Freud Intro



Freud Intro[1]

• Sigismund Schlomo Freud (later shortened to Sigmund Freud by himself) was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Moravia (now the Czech Republic) on May 6, 1856.

• When Sigmund was four, his family moved to Vienna, Austria.

• Left Austria for England in 1938, to escape the Nazi invasion. Died in London on September 23, 1939.

• His father, Jacob Freud, was a wool merchant. His mother, Amalia, was Jacob’s second wife and 20 years younger than her husband.

• He had two much older half-brothers from his father’s first marriage and seven younger siblings. One of the older half-brothers, Emanuel, was older than Amalia and had a son who was a year younger than Sigmund.

• Sigmund’s Catholic nanny was very close to the boy. The unusual family situation, especially the complex relationships Sigmund had with his father and his nanny, was believed to have helped shape some of Freud’s psychoanalytic notions, such as the Oedipus Complex.

• At age 17, he entered the University of Vienna to study medicine.

• Upon graduation, he became a practicing physician, but was more interested in research into neurology[2] – specifically hysteria.[3]

• Published Studies in Hysteria (1895) with another physician based on treatment of a female patient. During treatment, Freud and Breuer discovered that recalling traumatic experiences[4] with the help of hypnosis helped relieve the patient’s symptoms. In the book, Freud and Breuer called this “the cathartic method,” or the “talking cure.”

• Gave up pure research in order to earn a living. Set up a medical practice specializing in “nervous diseases.”

• Interested in the effect of the unconscious[5] on mental stability and behavior, Freud established a treatment method that utilized hypnosis and the “talking cure,” or free association. This becomes the basis for Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis.

• In later years, Freud wrote more about how human psychology could influence the development and functioning of society.

• Freud accepted Darwin’s theory of human evolution and used it as a guidepost for his own investigations into society and culture.

• Freud examined the role of religion in society critically. He saw religion as a primitive attempt to deal with the frightening realities of the world and the impossibility of satisfying our fundamental desires. Love for and fear of the father found symbolic expression, he thought, in the major religious traditions. Freud himself did not practice the religion he was born into, although he always identified himself as a Jew.

Freud quotes:

• Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

• Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.

• Love in itself, in the form of longing and deprivation, lowers the self-regard; whereas to be loved, to have love returned, and to possess the beloved object, exalts it again.

Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development

David B. Stevenson

[pic]

Freud advanced a theory of personality development that centered on the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. At particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation. These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region. The child's libido centers on behavior affecting the primary erogenous zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the immediate one.

A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands, such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage. Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child's libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages, resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult personality.

The Oral Stage

The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of libidinal energy. The child, of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage, whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who truncated nursing sessions early, is characterized by pessimism, envy, suspicion and sarcasm. The overindulged oral character, whose nursing urges were always and often excessively satisfied, is optimistic, gullible, and is full of admiration for others around him. The stage culminates in the primary conflict of weaning, which both deprives the child of the sensory pleasures of nursing and of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. The stage lasts approximately one and one-half years.

The Anal Stage

At one and one-half years, the child enters the anal stage. With the advent of toilet training comes the child's obsession with the erogenous zone of the anus and with the retention or expulsion of the feces. This represents a classic conflict between the id, which derives pleasure from expulsion of bodily wastes, and the ego and superego, which represent the practical and societal pressures to control the bodily functions. The child meets the conflict between the parent's demands and the child's desires and physical capabilities in one of two ways: Either he puts up a fight or he simply refuses to go. The child who wants to fight takes pleasure in excreting maliciously, perhaps just before or just after being placed on the toilet. If the parents are too lenient and the child manages to derive pleasure and success from this expulsion, it will result in the formation of an anal expulsive character. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant. Conversely, a child may opt to retain feces, thereby spiting his parents while enjoying the pleasurable pressure of the built-up feces on his intestine. If this tactic succeeds and the child is overindulged, he will develop into an anal retentive character. This character is neat, precise, orderly, careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, and passive-aggressive. The resolution of the anal stage, proper toilet training, permanently affects the individual propensities to possession and attitudes towards authority. This stage lasts from one and one-half to two years.

The Phallic Stage

The phallic stage is the setting for the greatest, most crucial sexual conflict in Freud's model of development. In this stage, the child's erogenous zone is the genital region. As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one.

In the young male, the Oedipus conflict stems from his natural love for his mother, a love which becomes sexual as his libidinal energy transfers from the anal region to his genitals. Unfortunately for the boy, his father stands in the way of this love. The boy therefore feels aggression and envy towards this rival, his father, and also feels fear that the father will strike back at him. As the boy has noticed that women, his mother in particular, have no penises, he is struck by a great fear that his father will remove his penis, too. The anxiety is aggravated by the threats and discipline he incurs when caught masturbating by his parents. This castration anxiety outstrips his desire for his mother, so he represses the desire. Moreover, although the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because his father does, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father and becoming as much like him as possible: this identification indoctrinates the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. A lasting trace of the Oedipal conflict is the superego, the voice of the father within the boy. By thus resolving his incestuous conundrum, the boy passes into the latency period, a period of libidinal dormancy.

On the Electra complex, Freud was more vague. The complex has its roots in the little girl's discovery that she, along with her mother and all other women, lack the penis which her father and other men posses. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and envious, as she yearns for a penis of her own. She comes to blame her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis envy, the apparent counterpart to the boy's castration anxiety. The resolution of the Electra complex is far less clear-cut than the resolution of the Oedipus complex is in males; Freud stated that the resolution comes much later and is never truly complete. Just as the boy learned his sexual role by identifying with his father, so the girl learns her role by identifying with her mother in an attempt to posses her father vicariously. At the eventual resolution of the conflict, the girl passes into the latency period, though Freud implies that she always remains slightly fixated at the phallic stage.

Fixation at the phallic stage develops a phallic character, who is reckless, resolute, self-assured, and narcissistic--excessively vain and proud. The failure to resolve the conflict can also cause a person to be afraid or incapable of close love; As well, Freud postulated that fixation could be a root cause of homosexuality.

Latency Period

The resolution of the phallic stage leads to the latency period, which is not a psychosexual stage of development, but a period in which the sexual drive lies dormant. Freud saw latency as a period of unparalleled repression of sexual desires and erogenous impulses. During the latency period, children pour this repressed libidinal energy into asexual pursuits such as school, athletics, and same-sex friendships. But soon puberty strikes, and the genitals once again become a central focus of libidinal energy.

The Genital Stage

In the genital stage, as the child's energy once again focuses on his genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as he struggles with further repression and defenses.

Created 1992; added to the Victorian Web 6 December 2000; last modified 27 May 2001,

Thanks to Herwig Neefs of Belgium for correcting a error.

1. Oedipus Complex (3-6 years old)

Freud describes the source of this complex in his Introductory Lectures (Twenty-First Lecture): “You all know the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by fate to kill his father and take his mother to wife, who did everything possible to escape the oracle’s decree and punished himself by blinding when he learned that he had nonetheless unwittingly committed both these crimes.” According to Freud, Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, illustrates a formative stage in each individual's psychosexual development, when the young child transfers his love object from the breast (the oral phase) to the mother. The child realizes, however, that the father will be angry and fears castration will be the punishment the father inflicts on the child. The process of overcoming these unconscious desires contributes to emotional maturity. They can reemerge, however, in dreams or even creative works like the aforementioned play. Eventually, the child will shift his sexual interest from his mother to other objects of desire.

2. Penis Envy

Girls follow the same psychosexual stages of development as boys. In the phallic stage – 3-6 years – a girl also wants to have a sexual relationship with her mother, for which she comes to realize she is physically unequipped. She desires a penis, and the power that it represents. This is described as penis envy. She sees the solution as obtaining her father’s penis, and switches her sexual desire to that parent. She comes to blame her mother for her apparent castration (what she sees as punishment by the mother for being attracted to the father) assisting a shift in the focus of her sexual impulses from her mother to her father. Sexual desire for her father leads to the desire to replace and eliminate her mother. The girl identifies with her mother so that she might learn to mimic her, and thus replace her. In order to avoid punishment, the girl slowly shifts the object of her sexual desires from her father to men in general.

3. Dream Symbolism, from Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-1917):

The male genitals, then, are represented in dreams in a number of ways that must be called symbolic, where the common element in the comparison is mostly very obvious. To begin with, for the male genitals as a whole the sacred number 3 is of symbolic significance. The more striking and for both sexes the more interesting component of the genitals, the male organ, finds symbolic substitutes in the first instance in things that resemble it in shape - things, accordingly, that are long and up-standing, such as sticks, umbrellas, posts, trees and so on; further, in objects which share with the thing they represent the characteristic of penetrating into the body and injuring - thus, sharp weapons of every kind, knives, daggers, spears, sabres, but also fire-arms, rifles, pistols and revolvers (particularly suitable owing to their shape). Nor is there any difficulty in understanding how it is that the male organ can be replaced by objects from which water flows - water-taps, watering-cans, or fountains - or again by other objects which are capable of being lengthened, such as hanging-lamps, extensible pencils, etc.

4. Dream Symbolism, from Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-1917):

The female genitals are symbolically represented by all such objects as share their characteristic of enclosing a hollow space which can take something into itself: by pits, cavities and hollows, for instance, by vessels and bottles, by receptacles, boxes, trunks, cases, chests, pockets, and so on. Ships, too, fall into this category. Some symbols have more connection with the uterus than with the female genitals: thus, cupboard, stoves and, more especially, rooms. Here room-symbolism touches on house-symbolism. Doors and gates, again, are symbols of the genital orifice. Materials, too, are symbols for women: wood, papery and objects made of them, like tables and books. Among animals, snails and mussels at least are undeniably female symbols; among parts of the body, the mouth (as a substitute for the genital orifice); among buildings, churches and chapels. Not every symbol, as you will observe, is equally intelligible.

5. Dream Symbolism, from Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-1917):

Dreams can ... represent the sexual organ as the essence of the dreamer's whole person and make him himself fly. Do not take it to heart if dreams of flying, so familiar and often so delightful, have to be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, as erection-dreams.... And do not make an objection out of the fact that women can have the same flying dreams as men. Remember, rather, that our dreams aim at being the fulfillments of wishes and that the wish to be a man is found so frequently, consciously or unconsciously, in women. Nor will anyone with knowledge of anatomy be bewildered by the fact that it is possible for women to realize this wish through the same sensations as men. Women possess as part of their genitals a small organ similar to the male one; and this small organ, the clitoris, actually plays the same part in childhood and during the years before sexual intercourse as the large organ in men.

6. “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy” (“Little Hans”) 1909

When “Little Hans” exhibited an irrational fear of horses pulling wagons in the streets, his father wrote to Freud: “Hans is afraid of horses, afraid a horse will bite him in the street, this fear seems to be connected to his being frightened by a large penis.” Hans had previously been reprimanded by his parents for playing with his penis too much. He had been told to stop or his penis would have to be cut off. He had also been told his mother would leave him if he didn’t stop.

Freud’s analysis was conducted through correspondence with the father. Eventually, Freud concluded that Little Hans’ fear was a result of Oedipal conflicts over his mother as Hans went through the phallic stage of development. Hans’ fear of horses was really fear and envy of his father and his father’s position in the family.

Freud’s therapeutic suggestion was that the father talk to Hans about sex. Years later, Hans could not remember the talks and he had developed into a well-adjusted young man.

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[1] Sources: ; ;

[2] Neurology: The medical science that deals with the nervous system and disorders affecting it.

[3] Hysteria: 1. Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic. 2. A mental disorder characterized by emotional excitability and sometimes by amnesia or a physical deficit, such as paralysis, or a sensory deficit, without an orgaficit, without an organic cause. [From Latin hystericus, hysterical, from Greek husterikos, from husterā, womb (from the former idea that disturbances in the womb caused hysteria).]

[4] According to Freud, memory is the biological basis of neurological and psychological problems.

[5] Unconscious: The division of the mind in psychoanalytic theory containing elements of psychic makeup, such as memories or repressed desires, that are not subject to conscious perception or control but that often affect conscious thoughts and behavior.

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Libido: a) The psychic and emotional energy associated with instinctual biological drives. b) The sex drive.

Id: Unconscious part of the mind that is the source of animal instincts and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs.

Ego: Conscious part of the mind that controls thought and behavior, and is most concerned with external reality.

Superego: Unconscious part of the mind that has internalized moral standards, thus censoring and restraining the thoughts and actions of the ego.

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