Sigmund Freud: Life and Theories

Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis

• Sigmund Freud is considered the most influential personality theorist, with a profound impact on psychology, psychiatry, and human nature.

The Life of Freud (1856-1939)

• Born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now the Czech Republic).
• Father was a wool merchant, and the family moved to Leipzig, Germany, and later to Vienna, where Freud spent almost 80 years.
• Freud's mother was 20 years old when he was born, and his father was 40 years old.
• Freud felt superior to his father and had a passionate, even sexual attachment to his mother.

The Early Years

• Freud was given a room of his own and encouraged to study by his parents.
• He was fluent in multiple languages, including German, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, French, and English.
• Freud entered high school a year earlier than typical and was frequently at the head of his class.

The Cocaine Episode

• Freud experimented with cocaine while in medical school, believing it to be a "miracle drug" that eased his depression and chronic indigestion.
• He wrote romantic, often erotic letters to his fiancée while under the influence of cocaine.
• He later published an article about cocaine's beneficial effects, which contributed to the epidemic of cocaine use in Europe and the United States.

Finding the Sexual Basis of Neurosis

• Freud was discouraged from pursuing a career in scientific research and instead entered private practice as a clinical neurologist.
• He studied with Jean Martin Charcot in Paris, who introduced him to the idea of hypnosis and the possible sexual basis of neurosis.
• Freud was reminded of the possible sexual origin of emotional problems when a colleague described a woman's anxiety stemming from her husband's impotence.

Childhood Sexual Abuse: Fact or Fantasy?

• Freud initially believed that childhood sexual traumas caused neurotic behavior in adulthood, based on reports from his women patients.
• However, he later changed his mind and announced that most of these reports were fantasies rather than facts.### Freud's Psychoanalytic Approach
• Freud's theory of neurosis was initially based on the idea that childhood sexual traumas were the cause of adult neuroses.
• He later concluded that the fantasies his patients described were quite real to them, but may not have actually happened.
• Freud believed that sex remained the cause of adult neuroses, even if the childhood traumas were fantasies.

The Seduction Theory

• Freud initially believed that childhood sexual abuse was a common occurrence, but later changed his mind and claimed that childhood seduction scenarios were fantasies.
• Some contemporary scholars suggest that Freud's original interpretation may have been correct, as childhood sexual abuse is more common than once thought.
• Freud may have deliberately suppressed the truth or genuinely believed that his patients were describing fantasies.

Freud's Personal Life

• Freud experienced personal sexual conflicts, including being shy and afraid of women, and being a virgin until he married at 30.
• He had a negative attitude toward sex, believing it to be degrading and contaminating both mind and body.
• Freud ended his own sex life at 41 and blamed his wife for the termination of his sex life.

Freud's Neurotic Episode

• Freud experienced a severe neurotic episode in his 40s, characterized by anxiety, physical symptoms, and fear of death.
• He diagnosed his condition as anxiety neurosis and neurasthenia, tracing both disturbances to an accumulation of sexual tension.
• Freud's personal life was deeply involved in his theory, as he used it to interpret and solve his own problems.

Analyzing Freud's Dreams

• Freud psychoanalyzed himself through the study of his own dreams, which helped him develop his theory of personality.
• He realized his hostility toward his father and recalled his childhood sexual longings for his mother.
• Freud's theory was formulated around his own neurotic conflicts and childhood experiences, as filtered through his interpretations of his dreams.

Freud's Ideas Attract Attention

• Freud's work became known through published articles and books, attracting a group of disciples who met with him weekly.
• The disciples included Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, who later broke with Freud to develop their own theories.
• Freud considered them traitors to the cause and never forgave them for disputing his approach to psychoanalysis.

Freud Comes to America

• Freud received formal recognition from the American psychological community in 1909, giving a series of lectures at Clark University.
• He was invited to receive an honorary doctoral degree, but did not like the United States, complaining about its informality, bad cooking, and scarcity of bathrooms.
• Freud's system of psychoanalysis was warmly welcomed in the United States, leading to the establishment of psychoanalytic societies in several cities.

The Final Years

• Freud reached the pinnacle of his success in the 1920s and 1930s, but his health began to deteriorate seriously due to cancer.
• He underwent 33 operations, including the removal of portions of his palate and upper jaw, and experienced almost constant pain.
• Freud refused to leave Vienna when the Nazis occupied Austria, but eventually fled to London in 1938.
• He continued to work until his death in 1939, when his physician administered a lethal dose of morphine to end his suffering.### Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
• Sigmund Freud is known for his theory of psychoanalysis, which emphasizes the role of unconscious thoughts and feelings in shaping behavior.
• The Freud Museum in London and the Library of Congress in Washington DC offer resources and exhibits on Freud's life and work.

Instincts and the Propelling Forces of the Personality

• According to Freud, instincts are the basic elements of the personality, driving forces that motivate behavior and determine its direction.
• Instincts are a form of energy, transformed physiological energy that connects bodily needs with mental wishes.
• The stimuli for instincts are internal, such as hunger and thirst, and generate a state of physiological excitation or energy.
• The mind transforms this bodily energy into a mental state, a wish, which motivates the person to behave in a way that satisfies the need.
• Freud's theory is a homeostatic approach, meaning that we are motivated to restore and maintain a condition of physiological equilibrium, or balance, to keep the body free of tension.

Two Types of Instincts

• Freud grouped instincts into two categories: life instincts and death instincts.
• Life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual and the species, seeking to satisfy needs for food, water, air, and sex.
• The life instincts are oriented toward growth and development, and the psychic energy manifested by the life instincts is the libido.
• The libido can be attached to or invested in objects, a concept Freud called cathexis.
• Death instincts, on the other hand, are the unconscious drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression.
• The aggressive drive compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill, and Freud considered it a compelling part of human nature as sex.

The Levels of Personality

• Freud's original conception divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious.
• The conscious includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment.
• The unconscious is the larger, invisible portion below the surface, containing the instincts, wishes, and desires that direct our behavior.
• The preconscious is the storehouse of all our memories, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness.

The Structure of Personality

• Freud later revised his notion of three levels of personality and introduced three basic structures: the id, the ego, and the superego.
• The id corresponds to Freud's earlier notion of the unconscious and is the reservoir for the instincts and libido.
• The id operates according to the pleasure principle, seeking to increase pleasure and avoid pain, and functions to satisfy bodily needs.
• The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or postponement of satisfaction for any reason.
• The id is a selfish, pleasure-seeking structure, primitive, amoral, insistent, and rash.