Sigmund Freud
I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to
bring relief to my neurotic patients.
Under the influence of an older friend and by my own
efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the
unconscious in psychic life, the role of instinctual urges, and
so on.
Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis, a
part of psychology, and a new method of treatment of the
neuroses.
I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck. People did not
believe in my facts and thought my theories unsavory.
Resistance was strong and unrelenting. In the end I
succeeded in acquiring pupils and building up an
International Psychoanalytic Association.
But the struggle is not yet over.
The World in the Late 1900’s:
Male and Female
 It was a world shaped by man for man, in which woman occupied the
second place.
 Political rights for women did not exist.
 The separation and dissimilarity of the sexes was sharper than today.
 Women who wore slacks, wore their hair short, or smoked, were hardly to be
found.
 The universities admitted no female students (the first ones appeared in the
early 1890's).
 Man's authority over his children and also over his wife was unquestioned.
 Education was authoritarian; the despotic father was a common figure and was
particularly conspicuous only when he became extremely cruel.
 Laws were more repressive, delinquent youth sternly punished, and
corporal punishment was considered indispensable.
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic
Books. p.255
The repression of
sexuality
 Sexual repression, a supposedly characteristic feature of [the Victorian]
period, was often merely the expression of two facts: the lack of diffusion
of contraceptives, and the fear of venereal disease.
 Venereal disease was all the more dangerous because of the great spread
of prostitution, and because prostitutes were almost invariably
contaminated, and therefore potential sources of infection.
 We can hardly imagine today how monstrous syphilis appeared to people of
that time, made worse by the fact that it was likely to be transmitted to the
next generation in the form of "hereditary syphilis," which, in turn, had
become a nightmarish myth and to which many physicians attributed all
diseases of unknown origin.
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic Books. p. 291
Nietzsche’s influence
 “Psychoanalysis evidently belongs to that "unmasking" trend, that
search for hidden unconscious motivations characteristic of the
1880's and 1890's. In Freud as in Nietzsche, words and deeds are
viewed as manifestations of unconscious motivations, mainly of
instincts and conflicts of instincts.
 For both men the unconscious is the realm of the wild, brutish
instincts that cannot find permissible outlets, derive from earlier
stages of the individual and of mankind, and find expression in
passion, dreams, and mental illness.
Nietzsche’s influence,
continued
 Even the term "id" (das Es) originates from Nietzsche.
 The dynamic concept of mind, with the notions of mental energy,
quanta of latent or inhibited energy, or release of energy or transfer
from one drive to another, is also to be found in Nietzsche.
 Before Freud, Nietzsche conceived the mind as a system of drives
that can collide or be fused into each other.
Nietzsche’s influence,
continued
 In contrast to Freud, however, Nietzsche did not give prevalence to the sexual drive
(whose importance he duly acknowledged), but to aggressive and self-destructive
drives.
 Nietzsche well understood those processes that have been called defense
mechanisms by Freud, particularly sublimation (a term that appears at least a dozen
times in Nietzsche's works), repression (under the name inhibition), and the turning
of instincts toward oneself.
 Both give a new expression to Diderot's old assumption that modern man is afflicted
with a peculiar illness bound up with civilization, because civilization demands of man
that he renounce the gratification of his instincts.”
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic Books. p. 277
Introspection and SelfAnalysis
The Creative Illness
 “In the summer of 1897...
Freud undertook his most
heroic feat - a psychoanalysis
of his own unconscious.
 It is hard for us nowadays to
imagine how momentous this
achievement was; that difficulty
being the fate of most
pioneering exploits.
 Yet the uniqueness of the feat
remains. Once done it is done
for ever. For no one again can
be the first to explore those
depths.
The Creative Illness,
continued
 In the long history of humanity the task had often been at-tempted.
Philosophers and writers, from Solon to Montaigne, from Juvenal to
Schopenhauer, had essayed to follow the advice of the Delphic oracle,
'Know thyself', but all had succumbed to the effort.
 Inner resistances had barred advance. There had from time to time been
flashes of intuition to point the way, but they had always flickered out.
 The realm of the unconscious, whose existence was so often postulated,
remained dark, and the words of Heraclitus still stood: 'The soul of man is a
far country, which cannot be approached or explored.’
 Freud had no help; no one to assist the undertaking in the slightest degree.
The Creative Illness,
continued
 Worse than this: the very thing that drove him onwards he must
have dimly divined (however much he tried to conceal it from
himself) could only result in profoundly affecting his relations perhaps even severing them - with the one being to whom he
was so closely bound and who had steadied his mental
equilibrium.
 It was daring much, and risking much. What indomitable courage,
both intellectual and moral, must have been needed! But it was
forthcoming.”
Jones, E. (1984). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, New York:
Basic Books, p. 276
Descent and reintegration
Transformation: normal vs
revolutionary
 REVOLUTIONARY
 NORMAL
The Freudian World
Some dynamic history
By 1900 four functions of the
unconscious had been described:
 Conservative: the unconscious stores memories, often
unaccessible to voluntary recall
 Dissolutive: the unconscious contains habits, once voluntary,
now automaticized, and dissociated elements of the
personality, which may lead a “parasitic existence”
 Creative: the unconscious serves as the matrix of new ideas
 Mythopoetic: the unconscious constructs narratives and
fantasies that appear mythic or religious in nature
Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic
Books.
The dynamic unconscious
The mind as a composite of
contradictory drives
sex and aggression
the psyche and its subpersonalities
motivated states expressed in behavior
Idea/emotion as pathogen
Two causes of mental disorders in the
early 1900’s
somatiker (physical)
psychiker (mental)
Freud was an adherent of the “psychiker”
trend
the pathology of belief
The idea of repression
What is repressed?
unbearable memories, usually sexual
• true or false: the role of childhood seduction in
adulthood trauma
impermissible desires
• sexual urges
• aggressive urges
Defense Mechanisms
 repression
 if you don’t like it, lie about it
 especially to yourself
 denial
 the truth isn’t so bad
 reaction formation
 I really really really really love my sister
 displacement
 My boss yells at me, I yell at my husband, my husband yells at
the baby, the baby bites the cat
Defense Mechanisms,
continued
 identification
– I want to be the bully
 rationalization
– we all know what this means
 intellectualization
– Woody Allen springs to mind
 Sublimation
– OK then, I’ll sculpt naked women
 projection
– it’s not me -- it’s you!
Neurotic Manifestations
“unconscious” ideas are at the core of
psychological conflicts
Incomprehensible distress
Psychosomatic Symptoms
Behavioral Anomalies
Hallucinations and Delusions
Jokes
 Jokes allow for the expression of repressed
wishes and ideas.
 For example, the Jester, or medieval court fool,
was often the only individual in the kingdom who
was allowed to tell the truth to the king.
 Jokes express in playful language what culture
will not allow formally expressed.
Parapraxes
 Hans Gross, founder of judicial psychology, had noted
during the 1880’s that witnesses and accused persons often
betrayed themselves involuntarily while giving false
testimony, often by a single word, or through attitudes,
general bearing and gesture.
 Freud, following Goethe, Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann,
attributed the source of these disturbances to autonomous
action in the unconscious, emergent as a consequence of
emotional disturbance.
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic
Books.
The Royal Road to the
Unconscious: The Dream
 Dreams as Wish Fulfillment
 A wish is a fantasy about gratified desire (pleasure) or
cessation of pain.
 “Freud considered as his major discovery that the dream is a
fulfillment of a wish, or, to put it more accurately, the vicarious
fulfillment of a repressed, unacceptable sexual wish, and this is
why the censor must intervene, to keep it down or to allow its
appearance only in disguised form.
 Freud also defined the dream as the guardian of sleep: feelings
that might awaken the dreamer are disguised in such a way
that they do not disturb him. Should this mechanism fail, the
dreamer has a nightmare and awakens.
Dreams as regressive
 The dream is also, Freud says, a process of regression that
manifests itself simultaneously in three fashions:
 as topical regression from the conscious to the unconscious,
 as temporal regression from the present time to childhood,
 and as form regression from the level of language to that of pictorial
and symbolic representations.”
Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic
Books, p. 492
Dream Processes in the
Unconscious:
 Latent Content: The repressed wish
the naked truth
 Censor: repression (socially-determined?)
produces:
Displacement
Condensation
Symbolization
Dramatization
 Preconscious Secondary Elaboration:
Imposition of Conscious Logic
 Consciousness and Manifest Content
The Dream Symbol
 Dream study was popular with the late
Victorians.
 Karl Albert Scherner theorized that dreams spoke
a symbolic language, and described typical
symbols, as follows:
The body as a house
Masculinity: high towers, pipes, clarinets, kinves and
pointed weapons, running horses
Femininity: narrow courtyards, staircases
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York, Basic Books.
Libido Theory: The stages of
psychosexual development
 Libido is energy, manifested most particularly as
sexual pleasure, with mental and physical
aspects.
Its source is internal, organic; it varies in pressure,
or intensity; it has an aim (a teleology), which is
removal of the pressure (the pleasure principle); it
has an object, which may be a person, or more rarely,
a thing.
It begins its development in infancy (the infant is a
sexual being) as unstructured, generalized desire, or
polymorphous perversity. Acquiring aim and object
requires development, through experience.
Childhood sexuality: development of the
personality
 the oral period (0-1)
 if it feels good, gum it
 the oral character: passive, optimistic, and dependent
 the anal period (2-3): biology meets hygiene (the id meets
the superego)
 get rid of it (or hoard it)
 the anal retentive miser: orderly, parsimonious, and obstinacy
 the anal expulsive: disorderly, overproductive, generous to a
fault
 the phallic period (3-5): the great and terrible penis
 masturbation
 penis envy
tough luck, girls. Maybe next time.
castration anxiety: a small price to pay for the possession of a
penis
The Oedipal phase emerges
during the ages of five and six.
Hostility and erotic
attraction towards
the parents
Boys develop
castration anxiety fear of the father as a consequence of
their competition for
mother.
Oedipus, continued
 A girl discovers her lack of
masculinity - that she is
already castrated - and
develops penis envy, and,
perhaps, resentment
towards the mother.
Oedipus, continued
 The path to mature adult
female sexuality means
acceptance of union with a
male,
 emancipation from the
father,
 and development of a
stable relationship with
the mother.
The Oedipal complex
 “On 15 October 1897, in [a] letter [to Wilhelm Fliess]
Freud announced the two elements of the Oedipus
complex: love for one parent, and jealous hostility
towards the other; this discovery was more than
incidental to the theory of dreams, since it vividly
illustrates the infantile roots of the unconscious wishes
animating all dreams.”
– Jones, E. (1984). The Life and Work of Sigmund
Freud, New York: Basic Books, p. 303
The Oedipal Myth
 “Most famous of the ancient Greek heroes of Thebes,
the unfortunate King Oedipus inspired Sophocles’great
tragedies Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus.
 The son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta, the infant
Oedipus was ritually wounded in the foot (hence his
name, which means "swollen foot") and exposed on
Mount Cithaeron, because of a prophecy that he would
kill his father and marry his mother.
 Rescued by a shepherd, he was brought up by King
Polybius of Corinth.
 When grown, Oedipus heard the prophecy about himself
and fled Corinth, believing that Polybius was his father.
 While on the road he killed a stranger, not knowing that
it was Laius.
 Entering Thebes, he found the city dominated by a
sphinx who killed anyone who could not solve her riddle:
"Who goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noon,
and in the evening on three?"
 Oedipus vanquished her by replying, "Man, in the three
ages of his life," and won the hand of the widowed
queen.
 Marrying Jocasta and thus fulfilling the prophecy,
Oedipus reigned long in Thebes and raised two sons,
Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone
and Ismene.
 When the secret of his birth came to light, Jocasta
hanged herself, and Oedipus blinded himself in
remorse, or was blinded.
 Under the regency of Jocasta's brother Creon,
Oedipus was driven from Thebes. Antigone chose
exile with him, the two seeking refuge at Colonus,
near Athens. Both daughters helped prepare Oedipus
for death in a grove sacred to the Eumenides. Many
variations of the story occur in literature.”
• Norma Goodrich, Oedipus, in the Software Toolworks
Multimedia Encyclopedia
Ellenberger’s commentary
 “Actually, the mythological model of that complex is not so
much to be found in the Oedipus drama as it is in the myth of
Saturn and Jupiter.
 Saturn was threatened with death by his father Uranus, the first
god of the world, but was saved by his mother. Saturn then
castrated his father.
 Later, Saturn ate his own children except for the youngest,
Jupiter, who was saved by his mother. Jupiter then supplanted
his father.
 The same myth has been found in India and among the
Hittites.”
– Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the
Unconscious. New York: Basic Books, pp. 507508.
The Oedipus theory,
continued
 Kill your father, marry your mother
but Oedipus married his mother accidentally,
and blinded himself in remorse
Oedipus as failed hero
 The primal horde theory: Freud’s anthropology
Dad has all the women; kill him, and feel
eternal guilt
 How to solve it: become your father
identification, remember?
More Childhood Sex
The latency period (7-12)
girls are yucky
boys are yucky
calm prevails
memories of childhood sexuality
vanish, into the unconscious.
the genital stage
the genital character: successfully
integrated sexuality
Neuroticism may be traced to
pathological sexual development.
 Neurotics, victims of unconscious inhibitions, can not
remember the source or the cause of their present
difficulties.
 They may be fixated - arrested in development at an early
sexual stage- or may regress to an earlier stage, when
pressured.
 Anal fixation, for example, may emerge in miserliness,
obsession with order, and procrastination. The miser “holds
on” to money and other objects, like the anally retentive
child holds on to his feces, in the course of toilet training.
The id, ego and superego
The idea of the pleasure and reality
principles
ID
The id was not very different from what Freud had
originally described as the unconscious, the seat of both
the repressed material and the drives, to which had been
added the unconscious fantasies and unconscious
feelings, notably guilt feelings.
The word "unconscious" was now an adjective, used to
qualify not only the id, but parts of the ego and
superego.
The term "id" (das Es) could be traced to Nietzsche, but
Freud admitted borrowing it from The Book of the Id, by
George Groddeck, an admirer of psychoanalysis.
EGO
“The ego was defined as "the coordinated organization
of mental processes in a person." There was a conscious
and an unconscious part in the ego.
To the conscious ego belonged perception and motor
control, and to the unconscious ego, the dream censor
and the process of repression.
Language was an ego function; unconscious contents
became preconscious through the medium of words.
SUPEREGO
 The most novel part of The Ego and the Id is that devoted to the
third agency, the superego, though Freud had already touched
on some of its aspects under the name of ego ideal.
 The superego is the watchful, judging, punishing agency in the
individual, the source of social and religious feelings in mankind.
 Its origin was in the individual's former ego configurations,
which had been superseded, and above all in the introjection of
the father figure as a part of the resolution of the Oedipus
complex.
 The construction of the superego in an individual is thus
dependent on the manner in which the Oedipus complex has
been resolved.
Superego, continued
 On the other hand,
the superego
receives its energy
from the id, hence
its frequently cruel,
sadistic quality.
Superego, continued
 This new concept explained the role of neurotic guilt
feelings in obsessions, melancholia, hysteria, and in
criminality.
 The ideas of self-punishment and criminality because of
guilt feelings were later to be expanded and emphasized
in psychoanalysis and criminology.
Id, Ego and Superego:
conclusion
 Freud concluded that the "Id is quite amoral, the Ego
strives to be moral, and the Superego can be hypermoral and cruel as only the Id can be."
As a consequence of these new theories, the ego was now in
the limelight of psychoanalysis, especially as the site of anxiety:
reality anxiety, that is, fear caused by reality, drive anxiety from
pressures from the id and guilt anxiety resulting from the
pressures of the superego.
Freud concluded with a description of the pitiful state of the
ego, suffering under the pressures of its three masters.
It was clear that the main concern of psychotherapy would now
be to relieve the ego by reducing these pressures and helping it
acquire some strength.
– Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New
York: Basic Books, p. 516
Catharsis
The talking cure
Free association, resistance and
transference
Free Association
 The patient relaxed on a couch, and was told the basic rule, to tell
whatever came to his mind, no matter how futile, absurd,
embarrassing, or even offensive it seemed.
 In trying to do so, the patient felt moments of inhibition and other
inner difficulties, which Freud termed "resistance."
 As the sessions went on from day to day, the patient began to
manifest irrational feelings of love or hostility toward the therapist;
Freud called them "transference.”
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic
Books, p. 490
Philosophy of Religion and
Culture
The Future of an Illusion
(1927).
“His philosophy was
an extreme form of
positivism, which
considered religion
dangerous and
metaphysics
superfluous.
Illusion, continued.
 In 1907, Freud compared obsessive compulsive symptoms of
neurotics with religious rituals and creeds, and concluded that
religion was a universal obsessional neurosis, and obsession an
individualized religion.
 Twenty years later, in The Future of an Illusion, Freud defined
religion as an illusion inspired by infantile belief in the omnipotence
of thought, a universal neurosis, a kind of narcotic that hampers the
free exercise of intelligence, and something man will have to give
up.
 Freud no doubt believed that psychoanalysis could unmask religion
as it could any neurotic symptom.
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic
Books, p. 525
Civilization and its
Discontents (1930)
Freud believed that primitive man had discovered
that voluntary limits on instinctual drive enabled
construction of powerful community.
Such renunciation, however, leads inevitably to
conflict between id, ego and superego, which
increases, as civilization becomes more
structured.
Freud appeared partially convinced that the limits
of such renuncation had been reached.
Eros and Thanatos: the life
and death instincts
Conclusion:
 Freud ended his life believing that psychoanalysis was more
useful as a tool for determining the nature of the
intrapsychic world, than as a adjunct to the cure of
psychiatric disturbance.
 “To undergo a successful psychoanalysis... amounts to a
journey through the unconscious, a journey from which a
man necessarily emerges with a modified personality. But
this in turn leads to a dilemma.
Conclusion, continued
 Psychoanalysts proclaim that their method is superior to any other
kind of therapy, being the only one able to restructure personality.
On the other hand, an increasing number of limitations, contraindications, dangers, have been pointed out by Freud and his
successors.
 Could it be that psychoanalysis, as a therapy, will come to be
replaced by other less laborious and more effective therapies,
whereas a few privileged men will afford it as a unique experience
apt to change their outlook upon the world, their fellowmen, and
themselves?”
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York: Basic Books, pp. 534525.
Conclusion
Whatever the number of its sources and
the intricacies of its context, the
psychoanalytic theory is universally
recognized as a powerful and original
synthesis that has been the incentive to
numerous researchers and findings in the
field of normal and abnormal psychology.
However, the problem of its scientific
status is not yet clarified.
Conclusion, continued
 Discoveries made in Freud's time in the field of
endocrinology, bacteriology, and the like, are
unequivocally integrated into science, whereas the
validity of psychoanalytic concepts is still questioned by
many experimental psychologists and epistemologists.
 This paradox has brought many Freudians to view
psychoanalysis as a discipline that stands outside the
field of experimental science and more akin to history,
philosophy, linguistics, or as a variety of hermeneutics.
 Ellenberger, H. (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious. New York:
Basic Books, p. 549
The Scientific Legacy of
Freud
Drew Westen
in press, Psychological Bulletin
Five key propositions have
stood the test of time
much of mental life is unconscious
thought, emotion, motivation
ambivalence is common in human mental life
parallel competition, compromise solutions
stable personality patterns begin in childhood
play an important role in shaping personality and social
relationships
mental representations of self, others, and relationships
guide interaction with others
influence form and expression of psychopathology
personality development entails
management of sexual and aggressive feelings
movement from immature dependence to mature interdependence
Catharsis
 “For the past decade, an increasing number of studies
have demonstrated that when individuals write about
emotional experiences, significant physical and mental
health improvements follow...”
improvements in immune function, autonomic
activity, grade improvement, laid-off
reemployment, less absenteeism
more observable, rather than less, with objective
measures
• Pennebaker, J.W. (1997). Writing about Emotional Experiences
as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science, 162-166
Studies of the Oedipus
complex
 Watson and colleagues (Watson & Getz, 1990) asked parents of
children age 3-6 to record over 7-days the number of
affectionate and aggressive acts displayed toward same- and
opposite-sex parents.
affection toward the opposite-sex parent and aggression
toward the same-sex parent were significantly more
common than the reverse.
This Oedipal pattern was strongest at age 4 and began to
decline by age 5.
These findings are particularly important because they are
neither intuitively obvious nor predictable from other
theories; in fact, based on socialization, social learning, and
reinforcement history on might expect more aggression
toward fathers from children of both sexes.
Is Freud dead?
Little modern concentration on ego, id,
superego
therapy is no longer an archaeological
expedition for lost memories
not much belief in the singular role of
aggressive and sexuality
but accruing evidence for
unconsciousness, ambivalence, catharsis,
transference