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Brief notes concerning Sigmund Freud’s life and ideas

Name associated with psychoanalysis

Popularity of Freud due to

• saying that sex and aggression is significant to psychoanalysis

• because his theory spread beyond Vienna

• fine use of language

To Freud theory came after observation

Freud thought of himself as a scientist

Freud’s reasoning was deductive

Freud’s observations were subjective

Freud dealt primarily with the middle and upper class

 

Brief biographical notes concerning Sigmund Freud

Born 1856

Birth place: Freiberg Moravia (Czech Republic)

First born child

Parents: Jacob and Amalie Freud

Seven younger siblings

Died: London Sept. 23, 1939

Freud’s younger brother Julius died (age 6 months)

Freud felt guilty over Julius’ death.

Freud went on to study Medicine sparked by his interest in human nature

Vienna Medical School—studied physiology

1885 Freud studied in Paris with French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot

Learned hypnotic technique for “hysteria”

Freud developed a friendship with Joseph Bruer

Freud learned “catharsis”—purging of emotions

Freud discovered “Free Association”

Freud experienced neurosis and obsession in the 1890’s

Freud’s major contribution to psychology

• exploration of the unconscious

Unconscious—mental levels of which we are unaware

Conscious—determines proper conduct

Preconscious—level of the conscious

(See sources such as Theories of Personality by Jess Feist and Gregory Feist, Toronto. McGraw Hill, 2006.)

 

Other terms common to the study of Freud’s ideas

 

Id, ego, and super-ego

In psychodynamics, the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are the divisions of the psyche according to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s “structural theory.” In his 1923 work The Ego and the Id, Freud introduced new terms to describe the division between the conscious and unconscious: “id,” “ego,” and “super-ego.” He thought these terms offered a more compelling description of the dynamic relations between the conscious and the unconscious. The “id” (fully unconscious) contains the drives and those things repressed by consciousness; the “ego” (mostly conscious) deals with external reality; and the “super ego” (partly conscious) is the conscience or the internal moral judge (The Freud Exhibit: L.O.C.).

This belief system is largely discredited. Karl Popper said in 1953, “…as for Freud’s epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer’s collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.”

 

Freud’s structural theory

 

The id

The term id is a Latinized derivation from Groddeck’s das Es.[2] It stands in direct opposition to the super-ego. It is dominated by the pleasure principle.

The newborn child is regarded as being completely “Id-ridden,” in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. This view equates a new born child with an id-ridden individual—often humorously—with this analogy: an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end.

The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, sex and aggressive impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure-pain principle; it is without a sense of time; completely illogical; primarily sexual; infantile in its emotional development; will not take “no” for an answer; is without verbal representation and therefore does not enter consciousness. It is regarded as the reservoir of the libido or “love energy”.

A popular interpretation of the id is not that it is “convincing” the mind to ignore social norms, but rather in itself just does not take social norms into account when “thinking” or “acting.” The id is the primal, or beastlike, part of the brain, determined to pursue actions that are pleasurable, such as eating or copulation. The prime motive of the id is self-survival, pursuing whatever necessary to accomplish that goal.

 

Ego

In Freud’s theory, the ego mediates among the id, the super-ego and the external world. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives, morals, and reality while satisfying the id and superego. Its main concern is with the individual’s safety and allows some of the id’s desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behaviour conflicts with reality and either society’s morals, norms, and taboos or the individual’s expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and taboos.

The word ego is taken directly from Latin where it is the nominative of the first person singular personal pronoun and is translated as “I myself” to express emphasis. Ego is the English translation for Freud’s German term “Das Ich.”

In modern-day society, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; or in philosophical terms, one’s self. However, according to the psychologist Sigmund Freud, the ego is the part of the mind which contains the consciousness. Originally, Freud had associated the word ego to meaning a sense of self; however, he later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgement, tolerance, reality-testing, control, planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory.

The ego is the mediator between the id and the superego; trying to ensure that the needs of both the id and the superego are met. It is said to operate on a reality principle, meaning it deals with the id and the superego; allowing them to express their desires, drives and morals in realistic and socially appropriate ways. It is said that the ego stands for reason and caution, developing with age. Sigmund Freud had used an analogy which likened the ego to a rider and a horse; the ego being the rider while the id being the horse. The horse provides the energy and the means of obtaining the energy and information need, while the rider ultimately controls the direction it wants to go. However, due to unfavorable conditions, sometimes the horse makes its own decisions over the rocky terrain.

When the ego is personified, it is like a slave to three harsh masters: the id, the super-ego and the external world. It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts with the pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the egos’ moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. To overcome this, this ego employs method of defense mechanism. Denial, displacement, intellectualization, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and identified the concepts of: undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjection, inversion, somatization, splitting and substitution.

 

Super-ego

Freud’s theory states that the super-ego is a symbolic internalization of the father figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and is aggressive towards the ego. The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and the prohibition of taboos. Its formation takes place during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex and is formed by an identification with and internalization of the father figure after the little boy cannot successfully hold the mother as a love-object out of fear of castration. “The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt” (The Ego and the Id, 1923). In Sigmund Freud’s work Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) he also discusses the concept of a “cultural super-ego”. The concept of super-ego and the Oedipus complex is subject to criticism for its sexism. Women, who are considered to be already castrated, do not identify with the father, and therefore form a weak super-ego, apparently leaving them susceptible to immorality and sexual identity complications.

 

References

Karl R. Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. Conjectures and Refutations (1963), p. 43–86; first published as Karl R. Popper: Philosophy of Science: a Personal Report. In: C. A. Mace (Ed.): British Philosophy in Mid-Century (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957), p. 155–191; first delivered as a lecture in 1953, see loc. cit. note 31.

Groddeck, G.W. (1928). The Book of the It Nervous and Mental Diseases Publishing Com, New York

 

Further reading

Freud, Sigmund (1910), The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, American Journal of Psychology 21(2), 196–218.

Freud, Sigmund (1920), Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Freud, Sigmund (1923), Das Ich und das Es, Internationaler Psycho-analytischer Verlag, Leipzig, Vienna, and Zurich. English translation, The Ego and the Id, Joan Riviere (trans.), Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-analysis, London, UK, 1927. Revised for The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, James Strachey (ed.), W.W. Norton and Company, New York, NY, 1961.

Gay, Peter (ed., 1989), The Freud Reader. W.W. Norton.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (certain characters represent the id, ego, and superego)

(License-free online information—Wikipedia.)

 

Freud specified three major types of anxiety:

Reality Anxiety: the most basic form, rooted in reality. Fear of a dog bite, fear arising from an impending accident. (Ego Based Anxiety)

Most common tension reduction method: Removing oneself from the harmful situation.

Neurotic Anxiety : Anxiety which arises from an unconscious fear that the libidinal impulses of the Id will take control at an in opportune time. This type of anxiety is driven by a fear of punishment that will result from expressing the Id’s desires without proper sublimation.

Moral Anxiety: Anxiety which results from fear of violating moral or societal codes, moral anxiety appears as guilt or shame.

In this conception of Anxiety, we can see why Freud concentrated on strengthening the Ego through psychoanalysis. (www.rpi.edu/~verwyc/defmech.htm)

 

Defence mechanisms

Sigmund Freud was the first person to develop the concept of defence mechanisms, however it was his daughter Anna Freud who clarified and conceptualized it. She has described various different defence mechanisms:

Compensation. Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behaviour because one cannot accomplish another behaviour.

Denial. Unconsciously refusing to perceive the more unpleasant aspects of external reality (feelings, events, or both), replacing it with a less threatening but inaccurate one.

Displacement. An unconscious defence mechanism, whereby the mind redirects emotion from a “dangerous” object to a “safe” object. In psychoanalytic theory, displacement is a defence mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet.

Dissociation. Separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would accompany a situation or thought.

Humour. Refocuses attention on the somewhat comical side of the situation as to relieve negative tension; similar to comic relief.

Idealization. Form of denial in which the object of attention is presented as “all good” masking true negative feelings towards the other.

Identification. The unconscious modeling of one’s self upon another person’s behavior.

Intellectualization (isolation). Concentrating on the intellectual components of the situations as to distance oneself from the anxiety provoking emotions associated with these situations.

Introjection. Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person.

Inversion. Refocusing of aggression or emotions evoked from an external force onto one’s self.

Projection. Attributing to others, one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts and/or emotions. Projection reduces anxiety in the way that it allows the expression of the impulse or desire without letting the ego recognize it.

Rationalization. The process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process;

Reaction formation. The converting of unconscious wishes or impulses that are perceived to be dangerous into their opposites.

Regression. The reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable impulses.

Repression. The process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering consciousness. The painful feelings are initially conscious and then forgotten. They are stored in the unconscious and, under certain circumstances, can be retrieved. Repression can range from momentary memory lapses to complete amnesia of a catastrophic event, such as a murder or an earthquake.

Somatisation. Manifestation of emotional anxiety into physical symptoms.

Splitting. Repressing, dissociating or disconnecting important feelings that are “dangerous” to psychic well-being. Causes the person to get out of touch with her/his feelings; fragmented self. An example is Anna Nicole Smith’s bizarre reaction to her son’s death as she believed he was still alive.

Substitution. When a person replaces one feeling or emotion for another.

Sublimation. The refocusing of psychic energy (which Sigmund Freud believed was limited) away from negative outlets to more positive outlets. These drives which cannot find an outlet are rechannelled. In Freud’s classic theory, erotic energy is only allowed limited expression due to repression, and much of the remainder of a given group’s erotic energy is used to develop its culture and civilization. Freud considered this defence mechanism the most productive compared to the others that he identified. Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into “socially useful” achievements, mainly art. Psychoanalysts often refer to sublimation as the only truly successful defence mechanism.

Suppression. The conscious process of pushing thoughts into the preconscious.

Undoing. A person tries to “undo” a negative or threatening thought by their actions.

(License-free online information—Wikipedia.)

 

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development

(David B. Stevenson ‘96, Brown University)

Freud advanced a theory of personality development that centered on the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. At particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation. These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region. The child’s libido centers on behavior affecting the primary erogenous zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the immediate one.

A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands, such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage. Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child’s libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages, resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult personality.

 

The oral stage

The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of libidal energy. The child, of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage, whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who truncated nursing sessions early, is characterized by pessimism, envy, suspicion and sarcasm. The overindulged oral character, whose nursing urges were always and often excessively satisfied, is optimistic, gullible, and is full of admiration for others around him. The stage culminates in the primary conflict of weaning, which both deprives the child of the sensory pleasures of nursing and of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. The stage lasts approximately one and one-half years.

 

The anal stage

At one and one-half years, the child enters the anal stage. With the advent of toilet training comes the child’s obsession with the erogenous zone of the anus and with the retention or expulsion of the feces. This represents a classic conflict between the id, which derives pleasure from expulsion of bodily wastes, and the ego and superego, which represent the practical and societal pressures to control the bodily functions. The child meets the conflict between the parent’s demands and the child’s desires and physical capabilities in one of two ways: Either he puts up a fight or he simply refuses to go. The child who wants to fight takes pleasure in excreting maliciously, perhaps just before or just after being placed on the toilet. If the parents are too lenient and the child manages to derive pleasure and success from this expulsion, it will result in the formation of an anal expulsive character. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant. Conversely, a child may opt to retain feces, thereby spiting his parents while enjoying the pleasurable pressure of the built-up feces on his intestine. If this tactic succeeds and the child is overindulged, he will develop into an anal retentive character. This character is neat, precise, orderly, careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, and passive-aggressive. The resolution of the anal stage, proper toilet training, permanently affects the individual propensities to possession and attitudes towards authority. This stage lasts from one and one-half to two years.

 

The phallic stage

The phallic stage is the setting for the greatest, most crucial sexual conflict in Freud’s model of development. In this stage, the child’s erogenous zone is the genital region. As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child’s unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one.

In the young male, the Oedipus conflict stems from his natural love for his mother, a love which becomes sexual as his libidal energy transfers from the anal region to his genitals. Unfortunately for the boy, his father stands in the way of this love. The boy therefore feels aggression and envy towards this rival, his father, and also feels fear that the father will strike back at him. As the boy has noticed that women, his mother in particular, have no penises, he is struck by a great fear that his father will remove his penis, too. The anxiety is aggravated by the threats and discipline he incurs when caught masturbating by his parents. This castration anxiety outstrips his desire for his mother, so he represses the desire. Moreover, although the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because his father does, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father and becoming as much like him as possible: this identification indoctrinates the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. A lasting trace of the Oedipal conflict is the superego, the voice of the father within the boy. By thus resolving his incestuous conundrum, the boy passes into the latency period, a period of libidal dormancy.

On the Electra complex, Freud was more vague. The complex has its roots in the little girl’s discovery that she, along with her mother and all other women, lack the penis which her father and other men posses. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and envious, as she yearns for a penis of her own. She comes to blame her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis envy, the apparent counterpart to the boy’s castration anxiety. The resolution of the Electra complex is far less clear-cut than the resolution of the Oedipus complex is in males; Freud stated that the resolution comes much later and is never truly complete. Just as the boy learned his sexual role by identifying with his father, so the girl learns her role by identifying with her mother in an attempt to posses her father vicariously. At the eventual resolution of the conflict, the girl passes into the latency period, though Freud implies that she always remains slightly fixated at the phallic stage.

Fixation at the phallic stage develops a phallic character, who is reckless, resolute, self-assured, and narcissistic—excessively vain and proud. The failure to resolve the conflict can also cause a person to be afraid or incapable of close love; As well, Freud postulated that fixation could be a root cause of homosexuality.

 

Latency period

The resolution of the phallic stage leads to the latency period, which is not a psychosexual stage of development, but a period in which the sexual drive lies dormant. Freud saw latency as a period of unparalleled repression of sexual desires and erogenous impulses. During the latency period, children pour this repressed libidal energy into asexual pursuits such as school, athletics, and same-sex friendships. But soon puberty strikes, and the genitals once again become a central focus of libidal energy.

 

The genital stage

In the genital stage, as the child’s energy once again focuses on his genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as he struggles with further repression and defenses.

 

Methods

Free association (Psychodynamic theory) is a technique used in psychology, devised by Sigmund Freud, though influenced largely from the work of Sir Francis Galton. In it, patients are asked to continually relate anything which comes into their minds, regardless of how superficially unimportant or potentially embarrassing the memory threatens to be. This technique assumes that all memories are arranged in a single associative network, and that sooner or later the subject will stumble across the crucial memory.

Freud developed the technique as an alternative to hypnosis, both because of its perceived fallibility and because he found that patients could recover and comprehend crucial memories while conscious. However, Freud found that despite a subject’s effort to remember, a certain resistance kept him or her from the most painful and important memories. He eventually came to the view that certain items were completely repressed, and off-limits to the conscious realm of the mind.

Freud’s eventual practice of psychoanalysis focused not so much on the recall of these memories as on the internal mental conflicts which kept them buried deep within the mind, though the technique of free association still plays a role today in the study of the mind.

(Wikipedia)

 

Dream analysis

• of interest to both Freud and Jung

• read their original texts for more discussion on such analysis

(Created 1992; added to the Victorian Web 6 December 2000; last modified 27 May 2001, No copyright indicated.)