Sigmund Freud

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The Beginning of Psychoanalysis

The next important development in Freud’s theory of psychology came out of work he conducted with his friend and colleague Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician who was involved in the treatment of a young woman who was distressed while caring for her dying father. The patient had developed a number of hysterical symptoms, which Breuer initially treated by hypnotic suggestion. Initial success gave way to disappointment when on her father’s death her symptoms returned with increased severity. Somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, Breuer had continued to talk to his patient on a daily basis and in time she began to talk about various reminiscences from the past and about her daydreams. Remarkably, as her narrative revisited memories from the past, which were associated with the onset of a particular symptom, each symptom disappeared when accompanied by an emotional outburst. Breuer made use of this discovery to eliminate her symptoms one at a time. He called the treatment the cathartic technique (from the Greek katharsis meaning “purgation”). The treatment was time consuming and required considerable effort to reach dimly recalled and otherwise inaccessible memories. 

Freud and Breuer published the case and several others in 1895 under the title Studies on Hysteria. Their view was summed up in the statement “Hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences.” They proposed that when faced with emotionally traumatic memories, hysterics subjugate them from conscious appreciation to prevent the unbearable emotional pain and suffering that they cause. Rather than being driven out of the mind, however, these memories are driven into an area of the mind that is unconscious and inaccessible. Here the memories may be redirected from the emotional system into the somatic (bodily) system and appear as apparently unexplained physical symptoms. The cases that constitute Studies on Hysteria outline the transition from treatment by hypnotic suggestion to the earliest descriptions of what is now known as psychoanalysis.

Working on his own Freud hypothesized that hysterical symptoms were most likely to arise when repressed traumatic memories related to adverse childhood sexual experiences. This view generated tremendous controversy at the time because the existence of childhood sexuality was not widely accepted. In time Freud was forced to reconsider this aspect of his theory, instead relating the repressed memories to childhood fantasies of sexuality and their relationship to parental figures.

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Dreams

The next development in Freud’s theory stemmed from his observations on dreaming. He came to see that many of the characteristics of dreams were shared with the symptomatic memories recalled by his patients in the narrative of “free association.” In his therapeutic relationship with his patients, Freud had abandoned hypnotic suggestion in favor of encouraging the person to speak freely about whatever came into his or her mind. Unintentionally, the patient would bring order to these free associations, whose structure and content Freud used to try to understand underlying unconscious processes.

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In dreams Freud noted the same apparently unstructured experiences of thoughts and images coming into the mind that seemed to be representative of some underlying unconscious process. To explain these phenomena, he suggested the existence of an inner censor that effected a compromise between conflicting mental forces and in the process disguised their meaning from conscious appreciation. He defined “resistance” as the unconscious defense against awareness of repressed experiences in order to avoid the resulting anxiety. He traced the operation of unconscious processes, using the free associations of the patient to guide him in the interpretation of dreams and slips of speech. Slips of speech or parapraxes, now known as “Freudian slips,” Freud claimed, were revelations of unconscious wishes. His 1904 publication, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, discusses these ideas. 

Freud came to understand the mind as a series of layers, with the most superficial layers in conscious appreciation and the deeper layers containing repressed memories and remaining unavailable to conscious thought. He termed this the topographical model and likened it to an iceberg, a small part of which is visible above the surface while the greater submerged part remains obscured from view. These ideas were published in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams. 

During the first two decades of the 1900s Freud concentrated on modifying and improving his theory of psychoanalysis. He defined a number of principles and described a model of personality development. 

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The Unconscious

Perhaps Freud’s greatest contribution was to describe the unconscious and to postulate that it obeys the principle of psychic determinism, which holds that human thoughts, feelings, and impulses, rather than being random, are linked in a system of causally related phenomena, behind which lies some reason or meaning. Freud concluded that on this basis unconscious processes could be investigated and understood. Some experiences that are not immediately accessible to conscious appreciation can be brought into the conscious mind by the process of remembering. Freud referred to these experiences as the preconscious. Still-deeper thoughts cannot be remembered and are actively repressed in the unconscious. 

Unconscious experiences, according to Freud, are not subject to the same logic characteristic of conscious experience. Unconscious ideas, images, thoughts, and feelings can be condensed or dramatized in the form of abstract concepts and imagery. Often the relationship between the original experience and the unconscious symbolic representation can seem obscure.

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Role of Conflict

The central theme of conflict had arisen early in Freud’s work. Conflict arises in a person’s conscious mind when one set of beliefs impacts adversely on another area of belief, causing emotional suffering felt as disappointment, anger, or frustration. Freud was interested in the unconscious aspect of mental conflict. He described the “pleasure principle” as another fundamental of psychoanalytic theory. This holds that human beings have a tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain. The principle is said to dominate in early life, bringing the developing individual into conflict with the external world. These conflicts are retained in the unconscious.

Freud’s original concept held that the conflicts of early life arose as a result of innate human drives or instincts. He conceptualized how development might occur in terms of the drives and their satisfaction according to the pleasure principle. Among the chief drives was the libidinal, or sexual, drive, which serves the human species by directing individuals to reproduce. Awareness of a need to keep rein on the free expression of drives gradually develops, and failure to rein in these drives (and fantasies about their expression) is felt as guilt. Life becomes an equilibrium between drives, conflicts, and reality. Freud believed that by understanding the crucial events and fantasy wishes of childhood, psychoanalysis could shed understanding on later adult character development with its attendant conflicts and neurotic symptoms. Later, he extended his model to include psychoses (serious mental disorders in which people have a distorted view of reality).

Conflicts repressed into the unconscious are retained, according to Freud. From time to time they may overcome repression and reemerge into conscious appreciation, precipitating anxiety or panic. To counteract this, the individual unconsciously produces various defense mechanisms, which become part of that person’s character. Examples of defense mechanisms include projection, where the individual ascribes to others his or her own unconscious desires (“I hate you,” for example, becomes “You hate me”), and reaction formation, where the individual adopts a pattern of behavior directly opposed to a strong unconscious drive. In 1923 Freud reformulated his ideas in a structural model of the mind that postulated the existence of the id, the ego, and the superego.

Freud gave the name “id” to unconscious drives. The id knows nothing of morality or reality. It seeks only to gratify the instinctual drives, and it operates solely according to the pleasure principle. Freud held that the biological drives of a young person are often frustrated by delays and restricted by the demands of parents and other older members of the family. As time passes, the demands of the community or society also become important obstacles to id gratification. In adapting to the environment, the child begins to acquire an ego, or set of conscious perceptions, memories, and thoughts that enable the person to deal effectively with reality. Thus, according to Freud, the ego obeys the reality principle. As the individual absorbs the teachings of family and society, he develops a superego, or conscience, that frequently conflicts with the drives of the id. In many cases the ego reduces the conflict by at least partially fulfilling the id impulses through socially acceptable behavior. Often, however, the conflict disappears on the conscious level as unfulfilled impulses are repressed into the unconscious mind.

Freud’s therapy consisted of listening to the patient relate a narrative of free associations over many sessions. By listening to the patient’s associations, Freudian slips, contents of dreams, and thoughts, he linked and interpreted these experiences to the patient’s conscious world. He came to understand the nature of “transference,” in which the patient develops feelings for the therapist that are in fact representative of previous feelings toward other important figures in the patient’s life. These thoughts and feelings Freud interpreted and linked to the patient’s current emotional state. 

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Freud and His Times

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Major Influences

Freud’s early psychological work shows the influence of the sciences of the day on his thinking. Ideas from physics, chemistry, and evolutionary theory occur regularly in his writing. At the time, Charles Darwin’s writings, especially the theory of evolution, were challenging contemporary Judeo-Christian belief. Indeed it was Darwin who emphasized instincts for survival and reproduction, formulated in Freud’s theory as basic drives. 

Freud’s ideas can be seen in the same context as Darwin’s. Freud, too, challenged philosophical and religious thinking by suggesting that human beings were rather less in control of their own thoughts and actions than previously believed. His contention that unconscious thoughts and actions had to arise from within the self rather than from God conflicted with the contemporary notion of soul. From Freud’s time on, the disciplines of philosophy and psychology developed separately. 

Freud was particularly interested in the “association” school of psychology, which included Johann Friedrich Herbart and Wilhelm Max Wundt, the former of whom may have contributed to free association as a therapeutic technique. Psychodynamic theory—the model of conflicting forces influencing the subconscious—also has its origins in the physical concepts of opposing forces and vector analysis. Freud’s theory that unresolved conflicts can be converted into physical symptoms reflects the principle of conservation of energy held by the first law of thermodynamics.

Yet Freud’s ideas were new and radical, and it is easy to see why Freud came into conflict so readily with the society and establishment of his time. He relied on the support of friends such as Breuer. By 1906, however, a small number of pupils and followers had gathered around Freud, including Austrians William Stekel, Alfred Adler, and Otto Rank; American Abraham Brill; and Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung from Switzerland. Other notable associates, who joined the circle in 1908, were Hungarian Sándor Ferenczi and Briton Ernest Jones.

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