Chapter 2 | FREUD: PSYCHOANALYSIS

Overview o In his autobiography, we said that the society could not

• Cornerstones: sex and aggression fathom the concept of male hysteria
• Spread beyond its Viennese origins • Studied case of Anna O about hysteria with Breuer
• Based on his experiences with patients, analysis of his own o Breuer could not accept Freud’s notion that childhood
dreams, vast readings in sciences and humanities sexual experiences cause hysteria
• Psychoanalysis could not be subjected to eclecticism o Published “Studies on Hysteria”
• Used deductive reasoning § Freud introduced “psychical analysis” à
• Subjective observations “psychoanalysis”
• Small sample of patients • Wilhelm Fliess
• Did not quantify data o Whom Freud told about the beginnings of psychoanalysis
• Observations not in controlled situations and start of Freudian theory
• 1890s: professional isolation and personal crises; father died
Biography in 1896
• Born: March 6/May 6, 1856; Freiberg, Moravia o Began analyzing his own dreams and self
• Parents: Jacob and Amalie Nathanson Freud o Middle aged and not yet achieved fame
• His mother’s favorite o Discovery: neuroses are caused by child’s seduction by a
o Mother/son relationship was the most perfect, most free patient
from ambivalence § Abandoned this theory because:
• Moved to Leipzig then Vienna • Theory did not enable him to treat his patients
• Migrated to London after Nazi invasion (1938) • Fathers would have to be accused of sexual
perversion (even his own father; siblings have
• Died September 23, 1939
hysteria)
• 1 ½ years old: brother Julius was born
• Unconscious mind cannot distinguish reality from
o Hostility towards his brother; wished for his death
fiction (à Oedipus complex)
o Julius died at 6 months; Freud was guilty
• Unconscious memories of patients never revealed
• Middle age: understood that he did not cause his brother’s
early childhood sexual experiences
death and it was common to have a death wish for siblings
• Ernest Jones; Freud suffered from psychoneurosis in late
• Drawn into medicine; curious about human nature
1890s
• University of Vienna Medicine School
• Max Schur: Freud’s personal physician; his illness was
o Teaching and doing research in physiology
caused by cardiac lesion, addiction to nicotine
• Stopped work at physiology because:
• Peter Gay: after Freud’s father’s death, Freud relived his
o He was a Jew; opportunities for academic advancement
Oedipal conflicts
would be limited
o Father became less able to provide monetary aid • Henn Ellenberger: Freud’s “creative illness” – characterized
by depression, neurosis, psychosomatic ailments,
• Worked 3 years at General Hospital of Vienna
preoccupation with creative activity
o Psychiatry and nervous diseases
• Suffered from self-doubts, depression, and obsession with
• 1885: received travelling grant from University of Vienna
his own death
o Studied in Paris with French neurologist Jean-Martin
Charcot • Interpretation of Dreams (1899): outgrowth of self-analysis;
§ Learned hypnotic technique to treat hysteria contained his dreams
§ Freud became convinces of psychogenic and sexual • Lost friends because of animosity, jealousy, or revenge
origin of hysteria • On Dreams (1901/1953): written because “Interpretation of
• Josef Breuer: taught Freud about catharsis Dreams” failed to capture much interest
o Removing hysterical symptoms through “talking them • Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901/1960): Freudian
out” slips
o Freud discovered “free association technique” – replaced • Three Essays on Theory of Sexuality (1905/1953): sex as
hypnosis as his therapeutic technique cornerstone of psychoanalysis
• 1884-1885: experiments with cocaine • Jokes and their Relations to the Unconscious (1905/1960):
• 1886: presented a paper about male hysteria to the Imperial jokes have unconscious meaning
Society of Physicians of Vienna • 1902: Wednesday Psychological Society/Vienna
o Before: hysteria as a female disorder Psychoanalytic Society was formed
§ Name: some origin of uterus o Freud, Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Stekel, Max Kahane, Rudolf
§ Result of “wandering womb” that causes body parts Reitler
to malfunction • 1910: founded International Psychoanalytic Association
o Most physicians already know about male hysteria so o President: Carl Jung
Freud’s study was disregarded
• 1909: Jung and Freud travelled to US; interpreted each o Perceptual conscious system: from sense organs; acts as
other’s dreams which ended their friendship. Jung left medium for perception of external stimuli
Psychoanalytic Movement o Within mental structure: nonthreatening ideas from
• World War I preconscious; well-disguised images from unconscious
o Cut off from communication with his followers
o Psychoanalytic practice dwindled Provinces of the mind
• Has 33 operations for cancer of the mouth • 1920s; to explain mental images according to their
• Important revisions in his theory functions/purposes
o Elevation of aggression = sexual drive Id: das Es; “It”
o Repression: one of the defense mechanisms of the ego • Primitive, chaotic, inaccessible to consciousness,
o Clarify female Oedipus complex unchangeable (not affected by time), amoral, illogical,
• Freud was sensitive, passionate, and has a capacity for unorganized
intimate, secretive friendships • Pleasure principle
• Very infrequent sex life o Seek pleasure without regard for what is pleasure of just
o Believed that condom, coitus interruptus, and Ego: das Ich; “I”
masturbation were unhealthy practices • In contact with reality
• Master of German tongue • Reality principle; decision-making/executive
• Won Goethe Prize for Literature (1930) • Reconciles blind, irrational claims of id and superego with
• Had intense intellectual curiosity, moral courage, ambivalent realistic demands of external world
feelings toward fathers; held grudges; burning ambition; • Anxious; uses defense mechanisms to fight anxiety
feelings of isolation; irrational dislike of America (due to • Becomes differentiated from id when infants learn to
chronic indigestion, no public restrooms, etc.) distinguish themselves from the outer world
• Develops strategies to handle id
Levels of mental life • Borrows energy from id
Unconscious • Children: pleasure and pain-ego functions; rewards and
• Drives, urges, instincts beyond awareness punishments teach them what to do to gain pleasure and
• Can only be proven indirectly avoid pain
• Explanation for dreams, slips of the tongue, forgetting Superego: das Uber-Ichl “over I”
(repression) • Idealistic principle; moral and ideal aspects
• Unconscious processes enter consciousness after being • No energy of its own; no contact with outside world
disguised to elude censorship • Demands perfection
o Guardian/censor to prevent undesirable anxiety- • 2 subsystems
producing memories o Conscience: tells us what we should not do; from
o Primary and final censor punishments
o Enters unconscious as pleasurable and nonthreatening o Ego-ideal: tells us what we should do; from rewards
experiences • Controls sexual and aggressive impulses through repression
o Punishment and suppression: create anxiety • Guilt: ego acts contrary to moral standards of superego;
o Anxiety stimulates repression function of conscience
• Portion of unconscious originates from experiences of early • Inferiority; ego is unable to meet superego’s standards;
ancestors stem from ego-ideal
• Phylogenetic endowment Dynamics of personality
o Inherited dispositions • Motivational principle to explain driving forces behind
§ Collective inherited experiences people’s actions
• Unconscious mind of one person can communicate with Drives
unconscious of another without hem being aware of the • Trieb
process • Motivational force
Preconscious • Sex/eros and aggression
• Not conscious but can become conscious quite readily • Distraction/Thanatos
• 2 sources: • Originate from id; controlled by ego
o Conscious perception: conscious for a transitory time; • Libido: sex drive
quickly passes to unconscious when attention shifts; free • Impetus: amount of force is exerts
from anxiety • Source: body in state of excitation/tension
o Unconscious: slip past vigilant censor and enter into
• Aim: seek pleasure by removing excitation/reducing tension
preconscious in disguised form; if recognized, it will
• Object: means through which aim is satistied
cause anxiety and final censor will repress it
Sex
Conscious
• Entire body is interested in libido
• In awareness at any time; directly available
• All pleasurable activities are traceable to the sexual desire
• Can reach consciousness from:
• Can be withdrawn from one person and places in free- Displacement
floating tension or reinvested in another person • Redirect unacceptable urges unto a variety of
• Forms: people/objects
o Narcissism • Not exaggerated
§ Primary: in infantsl self-centered as ego develops Fixation
§ Secondary: adolescence; personal appearance and • Remain at the present
self-interests • Permanent
o Love • Oral fixation: eating, smoking, talking
§ Investing libido on something/one other than • Anal fixation: neatness and orderliness
themselves Regression
§ Aim: inhibited; repressed sexual tension; towards • Reverting back to earlier stage
family etc. • Rigid and infantile
o Sadism • Temporary
§ Inflicting pain and humiliation on another person Projection
§ Extreme: sexual perversion; destructive aim • Seeing in others unacceptable feelings that actually reside in
o Masochism one’s own unconscious
§ Suffering pain and humiliation caused by self/others • Extreme: paranoia
§ Extreme: subservient is sexual drive o Powerful delusions of jealousy and persecution
Aggression o Repressed homosexual feelings
• Destructive drive Introjection
• Return organism to inorganic state (death) • Incorporating positive qualities of another person into their
• Aim: self-destruction own ego
• Teasing, gossip, sarcasm, enjoyment of other people’s • Qualities that are valuable and will permit them to feel
suffering better about themselves
• Explanation for wars, atrocities, and religious persecution • Oedipal period: child introjects authority of parents; relieved
• Need reaction formation to check aggression from choosing their own beliefs
Anxiety Sublimation
• Felt, affective, unpleasant • Substituting a cultural/social aim
• Warns person against impending danger • Art, music, and literature
Neurotic anxiety
• Dependence on id Stages of development
• About an unknown danger Infantile
• Originates from id impulses • First 4-5 years
• Childhood: fear of punishment • Autoerotic
Moral anxiety • Mouth and anus: erogenous stimulation
• Conflict between ego and superego Oral phase
Realistic anxiety • Mouth; sucking
• Dependence on outer world • Aim: nipple
• Possible fear but without specific fearful object • Oral-receptive: no ambivalence
• Anxiety: ego-preserving mechanism • Oral-sadistic: teeth
• Self-regulating: precipitates repression which reduces pain o Thumbsucking: satisfies sexual but not nutritional need
of anxiety Anal phase (sadistic-anal)
• Anus emerges as a sexually pleasurable zone
Defense mechanisms • Satisfaction through aggressive behavior and excretory
• More defensive = less energy to satisfy id’s impulses function
• To avoid dealing directly with sexual and aggressive • Early: destroying/losing objects; toilet training
implosives and defend itself against anxiety • Late: erotic pleasure of defecating; friendly interest towards
Repression feces
• Back to the unconscious • Anal character: excessively treat and orderly; resistant to
• Unchanged in the unconscious toilet training; holding back feces
• Forces its way to consciousness; disguised form • Anal triad: orderliness, stinginess, obstinacy
• Dreams, slips of the tongue • Penis, baby, feces: some symbols in dreams
Reaction Formation • No basic distinction between male and female
• Opposite to its true form; to one person • Active attitude: masculine, dominance, and sadism
• Exaggerated • Passive: feminine, voyeurism, and masochism
• Obsessive and compulsive form Phallic phase
• 3-4 years
• Genital area • Freudian slip
• Dichotomy between male and female o Unconscious intentions
• Physical differences à psychological differences o Felleistung; paraplaxes
• Male Oedipus complex
o Identification with father
o Sexual desire for mother
o Simple vs complete OC
o Castration anxiety: phylogenetic endowment
o Primitive superego
o Mature superego
• Female Oedipus complex
o Penis envy
o Identification with mother
o Rebel in 3 ways:
§ Give up sexuality; hostility towards mother
§ Cling defiantly to masculinity
§ Develop normally
o Influenced by: inherent bisexuality, degree of masculinity
o Superego: weaker, more flexible, less sever
Latency
• 4-5 until puberty
• Punish or discourage sexual activity
Genital
• Puberty: reawakening of sexual aim
• Gives up autoeroticism
• Reproduction
• Vagina à sought-after
• Genitals: supremacy as erogenous zones
• Direct libido outward
Maturity
• Balance of structures of the mind

Applications
• Early therapeutic technique
o Extracting repressed memories
o Dream interpretation, hypnosis
• Later therapeutic technique
o Free association (verbalize every thought) and dream
analysis
o Transference; strong sexual/aggressive feelings towards
analyst; from early experiences
o Limitations
§ Not all memories can be brought into consciousness
§ Not effective with psychoses
§ May later develop other psychic problems
• Dream analysis
o Manifest: surface meaning; conscious description
o Latent: unconscious description
o All dreams are wish fulfillments
o Repetition compulsion: PTSD; dreams of frightening
experience
o Disguise:
§ Condensation: manifest not as extensive as latent
§ Displacement: replaced
o 3 major kinds
§ Embarrassment: dream of nakedness
§ Death
§ Failing an exam