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Sigmund Freud

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Human Scientists

   Sigmund Freud
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   Sigmund Freud

   Sigmund Freud ( May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939; IPA pronunciation:
   [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfrɔʏt]) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the
   psychoanalytic school of psychology. Freud is best known for his
   theories of the unconscious mind, especially involving the mechanism of
   repression; his redefinition of sexual desire as mobile and directed
   towards a wide variety of objects; and his therapeutic technique,
   especially his understanding of transference in the therapeutic
   relationship and the presumed value of dreams as sources of insight
   into unconscious desires.

   The name Freud is generally pronounced [fɹɔɪd] in English and [frɔʏt]
   in German. He is commonly referred to as " the father of
   psychoanalysis" and his work has been tremendously influential in the
   popular imagination — popularizing such notions as the unconscious,
   defense mechanisms, Freudian slips and dream symbolism — while also
   making a long-lasting impact on fields as diverse as literature, film,
   Marxist and feminist theories, literary criticism, philosophy and
   psychology.

Life

   Sigmund Freud, 1907
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   Sigmund Freud, 1907

   Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born into a Jewish family in Příbor
   (Freiberg in German), Moravia, in the Austrian Empire (now belonging to
   the Czech Republic). In 1877, at the age of 21, he abbreviated his
   given name to "Sigmund." Although he was the first-born of three
   brothers and five sisters among his mother's children, Sigmund had
   older half-brothers from his father's previous marriage. His family had
   limited finances and lived in a crowded apartment, but his parents made
   every effort to foster his intellect (often favoring Sigmund over his
   siblings), which was apparent from an early age. Sigmund was ranked
   first in his class in six of eight years of schooling. He went on to
   attend the University of Vienna at 17, from 1873 to 1881.

   Little is known of Freud's early life, as he destroyed his personal
   papers at least twice, once in 1885 and again in 1907. Additionally,
   portions of his personal correspondence and unpublished papers were
   closely guarded in the Sigmund Freud Archives at the Library of
   Congress and for many years were made available only to a few members
   of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. Most of these previously
   restricted documents have now been declassified and are available to
   researchers who visit the Library of Congress.

   In 1886, Freud returned to Vienna and, after opening a private practice
   specializing in nervous and brain disorders, he married Martha Bernays.
   He experimented with hypnotism with his most hysteric and neurotic
   patients, but he eventually gave up the practice. (One theory is that
   he did so because he was not very good at it.) He switched to putting
   his patients on a couch and encouraging them to say whatever came into
   their minds (a practice termed free association).

   In his 40s, Freud "had numerous psychosomatic disorders as well as
   exaggerated fears of dying and other phobias" (Corey, 2001, p. 67).
   During this time, Freud was involved in the task of exploring his own
   dreams, memories and the dynamics of his personality development.
   During this self-analysis, he came to realize the hostility he felt
   towards his father (Jacob Freud) and "he also recalled his childhood
   sexual feelings for his mother ( Amalia Freud), who was attractive,
   warm, and protective" (Corey, 2001, p. 67). Corey (2001) considers this
   time of emotional difficulty to be the most creative time in Freud's
   life.

   After publishing successful books on the unconscious mind in 1900 and
   1901, Freud was appointed to a professorship at the University of
   Vienna, where he began to develop a loyal following.
   Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row from left:
   Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, Carl Jung. Back row from left:
   Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.
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   Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row from left:
   Sigmund Freud, Granville Stanley Hall, Carl Jung. Back row from left:
   Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.

   Freud had little tolerance for colleagues who diverged from his
   psychoanalytic doctrines. He attempted to expel those who disagreed
   with the movement or even refused to accept certain central aspects of
   his theory (Corey, 2001): the most notable examples are Carl Jung and
   Alfred Adler. While Freud wrote a stinging attack on both of them in a
   piece called "On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement," he
   ostracized the dissidents Otto Gross and Wilhelm Reich by complete
   silence.

   In 1930, Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize by the city of Frankfurt,
   in recognition of his exceptional qualities as a writer in the German
   language. His mother died the same year, at the age of ninety-five. In
   1933, as Hitler and the Nazis seized power in Germany, Freud's books
   were burnt publicly by the SA.
   Memorial plaque of Sigmund Freud at his birthplace in Příbor, Czech
   Republic.
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   Memorial plaque of Sigmund Freud at his birthplace in Příbor, Czech
   Republic.

   Following the Nazi German Anschluss, Freud fled Austria with his family
   with the financial help of his patient and friend Princess Marie
   Bonaparte. On June 4, 1938, they were allowed across the border into
   France and then they traveled from Paris to Hampstead, London, England,
   where they lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens (now the Freud Museum). As he
   was leaving Germany, Gestapo forced him to sign a statement that he had
   been treated respectfully. Freud wrote sarcastically, "I warmly
   recommend the Gestapo to everyone."

   In England, in 1938, Freud's longing to be embraced by society as an
   important scientist was partly realized when two secretaries of the
   Royal Society brought the book of the Society for Freud to sign. Freud
   wrote to his friend Arnold Zweig: "They left a facsimile of the book
   with me and if you were here I could should show you the signatures
   from I. Newton to Charles Darwin. Good company!"

   Freud began smoking at age 24, and smoked cigars for most of his life.
   When his colleague Wilhelm Fliess, a nose and throat specialist,
   suggested that he quit in order to clear up some nasal catarrhs, Freud
   was unwilling to do so. (Gay, 1988, p.169) Even after having his jaw
   removed due to malignancy, he continued to smoke until his death on
   September 23, 1939. After contracting cancer of the mouth in 1923 at
   the age of 67, he underwent over 30 operations to treat the disease,
   and for several years wore a painful prosthesis to seal off his mouth
   from his nasal cavity. In the end, Freud could no longer tolerate the
   pain associated with his cancer. He requested that his personal
   physician visit him at his London home for the purpose of helping him
   end his own life. Freud's death was by a physician-assisted morphine
   overdose.

Family / Descendants

   Sigmund Freud's youngest daughter, Anna Freud, was also a distinguished
   psychoanalyst, particularly in the fields of child and developmental
   psychology. Sigmund is the grandfather of painter Lucian Freud and
   comedian/ politician/ writer Clement Freud, and the great-grandfather
   of journalist Emma Freud, fashion designer Bella Freud, novelist Esther
   Freud (daughter of Lucian) and media magnates Matthew Freud and Ria
   Willems. Sigmund Freud was also both a blood uncle and an uncle-in-law
   to public relations and propaganda wizard Edward Bernays. Bernays's
   mother, Anna Freud Bernays, was sister to Sigmund. Bernays's father,
   Ely Bernays, was brother to Sigmund's wife, Martha Bernays Freud.

Innovations

   Freud has been influential in two related but distinct ways. He
   simultaneously developed a theory of the human mind and human
   behaviour, as well as clinical techniques for attempting to help
   neurotics.

Early work

   A lesser known interest of Freud's was neurology. He was an early
   researcher on the topic of cerebral palsy, then known as "cerebral
   paralysis." He published several medical papers on the topic and showed
   that the disease existed far before other researchers in his day began
   to notice and study it. He also suggested that William Little, the man
   who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen
   during the birth process being a cause. Instead, he suggested that
   complications in birth were only a symptom of the problem. It was not
   until the 1980s that Freud's speculations were confirmed by more modern
   research.

   Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant. He
   wrote several articles on the antidepressant qualities of the drug and
   he was influenced by his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, who
   recommended cocaine for the treatment of the "nasal reflex neurosis."
   Fliess operated on Freud and a number of Freud's patients whom he
   believed to be suffering from the disorder, including Emma Eckstein,
   whose surgery proved disastrous.

   Freud felt that cocaine would work as a cure-all for many disorders and
   wrote a well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues. He
   prescribed it to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him
   overcome a morphine addiction he had acquired while treating a disease
   of the nervous system. Freud also recommended it to many of his close
   family and friends. He narrowly missed out on obtaining scientific
   priority for discovering cocaine's anesthetic properties (of which
   Freud was aware but on which he had not written extensively), after
   Karl Koller, a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, presented a report to a
   medical society in 1884 outlining the ways in which cocaine could be
   used for delicate eye surgery. Freud was bruised by this, especially
   because this would turn out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine,
   as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many
   places in the world. Freud's medical reputation became somewhat
   tarnished because of this early enthusiasm. Furthermore, Freud's friend
   Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of "cocaine psychosis" as a
   result of Freud's prescriptions and died a few years later. Freud felt
   great regret over these events, which later biographers have dubbed
   "The Cocaine Incident."

   Freud hoped that his research would provide a solid scientific basis
   for his therapeutic technique. The goal of Freudian therapy, or
   psychoanalysis, was to bring to consciousness repressed thoughts and
   feelings. According to some of his successors, including his daughter
   Anna Freud, the goal of therapy is to allow the patient to develop a
   stronger ego; according to others, notably Jacques Lacan, the goal of
   therapy is to lead the analysand to a full acknowledgement of his or
   her inability to satisfy the most basic desires.

   Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to
   consciousness is brought about by encouraging the patient to talk in
   free association and to talk about dreams. Another important element of
   psychoanalysis is a relative lack of direct involvement on the part of
   the analyst, which is meant to encourage the patient to project
   thoughts and feelings onto the analyst. Through this process,
   transference, the patient can reenact and resolve repressed conflicts,
   especially childhood conflicts with (or about) parents.

   The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to
   Joseph Breuer. Freud actually credits Breuer with the discovery of the
   psychoanalytical method. One case started this phenomenon that would
   shape the field of psychology for decades to come, the case of Anna O.
   In 1880 a young girl came to Breuer with symptoms of what was then
   called hysteria. Anna O. was a 21 year old highly intelligent young
   girl. She presented with symptoms such as paralysis of the limbs, split
   personality and amnesia; today these symptoms are known as conversion
   disorder. After many doctors had given up and accused Anna O. of faking
   her symptoms, Breuer decided to treat her sympathetically, which he did
   with all of his patients. He started to hear her mumble words during
   what he called states of absence. Eventually Breuer started to
   recognize some of the words and wrote them down. He then hypnotized her
   and repeated the words to her; Breuer found out that the words were
   associated with her father's illness and death. Anna O. coined the term
   'talk therapy' to describe this process.

   In the early 1890s Freud used a form of treatment based on the one that
   Breuer had described to him, modified by what he called his "pressure
   technique". The traditional story, based on Freud's later accounts of
   this period, is that as a result of his use of this procedure most of
   his patients in the mid-1890s reported early childhood sexual abuse. He
   believed these stories, but then came to realize that for the most part
   his patients were fantasizing the abuse scenes.

   However in recent decades several researchers have returned to the
   original documents and found that the received story, based on Freud's
   late retrospective account of the episode, is false in many respects.
   In 1896 Freud posited that the symptoms of 'hysteria' and obsessional
   neurosis derived from *unconscious* memories of sexual abuse in
   infancy, and claimed that he had uncovered such incidents for every
   single one of his current patients (one third of whom were men).
   However a close reading of his papers and letters from this period
   indicates that these patients did not report early childhood sexual
   abuse as he later claimed: rather, he arrived at his findings by
   analytically inferring the supposed incidents, using a procedure that
   was heavily dependent on the symbolic interpretation of somatic
   symptoms.
   http://www.esterson.org/Mythologizing_psychoanalytic_history.htm

The Unconscious

   It has often been claimed that the most significant contribution Freud
   made to Western thought was his argument for the existence of an
   unconscious mind. During the 19th century, the dominant trend in
   Western thought was positivism, which subscribed to the belief that
   people could ascertain real knowledge concerning themselves and their
   environment and judiciously exercise control over both. Freud, however,
   suggested that such declarations of free will are in fact delusions;
   that we are not entirely aware of what we think and often act for
   reasons that have little to do with our conscious thoughts. The concept
   of the unconscious as proposed by Freud was allegedly groundbreaking in
   that he proposed that awareness existed in layers and that there were
   thoughts occurring "below the surface." Nevertheless, as psychologist
   Jacques Van Rillaer, among others, pointed out, "contrary to what most
   people believe, the unconscious was not discovered by Freud. In 1890,
   when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his
   monumental treatise on psychology, examined the way Schopenhauer, von
   Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and
   'subconscious'". Moreover, the historian of psychology Mark Altschule
   writes: "It is difficult - or perhaps impossible - to find a nineteenth
   century psychologist or medical psychologist who did not recognize
   unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest
   importance."

   Dreams, which he called the "royal road to the unconscious", provided
   the best access to our unconscious life and the best illustration of
   its "logic", which was different from the logic of conscious thought.
   Freud developed his first topology of the psyche in The Interpretation
   of Dreams (1899) in which he proposed the argument that the unconscious
   exists and described a method for gaining access to it. The
   preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious
   thought—that which we could access with a little effort. Thus for
   Freud, the ideals of the Enlightenment, positivism and rationalism,
   could be achieved through understanding, transforming, and mastering
   the unconscious, rather than through denying or repressing it.

   Crucial to the operation of the unconscious is " repression." According
   to Freud, people often experience thoughts and feelings that are so
   painful that people cannot bear them. Such thoughts and feelings—and
   associated memories—could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind,
   but could be banished from consciousness. Thus they come to constitute
   the unconscious. Although Freud later attempted to find patterns of
   repression among his patients in order to derive a general model of the
   mind, he also observed that individual patients repress different
   things. Moreover, Freud observed that the process of repression is
   itself a non-conscious act (in other words, it did not occur through
   people willing away certain thoughts or feelings). Freud supposed that
   what people repressed was in part determined by their unconscious. In
   other words, the unconscious was for Freud both a cause and effect of
   repression.

   Later, Freud distinguished between three concepts of the unconscious:
   the descriptive unconscious, the dynamic unconscious, and the system
   unconscious. The descriptive unconscious referred to all those features
   of mental life of which we are not subjectively aware. The dynamic
   unconscious, a more specific construct, referred to mental process and
   contents which are defensively removed from consciousness as a result
   of conflictual forces or "dynamics". The system unconscious denoted the
   idea that when mental processes are repressed, they become organized by
   principles different from those of the conscious mind, such as
   condensation and displacement.

   Eventually, Freud abandoned the idea of the system unconscious,
   replacing it with the concept of the Ego, super-ego, and id (discussed
   below). Throughout his career, however, he retained the descriptive and
   dynamic conceptions of the unconscious.

Psychosexual development

   Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by
   changing its object, a process designed by the concept of sublimation.
   He argued that humans are born "polymorphously perverse", meaning that
   any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued
   that, as humans develop, they become fixated on different and specific
   objects through their stages of development—first in the oral stage
   (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then in the anal
   stage (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in emptying his or her
   bowels), then in the phallic stage. Freud argued that children then
   passed through a stage in which they fixated on the mother as a sexual
   object (known as the Oedipus Complex) but that the child eventually
   overcame and repressed this desire because of its taboo nature. (The
   lesser known Electra complex refers to such a fixation upon the
   father.) The repressive or dormant latency stage of psychosexual
   development preceded the sexually mature genital stage of psychosexual
   development.

   Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and thus
   turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for
   comparative material. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus complex
   after the famous Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. “I found in
   myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now
   consider this to be a universal event in childhood,” Freud said. Freud
   sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the
   mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity,
   characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification
   (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). He used the Oedipus
   conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest
   and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a
   state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to
   anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected
   a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.

   Freud originally posited childhood sexual abuse as a general
   explanation for the origin of neuroses, but he abandoned this so-called
   "seduction theory" as insufficiently explanatory, noting that he had
   found many cases in which apparent memories of childhood sexual abuse
   were based more on imagination than on real events. During the late
   1890s Freud, who never abandoned his belief in the sexual etiology of
   neuroses, began to emphasize fantasies built around the Oedipus complex
   as the primary cause of hysteria and other neurotic symptoms. Despite
   this change in his explanatory model, Freud always recognized that some
   neurotics had been sexually abused by their fathers, and was quite
   explicit about discussing several patients that he knew to have been
   abused.(Gay, 1988, p.95)

   Freud's way of interpretation has been called phallocentric by many
   contemporary thinkers. This is because, for Freud, the unconscious
   always desires the phallus (penis). Males are afraid of castration -
   losing their phallus or masculinity to another male. Females always
   desire to have a phallus - an unfulfillable desire. Thus boys resent
   their father (fear of castration) and girls desire theirs. For Freud,
   desire is always defined in the negative term of lack - you always
   desire what you don't have or what you are not, and it is very unlikely
   that you will fulfill this desire. Thus his psychoanalysis treatment is
   meant to teach the patient to cope with his unsatisfiable desires.

Ego, super-ego, and id

   In his later work, Freud proposed that the psyche was divided into
   three parts: Ego, super-ego, and id. Freud discussed this structural
   model of the mind in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and
   fully elaborated it in The Ego and The Id (1923), where he developed it
   as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (conscious,
   unconscious, preconscious).

Defense Mechanisms

   According to Freud, the defense mechanisms are the method by which the
   ego can solve the conflicts between the super-ego and the id. The use
   of defense mechanisms may attenuate the conflict between the id and
   super-ego, but their overuse or reuse rather than confrontation can
   lead to either anxiety or guilt which may result in psychological
   disorders such as depression. His daughter Anna Freud had done the most
   significant work on this field, yet she credited Sigmund with defense
   mechanisms, as he began the work. The defense mechanisms include:
   denial, reaction formation, displacement, repression/ suppression (the
   proper term), projection, intellectualisation, rationalisation,
   compensation, sublimation and regressive emotionality.
     * Denial occurs when someone fends off awareness of an unpleasant
       truth or of a reality that is a threat to the ego. For example, a
       student may have received a bad grade on a report card but tells
       himself that grades don't matter. (Some early writers argued for a
       striking parallel between Freudian denial and Nietzsche's ideas of
       ressentiment and the revaluation of values that he attributed to
       "herd" or "slave" morality.)
     * Reaction formation takes place when a person takes the opposite
       approach consciously compared to what that person wants
       unconsciously. For example, someone may engage in violence against
       another race because, that person claims, the members of the race
       are inferior, when unconsciously it is that very person who feels
       inferior.
     * Displacement takes place when someone redirects emotion from a
       "dangerous" object to a "safe" one, such as punching a pillow when
       one is angry at a friend.
     * Repression occurs when an experience is so painful (such as war
       trauma) that it is unconsciously forced from consciousness, while
       suppression is a conscious effort to do the same.
     * Psychological projection occurs when a person "projects" his or her
       own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, feelings —
       basically parts of oneself — onto someone or something else. An
       example of this would be to say that Alice doesn't like Bob, but
       rather than to admit she doesn't like Bob, she will project her
       sentiment onto Bob, saying that Bob doesn't like her.
     * Intellectualisation involves removing one's self, emotionally, from
       a stressful event. Intellectualisation is often accomplished
       through rationalisation rather than accepting reality; one may
       explain it in a way to remove one's self.
     * Rationalization involves constructing a logical justification for a
       decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental
       process. For example, Jim may have bought a tape player to listen
       to self-help tapes, but he tells his friends he bought it so that
       he can listen to classic rock mixes for fear of his actual reason
       being rejected.
     * Compensation occurs when someone takes up one behaviour because one
       cannot accomplish another behaviour. For example, the second born
       child may clown around to get attention since the older child is
       already an accomplished scholar.
     * Sublimation is the channeling of impulses to socially accepted
       behaviours. For instance, the use of a dark, gloomy poem to
       describe life by such poets as Emily Dickinson.

The life and death instincts

   Freud believed that humans were driven by two conflicting central
   desires: the life drive ( Eros) (incorporating the sex drive) and the
   death drive ( Thanatos). Freud's description of Eros and Libido
   included all creative, life-producing drives. The Death Drive (or death
   instinct) represented an urge inherent in all living things to return
   to a state of calm, or, ultimately, of non-existence. The presence of
   the Death Drive was only recognized in his later years, and the
   contrast between the two represents a revolution in his manner of
   thinking.

Social psychology

   Freud leaves Vienna for exile in London, 1938 (Memorial to the German
   Resistance, Berlin)
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   Freud leaves Vienna for exile in London, 1938 (Memorial to the German
   Resistance, Berlin)

   Freud gave explanations of the genesis of religion in his writings,
   included in a reflection on crowd psychology. In Totem and Taboo
   (1913), he proposed that humans originally banded together in “primal
   hordes”, consisting of a male, a number of females and the offspring of
   this polygamous arrangement. According to Freud’s psychoanalytical
   theory, a male child early in life has sexual desires for his mother –
   the Oedipus Complex – which he held to be universal. Ethnologists would
   later criticize this point, leading to ethno-psychoanalytic studies.
   According to Freud, the father is protective, so his sons love him, but
   they are also jealous of their father for his relationship with their
   mothers. Finding that individually they cannot defeat the
   father-leader, they band together, kill and eat him in a ritual meal,
   thereby ingesting the substance of the father’s hated power – but their
   subsequent guilt leads the sons to elevate their father's memory and to
   worship him. The super-ego then takes the place of the father as the
   source of internalized authority. A ban was then put upon incest and
   upon marriage within the clan, and symbolic animal sacrifice was
   substituted for the ritual killing of a human being.

   In Moses and Monotheism (1939) Freud reconstructed biblical history in
   accord with his general theory, but many biblical scholars and
   historians would not accept his account since it defied commonly
   accepted views on the history of Judaism and of dynastic Egypt.
   However, this book remains interesting as an interpretation of
   leadership based on charisma and mass psychology, using the Prophetic
   figure of Moses. His ideas about religion were also developed in The
   Future of an Illusion (1927). When Freud spoke of religion as an
   illusion, he maintained that it is fantastic structure from which a man
   must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his treatment of
   the unconscious he moved toward atheism. In this sense, Freud
   approached the Marxist theory of alienation. Freud isolated two main
   principles: Thanatos is the drive towards the disillusion of all life,
   whereas, Eros is to strive towards stopping that drive. When one goal
   is reached, the other becomes out of reach, and vice versa.

   In " Group Psychology and Ego Analysis" (Massenpsychologie und
   Ich-Analysis, 1920), Freud explored crowd psychology, continuing
   Gustave Le Bon's early work. When the individual joins a crowd, he
   ceases repressing his instincts, and thus relapses into primitive
   culture, according to Freud's analysis. However, crowds must be
   distinguished into natural and organized crowds, following William
   McDougall' distinction. Thus, if intellectual skills (the capacity to
   doubt and to distance oneself) are systematically reduced when the
   individual joins a mass, he may eventually be "morally enlightened".
   Prefiguring Moses and Monotheism and The Future of an Illusion, he
   states that the love relationship between the leader and the masses, in
   the Church or in the Army, are only an "idealist transformation of the
   conditions existing in the primitive horde". Freud then compares
   leader's relationship with the crowd to a relation of hypnosis, a force
   to which he relates Mana. Pessimistic about humanity's chances of
   liberty, Freud writes that "the leader of the crowd always incarnates
   the dreaded primitive father, the crowd always want to be dominated by
   an illimited power, it is grasping at the highest degree for authority
   or, to use Le Bon's expression, it is hungry for subservience".

   According to Freud, self-identification to a common figure, the leader,
   explained the phenomenon of masses' obedience. Each individual
   connected themselves vertically to the same ideal figure (or idea),
   each one thus have the same self-ideal, and hence identify together
   (horizontal relation). Freud also quoted Wilfred Trotter's The
   Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1914). Along with Moses and
   Monotheism, Massenpsychologie... would be one of the articles most
   quoted by Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School in its Freudo-Marxist
   synthesis.

Freud's legacy

Psychotherapy

   Freud's theories and research methods were controversial during his
   life and remain so today, but few dispute his far-reaching impact on
   psychologists and academics.

   Most importantly, Freud popularized the "talking-cure"--the notion that
   a person could be treated simply by talking over his or her problems,
   which was almost unheard of in the 19th century. Even though many
   psychotherapists today partly or wholly reject the specifics of Freud's
   theories, this basic model of treatment stems largely from his work.

   In addition, Freud's development of "unconscious" sources of behavior
   and his emphasis on motivational structures of the human mind have had
   a lasting impact on psychological theory and research. However, most of
   Freud's specific theories--like his stages of psychosexual
   development--and especially his methodology, have fallen out of favour
   in modern experimental psychology.

   Some psychotherapists, however, still follow an approximately Freudian
   system of treatment. Many more have modified his approach, or joined
   one of the schools that branched from his original theories (see
   Neo-Freudian). Still others reject his theories entirely, although
   their practice may still reflect his influence.

   Psychoanalysis today maintains the same ambivalent relationship with
   medicine and academia that Freud experienced during his life.

Philosophy

   While Freud saw himself as a scientist, his theories have had a
   tremendous impact on the humanities--especially on the Frankfurt school
   and critical theory. In addition, many philosophers have discussed his
   theories and their implications, in the broader context of Western
   thought. Freud's model of the mind is often seen as a critical
   challenge to the enlightenment model of rational agency, which was a
   key element of much modern philosophy.
     * Rationality. While many enlightenment thinkers viewed rationality
       as both an unproblematic ideal and a defining feature of man,
       Freud's model of the mind drastically reduced the scope and power
       of reason. In Freud's view, reasoning occurs in the conscious
       mind--the ego--but this is only a small part of the whole. The mind
       also contains the hidden, irrational elements of id and superego,
       which lie outside of conscious control, drive behaviour, and
       motivate conscious activities. As a result, these structures call
       into question humans' ability to act purely on the basis of reason,
       since lurking motives are also always at play. Moreover, this model
       of the mind makes rationality itself suspect, since it may be
       motivated by hidden urges or societal forces (e.g. defense
       mechanisms, where reasoning becomes "rationalizing").

     * Transparency of Self. Another common assumption in pre-Freudian
       philosophy was that people have immediate and unproblematic access
       to themselves. Emblematic of this position is René Descartes's
       famous line, "Cogito ergo sum" i.e., I think therefore I am.
       However, for Freud, many central aspects of a person remain
       radically inaccessible to the conscious mind (without the aid of
       psychotherapy), which undermines the once unquestionable status of
       first-person knowledge.

Pop Culture

   Freud has also had a remarkably powerful and lasting impact on popular
   culture. Many of his general psychological ideas have made their way
   into people's everyday thinking--for example, the idea that someone can
   be motivated by unconscious impulses, or the general idea that man
   contains a "beast" within, restrained only by the institutions of
   society. Some of his more specific ideas have also been
   popularized--"Freudian slips," "Oedipal complexes," and "anal"
   personality traits, for example, are frequently mentioned in
   non-technical discourse.

   Since, the early 1900s, Freud's ideas have often been represented
   explicitly or implicitly in a wide variety of art, literature, and
   film. A small sampling of famous artistic figures famous for their
   Freudian overtones would include: Alfred Hitchcock, Thomas Mann, and
   many others.

Critical reactions

   Although Freud's theories were quite influential, they have also come
   under widespread criticism during his lifetime and afterward. A paper
   by Lydiard H. Horton, read in 1915 at a joint meeting of the American
   Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Sciences , called
   Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and noted that "rank
   confabulations...appear to hold water, psychoanalytically" . A. C.
   Grayling, writing in The Guardian in 2002, said "Philosophies that
   capture the imagination never wholly fade....But as to Freud's claims
   upon truth, the judgment of time seems to be running against him."
   Peter D. Kramer, said "I'm afraid [Freud] doesn't hold up very well at
   all. It almost feels like a personal betrayal to say that. But every
   particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis
   envy, infantile sexuality." A 2006 article in Newsweek magazine called
   him "history's most debunked doctor" .

   Some critics, rather than attacking the body of Freud's work, have
   delved into individual topics. For instance, Juliet Mitchell, has
   suggested that Freud's basic claim — that many of our conscious
   thoughts and actions are driven by unconscious desires and fears —
   should be rejected because it implicitly challenges the possibility of
   making universal and objective claims about the world. Some proponents
   of science conclude that this invalidates Freudian theory as a means of
   interpreting and explaining human behaviour.

   Another frequently criticized aspect of Freud's theories is his model
   of psychosexual development. Some have attacked Freud's claim that
   infants are sexual beings, and, implicitly, Freud's expanded notion of
   sexuality. Others have accepted Freud's expanded notion of sexuality,
   but have argued that this pattern of development is not universal, nor
   necessary for the development of a healthy adult. Instead, they have
   emphasized the social and environmental sources of patterns of
   development. Moreover, they call attention to social dynamics Freud
   de-emphasized or ignored, such as class relations. This branch of
   Freudian critique owes a great deal to the work of Herbert Marcuse.

   Freud has also come under fire from many feminist critics. Freud was an
   early champion of both sexual freedom and education for women (Freud, "
   Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervousness"). Some feminists,
   however, have argued that at worst his views of women's sexual
   development set the progress of women in Western culture back decades,
   and that at best they lent themselves to the ideology of female
   inferiority. Believing as he did that women are a kind of mutilated
   male, who must learn to accept their "deformity" (the "lack" of a
   penis) and submit to some imagined biological imperative, he
   contributed to the vocabulary of misogyny. Terms such as " penis envy"
   and " castrating" (both used to describe women who attempted to excel
   in any field outside the home) contributed to discouraging women from
   obtaining education or entering any field dominated by men, until the
   1970s. Some of Freud's most criticised statements appear in his
   'Fragment of Analysis' on Ida Bauer such as "This was surely just the
   situation to call up distinct feelings of sexual excitement in a girl
   of fourteen" in reference to Dora being kissed by a 'young man of
   preposessing appearance' (S.E. 7. pp28) implying the passivity of
   female sexuality and his statement "I should without question consider
   a person hysterical in whom an occasion for sexual excitement elicited
   feelings that were preponderantly or exclusively unpleasurable" (ibid)

   On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell, Nancy
   Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin, Jane Gallop, and Jane Flax have argued that
   psychoanalytic theory is essentially related to the feminist project
   and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to
   free it from vestiges of sexism. Freud's views are still being
   questioned by people concerned about women's equality. Another feminist
   who finds potential use of Freud's theories in the feminist movement is
   Shulamith Firestone. In "Freudianism: The Misguided Feminism", she
   discusses how Freudianism is essentially completely accurate, with the
   exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis",
   the word should be replaced with "power".

   Dr. J. Von Schneidt speculated (with little evidence) that most of
   Freud's psychoanalytical theory was a byproduct of his cocaine use.
   Cocaine enhances dopaminergic neurotransmission increasing sexual
   interest and obsessive thinking. Chronic cocaine use can produce
   unusual thinking patterns due to the depletion of dopamine levels in
   the prefrontal cortex.

   Finally, Freud's theories are often criticized for not being real
   science. This objection was raised most famously by Karl Popper, who
   claimed that all proper scientific theories must be potentially
   falsifiable. Popper argued that no experiment or observation could ever
   falsify Freud's theories of psychology (e.g. someone who denies having
   an Oedipal complex is interpreted as repressing it), and thus they
   could not be considered scientific. However, Popper's criteria for
   scientific activity is no longer widely accepted in the philosophy of
   science.

Patients

   This is a partial list of patients whose case studies were published by
   Freud, with pseudonyms substituted for their names:
   Freud's couch used during psychoanalytic sessions
   Enlarge
   Freud's couch used during psychoanalytic sessions
     * Anna O. = Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936)
     * Cäcilie M. = Anna von Lieben
     * Dora = Ida Bauer (1882–1945)
     * Frau Emmy von N. = Fanny Moser
     * Fräulein Elizabeth von R.
     * Fräulein Katharina = Aurelia Kronich
     * Fräulein Lucy R.
     * Little Hans = Herbert Graf (1903–1973)
     * Rat Man = Ernst Lanzer (1878–1914)
     * Wolf Man = Sergei Pankejeff (1887–1979)

   People on whom psychoanalytic observations were published but who were
   not patients:
     * Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911)
     * Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) (co-authored with and primarily written
       by William Bullitt)

   Other patients:
     * H.D. (1886–1961)
     * Emma Eckstein
     * Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)

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