What kind of theorist was sigmund freud

He believed one could then discharge it and rid oneself of the neurotic symptoms. Charles Darwin 's understanding of humankind as a progressive element of the animal kingdom certainly informed Freud's investigation of human behavior. Additionally, the formulation of a new principle by scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, stating that energy in any given physical system is always constant, informed Freud's scientific inquiries into the human mind.

Freud's work has been both rapturously praised and hotly critiqued, but no one has influenced the science of psychology as intensely as Sigmund Freud. The great reverence that was later given to Freud's theories was not in evidence for some years. Most of his contemporaries felt that his emphasis on sexuality was either scandalous or overplayed. In , he was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States; it was only after the ensuing publication of his book Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis that his fame grew exponentially.

Freud has published a number of important works on psychoanalysis. Some of the most influential include:. In , after a serious period of self-analysis, Freud published what has become his most important and defining work, which posits that dream analysis can give insight into the workings of the unconscious mind.

The book was and remains controversial, producing such topics as the Oedipus complex. Many psychologists say this work gave birth to modern scientific thinking about the mind and the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. These slips, he explained through a series of examples, revealed our inner desires, anxieties and fantasies.

While no one person will die without sex, the whole of humanity would without it — so sex drives human instincts, Freud believed. In this work, he explores sexual development and the relationship between sex and social behavior without applying his controversial Oedipal complex.

Perhaps Freud's most important contribution to the field of psychology was the development of talk therapy as an approach to treating mental health problems. In addition to serving as the basis for psychoanalysis, talk therapy is part of many psychotherapeutic interventions designed to help people overcome psychological distress and behavioral problems.

While Freud's theories have been the subject of considerable controversy and debate, his impact on psychology, therapy, and culture is undeniable. Auden wrote in his poem, "In Memory of Sigmund Freud,". Ever wonder what your personality type means?

Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Shedler J. The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Am Psychol. Bogousslavsky J, Dieguez S. Sigmund Freud and hysteria: The etiology of psychoanalysis. In: Bogousslavsky J, ed. Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience. S Karger Eds. Grubin D. Young Dr. Public Broadcasting Service. Published Gay, P. Published March 29, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Society.

Newsweek: Freud in Our Midst. Published March 27, Yale University CampusPress. In Memory of Sigmund Freud. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.

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Repression is thus one of the central defense mechanisms by which the ego seeks to avoid internal conflict and pain, and to reconcile reality with the demands of both id and super-ego. As such it is completely normal and an integral part of the developmental process through which every child must pass on the way to adulthood. However, the repressed instinctual drive, as an energy-form, is not and cannot be destroyed when it is repressed—it continues to exist intact in the unconscious, from where it exerts a determining force upon the conscious mind, and can give rise to the dysfunctional behavior characteristic of neuroses.

This is one reason why dreams and slips of the tongue possess such a strong symbolic significance for Freud, and why their analysis became such a key part of his treatment—they represent instances in which the vigilance of the super-ego is relaxed, and when the repressed drives are accordingly able to present themselves to the conscious mind in a transmuted form.

The difference between normal repression and the kind of repression which results in neurotic illness is one of degree , not of kind—the compulsive behavior of the neurotic is itself a manifestation of an instinctual drive repressed in childhood. Such behavioral symptoms are highly irrational and may even be perceived as such by the neurotic , but are completely beyond the control of the subject because they are driven by the now unconscious repressed impulse.

Freud positioned the key repressions for both, the normal individual and the neurotic, in the first five years of childhood, and of course, held them to be essentially sexual in nature; since, as we have seen, repressions which disrupt the process of infantile sexual development in particular, according to him, lead to a strong tendency to later neurosis in adult life.

The task of psychoanalysis as a therapy is to find the repressions which cause the neurotic symptoms by delving into the unconscious mind of the subject, and by bringing them to the forefront of consciousness, to allow the ego to confront them directly and thus to discharge them. This has become so influential today that when people speak of psychoanalysis they frequently refer exclusively to the clinical treatment; however, the term properly designates both the clinical treatment and the theory which underlies it.

The aim of the method may be stated simply in general terms—to re-establish a harmonious relationship between the three elements which constitute the mind by excavating and resolving unconscious repressed conflicts. Turning away from his early attempts to explore the unconscious through hypnosis, Freud further developed this talking cure , acting on the assumption that the repressed conflicts were buried in the deepest recesses of the unconscious mind.

Accordingly, he got his patients to relax in a position in which they were deprived of strong sensory stimulation, and even keen awareness of the presence of the analyst hence the famous use of the couch, with the analyst virtually silent and out of sight , and then encouraged them to speak freely and uninhibitedly, preferably without forethought, in the belief that he could thereby discern the unconscious forces lying behind what was said.

This is the method of free-association, the rationale for which is similar to that involved in the analysis of dreams—in both cases the super-ego is to some degree disarmed, its efficiency as a screening mechanism is moderated, and material is allowed to filter through to the conscious ego which would otherwise be completely repressed.

The process is necessarily a difficult and protracted one, and it is therefore one of the primary tasks of the analyst to help the patient recognize, and overcome, his own natural resistances, which may exhibit themselves as hostility towards the analyst. Taking it that the super-ego functioned less effectively in sleep, as in free-association, Freud made a distinction between the manifest content of a dream what the dream appeared to be about on the surface and its latent content the unconscious, repressed desires or wishes which are its real object.

To create a cure, the analyst must facilitate the patient himself to become conscious of unresolved conflicts buried in the deep recesses of the unconscious mind, and to confront and engage with them directly. In this sense, then, the object of psychoanalytic treatment may be said to be a form of self-understanding—once this is acquired it is largely up to the patient, in consultation with the analyst, to determine how he shall handle this newly-acquired understanding of the unconscious forces which motivate him.

One possibility, mentioned above, is the channeling of sexual energy into the achievement of social, artistic or scientific goals—this is sublimation, which Freud saw as the motivating force behind most great cultural achievements. Another possibility would be the conscious, rational control of formerly repressed drives—this is suppression. Yet another would be the decision that it is the super-ego and the social constraints which inform it that are at fault, in which case the patient may decide in the end to satisfy the instinctual drives.

But in all cases the cure is created essentially by a kind of catharsis or purgation—a release of the pent-up psychic energy, the constriction of which was the basic cause of the neurotic illness.

It should be evident from the foregoing why psychoanalysis in general, and Freud in particular, have exerted such a strong influence upon the popular imagination in the Western World, and why both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis should remain the object of a great deal of controversy.

Freud and Cocaine: The Freudian Fallacy to the view that he made an important, but grim, empirical discovery, which he knowingly suppressed in favour of the theory of the unconscious, knowing that the latter would be more socially acceptable see Masson, J.

The Assault on Truth. The supporters and followers of Freud and Jung and Adler are noted for the zeal and enthusiasm with which they espouse the doctrines of the master, to the point where many of the detractors of the movement see it as a kind of secular religion, requiring as it does an initiation process in which the aspiring psychoanalyst must himself first be analyzed.

In this way, it is often alleged, the unquestioning acceptance of a set of ideological principles becomes a necessary precondition for acceptance into the movement—as with most religious groupings. In reply, the exponents and supporters of psychoanalysis frequently analyze the motivations of their critics in terms of the very theory which those critics reject. And so the debate goes on. This is a crucially important issue since Freud saw himself first and foremost as a pioneering scientist, and repeatedly asserted that the significance of psychoanalysis is that it is a new science , incorporating a new scientific method of dealing with the mind and with mental illness.

There can, moreover, be no doubt but that this has been the chief attraction of the theory for most of its advocates since then—on the face of it, it has the appearance of being not just a scientific theory but an enormously strong one, with the capacity to accommodate, and explain, every possible form of human behavior. However, it is precisely this latter which, for many commentators, undermines its claim to scientific status.

In other words, if a theory is incompatible with possible observations, it is scientific; conversely, a theory which is compatible with all possible observations is unscientific see Popper, K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Thus the principle of the conservation of energy physical, not psychic , which influenced Freud so greatly, is a scientific one because it is falsifiable—the discovery of a physical system in which the total amount of physical energy was not constant would conclusively show it to be false.

Hence it is concluded that the theory is not scientific, and while this does not, as some critics claim, rob it of all value, it certainly diminishes its intellectual status as projected by its strongest advocates, including Freud himself. A related but perhaps more serious point is that the coherence of the theory is, at the very least, questionable. What is attractive about the theory, even to the layman, is that it seems to offer us long sought-after and much needed causal explanations for conditions which have been a source of a great deal of human misery.

The thesis that neuroses are caused by unconscious conflicts buried deep in the unconscious mind in the form of repressed libidinal energy would appear to offer us, at last, an insight in the causal mechanism underlying these abnormal psychological conditions as they are expressed in human behavior, and further show us how they are related to the psychology of the normal person.

However, even this is questionable, and is a matter of much dispute. In general, when it is said that an event X causes another event Y to happen, both X and Y are, and must be, independently identifiable. It is true that this is not always a simple process, as in science causes are sometimes unobservable sub-atomic particles, radio and electromagnetic waves, molecular structures, and so forth , but in these latter cases there are clear correspondence rules connecting the unobservable causes with observable phenomena.

At a less theoretical, but no less critical level, it has been alleged that Freud did make a genuine discovery which he was initially prepared to reveal to the world. However, the response he encountered was so ferociously hostile that he masked his findings and offered his theory of the unconscious in its place see Masson, J.

What he discovered, it has been suggested, was the extreme prevalence of child sexual abuse, particularly of young girls the vast majority of hysterics are women , even in respectable nineteenth century Vienna.

He did in fact offer an early seduction theory of neuroses, which met with fierce animosity, and which he quickly withdrew and replaced with the theory of the unconscious. Questions concerning the traumas suffered by his patients seemed to reveal [to Freud] that Viennese girls were extraordinarily often seduced in very early childhood by older male relatives. Doubt about the actual occurrence of these seductions was soon replaced by certainty that it was descriptions about childhood fantasy that were being offered.

This statement begs a number of questions, not least, what does the expression extraordinarily often mean in this context? By what standard is this being judged? The answer can only be: By the standard of what we generally believe—or would like to believe—to be the case. Freud, according to them, had stumbled upon and knowingly suppressed the fact that the level of child sexual abuse in society is much higher than is generally believed or acknowledged.

If this contention is true—and it must at least be contemplated seriously—then this is undoubtedly the most serious criticism that Freud and his followers have to face.

Further, this particular point has taken on an added and even more controversial significance in recent years, with the willingness of some contemporary Freudians to combine the theory of repression with an acceptance of the wide-spread social prevalence of child sexual abuse. The result has been that in the United States and Britain in particular, many thousands of people have emerged from analysis with recovered memories of alleged childhood sexual abuse by their parents; memories which, it is suggested, were hitherto repressed.

On this basis, parents have been accused and repudiated, and whole families have been divided or destroyed. Unsurprisingly, this in turn has given rise to a systematic backlash in which organizations of accused parents, seeing themselves as the true victims of what they term False Memory Syndrome , have denounced all such memory-claims as falsidical — the direct product of a belief in what they see as the myth of repression. Victims of Memory. In this way, the concept of repression, which Freud himself termed the foundation stone upon which the structure of psychoanalysis rests , has come in for more widespread critical scrutiny than ever before.

Here, the fact that, unlike some of his contemporary followers, Freud did not himself ever countenance the extension of the concept of repression to cover actual child sexual abuse, and the fact that we are not necessarily forced to choose between the views that all recovered memories are either veridical or falsidical are frequently lost sight of in the extreme heat generated by this debate, perhaps understandably. The theory upon which the use of leeches to bleed patients in eighteenth century medicine was based was quite spurious, but patients did sometimes actually benefit from the treatment!

And of course even a true theory might be badly applied, leading to negative consequences. One of the problems here is that it is difficult to specify what counts as a cure for a neurotic illness as distinct, say, from a mere alleviation of the symptoms.

In general, however, the efficiency of a given method of treatment is usually clinically measured by means of a control group—the proportion of patients suffering from a given disorder who are cured by treatment X is measured by comparison with those cured by other treatments, or by no treatment at all. Such clinical tests as have been conducted indicate that the proportion of patients who have benefited from psychoanalytic treatment does not diverge significantly from the proportion who recover spontaneously or as a result of other forms of intervention in the control groups used.

So, the question of the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis remains an open and controversial one. Stephen P. Thornton Email: stephen. Sigmund Freud — Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was a physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and influential thinker of the early twentieth century. Life Freud was born in Frieberg, Moravia in , but when he was four years old his family moved to Vienna where he was to live and work until the last years of his life.

Backdrop to His Thought Although a highly original thinker, Freud was also deeply influenced by a number of diverse factors which overlapped and interconnected with each other to shape the development of his thought. Critical Evaluation of Freud It should be evident from the foregoing why psychoanalysis in general, and Freud in particular, have exerted such a strong influence upon the popular imagination in the Western World, and why both the theory and practice of psychoanalysis should remain the object of a great deal of controversy.

The Claim to Scientific Status This is a crucially important issue since Freud saw himself first and foremost as a pioneering scientist, and repeatedly asserted that the significance of psychoanalysis is that it is a new science , incorporating a new scientific method of dealing with the mind and with mental illness. The Coherence of the Theory A related but perhaps more serious point is that the coherence of the theory is, at the very least, questionable. In this way, it is suggested, the theory of the Oedipus complex was generated.

References and Further Reading a. Strachey with Anna Freud , 24 vols. London: New York: Free Press, Bettlelheim, B. Knopf, Cavell, M. Harvard University Press, Becoming a Subject: Reflections in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. New York: Oxford University Press, Chessick, R. Freud Teaches Psychotherapy.