by DK
Anna O, actually Bertha Pappenheim, was diagnosed with paralysis and hysteria. She was treated successfully, with what she described as a “talking cure,” by physician Josef Breuer.
Our everyday mind
It is easy to take for granted the reality of the conscious, and naively believe that what we think, feel, remember, and experience make up the entirety of the human mind. But Freud says that the active state of consciousness—that is, the operational mind of which we are directly aware in our everyday experience—is just a fraction of the total psychological forces at work in our psychical reality. The conscious exists at the superficial level, to which we have easy and immediate access. Beneath the conscious lies the powerful dimensions of the unconscious, the warehouse from which our active cognitive state and behavior are dictated. The conscious is effectively the puppet in the hands of the unconscious. The conscious mind is merely the surface of a complex psychic realm.
Since the unconscious is all-encompassing, Freud says, it contains within it the smaller spheres of the conscious and an area called the “preconscious.” Everything that is conscious—that we actively know—has at one time been unconscious before rising to consciousness. However, not everything becomes consciously known; much of what is unconscious remains there. Memories that are not in our everyday working memory, but which have not been repressed, reside in a part of the conscious mind that Freud called the preconscious. We are able to bring these memories into conscious awareness at any time.
The unconscious acts as a receptacle for ideas or memories that are too powerful, too painful, or otherwise too much for the conscious mind to process. Freud believed that when certain ideas or memories (and their associated emotions) threaten to overwhelm the psyche, they are split apart from a memory that can be accessed by the conscious mind, and stored in the unconscious instead.
"The mind is like an iceberg; it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water."
Sigmund Freud
Our psyche, according to Freud, resembles an iceberg, with the area of primitive drives, the id, lying hidden in the unconscious. The ego deals with conscious thoughts and regulates both the id and the superego—our critical, judging voice.
Dynamic thought
Freud was also influenced by the physiologist Ernst Brücke, who was one of the founders of the 19th-century’s “new physiology,” which looked for mechanistic explanations for all organic phenomena. Brücke claimed that like every other living organism, the human being is essentially an energy system, and so must abide by the Principle of the Conservation of Energy. This law states that the total amount of energy in a system stays constant over time; it cannot be destroyed, only moved or transformed. Freud applied this thinking to mental processes, resulting in the idea of “psychic energy.” This energy, he said, can undergo modification, transmission, and conversion, but cannot be destroyed. So if we have a thought that the conscious mind finds unacceptable, the mind redirects it away from conscious thought into the unconscious, in a process Freud called “repression.” We may repress the memory of a childhood trauma (such as abuse or witnessing an accident), a desire we have judged as unacceptable (perhaps for your best friend’s partner), or ideas that otherwise threaten our wellbeing or way of life.
"Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to be."
Sigmund Freud
Motivating drives
The unconscious is also the place where our instinctual biological drives reside. The drives govern our behavior, directing us toward choices that promise to satisfy our basic needs. The drives ensure our survival: the need for food and water; the desire for sex to ensure the continuation of our species; and the necessity to find warmth, shelter, and companionship. But Freud claims the unconscious also holds a contrasting drive, the death drive, which is present from birth. This drive is self-destructive and impels us forward, though as we do so we are moving closer to our death.
In his later works, Freud moved away from the idea that the mind was structured by the conscious, unconscious, and preconscious to propose a new controlling structure: the id, ego, and superego. The id (formed of primitive impulses) obeys the Pleasure Principle, which says that every wishful impulse must be immediately gratified: it wants everything now. However, another part of the mental structure, the ego, recognizes the Reality Principle, which says we can’t have everything we desire, but must take account of the world we live in. The ego negotiates with the id, trying to find reasonable ways to help it get what it wants, without resulting in damage or other terrible consequences. The ego itself is controlled by the superego—the internalized voice of parents and society’s moral codes. The superego is a judging force, and the source of our conscience, guilt, and shame.
In fact, Freud proposes, the unconscious holds a vast amount of conflicting forces. In addition to the drives of the life and death forces, it encompasses the intensity of repressed memories and emotions, as well as the contradictions inherent in our views of conscious reality alongside our repressed reality. According to Freud, the conflict that arises from these contrasting forces is the psychological conflict that underlies human suffering. Is it any wonder that humans exist in states of anxiety, depression, neurosis, and other forms of discontent?
"A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world."
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytical treatment
Since the unconscious remains inaccessible, the only way the conflicts can be recognized is through the symptoms that are present in the conscious. Emotional suffering, Freud claims, is the result of unconscious conflict. We cannot continually fight against ourselves, against the uprising of repressed material, and against the force of death, without emotional turmoil.
Freud’s unique approach to the treatment of psychological ailments involved working with the conflicts that existed in the unconscious. He sought to free the patient from repressed memories and so alleviate their mental pain. His approach to treatment is called psychoanalytic psychotherapy, or psychoanalysis. This process is not easy or quick. Psychoanalysis is only performed by a therapist trained in Freud’s specific approach, and it is his therapy that encourages a patient to lie on a couch and talk. From Freud’s first treatments, psychoanalysis has been practiced in sessions that can sometimes last for hours, take place several times per week, and continue for many years.
While unconscious thoughts cannot be retrieved through normal introspection, the unconscious can communicate with the conscious in some ways. It quietly communicates via our preferences, the frames of reference in which we tend to understand things, and the symbols that we are drawn to or create.
During analysis, the analyst acts as a mediator, trying to allow unspoken thoughts or unbearable feelings to come to light. Messages arising from a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious are likely to be disguised, or encoded, and it is the psychoanalyst’s job to interpret the messages using the tools of psychoanalysis.
There are several techniques that allow the unconscious to emerge. One of the first to be discussed by Freud at length was dream analysis; he famously studied his own dreams in his book, The Interpretation of Dreams. He claimed that every dream enacts a wish fulfilment, and the more unpalatable the wish is to our conscious mind, the more hidden or distorted the desire becomes in our dreams. So the unconscious, he says, sends messages to our conscious mind in code. For instance, Freud discusses dreams where the dr
eamer is naked—the primary source for these dreams in most people is memories from early childhood, when nakedness was not frowned upon and there was no sense of shame. In dreams where the dreamer feels embarrassment, the other people in the dream generally seem oblivious, lending support to a wish-fulfilment interpretation where the dreamer wants to leave behind shame and restriction. Even buildings and structures have coded meanings; stairwells, mine shafts, locked doors, or a small building in a narrow recess all represent repressed sexual feelings, according to Freud.
"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind."
Sigmund Freud
Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory (1931) is a surrealist vision of time passing, leading to decay and death. Its fantastical quality suggests the Freudian process of dream analysis.
Accessing the unconscious
Other well-known ways in which the unconscious reveals itself are through Freudian slips and the process of free association. A Freudian slip is a verbal error, or “slip of the tongue,” and it is said to reveal a repressed belief, thought, or emotion. It is an involuntary substitution of one word for another that sounds similar but inadvertently reveals something the person really feels. For instance, a man might thank a woman he finds desirable for making “the breast dinner ever,” the slip revealing his true thoughts. Freud used the free-association technique (developed by Carl Jung), whereby patients heard a word and were then invited to say the first word that came into their mind. He believed that this process allowed the unconscious to break through because our mind uses automatic associations, so “hidden” thoughts are voiced before the conscious mind has a chance to interrupt.
In order to help an individual emerge from a repressed state and begin to consciously deal with the real issues that are affecting him or her, Freud believed that it is necessary to access repressed feelings. For example, if a man finds it difficult to confront others, he will choose to repress his feelings rather than deal with the confrontation. Over time, however, these repressed emotions build up and reveal themselves in other ways. Anger, anxiety, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, or eating disorders may all be the result of struggling to fend off feelings that have been repressed instead of being addressed. Unprocessed emotions, Freud asserts, are constantly threatening to break through, generating an increasingly uncomfortable tension and inciting more and more extreme measures to keep them down.
Analysis allows trapped memories and feelings to emerge, and the patient is often surprised to feel the emotion that has been buried. It is not uncommon for patients to find themselves moved to tears by an issue from many years ago that they felt they had long since “got over.” This response demonstrates that the event and the emotion are still alive—still holding emotional energy—and have been repressed rather than dealt with. In Freudian terms, “catharsis” describes the act of releasing and feeling the deep emotions associated with repressed memories. If the significant event—such as the death of a parent—was not fully experienced at the time because it was too overwhelming, the difficulty and the energy remain, to be released at the moment of catharsis.
"The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which it could be studied."
Sigmund Freud
School of psychoanalysis
Freud founded the prominent Psychoanalytic Society in Vienna, from which he exerted his powerful influence on the mental health community of the time, training others in his methods and acting as the authority on what was acceptable practice. Over time, his students and other professionals modified his ideas, eventually splitting the Society into three: the Freudians (who remained true to Freud’s original thoughts), the Kleinians (who followed the ideas of Melanie Klein), and the Neo-Freudians (a later group who incorporated Freud’s ideas into their broader practice). Modern psychoanalysis encompasses at least 22 different schools of thought, though Freud’s ideas continue to remain influential for all contemporary practitioners.
Freud’s patients would recline on this couch in his treatment room while they talked. Freud would sit out of sight while he listened for clues to the source of the patient’s internal conflicts.
SIGMUND FREUD
Born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in Freiberg, Moravia, Freud was openly his mother’s favorite child; she called him “Golden Siggie.” When Freud was four years old, the family moved to Vienna and Sigismund became Sigmund. Sigmund completed a medical degree and in 1886 he opened a medical practice specializing in neurology, and married Martha Bernays. Eventually, he developed the “talking cure” that was to become an entirely new psychological approach: psychoanalysis.
In 1908, Freud established the Psychoanalytic Society, which ensured the future of his school of thought. During World War II, the Nazis publicly burned his work, and Freud moved to London. He died by assisted suicide, after enduring mouth cancer.
Key works
1900 The Interpretation of Dreams
1904 The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
1930 Civilization and Its Discontents
See also: Johann Friedrich Herbart • Jean-Martin Charcot • Carl Jung • Melanie Klein • Anna Freud • Jacques Lacan • Paul Watzlawick • Aaron Beck • Elizabeth Loftus
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Individual psychology
BEFORE
1896 William James says that self-esteem is about a ratio of “goals satisfied” to “goals unmet” and can be raised by lowering expectations as well as through achievements.
1902 Charles Horton Cooley describes the “looking glass self;” the way we view ourselves is based on how we imagine other people view us.
AFTER
1943 Abraham Maslow says that to feel both necessary and good about ourselves we need achievements as well as respect from others.
1960s British psychologist Michael Argyle states that comparison shapes self-esteem; we feel better when we feel more successful than others, and worse when we feel less successful than others.
Freudian thinking dominated psychotherapy in the late 19th century, but Freud’s approach was limited to addressing unconscious drives and the legacy of an individual’s past. Alfred Adler was the first psychoanalyst to expand psychological theory beyond the Freudian viewpoint, suggesting that a person’s psychology was also influenced by present and conscious forces, and that the influence of the social realm and environment was equally vital. Adler founded his own approach, individual psychology, based on these ideas.
Adler’s particular interest in inferiority and the positive and negative effects of self-esteem began early in his career, when he worked with patients who had physical disabilities. Looking at the effects that disability had on achievement and sense of self, he found huge differences between his patients. Some people with disabilities were able to reach high levels of athletic success, and Adler noted that in these personalities, the disability served as a strong motivational force. At the other extreme, he witnessed patients who felt defeated by their disability and who made little effort to improve their situation. Adler realized that the differences came down to how these individuals viewed themselves: in other words, their self-esteem.
A paralympic athlete may be driven by a powerful desire to overcome her disabilities and reach greater levels of physical achievement. Adler described this trait as “compensation.”
The inferiority complex
According to Adler, feeling inferior is a universal h
uman experience that is rooted in childhood. Children naturally feel inferior because they are constantly surrounded by stronger, more powerful people with greater abilities. A child generally seeks to emulate and achieve the abilities of its elders, motivated by the surrounding forces that propel him toward his own development and accomplishments.
Children and adults with a healthy and balanced personality gain confidence each time they realize that they are capable of meeting external goals. Feelings of inferiority dissipate until the next challenge presents itself and is overcome; this process of psychic growth is continual. However, an individual with a physical inferiority may develop more generalized feelings of inferiority—leading to an unbalanced personality and what Adler termed an “inferiority complex,” where the feelings of inferiority are never relieved.
Adler also recognized the equally unbalanced “superiority complex,” manifested in a constant need to strive toward goals. When attained, these goals do not instil confidence in the individual, but merely prompt him to continually seek further external recognition and achievements.