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chapter 2 Sigmund Freud:...

chapter 2 Sigmund Freud: Fair Use Psychoanalysis Turn your eyes inward, look into your own depths, learn to first know yourself. —Sigmund Freud The Life of Freud (1856–1939) Growing up Is Not Easy The Early Years The Oral Stage: Taking In or Spitting Out The Cocaine Episode The Anal Stage: Letting Go or Holding Back Finding the Sexual Basis of Neurosis The Phallic Stage Childhood Sexual Abuse: Fact or Fantasy? The Latency Period Freud’s Own Sex Life The Genital Stage Freud’s Neurotic Episode The Importance of Childhood Analyzing Freud’s Dreams Questions about Human Nature Freud’s Ideas Attract Attention Freud Comes to America Assessment in Freud’s Theory The Final Years Free Association Free Association Is Not Always so Free Instincts: The Propelling Forces of the Dream Analysis Personality Uncovering the Conflicts Two Types of Instincts Criticisms of Freud’s Research The Levels of Personality Freud’s Negative Views on Experimental Research The Structure of Personality Scientific Testing of Freudian Concepts The Id Extensions of Freudian Theory The Ego Ego Psychology: Anna Freud The Superego Reflections on Freud’s Theory Anxiety: A Threat to the Ego The Decline of Freudian Psychotherapy Reality Anxiety Criticisms of Psychoanalysis Neurotic Anxiety Freud’s Lasting Influence Moral Anxiety The Purpose of Anxiety Chapter Summary Defenses against Anxiety Review Questions Lying to Ourselves Suggested Readings Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development It is no exaggeration to say that personality theory has been influenced more by psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud than by anyone else. His system of psychoanalysis was the first for- Sigmund Freud’s mal theory of personality and is still the best known. Not only did Freud’s work affect theory of personality and system of therapy thinking about personality in psychology and psychiatry, but it also made a tremendous for treating mental impact on the way we look at human nature in general. Few ideas in the history of civi- disorders. lization have had such a broad and profound influence. When he died in 1939, the New York Times noted his passing in an editorial stating that Freud was “the most effective disturber of complacency in our time” (quoted in Bakalar, 2011, p. D7). 37 Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 38 The Psychoanalytic Approach Many of the personality theories proposed after Freud are derivatives of or ela- borations on his basic work. Others owe their impetus and direction in part to their opposition to Freud’s psychoanalysis. It would be difficult to comprehend and assess the development of the field of personality without first understanding Freud’s system. The Life of Freud (1856–1939) The Early Years Freud was born in 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, which is now the town of Pribor, in the Czech Republic. His father was a relatively unsuccessful wool merchant. When his busi- ness failed in Moravia, he moved the family to Leipzig, Germany, and then later, when Freud was 4, to Vienna, where Freud remained for almost 80 years. When Freud was born his father was 40 years old and his mother (his father’s third wife) was only 20. The father was strict and authoritarian. Freud later remembered how much hostility and anger he felt toward him when he was growing up. He also felt superior to his father as early as age 2. Freud’s mother was very attractive and she was extremely protective and loving toward Sigmund, her first son. Freud felt a passionate, even sexual attachment to her, a relationship that set the stage for his concept of the Oedipus complex. As we will see, much of Freud’s theory reflected and built on his own experiences as a child. Freud’s mother took pride in young Sigmund, convinced he would become a great man. Among Freud’s lifelong personality characteristics were a high degree of self- confidence, an intense ambition to succeed, and dreams of glory and fame. Showing the impact of his mother’s continuing attention and support he wrote: “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that con- fidence of success that often induces real success” (quoted in Jones, 1953, p. 5). There were eight children in the Freud family, two of them his adult halfbrothers with children of their own. Freud resented them all and grew jealous whenever another competitor for his mother’s full-time attention and affection was born. From an early age he exhibited a high level of intelligence, which his parents helped to foster. His sisters were not allowed to practice the piano lest the noise disturb Freud’s studies. He was given a room of his own; he often took his meals there so as not to lose time from his studies. The room was the only one in the apartment to contain a prized oil lamp; the rest of the family had to use candles. Freud entered high school a year earlier than was typical and was frequently at the head of his class. He was fluent in German and Hebrew, and mastered Latin, Greek, French, and English in school and taught himself Italian and Spanish. As a youngster he enjoyed reading Shakespeare in English. Freud had many interests, including military history, but when it came time to choose a career from among the few professions that were open to Jews in Vienna, he settled on medicine. It was not that he wanted to become a physician but rather he believed that the study of medicine would lead to a career in scientific research, which would in turn bring him the fame he so strongly wanted and felt he deserved. The Cocaine Episode While in medical school, Freud began to experiment with cocaine, which at that time was not an illegal substance. He took the drug himself and persuaded his fiancée, sisters, and friends to try it. Freud called cocaine a miracle drug and claimed it eased his depres- sion and chronic indigestion. He “continued to use cocaine to make bad days good and Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 39 good days better. Cocaine thrilled him in a manner that everyday life could not. He wrote romantic, often erotic letters to his fiancée [and] dreamed grandiose dreams of his future career” (Markel, 2011, p. 81). In 1884, he published an article about cocaine’s beneficial effects, thinking it would make him famous. But that was not to be. This article was later judged to be a major contributor to the epidemic of cocaine use which swept over Europe and the United States, lasting well into the 1920s. Freud was strongly criticized for his part in unleashing the cocaine plague. The publicity later brought him infamy rather than fame, and for the rest of his life he tried to erase his earlier endorsements of cocaine, deleting all references to it from his own bibliography. However, he continued to use cocaine well into middle age (Freud, 1985). He apparently took it from 1884 to 1896, and then switched to wine. In June 1899, he wrote to a friend, “I am gradually becoming accustomed to the wine; it seems like an old friend. I plan to drink a lot of it in July” (quoted in Markel, 2011, p. 177). Finding the Sexual Basis of Neurosis Freud was discouraged from pursuing his intended career in scientific research when his major professor told him that it would be many years before he could obtain a profes- sorship and support himself financially. Because he lacked an independent income, he believed his only choice was to enter private practice. A further impetus was his engage- ment to Martha Bernays, which lasted 4 years before they could afford to marry. Freud established practice as a clinical neurologist in 1881 and began his exploration of the personalities of people suffering from emotional disorders. He studied several months in Paris with the psychiatrist Jean Martin Charcot, a pio- neer in the use of hypnosis, who alerted Freud to the possible sexual basis of neurosis. Freud overheard Charcot say that a particular patient’s problem was sexual in origin. “In this sort of case,” Charcot said, “it’s always a question of the genitals—always, always, always” (Charcot quoted in Freud, 1914, p. 14). Freud noted that while Charcot was discussing this issue he “crossed his hands in his lap and jumped up and down several times…. for a moment I was almost paralyzed with astonishment” (Freud quoted in Prochnik, 2006, p. 135). When Freud returned to Vienna, he was again reminded of the possible sexual origin of emotional problems. A colleague described a woman patient’s anxiety, which the ther- apist believed stemmed from her husband’s impotence. The husband had never had sex- ual relations with his wife in 18 years of marriage. “The sole prescription for such a malady,” Freud’s colleague said, “is familiar enough to us, but we cannot order it. It runs: Penis normalis dosim repetatur!” (quoted in Freud, 1914, p. 14). As a result of these incidents, and his own sexual conflicts, Freud was led to consider the possibility of a sexual basis for emotional disturbance. Childhood Sexual Abuse: Fact or Fantasy? After several years in clinical practice, Freud was increasingly convinced that sexual con- flicts were the primary cause of all neuroses. He claimed that the majority of his women patients reported traumatic sexual experiences from their childhoods. These events resem- bled seduction, with the seducer usually being an older male relative, typically the father. Today we call such experiences child abuse, and they often involve rape or incest. Freud believed that it was these early sexual traumas that caused neurotic behavior in adulthood. About a year after he published this theory, Freud changed his mind and announced that in most cases the childhood sexual abuse his patients told him about had never Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 40 The Psychoanalytic Approach really happened. They had been telling him fantasies, Freud claimed. At first, this was a stunning blow, for it seemed that the foundation of his theory of neurosis had been undermined. How could childhood sexual traumas be the cause of neurotic behavior if they had never happened? On further reflection, Freud concluded that the fantasies his patients described were quite real to them. They believed that the shocking sexual events had actually happened. Because the fantasies still focused on sex, then sex remained the cause of adult neuroses. In 1898, he wrote that “the most immediate and most significant causes of neurotic ill- ness are to be found in factors arising from sexual life” (quoted in Breger, 2000, p. 117). It is important to note that Freud never claimed that all the childhood sexual abuses his patients reported were fantasies; what he did deny was that his patients’ reports were always true. It was, Freud wrote, “hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general” (Freud, 1954, pp. 215–216). Today we know that childhood sexual abuse is much more common than once thought, which led contemporary scholars to suggest that Freud’s original interpretation of the seduction experiences may have been correct. We do not know whether Freud deliberately suppressed the truth, perhaps to make his theory more acceptable, or whether he genuinely believed that his patients were describing fantasies. It may well be that “more of Freud’s patients were telling the truth about their childhood experiences than [Freud] was ultimately prepared to believe” (Crewsdon, 1988, p. 41). Ten years after Freud changed his mind and announced that childhood seduction sce- narios were fantasies, he admitted in a letter to a friend that such traumatic experiences were frequently genuine. A few years later he confided to another friend that “I have myself analyzed and cured several cases of real incest (of the most severe kind)” (quotes from Kahr, 2010, p. 4). The conclusion that child sexual abuse occurred more often than Freud was willing to admit publicly was reached by one of Freud’s disciples in the 1930s, and Freud tried to suppress the publication of his ideas. It has also been suggested that Freud changed his position on the seduction theory because he realized that if sexual abuse was so wide- spread, then many fathers (including perhaps his own) would be considered suspect of perverse acts against their children (Krüll, 1986). Freud’s Own Sex Life It is a paradox that Freud, who emphasized the importance of sex in emotional life, experienced so many personal sexual conflicts. He “had no contact with members of the opposite sex throughout [his early years]. He was decidedly shy and afraid of women and was a virgin when he married at age 30” (Breger, 2009, p. 11). His attitude toward sex was negative. He wrote about the dangers of sex, even for those who were not neurotic, and urged people to rise above what he called the common animal need for sex. The sex act was degrading, he wrote, because it contaminated both mind and body. He apparently ended his own sex life at the age of 41, writing to a friend: “sexual excitation is of no more use to a person like me” (Freud, 1954, p. 227). He occasionally had been impo- tent during his marriage and had sometimes chosen to abstain from sex because he dis- liked condoms and coitus interruptus, the standard birth control methods of the day. Freud blamed his wife, Martha, for the termination of his sex life, and for many years he had dreams involving his resentment toward her for forcing him to abandon sex. “He felt resentful because she became pregnant so easily, because she often became ill during her pregnancies, and because she refused to engage in any kind of sexual activity beyond [procreative acts]” (Elms, 1994, p. 45). Thus, Freud’s periods of impotence may also have been related to his fear that Martha would become pregnant again. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 41 Freud’s Neurotic Episode Freud’s personal frustrations and conflicts about sex surfaced in the form of neuroses, in the same way he believed sexual difficulties affected his patients. In his 40s, he experi- enced a severe neurotic episode, which he described as involving “odd states of mind not intelligible to consciousness—cloudy thoughts and veiled doubts, with barely here and there a ray of light…. I still do not know what has been happening to me” (Freud, 1954, pp. 210–212). He was also troubled by a variety of physical symptoms, including migraine headaches, urinary problems, and a spastic colon. He worried about dying, feared for his heart, and became anxious about travel and open spaces. It was not a happy time for him. Freud diagnosed his condition as anxiety neurosis and neurasthenia—a neurotic condi- tion characterized by weakness, worry, and disturbances of digestion and circulation. He traced both disturbances to an accumulation of sexual tension. In his writings, he proposed that neurasthenia in men resulted from masturbation, and anxiety neurosis arose from abnormal sexual practices such as coitus interruptus and abstinence. By so labeling his symptoms, “his personal life was thus deeply involved in this particular theory, since with its help he was trying to interpret and solve his own problems…. Freud’s theory of actual neurosis is thus a theory of his own neurotic symptoms” (Krüll, 1986, pp. 14, 20). Despite Freud’s personal conflicts about sex (or perhaps because of them), he was fas- cinated by beautiful women. A friend noted that “among [Freud’s] students there were so many attractive women that it began to look like more than a matter of chance” (Roazen, 1993, p. 138). Analyzing Freud’s Dreams Freud psychoanalyzed himself through the study of his own dreams, a process he contin- ued for the rest of his life. When he started, he wrote to a friend that “The chief patient I am busy with is myself” (quoted in Kandel, 2012, p. 63). It was during this period that he performed his most creative work in developing his theory of personality. Through the exploration of his dreams, he realized, for the first time, how much hostility he felt toward his father. He recalled his childhood sexual longings for his mother and dreamed of a sex wish toward his eldest daughter. Thus, he formulated much of his theory around his own neurotic conflicts and childhood experiences, as filtered through his interpreta- tions of his dreams. As he perceptively observed, “The most important patient for me was my own person” (Freud quoted in Gay, 1988, p. 96). Freud’s Ideas Attract Attention As his work became known through published articles and books as well as papers pre- sented at scientific meetings, Freud attracted a group of disciples who met with him once a week to learn about his new system. The topic of their first meeting was the psychology of cigar making. One writer referred to the group as a second-rate “collection of mar- ginal neurotics” (Gardner, 1993, p. 51). Freud’s daughter Anna described the early disci- ples a bit more charitably as the “unconventional ones, the doubters, those who were dissatisfied with the limitations imposed on knowledge; also among them were the odd ones, the dreamers, and those who knew neurotic suffering from their own experience” (quoted in Coles, 1998, p. 144). 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 he never forgave them for disputing his approach to psychoanalysis. At a family dinner, he com- plained about his followers’ disloyalty. “The trouble with you, Sigi,” said his aunt, “is that you just don’t understand people” (quoted in Hilgard, 1987, p. 641). Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 42 The Psychoanalytic Approach At home, Freud led a disciplined and regimented life. His daughter-in-law remarked, “The Freuds had their noontime meal, the main meal in Vienna, at the stroke of one, and war or no war, you had to be there on time or not eat” (quoted in Berman, 2008, p. 561). Freud Comes to America In 1909, Freud received formal recognition from the American psychological community. He was invited to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and to receive an honorary doctoral degree. Although grateful for the honor, Freud did not like the United States, and complained about its informality, bad cooking, and scarcity of bathrooms. Although he had been troubled by gastrointestinal problems for many years prior to his visit, “he blamed the New World for ruining his digestion” (Prochnik, 2006, p. 35). Freud’s system of psychoanalysis was warmly welcomed in the United States. Two years after his visit, American followers founded the American Psychoanalytic Associa- tion and the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Over the next few years, psychoanalytic societies were established in Boston, Chicago, and Washington DC. In 1920, only 11 years after his visit to America, more than 200 books on his work had been published in the United States (Abma, 2004). Leading U.S. magazines such as Time, Ladies’ Home Journal, and The New Republic featured articles about Freud. Dr. Benjamin Spock’s phenomenally successful baby and child care books that influenced the raising of several generations of America children were based on Freud’s teachings. Freud’s work on dreams even inspired a popular song that included the line: “Don’t tell me what you dream’d last night—For I’ve been reading Freud” (quoted in Fancher, 2000, p. 1026). America may have made Freud sick, so he claimed, but it also helped bring him worldwide fame. The Final Years During the 1920s and 1930s, Freud reached the pinnacle of his success, but at the same time his health began to deteriorate seriously. From 1923 until his death 16 years later, he underwent 33 operations for cancer of the mouth, perhaps as a result of his smoking 20 cigars daily. Portions of his palate and upper jaw were surgically removed, and he experienced almost constant pain, for which he refused medication. He also received X-ray and radium treatments and even had a vasectomy, which some physicians thought would halt the growth of the cancer. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they expressed their feelings about Freud by publicly burning his books, along with those of other so-called “enemies of the state,” such as the physicist Albert Einstein and the writer Ernest Hemingway. “What progress we are making,” Freud wrote. “In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me; nowadays they are content with burning my books” (Freud quoted in Jones, 1957, p. 182). In 1938, the Nazis occupied Austria, but despite the urgings of his friends, Freud refused to leave Vienna. Several times gangs of Nazis invaded his home. It was not until his daughter Anna was arrested (and later released) that Freud agreed to leave for London. Four of his sisters died in Nazi concentration camps. Freud’s health became even worse, but he remained mentally alert and continued to work almost to the last day of his life. By late September 1939, he told his physician, Max Schur, “Now it’s nothing but torture and makes no sense any more” (quoted in Schur, 1972, p. 529). The doctor had promised that he would not let Freud suffer needlessly. He administered three injections of morphine over the next 24 hours, each dose greater than necessary for sedation, and brought Freud’s long years of pain to an end. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 43 LOG ON Sigmund Freud Various sites provide biographical information, discussions of his theory, research on rel- evant concepts, and links to other resources. The Sigmund Freud Museum, London Visit the Freud Museum in London to see photos, depictions of Freud’s years in England, and furnishings from his home in Vienna, including the famous psychoanalytic couch. You can also purchase a Freud T-shirt, coffee mug, mouse pad, jigsaw puzzle, or beanie. Library of Congress: Freud Exhibition The exhibition on Freud displayed at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, in 1998, contains many photographs and other items of interest. Instincts: The Propelling Forces of the Personality instincts In Freud’s Freud wrote that instincts were the basic elements of the personality, the motivating system, mental repre- forces that drive behavior and determine its direction. Freud’s German term for this con- sentations of internal cept is Trieb, which is a driving force or impulse (Bettelheim, 1984). Instincts are a form stimuli, such as hunger, of energy—transformed physiological energy—that connects the needs of the body with that drive a person to the wishes of the mind. take certain actions. The stimuli for instincts—hunger and thirst, for example—are internal. When a need such as hunger is aroused in the body, it generates a state of physiological excitation or energy. The mind transforms this bodily energy into a wish. It is this wish—the mental representation of the physiological need—that is the instinct or driving force that moti- vates the person to behave in a way that satisfies the need. A hungry person, for exam- ple, will look for food. The instinct is not the bodily state itself (the hunger). Rather, it is the bodily need transformed into a mental state, a wish. When the body is in such a state of need, the person experiences a feeling of tension or pressure. The aim of an instinct is to satisfy the need and thereby reduce the tension. Freud’s theory is therefore 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. Freud believed that we always experience a certain level or amount of instinctual ten- sion and that we must continually act to reduce it. It is not possible to escape the pres- sure of our physiological needs as we might escape some annoying stimulus in our external environment. This means that instincts are always influencing our behavior, in a cycle of need leading to reduction of need. People may take different paths to satisfy their needs. For example, the sex drive may be satisfied by heterosexual behavior, homosexual behavior, or autosexual behavior, or the sex drive may be channeled into a totally different form of activity. Freud believed that psychic energy could be displaced to substitute objects, and this displacement was of primary importance in determining an individual’s personality. Although the instincts are the exclusive source of energy for human behavior, the resulting energy can be invested in a variety of activities. This helps explain the diversity we see in human behavior. All the interests, preferences, and attitudes we display as adults were believed by Freud to be displacements of energy from the original objects that satisfied the instinctual needs. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 44 The Psychoanalytic Approach Two Types of Instincts Freud grouped the instincts into two categories: life instincts and death instincts. life instincts The drive The Life Instincts The life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual for ensuring survival of and the species by seeking to satisfy the needs for food, water, air, and sex. the individual and the The life instincts are oriented toward growth and development. The psychic energy species by satisfying manifested by the life instincts is the libido. The libido can be attached to or invested the needs for food, in objects, a concept Freud called cathexis. If you like your roommate, for example, water, air, and sex. Freud would say that your libido is cathected to him or her. libido To Freud, the The life instinct Freud considered most important for the personality is sex, which he form of psychic energy, defined in broad terms. He was not referring exclusively to the erotic, but also included manifested by the life almost all pleasurable behaviors and thoughts. He described his view as enlarging or instincts, that drives a extending the accepted concept of sexuality. He considered the sexual impulses to person toward plea- include “all of those merely affectionate and friendly impulses to which usage applies surable behaviors and the exceedingly ambiguous word ‘love’ ” (Freud, 1925, p. 38). thoughts. Freud regarded sex as our primary motivation. Erotic wishes arise from the body’s cathexis An invest- erogenous zones: the mouth, anus, and sex organs. He suggested that people are predom- ment of psychic energy inantly pleasure-seeking beings, and much of his personality theory revolves around the in an object or person. necessity of inhibiting or suppressing our sexual longings. The Death Instincts In opposition to the life instincts, Freud postulated the destruc- death instincts The tive or death instincts. Drawing from biology, he stated the obvious fact that all living unconscious drive things decay and die, returning to their original inanimate state, and he believed that toward decay, people have an unconscious wish to die. One component of the death instincts is the destruction, and aggressive drive, which he saw as the wish to die turned against objects other than the aggression. self. The aggressive drive compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill. Freud came to con- aggressive drive The sider aggression as compelling a part of human nature as sex. compulsion to destroy, Freud developed the notion of the death instincts later in his life, as a reflection of his conquer, and kill. own experiences. He endured the physiological and psychological debilitations of age, his cancer got worse, and he witnessed the large-scale carnage of World War I. In addition, one of his daughters died at the age of 26, leaving two young children. All these events affected him deeply, and, as a result, death and aggression became major themes in his theory, and in his own life as well. In his later years, Freud dreaded his own death, and exhibited high levels of hostility, hatred, and aggressiveness toward those colleagues and disciples who disputed his views and left his psychoanalytic circle. The concept of the death instincts achieved only limited acceptance, even among Freud’s most dedicated followers. One psychoanalyst wrote that the idea should be “rele- gated to the dustbin of history” (Sulloway, 1979, p. 394). Another suggested that if Freud were a genius, then the suggestion of the death instincts was an instance of a genius hav- ing a bad day (Eissler, 1971). The Levels of Personality Freud’s original conception divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the pre- conscious, and the unconscious. The conscious, as Freud defined the term, corresponds to its ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment. As you read these words, for example, you may be conscious of the sight of the page, a message you want to send to a friend, and someone playing loud music next door. Freud considered the conscious to be a limited aspect of personality because only a small portion of our thoughts, sensations, and memories exists in conscious awareness Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 45 at any one time. He likened the mind to an iceberg. The conscious is that part above the surface of the water—the tip of the iceberg. More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control. Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of all our memo- ries, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. For example, in the unlikely event your mind strays from this page and you begin to think about what you did last night, you would be summoning up material from your preconscious into your conscious. We often find our attention shifting back and forth from experiences of the moment to events and memories in the preconscious. The Structure of Personality The Id Freud later revised this notion of three levels of personality and introduced in its place three basic structures in the anatomy of the personality: the id, the ego, and the superego (see id To Freud, the aspect Figure 2.1). The id corresponds to Freud’s earlier notion of the unconscious (although the of personality allied ego and superego have unconscious aspects as well). The id is the reservoir for the instincts with the instincts; the and libido (the psychic energy manifested by the instincts). The id is a powerful structure of source of psychic the personality because it supplies all the energy for the other two components. energy, the id operates Because the id is the reservoir of the instincts, it is vitally and directly related to the according to the plea- satisfaction of bodily needs. As we saw earlier, tension is produced when the body is in a sure principle. state of need, and the person acts to reduce this tension by satisfying the need. The id FIGURE 2.1 Freud’s levels and structures of Conscious: personality. Contact with outside world EGO Preconscious: Reality principle Material just beneath the surface of Secondary process thinking awareness Unconscious: Difficult to retrieve material; SUPEREGO well below the surface ID of awareness Moral imperatives Pleasure principle Primary process thinking Source: From Weiten, Psychology: Themes and Variations, 2E. © 1992 Cengage Learning. Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 46 The Psychoanalytic Approach pleasure principle The operates in accordance with what Freud called the pleasure principle. Through its con- principle by which the cern with tension reduction, the id functions to increase pleasure and avoid pain. id functions to avoid The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or pain and maximize postponement of satisfaction for any reason. It knows only instant gratification; it drives pleasure. us to want what we want when we want it, without regard for what anyone else wants. The id is a selfish, pleasure-seeking structure—primitive, amoral, insistent, and rash. primary-process The id has no awareness of reality. We might compare the id to a newborn baby who cries thought Childlike think- and frantically waves its legs and arms when its needs are not met but who has no knowledge ing by which the id of how to bring about satisfaction. Hungry infants cannot find food on their own. The only attempts to satisfy the ways the id can attempt to satisfy its needs are through reflex action and wish-fulfilling hal- instinctual drives. lucinatory or fantasy experience, which Freud labeled primary-process thought. The Ego Most children learn that they cannot grab food from other people unless they are willing to face the consequences. For example, kids learn that they have to postpone the pleasure obtained from relieving anal tensions until they get to a bathroom, or that they cannot indiscriminately give vent to sexual and aggressive longings. The growing child is taught to deal intelligently and rationally with other people and the outside world and to develop the powers of perception, recognition, judgment, and memory—the powers secondary-process adults use to satisfy their needs. Freud called these abilities secondary-process thought. thought Mature We can sum up these characteristics as reason or rationality, and they are contained thought processes in Freud’s second structure of personality, the ego, which is the rational master of the needed to deal ratio- personality. Its purpose is not to thwart the impulses of the id but to help the id obtain nally with the external the tension reduction it craves. Because the ego is aware of reality, however, it decides world. when and how the id instincts can best be satisfied. It determines appropriate and ego To Freud, the socially acceptable times, places, and objects that will satisfy the id impulses. rational aspect of the The ego does not prevent id satisfaction. Rather, it tries to postpone, delay, or redirect personality, responsi- it in order to meet the demands of reality. It perceives and manipulates the environment ble for directing and in a practical and realistic manner and so is said to operate in accordance with the controlling the instincts reality principle. (The reality principle stands in opposition to the pleasure principle, according to the reality by which the id operates.) principle. The ego thus exerts control over the id impulses. Freud compared the relationship of reality principle The the ego and the id to that of a rider on a horse. The raw, brute power of the horse must principle by which the be guided, checked, and reined in by the rider; otherwise the horse could bolt and run, ego functions to pro- throwing the rider to the ground. vide appropriate con- The ego serves two masters—the id and reality—and is constantly mediating and straints on the striking compromises between their conflicting demands. Also, the ego is never indepen- expression of the id dent of the id. It is always responsive to the id’s demands and derives its power and instincts. energy from the id. It is the ego, the rational master, which keeps you working at a job you may not like, if the alternative is being unable to provide food and shelter for your family. It is the ego that forces you to get along with people you dislike because reality demands such behav- ior from you as an appropriate way of satisfying id demands. This controlling and postponing function of the ego must be exercised constantly. If not, the id impulses might come to dominate and overthrow the rational ego. A person controlled by the id can easily become a danger to society, and might end up in treat- ment or in prison. Freud argued that we must protect ourselves from being controlled by the id and proposed various unconscious mechanisms with which to defend the ego. So far, we have a picture of Freud’s view of the human personality as being in a con- stant state of battle. It’s trying to restrain the id while at the same time serving it, per- ceiving and manipulating reality to relieve the tensions of the id impulses. Driven by Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 47 instinctual biological forces that it strives to satisfy, the personality walks a tightrope between the demands of the id and the demands of reality, both of which require con- stant vigilance. The Superego The id and the ego do not represent Freud’s complete picture of human nature. There is also a third set of forces—a powerful and largely unconscious set of dictates or beliefs— that we acquire in childhood: our ideas of right and wrong. In everyday language we call superego To Freud, the this internal morality a conscience. Freud called it the superego. moral aspect of per- He believed that this moral side of the personality is usually learned by the age of 5 or sonality; the internali- 6 and consists initially of the rules of conduct set down by our parents. Through praise, zation of parental and punishment, and example, children learn which behaviors their parents consider good or societal values and bad. Those behaviors for which children are punished form the conscience, one part of standards. the superego. The second part of the superego is the ego-ideal, which consists of good, conscience A compo- or correct, behaviors for which children have been praised. nent of the superego In this way, Freud believed, children learn a set of rules that earn either acceptance or that contains behaviors rejection from their parents. In time, children internalize these teachings, and the rewards for which the child has and punishments become self-administered. Parental control is replaced by self-control. been punished. We come to behave at least in partial conformity with these now largely unconscious ego-ideal A compo- moral guidelines. As a result of this internalization, we feel guilt or shame whenever we nent of the superego perform (or even think of performing) some action contrary to this moral code. that contains the moral As the ultimate arbiter of morality, the superego is relentless, even cruel, in its con- or ideal behaviors for stant quest for moral perfection. It never lets up. In terms of intensity, irrationality, and which a person should insistence on obedience, it is not unlike the id. Its purpose is not merely to postpone the strive. pleasure-seeking demands of the id, as the ego does, but to inhibit them completely, par- ticularly those demands concerned with sex and aggression. The superego strives neither for pleasure (as the id does) nor for attainment of realis- tic goals (as the ego does). It strives solely for moral perfection. The id presses for satis- faction, the ego tries to delay it, and the superego urges morality above all. Like the id, the superego admits no compromise with its demands. The ego is caught in the middle, pressured by these insistent and opposing forces. Thus, the ego has a third master, the superego. To paraphrase Freud, the poor ego has a hard time of it, pressured on three sides, threatened by three dangers: the id, reality, and the superego. The inevitable result of this friction, when the ego is too severely strained, is the development of anxiety. Anxiety: A Threat to the Ego You already have a general idea of what the word anxiety means because you know how you feel when you’re anxious about something. Anxiety is not unlike fear, but we may anxiety To Freud, a not know what we’re afraid of. Freud described anxiety as an objectless fear, meaning feeling of fear and that we cannot point to its source, to a specific object that caused it. dread without an obvi- Freud made anxiety an important part of his personality theory, asserting that it is ous cause; reality fundamental to the development of all neurotic and psychotic behavior. He suggested anxiety is a fear of that the prototype of all anxiety is the birth trauma. tangible dangers; neu- The fetus in its mother’s womb is in the most stable and secure of worlds, where rotic anxiety involves a every need is satisfied without delay. But at birth, the organism is thrust into a hostile conflict between id and environment. Suddenly, it is required to begin adapting to reality because its instinctual ego; moral anxiety involves a conflict demands may not always be immediately met. The newborn’s nervous system, immature between id and and ill prepared, is bombarded with diverse sensory stimuli. superego. Consequently, the infant engages in massive motor movements, heightened breathing, and increased heart rate. This birth trauma, with its tension and fear that the id instincts Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 48 The Psychoanalytic Approach won’t be satisfied, is our first experience with anxiety, according to Freud. From it, the pattern of reactions and feelings that will occur every time we are exposed to some threat in the future develops. When we cannot cope with anxiety, when we are in danger of being overwhelmed by it, the anxiety is said to be traumatic. What Freud meant by this is that the person, regardless of age, is reduced to a state of helplessness like that experienced in infancy. In adult life, infantile helplessness is reenacted to some degree whenever the ego is threatened. Freud proposed three different types of anxiety: reality anxiety, neurotic anx- iety, and moral anxiety. Reality Anxiety The first type of anxiety, the one from which the others are derived, is reality anxiety (or objective anxiety). This involves a fear of real dangers in the real world. Most of us justi- fiably fear fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and similar disasters. We run from wild ani- mals, jump out of the paths of speeding cars, and run out of burning buildings. Reality anxiety serves the positive purpose of guiding our behavior to escape or pro- tect ourselves from actual dangers. Our fear subsides when the threat is no longer pres- ent. These reality-based fears can be carried to extremes, however. The person who cannot leave home for fear of being hit by a car or who cannot light a match for fear of fire is carrying reality-based fears beyond the point of normality. Neurotic Anxiety The other kinds of anxiety, neurotic anxiety and moral anxiety, are more consistently troublesome to our mental health. Neurotic anxiety has its basis in childhood, in a con- flict between instinctual gratification and reality. Children are often punished for overtly expressing sexual or aggressive impulses. Therefore, the wish to gratify certain id impulses generates anxiety. This neurotic anxiety is an unconscious fear of being punished for impulsively dis- playing id-dominated behavior. Note that the fear is not of the instincts themselves, but of what might happen as a result of gratifying the instincts. The conflict becomes one between the id and the ego, and its origin has some basis in reality. Moral Anxiety Moral anxiety results from a conflict between the id and the superego. In essence, it is a fear of one’s conscience. When you are motivated to express an instinctual impulse that is contrary to your moral code, your superego retaliates by causing you to feel shame or guilt. In everyday terms, you might describe yourself as conscience-stricken. Moral anxiety is a function of how well developed the superego is. A person with a strong inhibiting conscience will experience greater conflict than a person with a less strin- gent set of moral guidelines. Like neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety has some basis in reality. Children are punished for violating their parents’ moral codes, and adults are pun- ished for violating society’s moral code. The shame and guilt feelings in moral anxiety arise from within; it is our conscience that causes the fear and the anxiety. Freud believed that the superego exacts a terrible retribution for violation of its tenets. The Purpose of Anxiety Anxiety serves as a warning to the person that something is amiss within the personality. Anxiety induces tension in the organism and thus becomes a drive (much like hunger or thirst) that the individual is motivated to satisfy. The tension must be reduced. Anxiety alerts the individual that the ego is being threatened and that unless action is taken, the ego might be overthrown. How can the ego protect or defend itself? There are Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 49 a number of options: running away from the threatening situation, inhibiting the impul- sive need that is the source of the danger, or obeying the dictates of the conscience. If none of these rational techniques works, the person may resort to defense mechanisms—the nonrational strategies designed to defend the ego. Defenses against Anxiety We saw that anxiety is a signal that impending danger, a threat to the ego, must be counteracted or avoided. The ego has to reduce the conflict between the demands of the id and the strictures of society as represented by the superego. According to Freud, this conflict is ever present because the instincts are always pressing for satisfaction, while the taboos of society are always working to limit such satisfaction. Freud believed that the defenses must, to some extent, always be in operation. All behaviors are motivated by instincts; similarly, all behaviors are defensive in the sense of defending against anxiety. The intensity of the battle within the personality may fluc- defense mechanisms tuate, but it never stops. Freud postulated several defense mechanisms (see Table 2.1) Strategies the ego uses and noted that we rarely use just one; we typically defend ourselves against anxiety by to defend itself against using several at the same time. Also, some overlap exists among the mechanisms. the anxiety provoked Although defense mechanisms vary in their specifics, they share two characteristics in by conflicts of every- common: (1) they are all denials or distortions of reality—necessary ones, but distortions day life. Defense nonetheless, and (2) they all operate unconsciously. We are unaware of them, which means mechanisms involve that on the conscious level we hold distorted or unreal images of our world and ourselves. denials or distortions of reality. Repression repression, which is the most fundamental and frequently used defense repression A defense mechanism, is an involuntary removal of something from conscious awareness. It is an mechanism that unconscious type of forgetting of the existence of something that brings us discomfort or involves unconscious pain. Repression can operate on memories of situations or people, on our perception of denial of the existence the present (so that we may fail to see some obviously disturbing event right in front of of something that us), and even on the body’s physiological functioning. For example, a man can so causes anxiety. strongly repress the sex drive that he becomes impotent. Once repression is operating, it is difficult to eliminate. Because we use repression to protect ourselves from danger, in order to remove it, we would have to realize that the idea or memory is no longer dangerous. But how can we find out that the danger no TABLE 2.1 Some Freudian defense mechanisms Repression: Involves unconscious denial of the existence of something that causes anxiety Denial: Involves denying the existence of an external threat or traumatic event Reaction Formation: Involves expressing an id impulse that is the opposite of the one truly driving the person Projection: Involves attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else Regression: Involves retreating to an earlier, less frustrating period of life and displaying the childish and dependent behaviors characteristic of that more secure time Rationalization: Involves reinterpreting behavior to make it more acceptable and less threatening Displacement: Involves shifting id impulses from a threatening or unavailable object to a substitute object that is available Sublimation: Involves altering or displacing id impulses by diverting instinctual energy into socially acceptable behaviors Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 50 The Psychoanalytic Approach denial A defense longer exists unless we release the repression so we can once again be aware of the mem- mechanism that involves ory? The concept of repression is the basis of much of Freud’s personality theory and is denying the existence of an external threat or involved in all neurotic behavior. traumatic event. Denial The defense mechanism of denial is related to repression and involves denying reaction formation A the existence of some external threat or traumatic event that has occurred. For example, defense mechanism a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death. Parents of a child that involves expres- sing an id impulse that who has died may continue to deny the loss by keeping the child’s room unchanged. is the opposite of the one that is truly driving Reaction Formation In reaction formation, we defend ourselves against a disturb- the person. ing impulse by actively expressing the opposite impulse. For example, a person who feels threatened by sexual longings may become a rabid crusader against pornography. Some- projection A defense one who is disturbed by extreme aggressive impulses may become overly solicitous and mechanism that friendly. Thus, lust becomes virtue and hatred becomes love, in the unconscious mind of involves attributing a disturbing impulse to the person using this mechanism. someone else. Projection Another way of defending against disturbing impulses is to project them regression A defense on to someone else. This defense mechanism is called projection. Lustful, aggressive, mechanism that and other unacceptable impulses are seen as being possessed by other people, not by involves retreating to oneself. The person says, in effect, “I don’t hate him. He hates me.” Or a mother may an earlier, less frus- ascribe her sex drive to her adolescent daughter. The impulse is still manifested, but in trating period of life a way that feels less threatening to the individual. and displaying the usually childish beha- viors characteristic of Regression In regression, the person retreats or regresses to an earlier period of life that more secure time. that was more pleasant and free of the current level of frustration and anxiety. Regres- sion usually involves a return to one of the stages of childhood development. The indi- rationalization A vidual returns to this more secure time of life by behaving as they did at that time, such defense mechanism as being childish and dependent. that involves reinter- preting our behavior to Rationalization Rationalization is a defense mechanism that involves reinterpreting make it more accept- able and less threat- our behavior to make it seem more rational and therefore more acceptable. We excuse or ening to us. justify a threatening thought or action by persuading ourselves that there is a rational explanation for it. The person who is fired from a job may rationalize by saying that displacement A they really didn’t like the job anyway. The loved one who turns you down now appears defense mechanism to have many faults. It is less threatening to blame someone or something else for our that involves shifting id failures than to blame ourselves. impulses from a threatening object or from one that is Displacement If an object that satisfies an id impulse is not available, the person may unavailable to an shift the impulse to another object. This is known as displacement. For example, chil- object that is available; dren who hate their parents or adults who hate their bosses, but are afraid to express for example, replacing their hostility for fear of being punished, may displace the aggression onto someone hostility toward one’s else—usually someone who is less likely to fight back or retaliate. boss with hostility The child may hit a younger brother or sister, or the adult may shout at the dog. In toward one’s child. these examples, the original object of the aggressive impulse has been replaced by an object that is not a threat. However, the substitute object will not reduce the tension as sublimation A defense satisfactorily as the original object would. If you are involved in a number of displace- mechanism that involves altering or ments, a reservoir of undischarged tension accumulates, and you will be increasingly displacing id impulses driven to find new ways of reducing that tension. by diverting instinctual energy into socially Sublimation Whereas displacement involves finding a substitute object to satisfy id acceptable behaviors. impulses, sublimation involves altering the id impulses themselves. The instinctual Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 2: Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis 51 energy is thus diverted into other channels of expression, ones that society considers acceptable and admirable. Sexual energy, for example, can be diverted or sublimated into artistically creative behaviors. Freud believed that a variety of human activities, particularly those of an artistic nature, are manifestations of id impulses that have been redirected into socially accept- able outlets. As with displacement (of which sublimation is a form), sublimation is a compromise. As such, it does not bring total satisfaction but leads to a buildup of undis- charged tension. Lying to Ourselves As we have seen, these defense mechanisms are unconscious denials or distortions of reality. We are lying to ourselves when we use these defenses, but we are not aware of doing so. If we knew we were lying to ourselves, the defenses would not be so effective. If the defenses are working well, they keep threatening or disturbing material out of our