Sigmund Freud

Podcast Transcript

If you know anything about the field of psychology, you’ve probably heard of Sigmund Freud.

Best known as the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud has become the most prominent figure in psychology.

His impact extended far beyond psychology, and in the process, he became a notable figure in popular culture through his theories and the terms he coined

Learn about the life and theories of Sigmund Freud on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

This is a warning for anyone listening to the show with their children; the theories of Sigmund Freud reference human sexuality. The topics are addressed clinically and non-gratitously but they will come up in the episode

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in what was then Freiberg, Austria, and is today the town of P?íbor, Czechia. He was the eldest of eight children, born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents. At Freud’s birth, his family was struggling financially, and they lived in a small, rented room in a locksmith’s house.

When Freud was four, his parents decided to move the family to Vienna, where Freud lived for the rest of his life.

In 1865, the young Freud attended the prestigious Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium. At this school, teachers respected his intelligence and considered him outstanding, and he graduated from this program with honors. Freud decided to attend university in 1873.

He entered the University of Vienna, initially intending to study law. However, he switched paths and worked with the medical faculty. There, he collaborated with academics in philosophy, zoology, and physiology, dissecting and comparing the brains of humans and other animals.

Unfortunately for Freud, he had to take a break from his studies to complete a year of military service in 1879. After fufilling his duty, he returned to the University, where he graduated with a medical degree in 1881.

In 1882, Freud started his medical career at Vienna General Hospital. During this time, he conducted research on cerebral anatomy, which he later used in his 1884 paper on the effects of cocaine.

He also used his research on cerebral anatomy to publish a book on aphasia, a condition in which the brain is impaired in understanding and formulating language.

During his first three years at Vienna General, Freud worked in numerous departments, including the psychiatric clinic and at the local asylum. It is believed that this work led to an increased interest in clinical psychology.

In 1885, Freud’s extensive research led the University of Vienna to appoint him as a lecturer. Though this position was not salaried, he was able to give lectures on Neuropathology at the university.

In 1886, Freud left his role at the Vienna General to start a private practice focused on ‘nervous disorders.’ That same year, he married Martha Bernays. They had a Jewish wedding, which Freud, an atheist, did not particularly appreciate. The couple would go on to have six children together.

Freud’s greatest contribution to psychology was his theory of psychoanalysis. This theory states that the unconscious mind and early childhood experience shape the personality and behaviors a person exhibits in their adult life.

Freud began developing psychoanalysis while working in private practice. It was then that a colleague treated a patient with physical symptoms that had no obvious cause. The experience led Freud to several important insights.

His colleague found that the patient’s symptoms improved when he was speaking with the patient. During their conversations, the patient uncovered traumatic experiences repressed from their conscious memory.

This case inspired Freud to understand the unconscious mind and shaped his work and the development of his ideas.

Freud started his research into the unconscious using the technique of hypnosis. This came from his time studying under a neurologist named Jean-Martin Charcot.

Charcot specialized in studying hysterical paralysis, which is being paralyzed or having other physical ailments without a physical cause. Hypnosis has been shown to help eliminate paralysis symptoms, allowing people to suddenly walk again.

However, further investigation showed that the miraculous recoveries induced by hypnosis would not last long. Freud determined this to be false healing, similar to the placebo effect, leading Freud to take a psychological perspective on neurological healing.

Later, in 1887 and 1888, Freud worked in a different hospital in Vienna. During this time, his theory that neurological conditions could be solved with psychology was further proven when patients who had neurotic symptoms with no known cause were being treated in atypical ways.

With this evidence, Freud became further convinced of his theory that hypnosis was ineffective and began to further delve into his theory on how effective treatment should be administered.

Believing that the hypnotic methods did not adequately allow for his patients’ minds to think freely, this led him to develop the idea of “free association.” This method allowed and encouraged the patient to speak freely about their thoughts, feelings, and emotions without censoring them.

Through this technique, Freud believed that he could uncover thoughts and memories in the person’s subconscious that were causing psychological anomalies.

Freud and Josef Breuer first presented free association in their book Studies on Hysteria, published in 1895. This work is typically viewed as the birth of psychoanalysis. It was based on Breuer and Freud’s joint treatment of a patient known as “Anna O.”

The treatment was dubbed the “talking cure.” In the book, Freud posits that “Anna” was suffering from hysteria due to experiencing distress due to her unconscious issues with sexuality, due to Anna’s free associations around young women.

At the same time, Freud began to come up with a term to describe his psychological cure for physiological problems. He decided to call it……psychoanalysis.

This term was introduced to the world in a published essay in 1896 titled “Inheritance and Etiology of Neuroses.”

The idea of free association and talking about psychological problems proved to be popular amongst psychologists at the time. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis revolutionized therapeutic techniques, many of which are still used today.

Over time, Freud further developed his theory.

One of the most notable developments was through the study of dream interpretation. Releasing a book called “The Interpretation of Dreams” in 1899 on the subject, Freud proposed that dreams are windows into the unconscious.

Freud argues that dreams give insight into a person’s hidden emotions and desires, as well as into conflicts and struggles the unconscious mind faces.

He believed dreams fall into two fields: manifest content, what you recall from the day, and latent content, the secret, underlying meaning. Freud argued the mind uses dreams to mask unacceptable desires, weaving them into symbolic narratives.

Freud viewed dream analysis as one of the most important aspects of his work, and used the theory as a foundation for his other work. The most notable of which was his topographicall model, which was Freud’s view of what some might call the human soul.

The topographical model described the conscious, unconscious, and preconscious mind. This model served as the earliest foundation of his ideas of the Id, Ego, and Superego.

In the topographical model, Freud sorted unconscious needs as being sexually based. If these thoughts can’t be expressed, then the conscious mind keeps them at bay.

In the preconscious, ideas of moral education are stored. This region warns the body of possible punishment or consequences. That, in turn, influences the conscience to behave in a socially acceptable way. The preconscious and unconscious work together to shape conscious behavior.

This was later expanded into the Id, Ego, and Superego. This is a method Freud used to show how a person’s psyche is formed.

The Id is the pleasure-seeking, instinct-driven part of a person’s mind. This is the desire to receive immediate gratification, where the brain basically goes, “I want that thing,” and acts on impulse to get it.

Another term for the Id is the pleasure principle. This is the instinctive desire to seek immediate gratification and avoid pain by satisfying immediate needs.

The superego acts as the antithesis of the Id. In many ways, the superego is the angel to the Id’s devil. The superego acts as a person’s conscience. It represents the moral ideas that society, friends, and family have given you. It works to keep the person acting in an ideal way.

Finally, there is the ego. The ego acts as a moderator between the Id and the superego, balancing the impulses the Id wants to act on with what is socially acceptable.

This dynamic was important because it is central to the development of personality and behavior.

His work on dreams also laid the foundation for one of Freud’s most controversial theories, the Oedipus Complex.

The theory was named after the Greek myth of Oedipus, who was cursed to murder his father and marry his mother. There is more nuance to this myth, but that’s the general idea.

To Freud, the Oedipus Complex helped explain psychoanalytical and psychosexual development. In this theory, a young boy admires his father for his mental and physical superiority over the boy and wants to grow into his father’s image.

However, the son is jealous of the father because of an unconscious desire for the mother. This relationship dynamic can be used to explain an adult’s development through how they perceive sexuality and relationships.

Freud had quite a few theories on personality and how sexuality helped form it. The next most notable was Freud’s psychosexual theory of development. This theory explains how personality develops.

In this theory, he argues that personality develops through five childhood stages, each associated with distinct erogenous zones of the body. These zones are parts of the body that become sensitive to arousal during childhood.

If one of these stages is interrupted through an unresolved conflict, then Freud believes that personality issues in adulthood could arise, specifically with a fixation where you would be stuck at one of the erogenous zones.

This is where the phrase ‘anal retentive’ comes from to describe someone who is overly neat and orderly.

Freud’s view of the world was that life was built on two principles, tension and pleasure. By viewing human development in a psychosexual way, he attempted to express that adult personality is developed through an argument between the ego and superego as they battle for control and the desire for gratification.

The final Freudian theory I’ll cover is the concept of defense mechanisms. This idea was first described in Freud’s work, but was actually developed by Freud’s daughter, Anna, who created the list of 10 different defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms were another theory developed by Freud to explain the unconscious strategies the mind uses to manage stress and anxiety around different types of conflict by transferring unacceptable impulses into an acceptable form.

Freud became a notable figure in psychology, and his ideas proved to compel and inspire psychologists for over a century.

One of Freud’s most notable contributions to the field was his founding of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1902. Through its founding, Freud’s theories began to spread rapidly across the Western World as he instructed other mental health professionals.

Many contemporaries believe that the founding of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society enabled Freud’s theories to spread as quickly as they did and to become widely accepted worldwide.

Despite the popularity of his theories, Freud’s ideas have faced their fair share of controversies from the beginning.

One of the main critiques was that psychoanalysis and Freud as a whole focused too much on sexuality. In Freud’s mind, sex and sexual drive are the foundation of his theories. Many psychologists argue that Freud’s theories oversexualize normal childhood development.

The other super-controversial theory is the Oedipus Complex. For obvious reasons, the taboo of the claim of being attracted to a parent makes people uncomfortable. However, there is a general lack of empirical evidence, cultural support, and self-bias in his research that make this theory questionable.

Another argument against Freud is his lack of empirical evidence. Many of his claims about the human mind are based on case studies rather than controlled experiments. Individual cases are prone to human error and personal bias, making it impossible to prove unconscious bias.

While case studies are important, they are not replicable and therefore cannot be generalized to the entire population.

Despite the controversy, Freud’s contributions to psychology can’t be denied. His theories are still the subjects of research and debate almost a century later. His theories have shaped how Western culture views psychology, laying the groundwork for many of the popular theories we see today.