Freud was born in 1856 to an Austrian family of non-observant Jews. Freud himself was an atheist which was reflected in his work but this did not stop him being assaulted due anti-Semitism.
Freud trained to become a doctor in Vienna and joined the staff of the General Hospital in 1882. He specialised in brain autonomy whilst collaborating with neurologist Joseph Breuer through treatment of hysterical patients using hypnosis. In 1885 he moved to Paris to study under neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot returning a year later whereupon he went into private medical practice.
In 1895, in conjunction with Breuer, Freud published a manuscript on hysteria which presented an original analysis on mental illness. Freud is credited to varying degrees with changing the moral attitude toward mental illness, i.e. behaviours seen as moral transgressions were now seen as symptoms of a disorder to be treated rather than a heinous act to be punished.
Eventually Freud ceased to use hypnosis, replacing it instead with psychoanalysis which consisted of nothing more than talking between patient and doctor.
Psychoanalysis was based on the theory that hysterical symptoms were the result of repressed psychological trauma that could be recovered by free association.
Free association is where the patient speaks about whatever comes to mind despite what these thoughts may be. The idea is that the patient can move past self censorship and say what is truly on their mind. The purpose of free association is to allow the patient to work freely through their own thoughts to allow personal insight with help from the analyst who can help make connections and identify central themes.
As a result of Freud’s many psychoanalytic sessions, he became convinced that psychological traumas originated from the patient’s infancy and had sexual content.
His theories of infantile sexuality were not without controversy and lead to a severing of ties with Breuer and isolation from his medical colleagues.
However Freud continued his work and eventually published his most important work in 1900 which was entitled: ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’
In this he argued dreams essentially are all forms of wish fulfilment, the attempts of the unconscious to resolve internal conflict which results in the confusing nature of dreams which are in fact the coded expression of the unconscious which usually relates to repressed sexual desires.
This was the first in a series of books by Freud that with each new instalment modified and refined his psychoanalytic theories up until his death.
Freud was appointed to an extraordinary chair of neuropathy at Vienna University in 1902 where he acquired pupils and colleages, some of which such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung eventually founded their own schools.
In his book: ‘Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.’ Freud summed up his psychoanalytic theory in two main tenants:
One states that our unconscious forms the greater part of our mental life; i.e. most of our thoughts and feelings are unconscious in nature.
The unconscious itself encompasses beliefs, desires and sentiments that are censored by the conscious and Freud believed it manifests in 3 ways:
Through everyday trivial mistakes, sometimes known as ‘Freudian Slips’ but Freud called ‘parapraxes.’ These are the idea that; for example when you say something but meant to say something else, you are in fact revealing your true thoughts and as such parapraxes have motive to reveal unconscious thoughts without censorship by the conscious mind. Freud referred to this level of unconscious as ‘superficial’ or ‘the preconscious.’
Dreams are another manifestation of unconscious thought or desire coded in symbolism to cover their latent (usually sexual) content. However the only way the symbolism can be removed and the true content revealed is for the person to use free association Freud argues. Only this will work as only the dreamer can understand the context and thus meanings and links of the symbolison in their dreams.
The third instance of the unconscious is in neurotic symptoms, neuroses can include symptoms such as OCD, anxiety and hysteria which are exhibited in behaviours which fall outside the socially acceptable. These seemingly random obsessive behaviours when analysed reveal our true motives.
The second tenant states that sexual impulses are the potential cause of mental illness (due to repression and sublimation) and are the catalyst for artistic creation.
Freud’s theories of infantile sexuality place sexual development as key not only to infant development but in understanding sexual repression revealed in patients through the use of free association.
Infant psychosexual development according to Freud is split into 5 stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent and Genital.
At the phallic stage, the child focuses on their genitals and learns to distinguish between genders. This is arguably the most important stage as this is when the Oedipus Complex occurs and gender is fully established. The Oedipus Complex is where a boy is sexually attracted to their mother and so wants to kill their father due to his possession of her. His hostility of his father leads him to fear reprisal in the form of castration and so the boy abandons his desires and gradually identifies with his father.
Freud did believe a female equivalent to the Oedipus complex existed, yet despite his efforts was unable to credibly create it in his work.
Freud’s theory stated that people who have become fixated at one of these stages, become neurotic and thus only through psychoanalysis can their issues be resolved.
In 1923 Freud published ‘The Ego and the id’ which replaced his earlier theory of the conscious and unconscious with the Ego, id and Superego.
The id represents primal desire and impulse. It works on the pleasure principle in that it seeks pleasure but avoids pain. It does not obey logic and may even contradict itself because it cannot reason, only want.
The Ego however represents reason and rationality, the mediator of the id in the same way that the conscious censors our unconscious thoughts. The Ego develops after the id and becomes stronger over time, however the Ego’s control over the id is never absolute which can result in parapraxes.
The Superego is the only one of these three which is not innate. It first exists in the form of parental authority but as the child grows and matures the superego develops and takes over this role. The Superego observes the efforts of the Ego, providing goals for it to attain to and punishing it when it fails with guilt for example.
Freud argued that a fine balance between all three must be maintained for one to have a healthy mind free of mental disorders.
Mental disorders he argues stem from an imbalance between two of these three. Depression is the result of conflict between the id and superego, neuroses are of conflict between the ego and id and psychoses are of conflict between the ego and external world.
Freud regarded himself as a scientist however his theories, those pertaining to medical science such as psychoanalysis have lost much of their credibility as effective treatments or explanations. A large problem is that many over of his theories are unfalsifiable in nature and thus cannot be tested by the scientific method. Furthermore his theories lack a large amount of quantitative evidence and research and the case studies Freud used to support his theories have in some cases been denounced as fabrications.
Instead it is Freud’s theories of the unconscious, of sexual desire and repression that have gathered a large following in philosophy and culture with Freud becoming known more in lieu of innuendo and sublimation than his own contributions to medical science.
