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| Dr. Sigmund Freud |
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| Dr. Brandt |
Freud - psychology's most famous figure, is also one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century.
Sigmund Freud's work and theories helped to shape our views of childhood, personality, memory, sexuality and therapy.
Other major thinkers have contributed work that grew out of Freud's legacy, while others developed new theories out of opposition to his ideas
Influenced by Darwin's 1859 'Origin of Species', lab work with physiologist Ernst Brucke, and a study of hysterics with Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, Freud became convinced that the human body, including the mind, could be rationally explained through the scientific method of observation and analysis.This idea was bolstered by his continued experiments with patients who were suffering from hysterias, or physical symptoms that had no ostensible physical cause.
Freud let his patients speak freely in hopes of unlocking their previously repressed thoughts, a process which led him to conclude that stifled sexual feelings were at the root of these illnesses.
To this day, Freud's ideas continue to "agitate the sleep of mankind," permeating our vocabulary as well as our consciousness.
Freud's claim of a link between the physical and the psychological was a controversial one, and most of his colleagues at the time rejected it, however, Freud continued to probe deeper into the observable facets of the subconscious, such as dreams, memories and emotions.
Sigmund Freud - (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881, and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy at the Vienna General Hospital.
He was appointed a university lecturer in neuropathology in 1885 and became a professor in 1902.
In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and in whichever order they spontaneously occur) and discovered transference (the process in which patients displace onto their analysts feelings derived from their childhood attachments), establishing its central role in the analytic process Freud’s redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the 'Oedipus Complex' as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory.
His analysis of his own and his patients' dreams as wish-fulfilments provided him with models for the clinical analysis of symptom formation and the mechanisms of repression as well as for elaboration of his theory of the unconscious as an agency disruptive of conscious states of mind.
Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested, and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive (Thanatos), the source of repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. In his later work Freud drew on psychoanalytic theory to develop a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.
Freud's work has suffused contemporary thought and popular culture to the extent that in 1939 W. H. Auden wrote, in a poem dedicated to him: "to us he is no more a person / now but a whole climate of opinion / under whom we conduct our different lives".
Freud read William Shakespeare in English throughout his life, and it has been suggested that his understanding of human psychology was partly derived from Shakespeare's plays.
Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17.
He had planned to study law, but joined the medical faculty at the university, where his studies included philosophy under Franz Brentano, physiology under Ernst Brücke, and zoology under Darwinist professor Carl Claus.
In 1876 Freud spent four weeks at Claus's zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs.
He graduated with an MD in 1881.
Freud's Early Career and Marriage
Freud was born to Jewish Galician parents in the town of Freiberg in Mähren, in the Austrian Empire, the first of their eight children.
His father, Jacob Freud (1815–1896), a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel (1833–1914) and Philipp (1836–1911), from his first marriage.
Jacob's family were Hasidic Jews, and though Jacob himself had moved away from the tradition, he came to be known for his Torah study.
He and Freud's mother, Amalia (née Nathansohn), 20 years her husband's junior and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855.
They were struggling financially and living in a rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born.
He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as a positive omen for the boy's future. In 1859 the Freud family left Freiberg.
Freud’s half brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, parting him from the “inseparable” playmate of his early childhood, Emanuel’s son, John.
Jacob Freud took his wife and two children (Freud's sister, Anna, was born in 1858; a brother, Julius, had died in infancy) firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters (Rosa, Marie, Adolfine and Paula) and a brother (Alexander) were born.
In 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school.
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| Sigmund Freuds Geburtshaus |
He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors.
He loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek.
Freud read William Shakespeare in English throughout his life, and it has been suggested that his understanding of human psychology was partly derived from Shakespeare's plays.
Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17.
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| Freud - Ex Libris |
In 1876 Freud spent four weeks at Claus's zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs.
He graduated with an MD in 1881.
Freud had greatly admired his philosophy tutor, Brentano, who was known for his theories of perception and introspection, as well as Theodor Lipps who was one of the main contemporary theorists of the concepts of the unconscious and empathy.
Brentano discussed the possible existence of the unconscious mind in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint.
Although Brentano denied the existence of the unconscious, his discussion of it probably helped introduce Freud to the concept.
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| Charles Darwin |
Freud owned and made use of Charles Darwin's major evolutionary writings, and was also influenced by Eduard von Hartmann's 'The Philosophy of the Unconscious'.
Freud read Friedrich Nietzsche as a student, and analogies between his work and that of Nietzsche were pointed out almost as soon as he developed a following.
In 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death, Freud bought his collected works; he told his friend, Fliess, that he hoped to find in Nietzsche's works "the words for much that remains mute in me."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. Nietzsche's key ideas include the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, 'perspectivism', the Will to Power, the "death of God", the Übermensch and 'eternal recurrence' (see Time and Illusion). One of the key tenets of his philosophy is the concept of 'life-affirmation', which embraces the realities of the world we live now in over the idea of a world beyond. It further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts. His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. His ideas of individual overcoming and transcendence beyond structure and context have had a profound impact on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers, who have used these concepts as points of departure in the development of their philosophies.
Freud's interest in philosophy declined after he had decided on a career in neurology and psychiatry.
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| Sigmund Freud - A Life in Photos |
Development of Psychoanalysis
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| Une leçon clinique à la Salpêtrière |
In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis.
He was later to recall the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research.
Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience.
Once he had set up in private practice in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work.
He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods he had studied in that it did not use suggestion.
He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods he had studied in that it did not use suggestion.
Josef Breuer (January 15, 1842 – June 20, 1925) was a distinguished Austrian physician who made key discoveries in neurophysiology, and whose work in the 1880s with a patient known as Anna O. developed the talking cure (cathartic method) and laid the foundation to psychoanalysis as developed by his protégé Sigmund Freud.
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| Bertha Pappenheim |
Breuer is perhaps best known for his work in the 1880s with Anna O. (the pseudonym of Bertha Pappenheim), a woman suffering from "paralysis of her limbs, and anaesthesias, as well as disturbances of vision and speech."
Breuer observed that her symptoms reduced or disappeared after she described them to him.
Anna O. humorously called this procedure chimney sweeping.
She also coined the more serious appellation for this form of therapy, 'talking cure'.
Breuer later referred to it as the 'cathartic method'.
Breuer observed that her symptoms reduced or disappeared after she described them to him.
Anna O. humorously called this procedure chimney sweeping.
She also coined the more serious appellation for this form of therapy, 'talking cure'.
Breuer later referred to it as the 'cathartic method'.
Breuer was then a mentor to the young Sigmund Freud, and had helped set him up in medical practice.
Ernest Jones recalled, 'Freud was greatly interested in hearing of the case of Anna O, which made a deep impression on him'; and in his 1909 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud generously pointed out, 'I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when Breuer, first (in 1880-2) made use of this procedure.
Never before had anyone removed a hysterical symptom by such a method.'
Ernest Jones recalled, 'Freud was greatly interested in hearing of the case of Anna O, which made a deep impression on him'; and in his 1909 Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud generously pointed out, 'I was a student and working for my final examinations at the time when Breuer, first (in 1880-2) made use of this procedure.
Never before had anyone removed a hysterical symptom by such a method.'
The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud's clinical practice.
Described as 'Anna O', she was invited to talk about her symptoms while under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase 'talking cure' for her treatment).
In the course of talking in this way, these symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of traumatic incidents associated with their onset.
This led Freud to eventually establish in the course of his clinical practice that a more consistent and effective pattern of symptom relief could be achieved, without recourse to hypnosis, by encouraging patients to talk freely about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them.
In addition to this procedure, which he called 'free association', Freud found that patient's dreams could be fruitfully analysed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material, and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which underlay symptom formation.
By 1896, Freud had abandoned hypnosis (?), and was using the term 'psychoanalysis' to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based.
Freud's development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression, a 'neurasthenia' which he linked to the death of his father in 1896, and which prompted a 'self-analysis' of his own dreams and memories of childhood.
His explorations of his feelings of hostility to his father and rivalrous jealousy over his mother’s affections led him to a fundamental revision of his theory of the origin of the neuroses.
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| Oedipus Complex - ? |
This theory is now generally rejected.
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| Oedipus and the Sphinx Gustave Moreau |
This transition from the 'theory of infantile sexual trauma' as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes an autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for Freud's subsequent formulation of the theory of the 'Oedipus Complex'.
In 1889 Freud published 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in which, following a critical review of existing theory, Freud gives detailed interpretations of his own and his patients dreams in terms of wish-fulfilments made subject to the repression and censorship of the 'dream work'.
He then set out the theoretical model of mental structure (the unconscious, preconscious and conscious) on which this account is based.
An abridged version, 'On Dreams', was published in 1901.
In works which would win him a more general readership, Freud applied his theories outside the clinical setting in 'The Psychopathology of Everyday Life' (1901), and 'Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious' (1905).
In 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality', published in 1905, Freud elaborated his theory of infantile sexuality, describing its 'polymorphous perverse' forms, and the functioning of the 'drives', to which it gives rise, in the formation of sexual identity.
The same year he published 'Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora)' which became one of his more famous and controversial case studies.
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| Großgermanisches Reich |
Freud, Faunus and Dr. Brandt
Dr. Brandt, an important character in 'Club Jaguar', who is a psychiatrist, is subsequently revealed to have worked in collaboration with the SS in Germany during the Third Reich, and later with the CIA in the US. - (See 'Club Jaguar' - Chapter 16 - 'Searching for Jim')
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| Faunus as 'Doug Spaulding' |
It is not clear, from the narrative of 'Club Jaguar' if Brandt was, himself an 'anti Semite'.
A significant point in the interaction between Dr. Brandt and Faunus is the fact that, for all Brandt's psychoanalytical theorizing, it is Faunus who has the 'upper hand'.
This appears to be derived from Faunus' far deeper and more ancient understanding of the human psyche that, to the average person, can only be described as 'magical'.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C Clarke
Text © Copyright Peter Crawford 2018
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