Sigmund Freud

by By Saul McLeod published 2013

Freud’s lexicon has become embedded within the vocabulary of western society.
Words he introduced through his theories are now used by everyday people, such as
anal (personality), libido, denial, repression, cathartic, Freudian slip, and neurotic.
Freud believed that when we explain our own behaviour to ourselves or others
(conscious mental activity) we rarely give a true account of our motivation. This is not
because we are deliberately lying. Whilst human beings are great deceivers of others,
they are even more adept at self-deception. Our rationalizations of our conduct are
therefore disguising the real reasons.
Freud’s life work was dominated by his attempts to find ways of penetrating this often
subtle and elaborate camouflage that obscures the hidden structure and processes of
personality.
Freud was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental
illness and also a theory which explains human behavior.
Psychoanalysis is often known as the talking cure. Typically Freud would encourage
his patients to talk freely (on his famous couch) regarding their symptoms, and to
describe exactly what was on their mind.
The Case of Anna O
The case of Anna O (real name Bertha Pappenheim) marked a turning point in the
career of a young Viennese neuropathologist by the name of Sigmund Freud. It even
went on to influence the future direction of psychology as a whole.
Anna O. suffered from hysteria, a condition in which the patient exhibits physical
symptoms (e.g. paralysis, convulsions, hallucinations, loss of speech) without an
apparent physical cause. Her doctor Josef Breuer succeeded in treating Anna by
helping her to recall forgotten memories of traumatic events.
During discussions with her it became apparent that she had developed a fear of
drinking, when a dog she hated drank from her glass. Her other symptoms originated
when caring for her sick father. She would not express her anxiety for her his illness
but did express it later, during psychoanalysis. As soon as she had the opportunity to
make these unconscious thoughts conscious her paralysis disappeared.
Breuer discussed the case with his friend Freud. Out of these discussions came the
germ of an idea that Freud was to pursue for the rest of his life. In Studies in
Hysteria (1895) Freud proposed that physical symptoms are often the surface
manifestations of deeply repressed conflicts. However, Freud was not just advancing
an explanation of a particular illness. Implicitly he was proposing a revolutionary new
theory of the human psyche itself.
This theory emerged “bit by bit” as a result of Freud’s clinical investigations and it led
him to propose that there were at least three levels of the mind.

The Unconscious Mind

Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, whereby he
described the features of the mind’s structure and function. Freud used the analogy of
an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.
On the surface is consciousness, which consists of those thoughts that are the focus of
our attention now, and this is seen as the tip of the iceberg. The preconscious consists
of all which can be retrieved from memory.
The third and most significant region is the unconscious. Here lie the processes that
are the real cause of most behaviour. Like an iceberg, the most important part of the
mind is the part you cannot see.
The unconscious mind acts as a repository, a ‘cauldron’ of primitive wishes and
impulse kept at bay and mediated by the preconscious area.For example, Freud (1915)
found that some events and desires were often too frightening or painful for his
patients to acknowledge, and believed such information was locked away in the
unconscious mind. This can happen through the process of repression.
Sigmund Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, and a primary
assumption of Freudian theory is that the unconscious mind governs behavior to a
greater degree than people suspect. Indeed, the goal of psychoanalysis is to make the
unconscious conscious.

The Psyche
Freud (1923) later developed a more structural model of the mind comprising the
entities id, ego and superego (what Freud called “the psychic apparatus”). These are
not physical areas within the brain, but rather hypothetical conceptualizations of
important mental functions.
Freud assumed the id operated at an unconscious level according to the pleasure
principle (gratification from satisfying basic instincts). The id comprises two kinds of
biological instincts (or drives) which Freud called Eros and Thanatos.
Eros, or life instinct, helps the individual to survive; it directs life-sustaining activities
such as respiration, eating and sex (Freud, 1925). The energy created by the life
instincts is known as libido.
In contrast, Thanatos or death instinct, is viewed as a set of destructive forces present
in all human beings (Freud, 1920). When this energy is directed outward onto others,
it is expressed as aggression and violence. Freud believed that Eros is stronger than
Thanatos, thus enabling people to survive rather than self-destruct.
The ego develops from the id during infancy. The ego's goal is to satisfy the demands
of the id in a safe a socially acceptable way. In contrast to the id the ego follows the
reality principle as it operates in both the conscious and unconscious mind.
The superego develops during early childhood (when the child identifies with the
same sex parent) and is responsible for ensuring moral standards are followed. The
superego operates on the morality principle and motivates us to behave in a socially
responsible and acceptable manner.
The basic dilemma of all human existence is that each element of the psychic
apparatus makes demands upon us that are incompatible with the other two. Inner
conflict is inevitable.
For example, the superego can make a person feel guilty if rules are not followed.
When there is conflict between the goals of the id and superego, the ego must act as a
referee and mediate this conflict. The ego can deploy various defense
mechanisms (Freud, 1894, 1896) to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed by
anxiety.

Defense Mechanisms
Click here for more information on defense mechanisms.

Psychosexual Stages
In the highly repressive “Victorian” society in which Freud lived and worked women,
in particular, were forced to repress their sexual needs. In many cases the result was
some form of neurotic illness.
Freud sought to understand the nature and variety of these illnesses by retracing the
sexual history of his patients. This was not primarily an investigation of sexual
experiences as such. Far more important were the patient’s wishes and desires, their
experience of love, hate, shame, guilt and fear – and how they handled these powerful
emotions.
It was this that led to the most controversial part of Freud’s work – his theory
of psychosexual development and of the Oedipus complex
Freud believed that children are born with a libido – a sexual (pleasure) urge. There
are a number of stages of childhood, during which the child seeks pleasure from a
different ‘object’.

To be psychologically healthy, we must successfully complete each stage.Mental

abnormality can occur if a stage is not completed successfully and the person becomes
‘fixated’ in a particular stage. This particular theory shows how adult personality is
determined by childhood experiences.
Dream Analysis
Freud (1900) considered dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious as it is in
dreams that the ego's defenses are lowered so that some of the repressed material
comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form. Dreams perform important
functions for the unconscious mind and serve as valuable clues to how
the unconscious mind operates.
On 24 July 1895, Freud had his own dream that was to form the basis of his theory.
He had been worried about a patient, Irma, who was not doing as well in treatment as
he had hoped. Freud in fact blamed himself for this, and was feeling guilty.
Freud dreamed that he met Irma at a party and examined her. He then saw a chemical
formula for a drug that another doctor had given Irma flash before his eyes and realized
that her condition was caused by a dirty syringe used by the other doctor. Freud's guilt
was thus relieved.
Freud interpreted this dream as wish-fulfillment. He had wished that Irma's poor
condition was not his fault and the dream had fulfilled this wish by informing him that
another doctor was at fault. Based on this dream, Freud (1900) went on to propose
that a major function of dreams was the fulfillment of wishes.
Freud distinguished between the manifest content of a dream (what the dreamer
remembers) and the latent content, the symbolic meaning of the dream (i.e. the
underlying wish). The manifest content is often based on the events of the day.
The process whereby the underlying wish is translated into the manifest content is
called dream-work. The purpose of dream work is to transform the forbidden wish
into a non-threatening form, thus reducing anxiety and allowing us to continuing
sleeping. Dream work involves the process of condensation, displacement, and
secondary elaboration.
The process of condensation is the joining of two or more ideas/images into one. For
example, a dream about a man may be a dream about both one's father and one's
lover. A dream about a house might be the condensation of worries about security as
well as worries about one's appearance to the rest of the world.
Displacement takes place when we transform the person or object we are really
concerned about to someone else. For example, one of Freud’s patients was extremely
resentful of his sister-in-law and used to refer to her as a dog, dreamed of strangling a
small white dog. Freud interpreted this as representing his wish to kill his sister-in-
law. If the patient would have really dreamed of killing his sister-in-law, he would
have felt guilty. The unconscious mind transformed her into a dog to protect him.
Secondary elaboration occurs when the unconscious mind strings together wish-
fulfilling images in a logical order of events, further obscuring the latent
content. According to Freud this is why the manifest content of dreams can be in the
form of believable events.
In Freud’s later work on dreams he explored the possibility of universal symbols in
dreams. Some of these were sexual in nature, including poles, guns and swords
representing the penis and horse riding and dancing representing sexual intercourse.
However, Freud was cautious about symbols and stated that general symbols are more
personal rather than universal. A person cannot interpret what the manifest content of
a dream symbolized without knowing about the person’s circumstances.
'Dream dictionaries', which are still popular now, were a source of irritation to Freud.
In an amusing example of the limitations of universal symbols, one of Freud's
patients, after dreaming about holding a wriggling fish, said to him 'that's a Freudian
symbol - it must be a penis!'
Freud explored further and it turned out that the woman's mother, who was a
passionate astrologer and a Pisces, was on the patient's mind because she disapproved
of her daughter being in analysis. It seems more plausible, as Freud suggested, that the
fish represented the patient's mother rather than a penis!

Freud's Followers
Freud attracted many followers, who formed a famous group in 1902 called the
"Psychological Wednesday Society". The group met every Wednesday in Freud's
waiting room.
As the organization grew, Freud established an inner circle of devoted followers, the
so-called "Committee" (including Sàndor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto
Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones).
At the beginning of 1908 the committee had 22 members and renamed themselves the
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Critical Evaluation
Freud's theory is good at explaining but not at predicting behavior (which is one of the
goals of science). For this reason Freud's theory is unfalsifiable - it can neither be
proved true or refuted. For example, the unconscious mind is difficult to test and
measure objectively. Overall, Freud's theory is highly unscientific.
Despite the scepticism of the unconscious mind, cognitive psychology has identified
unconscious processes, such as procedural memory (Tulving, 1972), automatic
processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Stroop, 1935), and social psychology have
shown the importance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Such
empirical findings have demonstrated the role of unconscious processes in human
behaviour.
However, most of the evidence for Freud's theories is taken from an unrepresentative
sample. He mostly studied himself, his patients and only one child (e.g. Little Hans).
The main problem here is that the case studies are based on studying one person in
detail, and with reference to Freud the individuals in question are most often middle
aged women from Vienna (i.e. his patients). This makes generalizations to the wider
population (e.g. the whole world) difficult. However, Freud thought this unimportant,
believing in only a qualitative difference between people.
Freud may also have shown research bias in his interpretations - he may have only
paid attention to information which supported his theories, and ignored information
and other explanations that did not fit them.
However, Fisher & Greenberg (1996) argue that Freud’s theory should be evaluated in
terms of specific hypotheses rather than as a whole. They concluded that there is
evidence to support Freud’s concepts of oral and anal personalities and some aspects
of his ideas on depression and paranoia. They found little evidence of the Oedipal
conflict and no support for Freud’s views on women’s sexuality and how their
development differs from men'.

References
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Fisher, S., & Greenberg, R. P. (1996). Freud scientifically reappraised: Testing the
theories and therapy. John Wiley & Sons.
Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 41-61.
Freud, S. (1896). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 157-185.
Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E., 4-5.
Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204.
Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.
Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard edition, 19, 235-239.
Freud, S. (1961). The resistances to psycho-analysis. In The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego
and the Id and other works (pp. 211-224).
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esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102(1), 4.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of
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Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson
(Eds.), Organization of Memory, (pp. 381–403). New York: Academic Press.

How to cite this article:

McLeod, S. A. (2013). Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-
Freud.html