" tax on Freud's declared assets, other substantial charges were levied concerning the debts of the IPA and the valuable collection of antiquities Freud possessed. Unable to access his own accounts, Freud turned to Princess Marie Bonaparte, the most eminent and wealthy of his French followers, who had travelled to Vienna to offer her support, and it was she who made the necessary funds available. This allowed Sauerwald to sign the necessary exit visas for Freud, his wife Martha, and daughter Anna. They left Vienna on the Orient Express on 4 June, accompanied by their housekeeper and a doctor, arriving in Paris the following day, where they stayed as guests of Marie Bonaparte, before travelling overnight to London, arriving at London Victoria station
Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail. Named after the nearby Victoria Street (not the ...
on 6 June.
Among those soon to call on Freud to pay their respects were Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...
, Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig (; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular write ...
, Leonard Woolf
Leonard Sidney Woolf (; – ) was a British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant. He was married to author Virginia Woolf. As a member of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, Woolf was an avid publisher of his own w ...
, Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born ...
, and H. G. Wells. Representatives of the Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
called with the Society's Charter for Freud, who had been elected a Foreign Member in 1936, to sign himself into membership. Marie Bonaparte arrived near the end of June to discuss the fate of Freud's four elderly sisters left behind in Vienna. Her subsequent attempts to get them exit visas failed, and they would all die in Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...
.
In early 1939, Sauerwald arrived in London in mysterious circumstances, where he met Freud's brother Alexander. He was tried and imprisoned in 1945 by an Austrian court for his activities as a Nazi Party official. Responding to a plea from his wife, Anna Freud wrote to confirm that Sauerwald "used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father". Her intervention helped secure his release from jail in 1947.
In the Freuds' new home, 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, North London, Freud's Vienna consulting room was recreated in faithful detail. He continued to see patients there until the terminal stages of his illness. He also worked on his last books, '' Moses and Monotheism'', published in German in 1938 and in English the following year[Chaney, Edward (2006). 'Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Religion', ''Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines'', eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, Chaney 'Freudian Egypt', ''The London Magazine'' (April/May 2006), pp. 62–69, and Chaney, 'Moses and Monotheism, by Sigmund Freud', 'The Canon', ''THE'' (''Times Higher Education''), 3–9 June 2010, No. 1, 950, p. 53.] and the uncompleted ''An Outline of Psychoanalysis
''An Outline of Psychoanalysis'' is a work by Sigmund Freud. Returning to an earlier project of providing an overview of psychoanalysis, Freud began writing this work in Vienna in 1938 as he was waiting to leave for London. By September 1938, he h ...
'', which was published posthumously.
Death
By mid-September 1939, Freud's cancer of the jaw was causing him increasingly severe pain and had been declared inoperable. The last book he read, Balzac's ''La Peau de chagrin
''La Peau de chagrin'' (, ''The Skin of Shagreen''), known in English as ''The Magic Skin and The Wild Ass's Skin'', is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells t ...
'', prompted reflections on his own increasing frailty, and a few days later he turned to his doctor, friend, and fellow refugee, Max Schur, reminding him that they had previously discussed the terminal stages of his illness: "Schur, you remember our 'contract' not to leave me in the lurch when the time had come. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense." When Schur replied that he had not forgotten, Freud said, "I thank you," and then, "Talk it over with Anna, and if she thinks it's right, then make an end of it." Anna Freud wanted to postpone her father's death, but Schur convinced her it was pointless to keep him alive; on 21 and 22 September, he administered doses of morphine that resulted in Freud's death at around 3 am on 23 September 1939. However, discrepancies in the various accounts Schur gave of his role in Freud's final hours, which have in turn led to inconsistencies between Freud's main biographers, has led to further research and a revised account. This proposes that Schur was absent from Freud's deathbed when a third and final dose of morphine was administered by Dr. Josephine Stross, a colleague of Anna Freud, leading to Freud's death at around midnight on 23 September 1939.
Three days after his death, Freud's body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000 (the equivalent of £135,987 in 2021), ...
in North London, with Harrods
Harrods Limited is a department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to oth ...
acting as funeral directors, on the instructions of his son, Ernst. Funeral orations were given by Ernest Jones and the Austrian author Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig (; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular write ...
. Freud's ashes were later placed in the crematorium's ''Ernest George Columbarium'' (see "Freud Corner"). They rest on a plinth designed by his son, Ernst, in a sealed[ ]ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
bell krater painted with Dionysian scenes that Freud had received as a gift from Marie Bonaparte, and which he had kept in his study in Vienna for many years. After his wife, Martha, died in 1951, her ashes were also placed in the urn.
Ideas
Early work
Freud began his study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873. He took almost nine years to complete his studies, due to his interest in neurophysiological research, specifically investigation of the sexual anatomy of eels and the physiology of the fish nervous system, and because of his interest in studying philosophy with Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano (; ; 16 January 1838 – 17 March 1917) was an influential German philosopher, psychologist, and former Catholic priest (withdrawn in 1873 due to the definition of papal infallibility in matters of ...
. He entered private practice in neurology for financial reasons, receiving his M.D. degree in 1881 at the age of 25. Amongst his principal concerns in the 1880s was the anatomy of the brain, specifically the medulla oblongata
The medulla oblongata or simply medulla is a long stem-like structure which makes up the lower part of the brainstem. It is anterior and partially inferior to the cerebellum. It is a cone-shaped neuronal mass responsible for autonomic (involun ...
. He intervened in the important debates about aphasia
Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in t ...
with his monograph of 1891, ''Zur Auffassung der Aphasien'', in which he coined the term agnosia
Agnosia is the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss. It is usually ...
and counselled against a too locationist view of the explanation of neurological deficits. Like his contemporary Eugen Bleuler
Paul Eugen Bleuler (; ; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939) was a Swiss psychiatry, psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", " ...
, he emphasized brain function rather than brain structure.
Freud was also an early researcher in the field of cerebral palsy
Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of movement disorders that appear in early childhood. Signs and symptoms vary among people and over time, but include poor coordination, spasticity, stiff muscles, Paresis, weak muscles, and tremors. There may be p ...
, which was then known as "cerebral paralysis". He published several medical papers on the topic and showed that the disease existed long before other researchers of the period began to notice and study it. He also suggested that William John Little, the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during birth being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were only a symptom.
The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to Josef Breuer. Freud credited Breuer with opening the way to the discovery of the psychoanalytical method by his treatment of the case of Anna O. In November 1880, Breuer was called in to treat a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman (Bertha Pappenheim
Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association (''). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented pat ...
) for a persistent cough that he diagnosed as hysterical. He found that while nursing her dying father, she had developed some transitory symptoms, including visual disorders and paralysis and contractures of limbs, which he also diagnosed as hysterical. Breuer began to see his patient almost every day as the symptoms increased and became more persistent, and observed that she entered states of ''absence''. He found that when, with his encouragement, she told fantasy stories in her evening states of ''absence'' her condition improved, and most of her symptoms had disappeared by April 1881. Following the death of her father in that month her condition deteriorated again. Breuer recorded that some of the symptoms eventually remitted spontaneously and that full recovery was achieved by inducing her to recall events that had precipitated the occurrence of a specific symptom. In the years immediately following Breuer's treatment, Anna O. spent three short periods in sanatoria with the diagnosis "hysteria" with "somatic symptoms", and some authors have challenged Breuer's published account of a cure. Richard Skues rejects this interpretation, which he sees as stemming from both Freudian and anti-psychoanalytical revisionism — revisionism that regards both Breuer's narrative of the case as unreliable and his treatment of Anna O. as a failure.
Seduction theory
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" and his newly developed analytic technique of interpretation and reconstruction. According to Freud's later accounts of this period, 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 accounts, which he used as the basis for his seduction theory, but then he came to believe that they were fantasies. He explained these at first as having the function of "fending off" memories of infantile masturbation, but in later years he wrote that they represented Oedipal fantasies, stemming from innate drives that are sexual and destructive in nature.
Another version of events focuses on Freud's proposing that unconscious memories of infantile sexual abuse were at the root of the psychoneuroses in letters to Fliess in October 1895, before he reported that he had actually discovered such abuse among his patients. In the first half of 1896, Freud published three papers, which led to his seduction theory, stating that he had uncovered, in all of his current patients, deeply repressed memories of sexual abuse in early childhood. In these papers, Freud recorded that his patients were not consciously aware of these memories, and must therefore be present as ''unconscious memories'' if they were to result in hysterical symptoms or obsessional neurosis. The patients were subjected to considerable pressure to "reproduce" infantile sexual abuse "scenes" that Freud was convinced had been repressed into the unconscious. Patients were generally unconvinced that their experiences of Freud's clinical procedure indicated actual sexual abuse. He reported that even after a supposed "reproduction" of sexual scenes the patients assured him emphatically of their disbelief.
As well as his pressure technique, Freud's clinical procedures involved analytic inference and the symbolic interpretation of symptoms to trace back to memories of infantile sexual abuse. His claim of one hundred percent confirmation of his theory only served to reinforce previously expressed reservations from his colleagues about the validity of findings obtained through his suggestive techniques. Freud subsequently showed inconsistency as to whether his seduction theory was still compatible with his later findings.[Andrews, B., and Brewin, C]
''What did Freud get right?'', The psychologist, December 2000, page 606
In an addendum to ''The Aetiology of Hysteria'' he stated: "All this is true he sexual abuse of children
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
but it must be remembered that at the time I wrote it I had not yet freed myself from my overvaluation of reality and my low valuation of phantasy". Some years later Freud explicitly rejected the claim of his colleague Ferenczi that his patients' reports of sexual molestation were actual memories instead of fantasies, and he tried to dissuade Ferenczi from making his views public.[ Karin Ahbel-Rappe concludes in her study "'I no longer believe': did Freud abandon the seduction theory?": "Freud marked out and started down a trail of investigation into the nature of the experience of infantile incest and its impact on the human psyche, and then abandoned this direction for the most part."
]
Cocaine
As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly used recreationally for its euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from the leaves of two Coca species native to South Am ...
as a stimulant as well as analgesic
An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic (American English), analgaesic (British English), pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used to achieve relief from pain (that is, analgesia or pain management). It ...
. He believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems, and in his 1884 paper "On Coca" he extolled its virtues. Between 1883 and 1887 he wrote several articles recommending medical applications, including its use as an antidepressant
Antidepressants are a class of medication used to treat major depressive disorder, anxiety disorders, chronic pain conditions, and to help manage addictions. Common side-effects of antidepressants include dry mouth, weight gain, dizziness ...
. He narrowly missed out on obtaining scientific priority In science, priority is the credit given to the individual or group of individuals who first made the discovery or propose the theory. Fame and honours usually go to the first person or group to publish a new finding, even if several researchers arr ...
for discovering its anesthetic
An anesthetic (American English) or anaesthetic (British English; see spelling differences) is a drug used to induce anesthesia — in other words, to result in a temporary loss of sensation or awareness. They may be divided into tw ...
properties of which he was aware but had mentioned only in passing. ( Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, received that distinction in 1884 after reporting to a medical society the ways cocaine could be used in delicate eye surgery.) Freud also recommended cocaine as a cure for morphine
Morphine is a strong opiate that is found naturally in opium, a dark brown resin in poppies ('' Papaver somniferum''). It is mainly used as a pain medication, and is also commonly used recreationally, or to make other illicit opioids. Ther ...
addiction. He had introduced cocaine to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow
Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, also Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (5 August 1846, Vienna – 22 October 1891, Vienna), son of Karl Fleischl Edlem von Marxow and his wife Ida (née Marx) was an Austrian physiology, physiologist and physician who became kno ...
, who had become addicted to morphine taken to relieve years of excruciating nerve pain resulting from an infection acquired after injuring himself while performing an autopsy. His claim that Fleischl-Marxow was cured of his addiction was premature, though he never acknowledged that he had been at fault. Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis", and soon returned to using morphine, dying a few years later still suffering from intolerable pain.
The application as an anaesthetic turned out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine, and as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world, Freud's medical reputation became somewhat tarnished. After the "Cocaine Episode" Freud ceased to publicly recommend the use of the drug, but continued to take it himself occasionally for depression, migraine
Migraine (, ) is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent headaches. Typically, the associated headache affects one side of the head, is pulsating in nature, may be moderate to severe in intensity, and could last from a few ho ...
and nasal inflammation during the early 1890s, before discontinuing its use in 1896.
The unconscious
The concept of the unconscious was central to Freud's account of the mind. Freud believed that while poets and thinkers had long known of the existence of the unconscious, he had ensured that it received scientific recognition in the field of psychology.
Freud states explicitly that his concept of the unconscious as he first formulated it was based on the theory of repression. He postulated a cycle in which ideas are repressed, but remain in the mind, removed from consciousness yet operative, then reappear in consciousness under certain circumstances. The postulate was based upon the investigation of cases of hysteria
Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
, which revealed instances of behaviour in patients that could not be explained without reference to ideas or thoughts of which they had no awareness and which analysis revealed were linked to the (real or imagined) repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. In his later re-formulations of the concept of repression in his 1915 paper 'Repression' ( ''Standard Edition'' XIV) Freud introduced the distinction in the unconscious between primary repression linked to the universal taboo on incest ('innately present originally') and repression ('after expulsion') that was a product of an individual's life history ('acquired in the course of the ego's development') in which something that was at one point conscious is rejected or eliminated from consciousness.[Wollheim, Richard (1971). ''Freud''. London, Fontana Press, pp. 157–76]
In his account of the development and modification of his theory of unconscious mental processes he sets out in his 1915 paper 'The Unconscious' ( ''Standard Edition'' XIV), Freud identifies the three perspectives he employs: the dynamic, the economic and the topographical.
The dynamic perspective concerns firstly the constitution of the unconscious by repression and secondly the process of "censorship" which maintains unwanted, anxiety-inducing thoughts as such. Here Freud is drawing on observations from his earliest clinical work in the treatment of hysteria.
In the economic perspective the focus is on the trajectories of the repressed contents ("the vicissitudes of sexual impulses") as they undergo complex transformations in the process of both symptom formation and normal unconscious thought such as dreams and slips of the tongue. These were topics Freud explored in detail in ''The Interpretation of Dreams
''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (german: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what ...
'' and ''The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
''Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (german: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards, it became perhaps the ...
''.
Whereas both these former perspectives focus on the unconscious as it is about to enter consciousness, the topographical perspective represents a shift in which the systemic properties of the unconscious, its characteristic processes, and modes of operation such as Condensation
Condensation is the change of the state of matter from the gas phase into the liquid phase, and is the reverse of vaporization. The word most often refers to the water cycle. It can also be defined as the change in the state of water vapor ...
and Displacement, are placed in the foreground.
This "first topography" presents a model of psychic structure comprising three systems:
*The System Ucs – the unconscious: "primary process" mentation governed by the pleasure principle characterised by "exemption from mutual contradiction,... mobility of cathexes, timelessness, and replacement of external by psychical reality." ('The Unconscious' (1915) ''Standard Edition'' XIV).
*The System Pcs – the preconscious in which the unconscious thing-presentations of the primary process are bound by the secondary processes of language (word presentations), a prerequisite for their becoming available to consciousness.
*The System Cns – conscious thought governed by the reality principle.
In his later work, notably in ''The Ego and the Id
''The Ego and the Id'' (german: Das Ich und das Es) is a prominent paper by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is an analytical study of the human psyche outlining his theories of the psychodynamics of the id, ego and super-ego, ...
'' (1923), a second topography is introduced comprising id, ego and super-ego
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical con ...
, which is superimposed on the first without replacing it. In this later formulation of the concept of the unconscious the id comprises a reservoir of instincts or drives, a portion of them being hereditary or innate, a portion repressed or acquired. As such, from the economic perspective, the id is the prime source of psychical energy and from the dynamic perspective it conflicts with the ego
Ego or EGO may refer to:
Social sciences
* Ego (Freudian), one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche
* Egoism, an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality
* Egotism, the drive to ...
[Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) 973]
Ego
. and the super-ego
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical co ...
[Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) 973]
Super-Ego
. which, genetically speaking, are diversifications of the id.
Dreams
Freud believed the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that which would otherwise awaken the dreamer.
In Freud's theory dreams are instigated by the daily occurrences and thoughts of everyday life. In what Freud called the "dream-work", these "secondary process" thoughts ("word presentations"), governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought ("thing presentations") governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. Because of the disturbing nature of the latter and other repressed thoughts and desires which may have become linked to them, the dream-work operates a censorship function, disguising by distortion, displacement, and condensation the repressed thoughts to preserve sleep.
In the clinical setting, Freud encouraged free association to the dream's manifest content, as recounted in the dream narrative, to facilitate interpretative work on its latent content – the repressed thoughts and fantasies – and also on the underlying mechanisms and structures operative in the dream-work. As Freud developed his theoretical work on dreams he went beyond his theory of dreams as wish-fulfillments to arrive at an emphasis on dreams as "nothing other than a particular form of thinking.... It is the dream-work that creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming".
Psychosexual development
Freud's theory of psychosexual development proposes that following on from the initial polymorphous perversity of infantile sexuality, the sexual "drives" pass through the distinct developmental phases of the oral, the anal, and the phallic
A phallus is a penis (especially when Erection, erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimesis, mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic.
Any object that symbolically— ...
. Though these phases then give way to a latency stage of reduced sexual interest and activity (from the age of five to puberty, approximately), they leave, to a greater or lesser extent, a "perverse" and bisexual residue which persists during the formation of adult genital sexuality. Freud argued that neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from t ...
and perversion could be explained in terms of fixation or regression to these phases whereas adult character and cultural creativity could achieve a sublimation
Sublimation or sublimate may refer to:
* ''Sublimation'' (album), by Canvas Solaris, 2004
* Sublimation (phase transition), directly from the solid to the gas phase
* Sublimation (psychology), a mature type of defense mechanism
* Sublimate of mer ...
of their perverse residue.
After Freud's later development of the theory of the Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to h ...
this normative developmental trajectory becomes formulated in terms of the child's renunciation of incestuous desires under the fantasised threat of (or fantasised fact of, in the case of the girl) castration. The "dissolution" of the Oedipus complex is then achieved when the child's rivalrous identification with the parental figure is transformed into the pacifying identifications of the Ego ideal which assume both similarity and difference and acknowledge the separateness and autonomy of the other.
Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material arguing that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.
Id, ego, and super-ego
Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. Freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', and fully elaborated upon it in ''The Ego and the Id
''The Ego and the Id'' (german: Das Ich und das Es) is a prominent paper by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is an analytical study of the human psyche outlining his theories of the psychodynamics of the id, ego and super-ego, ...
'' (1923), in which he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (i.e., conscious, unconscious and preconscious). The id is the unconscious portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.[Hothersall, D. 2004. "History of Psychology", 4th ed., Mcgraw-Hill: NY p. 290] Freud acknowledged that his use of the term ''Id'' (''das Es'', "the It") derives from the writings of Georg Groddeck
Georg Walther Groddeck (13 October 1866 in Bad Kösen – 10 June 1934 in Knonau, near Zurich) was a physician and writer regarded as a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine.
Early life
Groddeck was born in a Lutheran family. His works before Worl ...
.[
The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche.][ The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical ]hedonism
Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. ''Psychological'' or ''motivational hedonism'' claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decre ...
of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego;[ it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, it may employ defence mechanisms including ]denial
Denial, in ordinary English usage, has at least three meanings: asserting that any particular statement or allegation is not true (which might be accurate or inaccurate); the refusal of a request; and asserting that a true statement is not true. ...
, repression, undoing, rationalization, and displacement. This concept is usually represented by the "Iceberg Model". This model represents the roles the id, ego, and super-ego play in relation to conscious and unconscious thought.
Freud compared the relationship between the ego and the id to that between a charioteer and his horses: the horses provide the energy and drive, while the charioteer provides direction.[
]
Life and death drives
Freud believed that the human psyche is subject to two conflicting drives: the life drive or libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act ...
and the death drive
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (german: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.Eric Berne, ''Wh ...
. The life drive was also termed "Eros" and the death drive "Thanatos", although Freud did not use the latter term; "Thanatos" was introduced in this context by Paul Federn
Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 – May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. Federn is largely remembered for his theories involving ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis.
Life and career
Fe ...
. Freud hypothesized that libido is a form of mental energy with which processes, structures, and object-representations are invested.
In '' Beyond the Pleasure Principle'' (1920), Freud inferred the existence of a death drive. Its premise was a regulatory principle that has been described as "the principle of psychic inertia", "the Nirvana principle", and "the conservatism of instinct". Its background was Freud's earlier ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'', where he had defined the principle governing the mental apparatus as its tendency to divest itself of quantity or to reduce tension to zero. Freud had been obliged to abandon that definition, since it proved adequate only to the most rudimentary kinds of mental functioning, and replaced the idea that the apparatus tends toward a level of zero tension with the idea that it tends toward a minimum level of tension.[Wollheim, Richard. ''Freud''. London, Fontana Press, pp. 184–86.]
Freud in effect readopted the original definition in ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', this time applying it to a different principle. He asserted that on certain occasions the mind acts as though it could eliminate tension, or in effect to reduce itself to a state of extinction; his key evidence for this was the existence of the compulsion to repeat. Examples of such repetition included the dream life of traumatic neurotics and children's play. In the phenomenon of repetition, Freud saw a psychic trend to work over earlier impressions, to master them and derive pleasure from them, a trend that was before the pleasure principle but not opposed to it. In addition to that trend, there was also a principle at work that was opposed to, and thus "beyond" the pleasure principle. If repetition is a necessary element in the binding of energy or adaptation, when carried to inordinate lengths it becomes a means of abandoning adaptations and reinstating earlier or less evolved psychic positions. By combining this idea with the hypothesis that all repetition is a form of discharge, Freud concluded that the compulsion to repeat is an effort to restore a state that is both historically primitive and marked by the total draining of energy: death.[ Such an explanation has been described by some scholars as "metaphysical biology".
]
Melancholia
In his 1917 essay "Mourning and Melancholia", Freud distinguished mourning, painful but an inevitable part of life, and "melancholia", his term for pathological refusal of a mourner to " decathect" from the lost one. Freud claimed that, in normal mourning, the ego was responsible for narcissistically detaching the libido from the lost one as a means of self-preservation, but that in "melancholia", prior ambivalence towards the lost one prevents this from occurring. Suicide, Freud hypothesized, could result in extreme cases, when unconscious feelings of conflict became directed against the mourner's own ego.
Femininity and female sexuality
Freud's account of femininity is grounded in his theory of psychic development as it traces the uneven transition from the earliest stages of infantile and childhood sexuality, characterised by polymorphous perversity and a bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, wh ...
disposition, through to the fantasy scenarios and rivalrous identifications of the Oedipus complex
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to h ...
and on to the greater or lesser extent these are modified in adult sexuality. There are different trajectories for the boy and the girl which arise as effects of the castration complex
The castration complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud, first presented in 1908, initially as part of his theorisation of the transition in early childhood development from the polymorphous perversity of infantile sexuality to the ‘infan ...
. Anatomical difference, the possession of a penis, induces castration anxiety for the boy whereas the girl experiences a sense of deprivation. In the boy's case the castration complex concludes the Oedipal phase whereas for the girl it precipitates it.
The constraint of the erotic feelings and fantasies of the girl and her turning away from the mother to the father is an uneven and precarious process entailing “waves of repression”. The normal outcome is, according to Freud, the vagina
In mammals, the vagina is the elastic, muscular part of the female genital tract. In humans, it extends from the vestibule to the cervix. The outer vaginal opening is normally partly covered by a thin layer of mucosal tissue called the hy ...
becoming “the new leading zone” of sexual sensitivity, displacing the previously dominant clitoris
The clitoris ( or ) is a female sex organ present in mammals, ostriches and a limited number of other animals. In humans, the visible portion – the glans – is at the front junction of the labia minora (inner lips), above the o ...
, the phallic properties of which made it indistinguishable in the child's early sexual life from the penis. This leaves a legacy of penis envy
Penis envy (german: Penisneid) is a stage theorized by Sigmund Freud regarding female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining ...
and emotional ambivalence for the girl which was “intimately related to the essence of femininity” and leads to “the greater proneness of women to neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from t ...
and especially hysteria
Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
.” In his last paper on the topic Freud likewise concludes that “the development of femininity remains exposed to disturbance by the residual phenomena of the early masculine period... Some portion of what we men call the ‘enigma of women’ may perhaps be derived from this expression of bisexuality in women's lives.”[Femininity (1933), ''SE'' XXII]
Initiating what became the first debate within psychoanalysis on femininity, Karen Horney of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute set out to challenge Freud's account of femininity. Rejecting Freud's theories of the feminine castration complex and penis envy, Horney argued for a primary femininity and penis envy as a defensive formation rather than arising from the fact, or "injury", of biological asymmetry as Freud held. Horney had the influential support of Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested th ...
and Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first ...
who coined the term " phallocentrism" in his critique of Freud's position.
In defending Freud against this critique, feminist scholar Jacqueline Rose has argued that it presupposes a more normative account of female sexual development than that given by Freud. She finds that Freud moved from a description of the little girl stuck with her 'inferiority' or 'injury' in the face of the anatomy of the little boy to an account in his later work which explicitly describes the process of becoming 'feminine' as an 'injury' or 'catastrophe' for the complexity of her earlier psychic and sexual life.
Throughout his deliberations on what he described as the “dark continent” of female sexuality and the "riddle" of femininity, Freud was careful to emphasise the “average validity” and provisional nature of his findings. He did, however, in response to his critics, maintain a steadfast objection "to all of you ... to the extent that you do not distinguish more clearly between what is psychic and what is biological..."
Religion
Freud regarded the monotheistic
Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, an all-supreme being that is universally referred to as God. Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1974). "Monotheism". The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxfor ...
God as an illusion based upon the infantile emotional need for a powerful, supernatural pater familias
The ''pater familias'', also written as ''paterfamilias'' (plural ''patres familias''), was the head of a Roman family. The ''pater familias'' was the oldest living male in a household, and could legally exercise autocratic authority over his ext ...
. He maintained that religion – once necessary to restrain man's violent nature in the early stages of civilization – in modern times, can be set aside in favor of reason
Reason is the capacity of Consciousness, consciously applying logic by Logical consequence, drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activ ...
and science. "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices" (1907) notes the likeness between faith (religious belief) and neurotic obsession. ''Totem and Taboo
''Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'', or ''Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'', (german: Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenl ...
'' (1913) proposes that society and religion begin with the patricide
Patricide is (i) the act of killing one's own father, or (ii) a person who kills their own father or stepfather. The word ''patricide'' derives from the Greek word ''pater'' (father) and the Latin suffix ''-cida'' (cutter or killer). Patricide ...
and eating of the powerful paternal figure, who then becomes a revered collective memory. These arguments were further developed in '' The Future of an Illusion'' (1927) in which Freud argues that the function of religious belief is psychological consolation. He argues that the belief in a supernatural protector serves as a buffer against man's "fear of nature", just as the belief in an afterlife serves as a buffer against man's fear of death. The core idea of the work is that religious belief can be explained through its function in society, not through its relation to the truth. In the first part of ''Civilization and Its Discontents
''Civilization and Its Discontents'' is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as ''Das Unbehagen in der Kultur'' ("The Uneasiness in Civilization"). Exploring what Fre ...
'' (1930), he considers the "oceanic feeling" of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity (brought to his attention by his friend Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production an ...
), as a possible source for religious feelings. He notes that he has no experience of this feeling himself, and suggests that it is a regression into the state of consciousness that precedes the ego's differentiation of itself from the world of objects and others. '' Moses and Monotheism'' (1937) proposes that Moses was the tribal pater familias, killed by the Jews, who psychologically coped with the patricide with a reaction formation In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation (german: Reaktionsbildung) is a defense mechanism in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency. ...
conducive to their establishing monotheistic Judaism; analogously, he described the Roman Catholic rite of Holy Communion
The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an Ordinance (Christianity), ordinance in others. According to the New Testame ...
as cultural evidence of the killing and devouring of the sacred father.[
Moreover, he perceived religion, with its suppression of violence, as mediator of the societal and personal, the public and the private, conflicts between Eros and ]Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos (; grc, Θάνατος, pronounced in "Death", from θνῄσκω ''thnēskō'' "(I) die, am dying") was the personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appea ...
, the forces of life and death. Later works indicate Freud's pessimism about the future of civilization, which he noted in the 1931 edition of ''Civilization and its Discontents''. Humphrey Skelton described Freud's worldview
A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...
as one of " stoical humanism
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
". The Humanist Heritage project summed his contributions to understanding of religion by saying:
In a footnote of his 1909 work, ''Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy'', Freud theorized that the universal fear of castration was provoked in the uncircumcised when they perceived circumcision and that this was "the deepest unconscious root of anti-Semitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Ant ...
".
Legacy
Freud's legacy, though a highly contested area of controversy, has been assessed as "one of the strongest influences on twentieth-century thought, its impact comparable only to that of Darwinism
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that ...
and Marxism
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialec ...
," with its range of influence permeating "all the fields of culture ... so far as to change our way of life and concept of man."
Psychotherapy
Though not the first methodology in the practice of individual verbal psychotherapy, Freud's psychoanalytic system came to dominate the field from early in the twentieth century, forming the basis for many later variants. While these systems have adopted different theories and techniques, all have followed Freud by attempting to achieve psychic and behavioral change through having patients talk about their difficulties.[Ford & Urban 1965, p. 109] Psychoanalysis is not as influential as it once was in Europe and the United States, though in some parts of the world, notably Latin America, its influence in the later 20th century expanded substantially. Psychoanalysis also remains influential within many contemporary schools of psychotherapy and has led to innovative therapeutic work in schools and with families and groups. There is a substantial body of research which demonstrates the efficacy of the clinical methods of psychoanalysis and of related psychodynamic therapies in treating a wide range of psychological disorders.
The neo-Freudians, a group including Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler ( , ; 7 February 1870 – 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, family constellation and birth orde ...
, Otto Rank, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...
, rejected Freud's theory of instinctual drive, emphasized interpersonal relations and self-assertiveness, and made modifications to therapeutic practice that reflected these theoretical shifts. Adler originated the approach, although his influence was indirect due to his inability to systematically formulate his ideas. The neo-Freudian analysis places more emphasis on the patient's relationship with the analyst and less on the exploration of the unconscious.[
]Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...
believed that the collective unconscious
Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is popula ...
, which reflects the cosmic order and the history of the human species, is the most important part of the mind. It contains archetype
The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis.
An archetype can be any of the following:
# a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...
s, which are manifested in symbols that appear in dreams, disturbed states of mind, and various products of culture. Jungians are less interested in infantile development and psychological conflict between wishes and the forces that frustrate them than in integration between different parts of the person. The object of Jungian therapy was to mend such splits. Jung focused in particular on problems of middle and later life. His objective was to allow people to experience the split-off aspects of themselves, such as the anima (a man's suppressed female self), the animus (a woman's suppressed male self), or the shadow
A shadow is a dark area where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette ...
(an inferior self-image), and thereby attain wisdom.[
Jacques Lacan approached psychoanalysis through ]linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
and literature. Lacan believed that most of Freud's essential work had been done before 1905 and concerned the interpretation of dreams, neurotic symptoms, and slips, which had been based on a revolutionary way of understanding language and its relation to experience and subjectivity, and that ego psychology
Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.
An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical c ...
and object relations theory
Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between ...
were based upon misreadings of Freud's work. For Lacan, the determinative dimension of human experience is neither the self (as in ego psychology) nor relations with others (as in object relations theory), but language. Lacan saw desire as more important than need and considered it necessarily ungratifiable.
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several influential books, most ...
developed ideas that Freud had developed at the beginning of his psychoanalytic investigation but then superseded but never finally discarded. These were the concept of the Actualneurosis and a theory of anxiety based upon the idea of dammed-up libido. In Freud's original view, what really happened to a person (the "actual") determined the resulting neurotic disposition. Freud applied that idea both to infants and to adults. In the former case, seductions were sought as the causes of later neuroses and in the latter incomplete sexual release. Unlike Freud, Reich retained the idea that actual experience, especially sexual experience, was of key significance. By the 1920s, Reich had "taken Freud's original ideas about sexual release to the point of specifying the orgasm as the criteria of healthy function." Reich was also "developing his ideas about character into a form that would later take shape, first as "muscular armour", and eventually as a transducer of universal biological energy, the "orgone"."[
]Fritz Perls
Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he devel ...
, who helped to develop Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, ...
, was influenced by Reich, Jung, and Freud. The key idea of gestalt therapy is that Freud overlooked the structure of awareness, "an active process that moves toward the construction of organized meaningful wholes... between an organism and its environment." These wholes, called ''gestalts'', are "patterns involving all the layers of organismic function – thought, feeling, and activity." Neurosis is seen as splitting in the formation of gestalts, and anxiety as the organism sensing "the struggle towards its creative unification." Gestalt therapy attempts to cure patients by placing them in contact with "immediate organismic needs." Perls rejected the verbal approach of classical psychoanalysis; talking in gestalt therapy serves the purpose of self-expression rather than gaining self-knowledge. Gestalt therapy usually takes place in groups, and in concentrated "workshops" rather than being spread out over a long period of time; it has been extended into new forms of communal living.[
Arthur Janov's ]primal therapy
Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov, who argues that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argues that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness for resolut ...
, which has been influential post-Freudian psychotherapy, resembles psychoanalytic therapy in its emphasis on early childhood experience but has also differences with it. While Janov's theory is akin to Freud's early idea of Actualneurosis, he does not have a dynamic psychology but a nature psychology like that of Reich or Perls, in which need is primary while wish is derivative and dispensable when need is met. Despite its surface similarity to Freud's ideas, Janov's theory lacks a strictly psychological account of the unconscious and belief in infantile sexuality. While for Freud there was a hierarchy of dangerous situations, for Janov the key event in the child's life is an awareness that the parents do not love it. Janov writes in '' The Primal Scream'' (1970) that primal therapy has in some ways returned to Freud's early ideas and techniques.
Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass (born June 16, 1947) is an American poet and co-author of ''The Courage to Heal''.
Life
Bass grew up in Pleasantville, New Jersey, where her parents owned a liquor store. Her family later moved to Ventnor City, New Jersey. She atten ...
and Laura Davis, co-authors of ''The Courage to Heal
''The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse'' (first published in 1988, with three subsequent editions, the last being a 20th anniversary edition in 2008) is a self-help book by poet Ellen Bass and Laura Davis that foc ...
'' (1988), are described as "champions of survivorship" by Frederick Crews
Frederick Campbell Crews (born 20 February 1933) is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is the author of numerous books, including ''The Tragedy of Manners: ...
, who considers Freud the key influence upon them, although in his view they are indebted not to classic psychoanalysis but to "the pre-psychoanalytic Freud... who supposedly took pity on his hysterical patients, found that they were all harboring memories of early abuse... and cured them by unknotting their repression." Crews sees Freud as having anticipated the recovered memory movement by emphasizing "mechanical cause-and-effect relations between symptomatology and the premature stimulation of one body zone or another", and with pioneering its "technique of thematically matching a patient's symptom with a sexually symmetrical 'memory.'" Crews believes that Freud's confidence in accurate recall of early memories anticipates the theories of recovered memory therapists such as Lenore Terr
Lenore C. Terr (born New York City, 1936) is a psychiatrist and author known for her research into childhood trauma. Terr graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School with an MD. She is the winner of the Blanche Ittleson Award for her ...
, which in his view have led to people being wrongfully imprisoned or involved in litigation.
Science
Research projects designed to test Freud's theories empirically have led to a vast literature on the topic. American psychologists began to attempt to study repression in the experimental laboratory around 1930. In 1934, when the psychologist Saul Rosenzweig sent Freud reprints of his attempts to study repression, Freud responded with a dismissive letter stating that "the wealth of reliable observations" on which psychoanalytic assertions were based made them "independent of experimental verification." Seymour Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg concluded in 1977 that some of Freud's concepts were supported by empirical evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences ...
. Their analysis of research literature supported Freud's concepts of oral and anal personality constellations, his account of the role of Oedipal factors in certain aspects of male personality functioning, his formulations about the relatively greater concern about the loss of love in women's as compared to men's personality economy, and his views about the instigating effects of homosexual anxieties on the formation of paranoid delusions. They also found limited and equivocal support for Freud's theories about the development of homosexuality. They found that several of Freud's other theories, including his portrayal of dreams as primarily containers of secret, unconscious wishes, as well as some of his views about the psychodynamics
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate t ...
of women, were either not supported or contradicted by research. Reviewing the issues again in 1996, they concluded that much experimental data relevant to Freud's work exists, and supports some of his major ideas and theories.[Fisher, Seymour & Greenberg, Roger P. Freud Scientifically Reappraised: Testing the Theories and Therapy. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1996, pp. 13–15, 284–85]
Other viewpoints include those of Hans Eysenck
Hans Jürgen Eysenck (; 4 March 1916 – 4 September 1997) was a German-born British psychologist who spent his professional career in Great Britain. He is best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, although he worked on othe ...
, who writes in ''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire
''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'' (1985; second edition 2004) is a book by the psychologist Hans Eysenck, in which the author criticizes Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Eysenck argues that psychoanalysis is unscientific. ...
'' (1985) that Freud set back the study of psychology and psychiatry "by something like fifty years or more", and Malcolm Macmillan, who concludes in ''Freud Evaluated'' (1991) that "Freud's method is not capable of yielding objective data about mental processes". Morris Eagle states that it has been "demonstrated quite conclusively that because of the epistemologically contaminated status of clinical data derived from the clinical situation, such data have questionable probative value in the testing of psychoanalytic hypotheses". Richard Webster, in '' Why Freud Was Wrong'' (1995), described psychoanalysis as perhaps the most complex and successful pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
in history. Crews believes that psychoanalysis has no scientific or therapeutic merit. University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
research associate Kurt Jacobsen takes these critics to task for their own supposedly dogmatic and historically naive views both about psychoanalysis and the nature of science.
I.B. Cohen regards Freud's ''Interpretation of Dreams'' as a revolutionary work of science, the last such work to be published in book form.
In contrast Allan Hobson believes that Freud, by rhetorically discrediting 19th century investigators of dreams such as Alfred Maury and the Marquis de Hervey de Saint-Denis at a time when study of the physiology of the brain was only beginning, interrupted the development of scientific dream theory for half a century. The dream researcher G. William Domhoff has disputed claims of Freudian dream theory being validated.
The philosopher Karl Popper, who argued that all proper scientific theories must be potentially falsifiable, claimed that Freud's Psychoanalytic Theories were presented in unfalsifiable form, meaning that no experiment could ever disprove them.[Popper, Karl. ''Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.'' London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963, pp. 33–39] The philosopher Adolf Grünbaum
Adolf Grünbaum (; May 15, 1923 – November 15, 2018) was a German-American philosopher of science and a critic of psychoanalysis, as well as Karl Popper's philosophy of science. He was the first Andrew Mellon Professor of Philosophy at the Uni ...
argues in '' The Foundations of Psychoanalysis'' (1984) that Popper was mistaken and that many of Freud's theories are empirically testable, a position with which others such as Eysenck agree. The philosopher Roger Scruton
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Editor from 1982 ...
, writing in ''Sexual Desire'' (1986), also rejected Popper's arguments, pointing to the theory of repression as an example of a Freudian theory that does have testable consequences. Scruton nevertheless concluded that psychoanalysis is not genuinely scientific, because it involves an unacceptable dependence on metaphor. The philosopher Donald Levy agrees with Grünbaum that Freud's theories are falsifiable but disputes Grünbaum's contention that therapeutic success is only the empirical basis on which they stand or fall, arguing that a much wider range of empirical evidence can be adduced if clinical case material is taken into consideration.
In a study of psychoanalysis in the United States, Nathan Hale reported on the "decline of psychoanalysis in psychiatry" during the years 1965–1985. The continuation of this trend was noted by Alan Stone: "As academic psychology becomes more 'scientific' and psychiatry more biological, psychoanalysis is being brushed aside." Paul Stepansky, while noting that psychoanalysis remains influential in the humanities, records the "vanishingly small number of psychiatric residents who choose to pursue psychoanalytic training" and the "nonanalytic backgrounds of psychiatric chairpersons at major universities" among the evidence he cites for his conclusion that "Such historical trends attest to the marginalisation of psychoanalysis within American psychiatry." Nonetheless, Freud was ranked as the third most cited psychologist of the 20th century, according to a ''Review of General Psychology
''Review of General Psychology'' is the quarterly scientific journal of the American Psychological Association Division 1: The Society for General Psychology. The journal publishes cross-disciplinary psychological articles that are conceptual, the ...
'' survey of American psychologists and psychology texts, published in 2002. It is also claimed that in moving beyond the "orthodoxy of the not so distant past... new ideas and new research has led to an intense reawakening of interest in psychoanalysis from neighbouring disciplines ranging from the humanities to neuroscience
Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...
and including the non-analytic therapies".
Research in the emerging field of neuropsychoanalysis, founded by neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms
Mark Solms (born 17 July 1961) is a South African psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, who is known for his discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming and his use of psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience. He holds the Chair ...
, has proved controversial with some psychoanalysts criticising the very concept itself. Solms and his colleagues have argued for neuro-scientific findings being "broadly consistent" with Freudian theories pointing out brain structures relating to Freudian concepts such as libido, drives, the unconscious, and repression. Neuroscientists who have endorsed Freud's work include David Eagleman who believes that Freud "transformed psychiatry" by providing "the first exploration of the way in which hidden states of the brain participate in driving thought and behavior" and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel
Eric Richard Kandel (; born Erich Richard Kandel, November 7, 1929) is an Austrian-born American medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry, a neuroscientist and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and S ...
who argues that "psychoanalysis still represents the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind."
Philosophy
Psychoanalysis has been interpreted as both radical and conservative. By the 1940s, it had come to be seen as conservative by the European and American intellectual community. Critics outside the psychoanalytic movement, whether on the political left or right, saw Freud as a conservative. Fromm had argued that several aspects of psychoanalytic theory served the interests of political reaction in his '' The Fear of Freedom'' (1942), an assessment confirmed by sympathetic writers on the right. In '' Freud: The Mind of the Moralist'' (1959), Philip Rieff portrayed Freud as a man who urged men to make the best of an inevitably unhappy fate, and admirable for that reason. In the 1950s, Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt Universi ...
challenged the then prevailing interpretation of Freud as a conservative in '' Eros and Civilization'' (1955), as did Lionel Trilling
Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...
in ''Freud and the Crisis of Our Culture'' and Norman O. Brown
Norman Oliver Brown (September 25, 1913 – October 2, 2002) was an American scholar, writer, and social philosopher. Beginning as a classical scholar, his later work branched into wide-ranging, erudite, and intellectually sophisticated cons ...
in '' Life Against Death'' (1959). ''Eros and Civilization'' helped make the idea that Freud and Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
were addressing similar questions from different perspectives credible to the left. Marcuse criticized neo-Freudian revisionism for discarding seemingly pessimistic theories such as the death instinct, arguing that they could be turned in a utopian direction. Freud's theories also influenced the Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), du ...
and critical theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from s ...
as a whole.
Freud has been compared to Marx by Reich, who saw Freud's importance for psychiatry as parallel to that of Marx for economics, and by Paul Robinson, who sees Freud as a revolutionary whose contributions to twentieth-century thought are comparable in importance to Marx's contributions to the nineteenth-century thought. Fromm calls Freud, Marx, and Einstein the "architects of the modern age", but rejects the idea that Marx and Freud were equally significant, arguing that Marx was both far more historically important and a finer thinker. Fromm nevertheless credits Freud with permanently changing the way human nature is understood. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næs ...
write in '' Anti-Oedipus'' (1972) that psychoanalysis resembles the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
in that it became corrupted almost from the beginning. They believe this began with Freud's development of the theory of the Oedipus complex, which they see as idealist.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...
critiques Freud's theory of the unconscious in ''Being and Nothingness
''Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology'' (french: L'Être et le néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes published with the subtitle ''A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology'', is a 1943 book by the philosoph ...
'' (1943), claiming that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also attempts to adapt some of Freud's ideas to his own account of human life, and thereby develop an "existential psychoanalysis" in which causal categories are replaced by teleological categories. Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
considers Freud to be one of the anticipators of phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
, while Theodor W. Adorno considers Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
, the founder of phenomenology, to be Freud's philosophical opposite, writing that Husserl's polemic against psychologism could have been directed against psychoanalysis. Paul Ricœur
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur (; ; 27 February 1913 – 20 May 2005) was a French philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutics. As such, his thought is within the same tradition as other major hermeneutic ...
sees Freud as one of the three "masters of suspicion
The hermeneutics of suspicion is a style of literary interpretation in which texts are read with skepticism in order to expose their purported repressed or hidden meanings.
This mode of interpretation was conceptualized by Paul Ricœur, inspir ...
", alongside Marx and Nietzsche, for their unmasking 'the lies and illusion
An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the mind normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Although illusions distort the human perception of reality, they are generally shared by most people.
Illusions may ...
s of consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
'. Ricœur and Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas (, ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's ...
have helped create a "hermeneutic
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate c ...
version of Freud", one which "claimed him as the most significant progenitor of the shift from an objectifying, empiricist understanding of the human realm to one stressing subjectivity and interpretation." Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.
Althusser w ...
drew on Freud's concept of overdetermination for his reinterpretation of Marx's '' Capital''. Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
developed a theory of the unconscious that reverses Freud's account of the dream-work: for Lyotard, the unconscious is a force whose intensity is manifest via disfiguration rather than condensation. Jacques Derrida finds Freud to be both a late figure in the history of western metaphysics and, with Nietzsche and Heidegger, a precursor of his own brand of radicalism.
Several scholars see Freud as parallel to Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...
, writing that they hold nearly the same theory of dreams and have similar theories of the tripartite structure of the human soul or personality, even if the hierarchy between the parts of the soul is almost reversed. Ernest Gellner
Ernest André Gellner Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, FRAI (9 December 1925 – 5 November 1995) was a British people, British-Czech people, Czech philosopher and social anthropology, social anthropologist describ ...
argues that Freud's theories are an inversion of Plato's. Whereas Plato saw a hierarchy inherent in the nature of reality and relied upon it to validate norms, Freud was a naturalist who could not follow such an approach. Both men's theories drew a parallel between the structure of the human mind and that of society, but while Plato wanted to strengthen the super-ego, which corresponded to the aristocracy, Freud wanted to strengthen the ego, which corresponded to the middle class.[Gellner, Ernest. ''The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason''. London: Fontana Press, 1993, pp. 140–43.] Paul Vitz compares Freudian psychoanalysis to Thomism
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed question ...
, noting St. Thomas's belief in the existence of an "unconscious consciousness" and his "frequent use of the word and concept 'libido' – sometimes in a more specific sense than Freud, but always in a manner in agreement with the Freudian use." Vitz suggests that Freud may have been unaware his theory of the unconscious was reminiscent of Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known ...
.[
]
Literature and literary criticism
The poem "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" was published by British poet W. H. Auden in his 1940 collection ''Another Time Another Time may refer to:
* ''Another Time'' (book), a 1940 book of poems by W. H. Auden
* ''Another Time'' (Jeff Williams album), 2011
* ''Another Time'' (Earth, Wind & Fire album), 1974
See also
* "Another Time (Andrew's Song)", a 2014 son ...
''. Auden describes Freud as having created "a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives."
Literary critic Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...
has been influenced by Freud. Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia (; born April 2, 1947) is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern cultur ...
has also been influenced by Freud, whom she calls "Nietzsche's heir" and one of the greatest sexual psychologists in literature, but has rejected the scientific status of his work in her ''Sexual Personae
''Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'' is a 1990 work about sexual decadence in Western literature and the visual arts by scholar Camille Paglia, in which she addresses major artists and writers such as Donatello ...
'' (1990), writing, "Freud has no rivals among his successors because they think he wrote science, when in fact he wrote art."
Feminism
The decline in Freud's reputation has been attributed partly to the revival of feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
. Simone de Beauvoir
Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even ...
criticizes psychoanalysis from an existentialist
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...
standpoint in ''The Second Sex
''The Second Sex'' (french: Le Deuxième Sexe, link=no) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women in the present society as well as throughout all of history ...
'' (1949), arguing that Freud saw an "original superiority" in the male that is in reality socially induced.[ ]Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan ( February 4, 1921 – February 4, 2006) was an American feminist writer and activist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book ''The Feminine Mystique'' is often credited with sparking the se ...
criticizes Freud and what she considered his Victorian view of women in ''The Feminine Mystique
''The Feminine Mystique'' is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. First published by W. W. Norton on February 19, 1963, ''The Feminine Mystique'' became a bestseller, initially selling ...
'' (1963).[Friedan, Betty. ''The Feminine Mystique''. W.W. Norton, 1963, pp. 166–94] Freud's concept of penis envy
Penis envy (german: Penisneid) is a stage theorized by Sigmund Freud regarding female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining ...
was attacked by Kate Millett
Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors ...
, who in '' Sexual Politics'' (1970) accused him of confusion and oversights. In 1968, the US-American feminist Anne Koedt wrote in her essay ''The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm
"The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" is a feminist essay on Human female sexuality, women's sexuality written by American Radical feminism, radical feminist activist Anne Koedt in 1968, and published in 1970. It first appeared in a four-paragraph out ...
:'' "It was Freud's feelings about women's secondary and inferior relationship to men that formed the basis for his theories on female sexuality. Once having laid down the law about the nature of our sexuality, Freud not so strangely discovered a tremendous problem of frigidity in women. His recommended cure for a frigid woman was psychiatric care. She was suffering from failure to mentally adjust to her 'natural' role as a woman." Naomi Weisstein writes that Freud and his followers erroneously thought his "years of intensive clinical experience" added up to scientific rigor.
Freud is also criticized by Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. Firestone was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism and second ...
and Eva Figes. In '' The Dialectic of Sex'' (1970), Firestone argues that Freud was a "poet" who produced metaphors rather than literal truths; in her view, Freud, like feminists, recognized that sexuality was the crucial problem of modern life, but ignored the social context and failed to question society itself. Firestone interprets Freud's "metaphors" in terms of the facts of power within the family. Figes tries in ''Patriarchal Attitudes'' (1970) to place Freud within a "history of ideas
Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual histo ...
". Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell, Lady Goody (born 4 October 1940) is a British psychoanalyst, socialist feminist, research professor and author.
Early life and education
Mitchell was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1940, and then moved to England in 1 ...
defends Freud against his feminist critics in ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism'' (1974), accusing them of misreading him and misunderstanding the implications of psychoanalytic theory for feminism. Mitchell helped introduce English-speaking feminists to Lacan.[Mitchell, Juliet. ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis''. London: Penguin Books, 2000, pp. xxix, 303–56] Mitchell is criticized by Jane Gallop
Jane Anne Gallop (born May 4, 1952) is an American professor who since 1992 has served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990.
Education
G ...
in ''The Daughter's Seduction'' (1982). Gallop compliments Mitchell for her criticism of feminist discussions of Freud but finds her treatment of Lacanian theory lacking.
Some French feminists, among them Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, bg, Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who ha ...
and Luce Irigaray, have been influenced by Freud as interpreted by Lacan. Irigaray has produced a theoretical challenge to Freud and Lacan, using their theories against them to put forward a "psychoanalytic explanation for theoretical bias". Irigaray, who claims that "the cultural unconscious only recognizes the male sex", describes how this affects "accounts of the psychology of women".
Psychologist Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan (; born November 28, 1936) is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist, best known for her work on ethical community and ethical relationships.
Gilligan is a professor of Humanities and Applied Psychology at New York Uni ...
writes that "The penchant of developmental theorists to project a masculine image, and one that appears frightening to women, goes back at least to Freud." She sees Freud's criticism of women's sense of justice reappearing in the work of Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology ...
and Lawrence Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg (; October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.
He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Grad ...
. Gilligan notes that Nancy Chodorow, in contrast to Freud, attributes sexual difference not to anatomy but to the fact that male and female children have different early social environments. Chodorow, writing against the masculine bias of psychoanalysis, "replaces Freud's negative and derivative description of female psychology with a positive and direct account of her own."
In her analysis of Freud's work on religion in relation to gender, Judith Van Herik noted that Freud paired femininity and the concept of weakness with Christianity and wish fulfillment while associating masculinity and renunciation with Judaism.
Toril Moi has developed a feminist perspective on psychoanalysis proposing that it is a discourse that "attempts to understand the psychic consequences of three universal traumas: the fact that there are others, the fact of sexual difference, and the fact of death". She replaces Freud's term of castration with Stanley Cavell's concept of "victimization" which is a more universal term that applies equally to both sexes. Moi regards this concept of human finitude as a suitable replacement for both castration and sexual difference as the traumatic "discovery of our separate, sexed, mortal existence" and how both men and women come to terms with it.
In popular culture
Sigmund Freud is the subject of three major films or TV series, the first of which was 1962's'' Freud: The Secret Passion'' starring Montgomery Clift as Freud, directed by John Huston
John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...
from a revision of a script by an uncredited Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialist, existentialism (and Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter ...
. The film is focused on Freud's early life from 1885 to 1890 and combines multiple case studies of Freud into single ones, and multiple friends of his into single characters.
In 1984, the BBC produced the six-episode mini-series ''Freud: the Life of a Dream'' starring David Suchet
Sir David Courtney Suchet''England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007'' ( ; born 2 May 1946) is an English actor known for his work on British stage and television. He portrayed Edward Teller in the television serial ''Oppenh ...
in the lead role.
The stage play ''The Talking Cure'' and subsequent film '' A Dangerous Method'' focus on the conflict between Freud and Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...
. Both are written by Christopher Hampton and are partly based on the nonfiction book ''A Most Dangerous Method'' by John Kerr. Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. R (; born October 20, 1958) is an American actor, writer, director, producer, musician, and multimedia artist. Born and raised in the State of New York to a Danish father and American mother, he also lived in Argenti ...
plays Freud and Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender (born 2 April 1977) is an Irish actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, and nominations for two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Award ...
plays Jung. The play is a reworking of an earlier unfilmed screenplay.
More fanciful employments of Freud in fiction are '' The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' by Nicholas Meyer
Nicholas Meyer (born December 24, 1945) is an American writer and director, known for his best-selling novel ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'', and for directing the films '' Time After Time'', two of the ''Star Trek'' feature films, the 1983 tele ...
, which centers on an encounter between Freud and the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, with a main part of the plot seeing Freud helping Holmes overcome his cocaine addiction. Similarly, the 2020 Austrian-German series ''Freud'' involves a young Freud solving murder mysteries. The series has been criticized for having Freud be helped by a medium with real paranormal powers, when in reality Freud was quite skeptical of the paranormal. Freud also helps to solve a murder case in the 2006 novel The Interpretation of Murder
''The Interpretation of Murder'', published in 2006, is the first novel by the American law professor Jed Rubenfeld. The book is written in the first person perspective of Dr. Stratham Younger, supposedly an American psychoanalyst. Other events ...
by Jed Rubenfeld
Jed L. Rubenfeld (born February 15, 1959) is an American lawyer, constitutional scholar, and novelist. He is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is an expert on constitutional law, privacy, and the First Amendment to th ...
. In this novel he is accompanied by Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, phil ...
and Abraham Brill amongst others.
Mark St. Germain's 2009 play ''Freud's Last Session'' imagines a meeting between C. S. Lewis, aged 40, and Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out. The play is focused on the two men discussing religion and whether it should be seen as a sign of neurosis. The play is inspired by the 2003 nonfiction book ''The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life'' by Armand Nicholi
Armand M. Nicholi Jr. (October 18, 1927 – June 22, 2017) was a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical work and research focused on the impact of absent parents on the emot ...
which also inspired a four-part nonfiction PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of ed ...
series. (Although, no such meeting took place, June Flewett, who as a teenager stayed with C. S. Lewis and his brother during the wartime London air raids, later married Freud's grandson Clement Freud.)
Freud is employed to more comic effect in the 1983 film ''Lovesick'' in which Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including '' Kind Hearts and Coronets'' (1 ...
plays Freud's ghost who gives love advice to a modern psychiatrist played by Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE (19 April 193527 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writ ...
. Freud is also presented in a comedic light in the 1989 film, '' Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure''. Portrayed by Rod Loomis, Freud is one of several historical figures recruited by the film's time traveling lead characters to assist them in passing their high school history class presentation.
Canadian author Kim Morrissey's stage play about the Dora case, ''Dora: A Case of Hysteria'', attempts to thoroughly debunk Freud's approach to the case. French playwright Hélène Cixous' 1976 ''Portrait of Dora'' is also critical of Freud's approach, though less acerbically.
The narrator of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's darkly humorous 2020 song " My Own Version of You" calls "Mr. Freud with his dreams" one of the "best-known enemies of mankind" and refers to him as burning in hell.
A limited series dramatizing (and mythologizing) Freud's early career and breakthroughs as (very nearly) a form of vampire hunting or exorcistic experimentation was released by Netflix in 2020.
Works
Books
* 1891 '' On Aphasia''
* 1895 '' Studies on Hysteria'' (co-authored with Josef Breuer)
* 1899 ''The Interpretation of Dreams
''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (german: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what ...
''
* 1901 ''On Dreams'' (abridged version of ''The Interpretation of Dreams'')
* 1904 ''The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
''Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (german: Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens) is a 1901 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Based on Freud's researches into slips and parapraxes from 1897 onwards, it became perhaps the ...
''
* 1905 ''Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
, translator = J. Strachey
, image = Sigmund Freud Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, 1905.png
, caption = Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
, author = Sigmund Freud
, illustrator =
, cover_artist =
, country =Germany an ...
''
* 1905 ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (german: Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie), sometimes titled ''Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex'', is a 1905 work by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author advance ...
''
* 1907 '' Delusion and Dream in Jensen's Gradiva''
* 1910 ''Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis''
* 1910 ''Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood
''Leonardo da Vinci and A Memory of His Childhood'' (german: Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci) is a 1910 essay by Sigmund Freud about Leonardo da Vinci. It consists of a psychoanalytic study of Leonardo's life based on his paintings ...
''
* 1913 '' Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics''
* 1915–17 '' Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis''
* 1920 '' Beyond the Pleasure Principle''
* 1921 '' Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego''
* 1923 ''The Ego and the Id
''The Ego and the Id'' (german: Das Ich und das Es) is a prominent paper by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is an analytical study of the human psyche outlining his theories of the psychodynamics of the id, ego and super-ego, ...
''
* 1926 ''Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety''
* 1926 '' The Question of Lay Analysis''
* 1927 '' The Future of an Illusion''
* 1930 ''Civilization and Its Discontents
''Civilization and Its Discontents'' is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as ''Das Unbehagen in der Kultur'' ("The Uneasiness in Civilization"). Exploring what Fre ...
''
* 1933 ''New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis''
* 1939 '' Moses and Monotheism''
* 1940 ''An Outline of Psychoanalysis
''An Outline of Psychoanalysis'' is a work by Sigmund Freud. Returning to an earlier project of providing an overview of psychoanalysis, Freud began writing this work in Vienna in 1938 as he was waiting to leave for London. By September 1938, he h ...
''
* 1967 Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study, with William C. Bullit
Case histories
* 1905 Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (the Dora case history)
* 1909 Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy (the Little Hans case history)
* 1909 Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (the Rat Man case history)
* 1911 Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (the Schreber case)
* 1918 From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (the Wolfman case history)
* 1920 The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman
* 1923 A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis (the Haizmann case)
Papers on sexuality
* 1906 My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses
* 1908 '' "Civilized" Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness''
* 1910 A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men
* 1912 Types of Onset of Neurosis
* 1912 The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life
* 1913 The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis
* 1915 A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease
* 1919 A Child is Being Beaten: A Contribution to the Origin of Sexual Perversions
* 1922 Medusa's Head
* 1922 Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality
* 1923 Infantile Genital Organisation
* 1924 The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex
* 1925 Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes
* 1927 Fetishism
* 1931 Female Sexuality
* 1933 Femininity
* 1938 The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence
Autobiographical papers
* 1899 An Autobiographical Note
* 1914 On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement
* 1925 An Autobiographical Study (1935 Revised edition with Postscript).
The Standard Edition
''''. Translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
, assisted by Alix Strachey, Alan Tyson
Alan Walker Tyson, (27 October 1926 – 10 November 2000) was a Glasgow-born British musicologist who specialized in studies of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He wrote the (deliberately concise) ''Thematic c ...
, and Angela Richards. 24 volumes, London: Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...
and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953–1974.
* Vol. I Pre-Psycho-Analytic Publications and Unpublished Drafts (1886–1899).
* Vol. II Studies in Hysteria (1893–1895). By Josef Breuer and S. Freud.
* Vol. III Early Psycho-Analytic Publications (1893–1899)
* Vol. IV The Interpretation of Dreams (I) (1900)
* Vol. V The Interpretation of Dreams (II) and On Dreams (1900–1901)
* Vol. VI The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
* Vol. VII A Case of Hysteria, Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Works (1901–1905)
* Vol. VIII Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)
* Vol. IX Jensen's 'Gradiva,' and Other Works (1906–1909)
* Vol. X The Cases of 'Little Hans' and the Rat Man' (1909)
* Vol. XI Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo and Other Works (1910)
* Vol. XII The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works (1911–1913)
* Vol. XIII Totem and Taboo and Other Works (1913–1914)
* Vol. XIV On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Meta-psychology and Other Works (1914–1916)
* Vol. XV Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Parts I and II) (1915–1916)
* Vol. XVI Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III) (1916–1917)
* Vol. XVII An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works (1917–1919)
* Vol. XVIII Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works (1920–1922)
* Vol. XIX The Ego and the Id and Other Works (1923–1925)
* Vol. XX An Autobiographical Study, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Lay Analysis and Other Works (1925–1926)
* Vol. XXI The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents and Other Works (1927–1931)
* Vol. XXII New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works (1932–1936)
* Vol. XXIII Moses and Monotheism, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis and Other Works (1937–1939)
* Vol. XXIV Indexes and Bibliographies (Compiled by Angela Richards,1974)
Correspondence
* ''Selected Letters of Sigmund Freud to Martha Bernays'', Ansh Mehta and Ankit Patel (eds.), CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
* ''Correspondence: Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
'', Cambridge: Polity 2014.
* '' The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis'' (eds. E.J. Lieberman and Robert Kramer). Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
* ''The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess
Wilhelm Fliess (german: Wilhelm Fließ; 24 October 1858 – 13 October 1928) was a German otolaryngologist who practised in Berlin. He developed the pseudoscientific theory of human biorhythms and a possible nasogenital connection that have ...
, 1887–1904'', (editor and translator Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson) is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his '' The Assault on Truth'' (1984), Masson argues that Freud may h ...
), 1985,
* ''The Sigmund Freud Carl Gustav Jung Letters'', Princeton University Press; Abr edition, 1994,
* ''The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1925'', Karnac Books, 2002,
* ''The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Jeanne Lampl-de Groot
Jeanne Lampl-de Groot (16 October 1895 – 4 April 1987) was a Dutch psychiatrist known for her work with Sigmund Freud and her research on female sexuality. After studying with Freud, she trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute from 1925 ...
, 1921–1939: Psychoanalysis and Politics in the Interwar Years''. Edited By Gertie Bögels. London: Routledge 2022.
''The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908–1939.''
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
, 1995,
* ''The Sigmund Freud – Ludwig Binswanger Correspondence 1908–1939'', London: Other Press 2003,
''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Vol 1, 1908–1914''
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
, 1994,
''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Vol 2, 1914–1919''
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
, 1996,
''The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Vol 3, 1920–1933''
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
, 2000,
''The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein, 1871–1881''
Belknap Press, Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the reti ...
,
* ''Psycho-Analysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister''. Trans. Eric Mosbacher. Heinrich Meng and Ernst L. Freud. eds London: Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and n ...
and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1963.
* ''Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salome; Letters'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1972,
* ''The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig
Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer, pacifist and socialist.
He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I.
Life and work
Zweig was born in Glogau, Prussian Silesia (now Głogów, Poland), the son ...
'', New York University Press, 1987,
* ''Why War? Open Letters Between Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
and Freud''. London: New Commonwealth, 1934.
* ''Letters of Sigmund Freud'', selected and edited by Ernst L. Freud, New York: Basic Books, 1960,
See also
*
* Sigmund Freud Archives
* Freud Museum
The Freud Museum in London is a museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud, located in the house where Freud lived with his family during the last year of his life. In 1938, after escaping Nazi annexation of Austria he came to London via Paris and st ...
(London)
* Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna)
* A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
* Afterwardsness In the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, afterwardsness is a "mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of sexual or traumatic meaning to earlier events... rom the German word''Nachträglichkeit'', translated as deferred action, ret ...
* Freudian slip
* Freudo-Marxism
* School of Brentano
* Hedgehog's dilemma
The hedgehog's dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is a metaphor about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs seek to move close to one another to share heat during cold weather. They mu ...
* Narcissism of small differences
In psychoanalysis, the narcissism of small differences (german: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feud ...
* Hidden personality
* Histrionic personality disorder
* Psychoanalytic literary criticism
* Psychodynamics
Psychodynamics, also known as psychodynamic psychology, in its broadest sense, is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate t ...
* Saul Rosenzweig
* Signorelli parapraxis
* The Freudian Coverup
* The Passions of the Mind
''The Passions of the Mind'' is a 1971 novel by American author Irving Stone. It is a biographical novel about the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud and covers his life from when he was a student to when he is forced to leave Austria to escape the gro ...
* Uncanny
Notes
References
* Alexander, Sam
"In Memory of Sigmund Freud"
The Modernism Lab, Yale University. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
* Appignanesi, Lisa and Forrester, John. ''Freud's Women''. Penguin Books, 2000.
* Auden, W.H
"In Memory of Sigmund Freud"
1940, poets.org. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
* Bloom, Harold. ''The Western Canon''. Riverhead Books, 1994.
* Blumenthal, Ralph
"Hotel log hints at desire that Freud didn't repress"
''International Herald Tribune'', 24 December 2006.
*
* Cohen, David. ''The Escape of Sigmund Freud''. JR Books, 2009.
* Cohen, Patricia
''The New York Times'', 25 November 2007.
* Eissler, K.R. ''Freud and the Seduction Theory: A Brief Love Affair''. Int. Univ. Press, 2005.
* Eysenck, Hans. J. ''Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire''. Pelican Books, 1986.
* Ford, Donald H. & Urban, Hugh B. ''Systems of Psychotherapy: A Comparative Study''. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1965.
* Freud, Sigmund (1896c). ''The Aetiology of Hysteria''. Standard Edition 3.
* Freud, Sigmund and Bonaparte, Marie (ed.). ''The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess: Drafts and Notes 1887–1902''. Kessinger Publishing, 2009.
* Fuller, Andrew R. ''Psychology and Religion: Eight Points of View'', Littlefield Adams, 1994.
* Gay, Peter. ''Freud: A Life for Our Time''. W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 (first published 1988).
* Gay, Peter (ed.) ''The Freud Reader''. W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.
* Gresser, Moshe. ''Dual Allegiance: Freud As a Modern Jew''. SUNY Press, 1994.
* Holt, Robert. ''Freud Reappraised: A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Theory''. The Guilford Press, 1989.
* Hothersall, D. ''History of Psychology''. 3rd edition, Mcgraw-Hill, 1995.
* Jones, E. ''Sigmund Freud: Life and Work Vol 1: The Young Freud 1856–1900, '' Hogarth Press, 1953.
* Jones, E. ''Sigmund Freud: Life and Work Vol 2: The Years of Maturity 1901–1919,'' Hogarth Press, 1955
* Jones, E. ''Sigmund Freud: Life and Work Vol 3: The Final Years 1919–1939,'' Hogarth Press, 1957
* Juergensmeyer, Mark. ''Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence''. University of California Press, 2004.
* Juergensmeyer, Mark
"Religious Violence"
in Peter B. Clarke (ed.). ''The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion''. Oxford University Press, 2009.
* Kovel, Joel. ''A Complete Guide to Therapy: From Psychoanalysis to Behaviour Modification''. Penguin Books, 1991 (first published 1976).
* Leeming, D.A.; Madden, Kathryn; and Marlan, Stanton. ''Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion''. Springer Verlag u. Co., 2004.
* Mannoni, Octave. ''Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious'', London: Verso, 2015 971
Year 971 ( CMLXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Byzantine Empire
* Battle of Dorostolon: A Byzantine expeditionary army (possibly 30–40,000 men ...
*
* Masson, Jeffrey M. (ed.). ''The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fless, 1887–1904.'' Harvard University Press, 1985.
* Meissner, William W
"Freud and the Bible"
in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael David Coogan (eds.). ''The Oxford Companion to the Bible''. Oxford University Press, 1993.
* Michels, Robert
"Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: A Changing Relationship"
American Mental Health Foundation. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
* Mitchell, Juliet. ''Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis''. Penguin Books, 2000.
* Palmer, Michael. ''Freud and Jung on Religion''. Routledge, 1997.
*
* Rice, Emmanuel. ''Freud and Moses: The Long Journey Home''. SUNY Press, 1990.
* Roudinesco, Elisabeth. ''Jacques Lacan''. Polity Press, 1997.
* Sadock, Benjamin J. and Sadock, Virginia A. ''Kaplan and Sadock's Synopsis of Psychiatry''. 10th ed. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007.
*
* Vitz, Paul C. ''Sigmund Freud's Christian Unconscious''. The Guilford Press, 1988.
* Webster, Richard. ''Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis.'' HarperCollins, 1995.
Biographies
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
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*
*
Further reading
* Brown, Norman O. '' Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History''. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, Second Edition 1985.
* Cioffi, Frank. ''Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience''. Peru, IL: Open Court, 1999.
* Cole, J. Preston. ''The Problematic Self in Kierkegaard and Freud''. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971.
* Crews, Frederick. '' The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute''. New York: The New York Review of Books, 1995.
* Crews, Frederick. ''Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend''. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
* Crews, Frederick. ''Freud: The Making of an Illusion''. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017, .
* Dufresne, Todd. ''Killing Freud: Twentieth-Century Culture and the Death of Psychoanalysis''. New York: Continuum, 2003.
* Dufresne, Todd, ed. ''Against Freud: Critics Talk Back''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.
* Ellenberger, Henri. ''Beyond the Unconscious: Essays of Henri F. Ellenberger in the History of Psychiatry''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
* Ellenberger, Henri. ''The Discovery of the Unconscious
''The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry'' is a 1970 book about the history of dynamic psychiatry by the Swiss medical historian Henri F. Ellenberger, in which the author discusses such figures as Franz ...
: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry''. New York: Basic Books, 1970.
* Esterson, Allen. ''Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud''. Chicago: Open Court, 1993.
* Gellner, Ernest. ''The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason''. London: Fontana Press, 1993.
* Grünbaum, Adolf. '' The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
* Grünbaum, Adolf. ''Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis''. Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press, 1993.
* Hale, Nathan G., Jr. ''Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
* Hale, Nathan G., Jr. ''The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985''. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
* Hirschmüller, Albrecht. ''The Life and Work of Josef Breuer''. New York University Press, 1989.
* Jung, Carl Gustav. ''The Collected Works of C. G. Jung Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis''. Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961.
* Macmillan, Malcolm. ''Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997.
* Marcuse, Herbert. '' Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud''. Boston: Beacon Press, 1974.
* Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. ''The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory''. New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
* Paul Ricœur, Ricœur, Paul. ''Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.
* Philip Rieff, Rieff, Philip. '' Freud: The Mind of the Moralist''. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1961.
* Paul Roazen, Roazen, Paul. ''Freud and His Followers''. New York: Knopf, 1975, hardcover; trade paperback, Da Capo Press (22 March 1992), .
* Roazen, Paul. ''Freud: Political and Social Thought''. London: Hogarth Press, 1969.
* Roth, Michael, ed. ''Freud: Conflict and Culture''. New York: Vintage, 1998.
* Schur, Max. ''Freud: Living and Dying''. New York: International Universities Press, 1972.
* David Stannard, Stannard, David E. ''Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
* Richard Webster (British author), Webster, Richard. '' Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis''. Oxford: The Orwell Press, 2005.
* Richard Wollheim, Wollheim, Richard. ''Freud''. Fontana, 1971.
* Wollheim, Richard, and James Hopkins, eds. ''Philosophical Essays on Freud''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
External links
*
*
*
Sigmund Freud
at the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''
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