Freud In A Week

by Ruth Snowden

  Ruth Snowden is a psychology specialist who has written a wide range of books about Freud, Jung and, her particular interest, dreams. Among her books in the Teach Yourself series are Jung: The Key Ideas and Freud: The Key Ideas. She also writes children’s fiction.

  FREUD

  Ruth Snowden

  www.inaweek.co.uk

  IN A WEEK

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Sunday

  Freud’s life and career

  Monday

  The beginnings of psychoanalysis

  Tuesday

  Freud, dreams and the unconscious

  Wednesday

  Freud’s theories about sex and sexuality

  Thursday

  Freud’s theories of psychosexual development

  Friday

  Freud and society

  Saturday

  The development of psychoanalysis

  Glossary

  Answers

  INTRODUCTION

  Sigmund Freud was an Austrian doctor who lived from 1856 to 1939 and he is famous because he founded a new system of psychology that he called ‘psychoanalysis’. Psychoanalysis is still the basis of various therapies used today in the treatment of neurosis and psychosis.

  Freud totally changed our way of looking at ourselves and our relationships with others. Before Freud, psychologists usually just described and observed behaviour. Freud, wanted to go deeper, to analyse and explain it. His work largely concerns the unconscious, but he did not invent the idea of unconscious mental processes – in fact, the idea had been around for ages. However, Freud was the first to apply the idea to his clinical practice and formulate theories about it. He made people look at themselves more honestly and to try to understand what really goes on under the surface. In many cases this has enabled people to move on from unhelpful or damaging ways of thinking and behaving.

  Freud said that we have many inner motives for our behaviour, and that these are mostly sexual. There are also other motives, such as power or aggression. Nowadays Freud is often seen as having claimed that absolutely everything in our minds is sexual. In fact, he realized that not everything could be – otherwise neurotic people would not have to struggle to suppress sexual feelings.

  Psychoanalysis has three main aspects: it is a type of therapy, aimed at treating mental and nervous disorders; it also attempts to explain how the human personality develops and how it works; thirdly, it provides theories about how individuals function in society.

  Each ‘day’ we will look at a different major aspect of Freud’s life and work – moving from his early ideas about hysteria and the development of psychoanalysis through his major theories about sexuality – most famously the Oedipus complex – and finally to his later investigations into societal phenomena such as war and religion. As you read through this book, however, it is important always to keep in mind that Freud’s ideas were not static, but fluid and changing and open-ended. You will see, for example, that his conception of the human psyche underwent quite drastic changes.

  This book is only an introduction and what, above all, I hope it will inspire you to do is to go to Freud’s own writings. Given the fact that today psychoanalysis has a reputation for being a ‘closed shop’ and having a penchant for impenetrable jargon, Freud himself wrote in a surprisingly accessible and clear way. His works are available in good English translations. Try, for starters, The Interpretation of Dreams. His case studies such as ‘Dora’, ‘Little Hans’ and also ‘The Wolf Man’ also make for fascinating reading. Please explore!

  Ruth Snowden

  In today’s chapter we will learn about Freud’s life and career and the influence of his background in the shaping of his ideas. Freud lived and worked in Vienna for most of his life. He was the eldest of eight children and his mother’s firm favourite. His parents were ambitious for him and he was a diligent and successful pupil at school. Being a Jew, he had an uneasy relationship with the society in which he lived, which was strongly anti-Semitic. However, Vienna was also a stimulating place to live, both culturally and academically.

  Freud trained as a medical doctor, but soon became interested in hypnosis. This led to pioneering work with patients and laid down the foundations of psychoanalysis. He was fascinated by dreams and spent much time analysing his own unconscious. Later on in his career, he formulated theories about how the psyche develops and how societies function. He was a very private person and by his own admission rather neurotic. However, he formed intense friendships. He was a conscientious family man and had six children.

  FREUD’S EARLY LIFE

  Freud was born on 6 May 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The town is now Prˇíbor in the Czech Republic. In 1860 his family moved to Vienna, where he would live for most of his life. When Freud was born his father, Jakob, was 40 and already a grandfather. Jakob was 20 years older than Amalie, his second wife, Freud’s mother. Freud was the eldest of Amalie’s eight children and her firm favourite. He later said that this gave him a feeling of invincibility and a great will to succeed.

  Young ‘Sigi’ worked hard at school and his family was very ambitious for him. He soon mastered Greek, Latin, German, Hebrew, French and English and by the age of eight he was reading Shakespeare. Needless to say, he often came top of his class. He had his own room in the crowded home – all the other lesser siblings had to share. He even ate his evening meal apart from the others, and when his sister Anna’s piano playing distracted him from his studies his parents had the instrument removed from the apartment.

  The family were Jewish by descent, but they did not practise the Jewish religion. Being Jewish was difficult because anti-Semitism was rife in Vienna at the time. Most people in Vienna were Roman Catholics. Two of Sigi’s boyhood heroes were the English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell and Hannibal, the Carthaginian leader who fought against the ancient Romans.

  Jakob Freud was a wool merchant, but he was not very successful financially. He was married three times and produced many children; as a consequence, he was unable to support Sigmund financially later on. It is important to be aware of Freud’s family background and psychological make-up because they influenced his later thinking.

  VIENNESE SOCIETY

  Freud had a love–hate relationship with Vienna. He was often critical about Viennese people and yet he was very reluctant ever to leave his native city. Several aspects of Viennese society were important in influencing Freud:

  • It was a very bourgeois society – middle class, materialistic and conservative.

  • It was in a state of economic decline – this led to unemployment, poverty and overcrowding.

  • People had a prudish attitude towards sex.

  • Men were still thought of as being superior to women. Freud didn’t really seem to realize that there was anything wrong with this attitude in his self-analysis.

  • The prevailing culture was strongly anti-Semitic. This made it hard for the young Freud when he was struggling to advance his career.

  • New movements for social reform were developing, such as early feminism and Social Democracy (a form of Marxism).

  A BRIEF OUTLINE OF FREUD’S CAREER

  Freud’s early ambition had been to study law, but when he entered the University of Vienna in 1873 it was to study medicine. Here he became very interested in zoology and spent a lot of time obsessively cutting up eels. He was greatly influenced by one of his teachers, Ernst Brücke, who was dedicated to the ‘mechanistic approach’, which emphasized that living things could be understood purely in terms of physics and chemistry. This approach was still unpopular early in Freud’s life because it ruled out the possibility of any religious explanations for biology. Freud remained
a convinced ‘determinist’ throughout his life: he believed that all events follow a rigid pattern of cause and effect.

  During his clinical training Freud specialized in neurology, finally graduating as a Doctor of Medicine in 1881. He would have liked to have stayed in research, but growing financial pressures and the fact that he wanted to get married meant that he would have to practise as a doctor. He spent the next three years gaining medical experience at the Vienna General Hospital.

  In 1885 Freud spent a few months in Paris, studying with a famous neurologist named Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93). Charcot was experimenting with hypnosis to help cases of hysteria (a nervous disorder with varying symptoms). Freud’s experience here was very important because it led him to the idea that the mind could affect physical symptoms. In 1886 he entered private practice as a neuropathologist and began his own work with hysterics. From this work he developed ideas that were to evolve into psychoanalysis. Right from the start, he encountered violent opposition from many other members of the medical establishment because his ideas were so unusual.

  Freud’s first published book, On Aphasia, appeared in 1891. (Aphasia is a neurological disorder in which the patient is either unable to recognize words or to pronounce them.) It soon became clear to Freud that psychological disturbances were indeed at work in many cases of mental illness. This idea was to be the basis of his life’s work and one of the main ways in which it differed from that of his contemporaries.

  At first Freud concentrated on looking at the causes and treatment of neurosis. Gradually he expanded his theories and became interested in the way the human psyche develops. His work falls into four main phases:

  1 1886–94 During this time Freud studied the causes and treatment of neurosis. At first he concentrated on using hypnosis, but later he developed other forms of therapy that gradually evolved into psychoanalysis.

  2 1894–1901 In this period Freud worked very much alone, doing a lot of self-analysis and developing ideas about the sexual origins of neurosis. At the end of this period he produced two very important books, The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

  3 1901–14 Freud began to formulate new theories about the origins of neurosis, which led to a whole system of ideas about how the psyche develops from birth onwards. The psychology that he developed at this stage is often called ‘id’ psychology. (The id is the part of the psyche that is concerned with inherited, instinctive impulses.)

  4 1914 onwards World War I made Freud look at people’s behaviour in new ways, as he realized that aggression, as well as sexual urges, could be an important factor in behaviour. He began to develop theories about the whole personality and the ways in which people relate to others. This is known as ‘ego’ psychology. (The ego is the part of the psyche which reacts to external reality.)

  Most of Freud’s ideas are explained in his book The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. These were originally published in several separate parts, and the ideas were gradually added to and revised.

  FREUD’S PRIVATE LIFE AND PERSONALITY

  In 1886 Freud married Martha Bernays (1861–1951) and over the years they had six children. The youngest, Anna, became a psychoanalyst. The family went through a great deal of financial struggle and in 1918 Freud lost a lot of money that had been bound up in Austrian state bonds. Martha later insisted that in the 53 years of their marriage they never spoke an angry word. This might be seen as a little suspicious! Freud was rather a private person and he did not reveal many personal details other than in letters to friends.

  In academic circles Freud was often seen as being opinionated and rather unconventional, and so much of his work was done in what he called ‘splendid isolation’. By his own admission he had a rather neurotic, obsessive personality. He was the kind of person who has to do everything meticulously and accurately and he liked to be in control. His rather obsessive character shows up in various ways. He was very superstitious about certain numbers and he collected quantities of antique statuettes. He was a compulsive smoker and found it impossible to stop, even when he was diagnosed as having oral cancer in 1923. It was not until he had a heart attack in 1930 that he finally gave up smoking.

  Freud had a rather neurotic, obsessive personality.

  Freud had many close friendships throughout his life, although he was also prone to quarrels and disagreements. Some of his friends developed theories that were thought of as being even more eccentric than Freud’s. For example, his friend Wilhelm Fliess was obsessed with the numbers 23 and 28, and thought the nose was an important sexual organ. However, the friendship with Fliess was typical, in that the two men exchanged many ideas and Fliess acted as a useful critic and adviser to Freud.

  Among other hobbies, Freud enjoyed playing cards with his friends or going for long walks and looking for mushrooms. People often think of him as a stern patriarch, but in fact his children recalled plenty of happy days when he stopped working and took them for family outings. He did not buy many clothes, and is said to have only ever had three suits, three sets of underwear and three pairs of shoes at a time. However, he was not mean and later in life gave financial support to various friends and students. He enjoyed literature but was not a great music lover, apart from opera.

  Following the diagnosis of cancer, Freud suffered many painful medical treatments and surgical operations. He continued to write for the remaining 16 years of his life, publishing mainly philosophical and cultural publications.

  In 1938 the Germans occupied Austria, and Freud and his family fled to England. He died in London on 23 September 1939.

  SUMMARY

  Today we have looked at the broad outlines of Freud’s life and career and begun to see how aspects of his background may have influenced the development of his ideas. For example, the fact that he was bought up in a Jewish family in what was largely an anti-Semitic culture undoubtedly helped him to stand ‘apart from the crowd’ and to go against the conventional ideas of his day. Similarly, we have seen how the horrors of trench warfare during World War I propelled him towards new ideas about the role of aggression in the human personality.

  Freud’s was undoubtedly a complex personality – full of contradictions and paradoxes. He combined clear-sightedness with obsessiveness, generosity with overbearingness, and warmth with steely reserve. This complexity should warn us, as we work through this week, about looking at his ideas in too reductive a way – for example thinking that his theories were all about sex. Freud’s thought evolved and changed through a long lifetime and became ever more rich and multi-dimensional.

  FACT-CHECK (ANSWERS AT THE BACK)

  1. In which European city was Freud born?

  a) Berlin

  b) Vienna

  c) Budapest

  d) Freiberg, now Příbor

  2. Freud’s background might best be described as…

  a) Working class

  b) Aristocratic

  c) Middle class

  d) None of the above

  3. Freud’s family was…

  a) Roman Catholic

  b) Anti-Semitic

  c) Jewish

  d) Non-religious

  4. Freud was a ‘determinist’. What does this mean?

  a) He was determined to succeed

  b) He believed in explaining phenomena by a strict pattern of cause and effect

  c) He believed that all phenomena were determined by God

  d) He believed that some phenomena were determined by cause and effect

  5. In which area did Freud first specialize?

  a) Psychology

  b) Biology

  c) Neurology

  d) Nephrology

  6. What was the experimental new technique used by the Parisian neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot in the treatment of hysteria?

  a) Hydrotherapy

  b) Surgery

  c) Dream analysis

  d) Hypnosis

  7. Which are the two main kinds of psycholo
gy developed by Freud?

  a) Id psychology

  b) Sexual psychology

  c) Behavioural psychology

  d) Ego psychology

  8. Which one of the following best describes Freud’s personality?

  a) Anxious

  b) Superstitious

  c) Complex

  d) Caring

  9. Why did Freud move to London?

  a) Because he was offered a job there

  b) Because he needed specialist medical treatment

  c) Because Germany annexed Austria

  d) None of the above

  10. In which year did Freud die?

  a) 1914

  b) 1929

  c) 1938

  d) None of the above