Freud- The Key Ideas

by Ruth Snowden

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  Insight

  Regression can even be fun, as any student will tell you at the end of final exams when everyone lets off steam in a very uninhibited way. But it can get overdone of course, in which case a person gets stuck in tiresome, infantile behaviour.

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  REACTION FORMATION

  Sometimes a person feels an impulse and covers it up by displaying its exact opposite, for example, being polite to somebody they want to be rude to. Reaction formation is quite a common form of defence in teenagers and is often shown by an individual being hostile to somebody they are really attracted to. Another example is that of a person who cannot accept their own homosexual impulses becoming outwardly homophobic. The problem arises when the latent urge remains dormant and unresolved and so may build up into a powerfully negative force.

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  Insight

  Reaction formations are cunning, confusing and often difficult to detect. The original impulse does not disappear, but is simply masked by the person behaving in the opposite manner. For example, someone who appears to be all love and light may turn out to be a total sadist.

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  UNDOING

  This is a rather strange mechanism that makes us use special gestures or rituals in order to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or events after they have already occurred. For example, Freud describes a ritual of this sort used by his patient the Wolf Man, who had to breathe out noisily every time he encountered people he felt sorry for, such as beggars, old people or cripples, in order to avoid becoming like them. In ‘normal’ people this sort of undoing is usually more conscious and we may actually ask for forgiveness or carry out a special ritual of atonement, such as visiting a priest for confession.

  ISOLATION

  This is sometimes called intellectualization. The person who uses this mechanism strips all emotion from a threatening memory or impulse and gives the impression that it is of no consequence whatsoever. This commonly happens during an accident or emergency, but after the event the person becomes very upset. It may also happen following traumatic events from earlier in life, such as childhood abuse. Sometimes this mechanism is essential if the person is to continue functioning effectively, for example, doctors and nurses must employ it at the scene of emergencies that occur every day in the course of their work.

  Isolation brings up an important point about defence mechanisms – they are all lies of one sort or another, even if we are not using them consciously. If we use them too often they build up until we can no longer separate fact from fantasy. Ultimately this may lead to a breakdown, as the ego can no longer cope with all the demands of the id and the super-ego. But we cannot live without defence mechanisms because there is simply too much to cope with in life without them.

  SUBLIMATION

  Freud suggested that this mechanism in particular should be seen as a positive defence. Sublimation involves transforming unacceptable impulses such as fear, aggression and sexual desire into socially acceptable forms. So a person who has deviant sexual desires might channel them into writing a novel, or someone who has struggled with their own emotional problems might become a psychotherapist!

  Any of the defence mechanisms can be helpful and they all appear in the behaviour of normal healthy people. Problems only arise when they become too forceful and the person becomes blind to their true feelings and motives. The job of the psychoanalyst is to help people to unravel these feelings, which can be a very painful process but is one that can help a person become a more rounded adult.

  Narcissism

  Freud found some patients who did not respond to psychoanalytic therapy at all. He used the myth of Narcissus to explain this.

  Narcissus was a beautiful youth in ancient Greece who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool. He pined away and eventually died and was turned into a flower because he could never fully possess himself. Freud saw this story as a good way of illustrating the idea of an ego that has become totally self-absorbed and can no longer relate to the outside world. Such cases of psychosis are not treatable by psychoanalysis, because the normal transference does not occur.

  Narcissism is normal in infancy, when the infantile ego expects the outside world to be just the same as itself. It has its place in the normal adult psyche too, because we need to have a certain degree of self-esteem. We need to direct some of our libido towards the self (ego libido) and some towards others (object libido). So even in a good, mutually supportive adult relationship, there is always some degree of narcissism involved. However, in some cases of mental illness the entire libido becomes directed towards the self and the person comes to think the whole world revolves around them. They may see themselves as omnipotent, or may become a hypochondriac, constantly worrying about their health and incapable of realizing that others have feelings too. Because narcissism is normal in very young infants, it can be regarded as a type or regression when it occurs in adults.

  Mourning and melancholia

  In 1915 Freud published a book called Mourning and Melancholia. Melancholia is what we would now call severe depression. This often occurs after a bereavement or divorce.

  The person blames themself for what has happened and becomes very self-destructive, even suicidal.

  He or she becomes very withdrawn from the world, as in narcissism, but this time the self is seen as being bad, unworthy, dirty and so on.

  Severe mourning can conceal repressed hatred for the lost person. The lost person becomes identified with the patient’s own ego, so that hate becomes self-hate and guilt. This is called introjection and is one of the defence mechanisms discussed above.

  The person may regress to an infantile state, where biting, sucking and excreting are dominant. They may be absorbed with images of excreta and filth.

  All of these symptoms mean that the person does not have to express their mixed feelings of love and hate directly.

  The normal mourning state is what we all go through when we have lost someone we love. It is similar to melancholia, but usually less severe. It is quite normal for people in mourning to blame themselves and feel that they did not put enough effort into the relationship or give the lost person enough love. Mourning often lasts a long time; Freud says that this is because it is difficult to withdraw libido from any love object, and compares the situation with the struggle neurotics often have breaking their Oedipal ties to their parents.

  Another difference between mourning and melancholia is that in mourning the loss is fully conscious, whereas in melancholia it may be partly unconscious. Melancholia also involves a greater loss of self-esteem. Freud suggests that this is because people who react to loss in this way are narcissistic and have chosen a love object that is closely identified with the self. This means that losing the love object is like losing a part of the ego.

  Instincts

  It is not always clear what Freud means when he talks about ‘instincts’. In fact he says that they are a very vague concept, ‘magnificent in their indefiniteness’. He complains that people are forever inventing new instincts in order to explain different aspects of behaviour such as love, hunger and aggression. Freud turned to biology for help, trying as always to be scientific in his approach.

  This was not easy, because science is concerned with external, observable reality, whereas Freud was grappling with the workings of the mind.

  According to Freud, current biological thinking grouped instincts into two types, according to the aim of the behaviour involved. The first type was aimed at self-preservation, the second at preservation of the species. Freud carried this idea over into psychoanalysis and hence classified instincts in two ways:

  Ego instincts are self-preserving and concerned with the needs of the individual.

  Sexual instincts are concerned with preserving the species and pertain to objects.

  Later, Freud decided that it was not necessary to separate the two, but that what was important was the degree to which libido was directed
towards the self or to external objects.

  Freud tried to clarify what he meant by an instinct by contrasting it with a stimulus. A stimulus, he said, arises from things going on outside the body. Instincts arise from within, so that one cannot avoid them by running away, as one can from a stimulus.

  The instinct is therefore identified by its:

  source – excitation within the body

  aim – removal of that excitation

  object – usually external.

  Eros and Thanatos

  For a long time Freud was puzzled by the tendency of patients to continually repeat and relive unpleasant experiences. He called this repetition compulsion. He found that it happens after a sudden and unexpected shock. Freud decided that the experience was repeated so that the normal anxiety that prepares us for danger could be built up and dealt with in retrospect. However, the repetition compulsion can sometimes totally take over. This phenomenon eventually led Freud to suggest that another instinct was at work – Thanatos, or the death instinct. The word thanatos is taken from the Greek word meaning ‘death’.

  When Thanatos is directed towards the self it produces self-destructive behaviour, such as addictions. Turned outwards it results in aggressive behaviour. The opposite of Thanatos is Eros, the life instinct (from Eros, the Greek god of love). Eros is concerned with survival of the species and is responsible for sexual and reproductive behaviour.

  Freud’s argument for the existence of Thanatos can be summarized as follows:

  All behaviour is aimed at reducing tension and achieving a previously existing state of stability.

  Since we were all originally made from inert matter, then perhaps we are really trying constantly to return to this state.

  So the aim of all life is death, a state where there are no tensions at all because no stimuli can impinge from within or without to disturb the everlasting peace.

  This seems like a very negative way of looking at things, but this perhaps arose partly because Freud’s own later life became very difficult and full of pain. He lived through the horrors of the First World War and then suffered the death of a daughter in 1920 and a grandson in 1923. His first operation for oral cancer came in 1923 – the first of 33 such operations, which must have left him in constant pain and discomfort for the rest of his life. It is to his credit that he never gave up, but kept on thinking and working until the end. However, his dualistic theory of Eros and Thanatos as two opposing forces that control all our behaviour obviously does not satisfy modern scientific thinking.

  Character

  The kind of family a person is born into, plus the experiences they have as they grow up, both contribute to the formation of character. According to Freud, traumatic experiences in childhood have an especially strong effect, and many of these traumas can be linked with a particular stage of development. Fixation at any of the stages will have a particular effect on the adult personality.

  Fixation at the oral stage may occur if a baby is weaned too soon, or frustrated in some way when feeding. This may lead to the development of an ‘oral passive’ character. Such a person tends to be dependent on others, and may seek oral gratification by over-eating, drinking or smoking. The ‘oral aggressive’ person, on the other hand, is stuck at the teething stage, when the baby first begins to bite. This shows up later as aggressive behaviour, and the tendency to bite on objects such as pencils.

  Fixation at the anal stage may give rise to an ‘anal expulsive’, or ‘anal aggressive’ character if the parents have been too obsessive about praising a child for producing wonderful bowel movements. Such a person will be very untidy and disorganized, but also generous. On the negative side, they may be aggressive and destructive, or prone to vandalizing things. Conversely, parents who are too strict about potty training and scold the child for making messes will tend to produce the opposite – an ‘anal retentive’ character. This type of person tends to be obsessively neat and tidy, dictatorial and mean – the classic ‘control freak’.

  Fixation at the phallic stage can also occur, but nobody has given a name to the type of characters that it produces. For example, some people feel a lack of self-worth sexually because they are stuck at this stage. A boy who is rejected by his mother and threatened by an over-aggressive father may react either by withdrawing into being very studious or by showing off sexually and becoming very macho. Similarly, a girl who is rejected by her father and feels threatened by trying to compete with a very feminine mother may react either by being very shy, or by becoming very feminine and seductive herself.

  There are various other phallic personalities that may arise as a result of being stuck at this stage. The main point is that it is very difficult for parents to strike the correct balance: if their children are either frustrated or over-pampered in some way then they will have problems later!

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  THINGS TO REMEMBER

  Freud established a useful new model of the ways in which we develop into adult human beings.

  He provided a map of the different levels of thinking and behaviour, which are now usually called id, ego and super-ego.

  Conflicts between the different levels result in anxiety and stress.

  Instinctive drives are held in check by a complex system of defence mechanisms. These appear in normal people as well as neurotics.

  Problems in the defence system can eventually lead to neurosis or even psychosis.

  Freud identified two opposing instincts that are often referred to as Eros and Thanatos; the life instinct and the death instinct.

  Character is modified by the experiences a child has at each stage of development.

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  9

  Freud and society

  In this chapter you will learn:

  Freud’s theories about civilization and its effects upon the individual

  key aspects of his thoughts about war and religion

  how he applied psychoanalysis to art and literature.

  Civilization

  Eventually Freud became interested in extending his psychoanalytical theories beyond individual psychology to exploring group psychology in all kinds of different areas such as anthropology, sociology, art, literature, war and religion. In 1912 he founded Imago, a journal of applied psychoanalysis, in order to extend his insights. He also began to invite non-medical people to join the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association in order to widen his contacts and increase the field of study for psychoanalysis. From its original beginning as a way of helping people with neurotic illnesses, psychoanalysis grew to explore child development and the structure of the psyche.

  Following experiences working with traumatized soldiers after the First World War, Freud then moved on to explore the ways in which society works and the effects that it has upon the individual. He devoted most of his energy to this more sociological approach to thinking during the last two decades of his life. Four of Freud’s works in particular are very important in explaining some of his thoughts about civilization and religion:

  Totem and Taboo, a collection of four essays, published together in a single volume in 1913

  The Future of an Illusion, published in 1927

  Civilization and its Discontents, published in 1930

  and finally three essays, published right at the end of his life in 1939, called Moses and Monotheism.

  Freud saw civilization as representing the ways in which human life has raised itself above its primitive animal origins, but he took the view that civilization oppressed people because it imposed all kinds of rules that demanded the suppression of libidinal urges. The purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness, dominated by the pleasure principle. By happiness, Freud means satisfaction of libidinous needs, but these are often dammed up. The ego has to find ways of controlling libidinal urges, sublimating them so that society will approve of behaviour. The need to conform in order to remain within a social group demands great sacrifices from the individual and eventually leads to a great deal o
f unhappiness and the formation of neurotic symptoms.

  Freud sees beauty, order and cleanliness as being the features of civilized living. Justice is the first requirement in maintaining these – the law must not be broken in favour of the individual. The two main reasons for living together in societies are:

  the need to get together in order to share the workload;

  to provide security within relationships, e.g. man and woman, mother and child.

  In order to gain these advantages people must curb sexual and aggressive urges, so it is difficult to live in a society and be happy. Aggressive urges are turned inwards towards the self, causing a sense of guilt and a need for punishment. This is the essence of the Oedipal complex, whereby the infantile instinctual urge to possess the mother sexually is repressed for fear of action by external authority. As the child matures, the internal sense of authority – the super-ego – gradually takes over and regulates behaviour. Freud says that the sense of guilt is the most significant problem in the development of civilization. Any thwarted instinctive urge heightens the sense of guilt and increases the problem of people trying to live happily together.