Austrian Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1866 in Freiburg, died
September 23, 1989 in London. He was a physician, neurologist, author
and the founder of the psychoanalysis. His most wellknown work is the
Interpretation of Dreams (1900), where he presents that the dreams can
be interpreted and understood.
Sigmund Freud married year 1886 with Martha Bernays and they
had three sons and three daughters, among them Anna Freud.
S. Freud had a significant part in the contemporary view of the
mind and the psychotherapy. He worked as a neurologist and began to interest
in the human psyche professionally at 40 years of age.
S. Freud received a scholarship in the end of 1800:s that made an opportunity
for him to travel to Paris to the mental hospital la Salpêtrière.
There could the young S. Freud follow the demonstration of professor Jean-Martin
Chareots of how hysteric women under the hypnosis were able to show the
symptom of similar kind as epilepsy, fainting etc. In the end of the 1800:s
hysteria was a very common diagnosis especially in women.
The main part of S. Freuds patients were hysterical persons and he tried
to help them by varying methods. But the patients did not want to be subjected
to hypnosis. Instead they preferred to have an outbrak by talking about
their deepest feelings and thoughts. Now they started using terms as a
repression and the unconscious to explain the psychological course of
events behind the hysterical symptoms. He found that by talking, under
hypnosis and by using free associations, one could get hold of the unpleasant
events which had been repressed away from the conscious of the patients.
He thought he found a connection between the traumatic (after incestuous)
sexual experiences back in early childhood and the hysterical symptoms.
S. Freud noticed that he came closer to his patients by listening and
really trying to understand what they had to tell. He gave up the hypnosis
as a method of treatment and let the patients speak straight from the
heart, lying on the sofa. He sat beside the sofa, behind the head of the
patient, listening concentrated. The method is called free associations
and the psychoanalytic treatment started taking a form. The free associations
mean that the therapist creates the contents about what the patients express.
S. Freud drew up his conclusion that there was an unconscious part of
human psyche that could take control over the body’s fysiological
functions and also operate on a great part of human conscious processes.
As a result of this discovery and after several years of the clinical
work S.F. introduced the topographical pattern of human psyche:
Within the conscious there are all information which
are available for our memory. Things that we know and can remember.
Within the preconscious there are things that at
present are not conscious but is rather easy to get hold on, such as
dentist times, the codes to the doors etc.
Within the unconscious there are ideas, thoughts
and events that are threatening to the individual. They are repressed.
It could be unpleasant things that oneself has done as child or unpleasant
things that has happened to one.
The censor is between the unconscious system and
the preconscious. It decides if the information stored in the unconscious
shall become preconscious or not. During the sleep the censor gets weaker.
In spite of the censor the unconsciousness still can take place in the
conscious as miss-presentation, which are the result of a conflict between
a conscious intention and a repressed wish or dream.
In his continuing theorizing S.F. started out from the significance of
the immature and unconscious fantasies behind the later symptom development.
Now came additional theory about the psychosexual development and its
aspects. Here is among others lies what S.F. calls the oral stage, the
anal stage and the genital stage.
1923 S.F. introduced his structural formula of human psyche where he underlines
conflicts between our biological driving forces:
The Id is the part of our psyche that is dominated
by our congenital needs, instincts and reflexes. The Id is controlled
by the principle of lust, that is, to satisfy our instincts and needs.
The Ego has a compromising role between the Id’s
desires and the Superego’s demand that develops during the second
year of life when a child realizes that he/she must adjust to the outer
reality. One says that the Ego works by the real life principle. The
child realizes that mother cannot always be present and this is not
dangerous.
The Superego starts growing between 2-6 years. It
represent the conscience and the child’s moral, the rules and
the values that within the society that the parents transform to the
child by upbringing. Often one hears little children try to educate
and bring up other children in the same age. The demands that the Super
ego put on itself can be as unrealistic as the Id’s desires and
needs.
With help of defence mechanisms the psyche tries to control those conflicts
that are between the Id, Ego and Superego. The individual wants to keep
their self-respect and then unconsciously misrepresent the reality by
using the defence mechanism. One represses, denies and jusifies own mistakes.
In the middle of 1920:s the surrealistic style of art grew up and they
used theories from S. Freud in their attempt to reshape the human subconscious/superconscious
lines of thoughts in art, literature and film.
S. Freud had many followers who developed his theories. Among others the
most known are Anna Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik H, Eriksson,
Melanie Klein, Wilhelm Reich and David Stern.
A well-known Freud theory is the Oedipus complex, which considers the
children’s worship and attraction to the parents of opposite sex,
at the same time as they feel jealousy towards the parent of the same
sex.
For example, the little boy falls in love with his mother but realizes
he has rivery against the father, who he then wants to remove. The boy
gives up his effort to own the mother when he realizes that he cannot
win over his father as he is taller and stronger.
The girl does not give up her father, according to Freud, until she finds
a partner and has her own child.
Unsolved Oedipus Complex can lead to that an individual when he has grown-up
has difficult to build up a relationship, i.e the boys tend to choose
a woman who is like his mother or may have a sense of guilt regarding
sex.
Libido is the sexual and physical love, our sex instinct. S. Freud called
this energy the urge of life that the individual gets from his sexual
desire, by the Latin word Libido. The opposite and complement to the Libido
according to Freud was the instinct of death, Thanatos, which is the aggression
and self-destruction that turn outward on others.
