ThePleasureof GettingReal:FreudandthePsycheBy Esme Wilcha

The Pleasure of Getting Real: Freud and the Psyche

By Esme Wilcha

SigmundFreud

Sigmund Freud was an incredibly influential scientist who developed the field of psychoanalysis and transformed the traditional view on the human psyche, based on conscious thought, to focus on unconscious processes. He was born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia. The oldest of eight children, he grew up with a harsh, authoritarian father and a kind, loving mother. Freud graduated in 1873 from a high school in Austria called Sperlgymnasium. Soon after, he was inspired by a public reading about nature to go into medicine. Once on this path, he traveled to work at the University of Vienna with a top physiologist of his time named Ersnt von Brüke. In 1882, he worked at a hospital with new partners, Theodor Meynert and Hermann Nothnagel. Theodor was a neuropathist and anatomist and Hermann was an internist. Both worked and developed new research at the University. In 1885, Freud?s research in Vienna helped him get promoted to a lecturer position speaking on neuropathy. During his studies in Vienna, Freud founded the concept of psychoanalysis, which he developed into a method for learning about and treating mental illness and explaining how unconscious mental life affects behavior in everyone. He was the first to believe childhood greatly shapes adult life and explored how trauma manifests through a lifetime. He explored this in himself as well, having come from a harsh father and growing up under a lot of scrutiny. In addition, he revolutionized the idea that humans can have altered mental states because we don't consciously register certain eventsor traumasthat could becausing our courseof action.

The goal of his course of treatment, which usually consisted of talking to patients for extended periods of time, was to bring unconscious information to your conscious. He believed this could relieve blockages in the psyche and assuage mental illness. Most mental illness in his time was either diagnosed as hysteria (often a common description of women) or insanity. His treatment helped create long-term progress in people exhibiting signs of mental disorders and relieved them of buried trauma. Freud had multiple breakthrough cases where he explored this, one of themost notablebeing thecaseof AnnaO.

Anna O led Freud to many of the realizations that eventually helped him break so many boundaries in the neurological world. She was suffering from hysteria, which manifested physically with paralysis and hallucinations. Hysteria is not a diagnosis seen today because, in the 1880s, It was a catchall diagnosis often used when women were acting ?strange?or showing signs of being unwell by the standards of the time, such as behaviors seen after a pregnancy, though often symptoms seemed to be unprovoked; doctors often gave these women morphine and no further treatment. Freud states in his examination of Anna O.: ?[she described] profoundly melancholy phantasies? 'day dreams' we should call them? sometimes characterized by poetic beauty, and their starting-point was as a rule the position of a girl at her father's sick-bed. When she had related a number of these phantasies, she was as if set free, and she was brought back to normal mental life.?The more Freud and his mentor at the time, Josef Breuer, talked with Anna, the more apparent it was that her paralysis was caused by past trauma in her life. They talked to her for days, and eventually she brought these forgotten memories to her consciousness. Once she started talking through theseeventsburied in her memory, her paralysissubsided.

Anna O

The theories that came from this proved to be revolutionary, and Freud eventually proposed there are at least three levels of the mind. Freud's three-part theory compared the mind to an iceberg, calling the three layers the id, ego, and superego. He believed these also created structurefor thethree partsof thehuman personality.

The id represents the unconscious mind, comprised of two parts called Eros and Thanatos. Eros helps a human survive, promoting pleasurable activities, such as breathing, eating, and sexual activities. Thanatos is a more hostile death instinct that engenders aggression that can lead to violent actions toward others or self. Freud said Eros, the life and survival instinct, was stronger than Thanatos, the death instinct, which explains why humans survive. The ego developed in every person as a baby to negotiate between satisfying the id and the superego while taking physical and social reality into account. The ego operates in both the conscious and unconscious mind. The superego develops during early childhood and focuses on morals and social norms. It drivesusto behavein socially acceptableways.

Freud'sIcebergTheory

Freud left the University of Viennain 1885. He spent 19 weeks there, which introduced him to the idea that psychological disorders could take root in the mind and consciousness rather than the physical brain. His mentor, Jean-Martin Charcot, demonstrated how mental disorders can affect your physical state. He married his wife, Matha Bernays, soon after. She was the daughter of an important Jewish family. She had six children with him, one being Anna Freud, who pursued her own psychoanalytic studies and became distinguished in the academic community. Around the time of hismarriageFreud met Wilhelm Fliess, who became his longest and closest friend throughout his life. He listened to Freud's wildest ideas and helped him further his speculation, most notably encouraging theideathat humanscan bebisexual.

Freud's work has been criticized over the years with many of his ideas receiving intense challenge; nevertheless, he still created a legacy in his field and accelerated research on the psyche decades after his time. Many have extended his psychoanalytic work, such as Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. Overall, he showed that people were governed much more by unconscious processes than conscious deliberations and, thus, that being psychologically intelligent was as important, if not moreso, than being politically, religiously, or economically intelligent.

Anna Freud

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