Sigmund Freud
SIGMUND FREUD
1856 - 1939
Dr. C. George Boeree
It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but
conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it
should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for
authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by
something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in its
catechism has but fe it consists mainly of
statements which it has developed to varying degrees of probability.
The capacity to be content with these approximations to certainty and
the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of final
confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind. --
Freud's story, like most people's
stories, begins with others. In
case those others were his mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Breuer, and
patient, called Anna O.
Anna O. was Joseph Breuer's patient from 1880 through 1882. Twenty
years old, Anna spent most of her time nursing her ailing father. She
a bad cough that proved to have no physical basis. She developed some
difficulties, then became mute, and then began speaking only in
rather than her usual German.
When her father died she began to refuse food, and developed an
set of problems. She lost the feeling in her hands and feet, developed
some paralysis, and began to have involuntary spasms. She also had
hallucinations and tunnel vision. But when specialists were consulted,
no physical causes for these problems could be found.
If all this weren't enough, she had fairy-tale fantasies, dramatic
swings, and made several suicide attempts. Breuer's diagnosis was that
she was suffering from what was then called hysteria (now
conversion disorder), which meant she had symptoms that appeared to be
physical, but were not.
In the evenings, Anna would sink into states of what Breuer called
"spontaneous
hypnosis," or what Anna herself called "clouds." Breuer found that,
these trance-like states, she could explain her day-time fantasies and
other experiences, and she felt better afterwards. Anna called these
"chimney sweeping" and "the talking cure."
Sometimes during "chimney sweeping," some emotional event was
that gave meaning to some particular symptom. The first example came
after she had refused to drink for a while: She recalled seeing a woman
drink from a glass that a dog had just drunk from. While recalling
she experienced strong feelings of disgust...and then had a drink of
In other words, her symptom -- an avoidance of water -- disappeared as
soon as she remembered its root event, and experienced the strong
that would be appropriate to that event. Breuer called this catharsis,
from the Greek word for cleansing.
It was eleven years later that Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund
wrote a book on hysteria. In it they explained their theory: Every
is the result of a traumatic experience, one that cannot be integrated
into the person's understanding of the world. The emotions appropriate
to the trauma are not expressed in any direct fashion, but do not
evaporate: They express themselves in behaviors that in a weak, vague
offer a response to the trauma. These symptoms are, in other words,
meaningful.
When the client can be made aware of the meanings of his or her
(through hypnosis, for example) then the unexpressed emotions are
and so no longer need to express themselves as symptoms. It is
to lancing a boil or draining an infection.
In this way, Anna got rid of symptom after symptom. But it must be
that she needed Breuer to do this: Whenever she was in one of her
states, she had to feel his hands to make sure it was him before
And sadly, new problems continued to arise.
According to Freud, Breuer recognized that she had fallen in love
him, and that he was falling in love with her.& Plus, she was
everyone she was pregnant with his child. You might say she wanted it
badly that her mind told her body it was true, and she developed an
hysterical
pregnancy. Breuer, a married man in a Victorian era, abruptly ended
sessions together, and lost all interest in hysteria.
It was Freud who would later add what Breuer did not acknowledge
-- that secret sexual desires lay at the bottom of all these hysterical
To finish her story, Anna spent time in a sanatorium. Later, she
a well-respected and active figure -- the first social worker in
-- under her true name, Bertha Pappenheim. She died in 1936. She will
remembered, not only for her own accomplishments, but as the
inspiration
for the most influential personality theory we have ever had.
Sigmund Freud was born May 6, 1856, in a small
town -- Freiberg --
Moravia. His father was a wool merchant with a keen mind and a good
of humor. His mother was a lively woman, her husband's second wife and
20 years younger. She was 21 years old when she gave birth to her first
son, her darling, Sigmund. Sigmund had two older half-brothers and six
younger siblings. When he was four or five -- he wasn't sure -- the
moved to Vienna, where he lived most of his life.
A brilliant child, always at the head of his class, he went to
school, one of the few viable options for a bright Jewish boy in Vienna
those days. There, he became involved in research under the direction
a physiology professor named Ernst Br&cke. Br&cke believed in
what was then a popular, if radical, notion, which we now call
reductionism:
"No other forces than the common physical-chemical ones are active
the organism." Freud would spend many years trying to "reduce"
personality
to neurology, a cause he later gave up on.
Freud was very good at his research, concentrating on
neurophysiology,
even inventing a special cell-staining technique. But only a limited
of positions were available, and there were others ahead of him.
helped him to get a grant to study, first with the great psychiatrist
in Paris, then with his rival Bernheim in Nancy. Both these gentlemen
investigating the use of hypnosis with hysterics.
After spending a short time as a resident in neurology and director
of a children's ward in Berlin, he came back to Vienna, married his
of many years Martha Bernays, and set up a practice in neuropsychiatry,
with the help of Joseph Breuer.
Freud's books and lectures brought him both fame and ostracism from
the mainstream of the medical community. He drew around him a number of
very bright sympathizers who became the core of the psychoanalytic
Unfortunately, Freud had a penchant for rejecting people who did not
agree with him. Some separated from h others did
and went on to found competing schools of thought.
Freud emigrated to England just before World War II when Vienna
an increasing dangerous place for Jews, especially ones as famous as
Not long afterward, he died of the cancer of the mouth and jaw that he
had suffered from for the last 20 years of his life.
Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus
unconscious
mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious
mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your
perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you.
closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious,
what we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily
made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about
can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two
of mind. But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts!
The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all
things that are not easily available to awareness, including many
that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and
that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the
and emotions associated with trauma.
According to Freud, the unconscious is the source of our
motivations,
whether they be simple desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions,
the motives of an artist or scientist. And yet, we are often driven to
deny or resist becoming conscious of these motives, and they are often
available to us only in disguised form. We will come back to this.
The id, the ego, and the superego
Freudian psychological reality begins with the world, full of
Among them is a very special object, the organism. The organism is
in that it acts to survive and reproduce, and it is guided toward those
ends by its needs -- hunger, thirst, the avoidance of pain, and sex.
A part -- a very important part -- of the organism is the nervous
which has as one of its characteristics a sensitivity to the organism's
At birth, that nervous system is little more than that of any other
an "it" or id. The nervous system, as id, translates the
organism's
needs into motivational forces called, in German, Triebe, which
has been translated as instincts or drives. Freud also
them wishes. This translation from need to wish is called the primary
The id works in keeping with the pleasure principle, which
be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately. Just
the hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn't "know" what it
it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now.
The infant, in the Freudian view, is pure, or nearly pure id. And the
is nothing if not the psychic representative of biology.
Unfortunately, although a wish for food, such as the image of a
steak, might be enough to satisfy the id, it isn't enough to satisfy
organism. The need only gets stronger, and the wishes just keep coming.
You may have noticed that, when you haven't satisfied some need, such
the need for food, it begins to demand more and more of your attention,
until there comes a point where you can't think of anything else. This
is the wish or drive breaking into consciousness.
Luckily for the organism, there is that small portion of the mind we
discussed before, the conscious, that is hooked up to the world through
the senses. Around this little bit of consciousness, during the first
of a child's life, some of the "it" becomes "I," some of the id becomes
The ego relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness,
and it searches for objects to satisfy the wishes that id creates to
the organisms needs. This problem-solving activity is called the secondary
The ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality
principle,
which says "take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is
It represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason.
However, as the ego struggles to keep the id (and, ultimately, the
happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets with
objects that actually assist it in attaining its goals. And it keeps a
record of these obstacles and aides. In particular, it keeps track of
rewards and punishments meted out by two of the most influential
in the world of the child -- mom and dad. This record of things to
and strategies to take becomes the superego. It is not
until about seven years of age. In some people, it never is completed.
There are two aspects to the superego: One is the conscience,
which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is
the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models
to the child. The conscience and ego ideal communicate their
requirements
to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.
It is as if we acquired, in childhood, a new set of needs and
accompanying
wishes, this time of social rather than biological origins.
Unfortunately,
these new wishes can easily conflict with the ones from the id. You
the superego represents society, and society often wants nothing better
than to have you never satisfy your needs at all!
Life instincts and the death instinct
Freud saw all human behavior as motivated by the drives or
instincts,
which in turn are the neurological representations of physical needs.
first, he referred to them as the life instincts. These
perpetuate (a) the life of the individual, by motivating him or her to
seek food and water, and (b) the life of the species, by motivating him
or her to have sex. The motivational energy of these life instincts,
"oomph" that powers our psyches, he called libido, from the
word for "I desire."
Freud's clinical experience led him to view sex as much more
in the dynamics of the psyche than other needs. We are, after all,
creatures, and sex is the most social of needs. Plus, we have to
that Freud included much more than intercourse in the term sex! Anyway,
libido has come to mean, not any old drive, but the sex drive.
Later in his life, Freud began to believe that the life instincts
tell the whole story. Libi the pleasure principle
keeps us in perpetual motion. And yet the goal of all this motion is to
be still, to be satisfied, to be at peace, to have no more needs. The
of life, you might say, is death! Freud began to believe that "under"
"beside" the life instincts there was a death instinct. He
to believe that every person has an unconscious wish to die.
This seems like a strange idea at first, and it was rejected by many
of his students, but I think it has some basis in experience: Life can
be a painful and exhausting process. There is easily, for the great
of people in the world, more pain than pleasure in life -- something we
are extremely reluctant to admit! Death promises release from the
Freud referred to a nirvana principle. Nirvana is a Buddhist
idea, often translated as heaven, but actually meaning "blowing out,"
in the blowing out of a candle. It refers to non-existence,
nothingness,
the void, which is the goal of all life in Buddhist philosophy.
The day-to-day evidence of the death instinct and its nirvana
is in our desire for peace, for escape from stimulation, our attraction
to alcohol and narcotics, our penchant for escapist activity, such as
ourselves in books or movies, our craving for rest and sleep. Sometimes
it presents itself openly as suicide and suicidal wishes. And, Freud
theorized,
sometimes we direct it out away from ourselves, in the form of
aggression,
cruelty, murder, and destructiveness.
Freud once said "life is not easy!"
The ego -- the "I" -- sits at the center of some pretty powerful
society, as represe biology, as
represented
by the id. When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is
understandable if it -- if you -- feel threatened, feel overwhelmed,
as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This
is called anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that
survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in
Freud mentions three different kind of anxieties: The first is realistic
anxiety, which you and I would call fear. Actually Freud did, too,
in German. But his translators thought "fear" too mundane!
Nevertheless,
if I throw you into a pit of poisonous snakes, you might experience
The second is moral anxiety. This is what we feel when the
comes not from the outer, physical world, but from the internalized
world of the superego. It is, in fact, just another word for feelings
shame and guilt and the fear of punishment.
The last is neurotic anxiety. This is the fear of being
overwhelmed
by impulses from the id. If you have ever felt like you were about to
it," lose control, your temper, your rationality, or even your mind,
have felt neurotic anxiety. Neurotic is actually the Latin word for
so this is nervous anxiety. It is this kind of anxiety that intrigued
most, and we usually just call it anxiety, plain and simple.
The defense mechanisms
The ego deals with the demands of reality, the id, and the superego
as best as it can. But when the anxiety becomes overwhelming, the ego
defend itself. It does so by unconsciously blocking the impulses or
distorting
them into a more acceptable, less threatening form. The techniques are
called the ego defense mechanisms, and Freud, his daughter
and other disciples have discovered quite a few.
Denial involves blocking external events from awareness. If
situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to
experience
it. As you might imagine, this is a primitive and dangerous defense --
no one disregards reality and gets away with it for long! It can
by itself or, more commonly, in combination with other, more subtle
mechanisms
that support it.
I was once reading while my five year old daughter was watching a
(The Smurfs, I think). She was, as was her habit, quite close to the
television,
when a commercial came on. Apparently, no-one at the television station
was paying much attention, because this was a commercial for a horror
complete with bloody knife, hockey mask, and screams of terror. Now I
able to save my child from this horror, so I did what any good
psychologist
father would do: I talked about it. I said to her "Boy, that was a
commercial, wasn't it?" She said "Huh?" I said "That commercial...it
was scary wasn't it?" She said "What commercial?" I said "The
commercial
that was just on, with the blood and the mask and the screaming...!"
had apparently shut out the whole thing.
Since then, I've noticed little kids sort of glazing over when
confronted
by things they'd rather not be confronted by. I've also seen people
at autopsies, people deny the reality of the death of a loved one, and
students fail to pick up their test results. That's denial.
Anna Freud also mentions denial in fantasy:& This is
when children, in their imaginations, transform an "evil" father into a
loving teddy bear, or a helpless child into a powerful superhero.
Repression, which Anna Freud also called "motivated
forgetting,"
is just that: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person,
or event. This, too, is dangerous, and is a part of most other
As an adolescent, I developed a rather strong fear of spiders,
especially
long-legged ones. I didn't know where it came from, but it was starting
to get rather embarrassing by the time I entered college. At college, a
counselor helped me to get over it (with a technique called systematic
desensitization), but I still had no idea where it came from. Years
I had a dream, a particularly clear one, that involved getting locked
by my cousin in a shed behind my grandparents' house when I was very
The shed was small, dark, and had a dirt floor covered with -- you
it! -- long-legged spiders.
The Freudian understanding of this phobia is pretty simple: I
a traumatic event -- the shed incident -- but seeing spiders aroused
anxiety of the event without arousing the memory.
Other examples abound. Anna Freud provides one that now strikes us
quaint: A young girl, guilty about her rather strong sexual desires,
to forget her boy-friend's name, even when trying to introduce him to
relations! Or an alcoholic can't remember his suicide attempt, claiming
he must have "blacked out." Or when someone almost drowns as a child,
can't remember the event even when people try to remind him -- but he
have this fear of open water!
Note that, to be a true example of a defense, it should function
unconsciously.
My brother had a fear of dogs as a child, but there was no defense
He had been bitten by one, and wanted very badly never to repeat the
experience!
Usually, it is the irrational fears we call phobias that derive from
repression
of traumas.
Asceticism, or the renunciation of needs, is one most people
haven't heard of, but it has become relevant again today with the
of the disorder called anorexia. Preadolescents, when they feel
threatened
by their emerging sexual desires, may unconsciously try to protect
themselves
by denying, not only their sexual desires, but all desires. They get
in some kind of ascetic (monk-like) lifestyle wherein they renounce
interest in what other people enjoy.
In boys nowadays, there is a great deal of interest in the
self-discipline
of the martial arts. Fortunately, the martial arts not only don't hurt
you (much), they may actually help you. Unfortunately, girls in our
often develop a great deal of interest in attaining an excessively and
artificially thin standard of beauty. In Freudian theory, their denial
of their need for food is actually a cover for their denial of their
development. Our society conspires with them: After all, what most
consider a normal figure for a mature woman is in ours considered 20
overweight!
Anna Freud also discusses a milder version of this called restriction
of ego.& Here, a person loses interest in some aspect of life
and focuses it elsewhere, in order to avoid facing reality.& A
young girl who has been rejected by the object of her affections may
turn away from feminine things and become a "sex-less
intellectual,"& or a boy who is afraid that he may be humiliated
on the football team may unaccountably become deeply interested in
Isolation (sometimes called intellectualization) involves
the emotion from a difficult memory or threatening impulse. A person
in a very cavalier manner, acknowledge that they had been abused as a
or may show a purely intellectual curiosity in their newly discovered
orientation. Something that should be a big deal is treated as if it
In emergency situations, many people find themselves completely calm
and collected until the emergency is over, at which point they fall to
pieces. Something tells you that, during the emergency, you can't
to fall apart. It is common to find someone totally immersed in the
obligations surrounding the death of a loved one. Doctors and nurses
learn to separate their natural reactions to blood, wounds, needles,
scalpels, and treat the patient, temporarily, as something less than a
warm, wonderful human being with friends and family. Adolescents often
go through a stage where they are obsessed with horror movies, perhaps
to come to grips with their own fears. Nothing demonstrates isolation
clearly than a theater full of people laughing hysterically while
is shown being dismembered.
Displacement is the redirection of an impulse onto a
substitute
target. If the impulse, the desire, is okay with you, but the person
direct that desire towards is too threatening, you can displace to
or something that can serve as a symbolic substitute.
Someone who hates his or her mother may repress that hatred, but
it instead towards, say, women in general. Someone who has not had the
chance to love someone may substitute cats or dogs for human beings.
who feels uncomfortable with their sexual desire for a real person may
substitute a fetish. Someone who is frustrated by his or her superiors
may go home and kick the dog, beat up a family member, or engage in
cross-burnings.
Turning against the self is a very special form of
displacement,
where the person becomes their own substitute target. It is normally
in reference to hatred, anger, and aggression, rather than more
impulses, and it is the Freudian explanation for many of our feelings
inferiority, guilt, and depression. The idea that depression is often
result of the anger we refuse to acknowledge is accepted by many
Freudians and non-Freudians alike.
Once upon a time, at a time when I was not feeling my best, my
five years old, spilled an entire glass of chocolate milk in the living
room. I lashed out at her verbally, telling her she was clumsy and had
to learn to be more careful and how often hadn't I told her and...well,
you know. She stood there stiffly with a sort of smoldering look in her
eyes, and, of all things, pounded herself on her own head several
Obviously, she would rather have pounded my head, but, well, you just
do that, do you? Needless to say, I've felt guilty ever since.
Projection, which Anna Freud also called displacement
is almost the complete opposite of turning against the self. It
the tendency to see your own unacceptable desires in other people. In
words, the desires are still there, but they're not your desires
I confess that whenever I hear someone going on and on about how
aggressive
everybody is, or how perverted they all are, I tend to wonder if this
doesn't have an aggressive or sexual streak in themselves that they'd
not acknowledge.
Let me give you a couple of examples: A husband, a good and faithful
one, finds himself terribly attracted to the charming and flirtatious
next door. But rather than acknowledge his own, hardly abnormal, lusts,
he becomes increasingly jealous of his wife, constantly worried about
faithfulness, and so on. Or a woman finds herself having vaguely sexual
feelings about her girlfriends. Instead of acknowledging those feelings
as quite normal, she becomes increasingly concerned with the presence
lesbians in her community.
Altruistic surrender is a form of projection that at first
looks like its opposite: Here, the person attempts to fulfill his or
own needs vicariously, through other people.
A common example of this is the friend (we've all had one) who,
not seeking any relationship himself, is constantly pushing other
into them, and is particularly curious as to "what happened last night"
and "how are things going?" The extreme example of altruistic surrender
is the person who lives their whole life for and through another.
Reaction formation, which Anna Freud called "believing the
opposite,"
is changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite. So a child,
at his or her mother, may become overly concerned with her and rather
dramatically
shower her with affection. An abused child may run to the abusing
Or someone who can't accept a homosexual impulse may claim to despise
homosexuals.
Perhaps the most common and clearest example of reaction formation
found in children between seven and eleven or so: Most boys will tell
in no uncertain terms how disgusting girls are, and girls will tell you
with equal vigor how gross boys are. Adults watching their
interactions,
however, can tell quite easily what their true feelings are!
Undoing involves "magical" gestures or rituals that are meant
to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they've already
Anna Freud mentions, for example, a boy who would recite the alphabet
whenever he had a sexual thought, or turn around and spit whenever
another boy who shared his passion for masturbation.
In "normal" people, the undoing is, of course, more conscious, and
might engage in an act of atonement for some behavior, or formally ask
for forgiveness. But in some people, the act of atonement isn't
at all. Consider the alcoholic father who, after a year of verbal and
physical abuse, puts on the best and biggest Christmas ever for his
When the season is over, and the kids haven't quite been fooled by his
magical gesture, he returns to his bartender with complaints about how
ungrateful his family is, and how they drive him to drink.
One of the classic examples of undoing concerns personal hygiene
sex: It is perfectly reasonable to wash up after sex. After all, it can
get messy! But if you feel the need to take three or four complete
using gritty soap -- perhaps sex doesn't quite agree with you.
Introjection, sometimes called identification, involves
into your own personality characteristics of someone else, because
so solves some emotional difficulty. For example, a child who is left
frequently, may in some way try to become "mom" in order to lessen his
or her fears. You can sometimes catch them telling their dolls or
not to be afraid. And we find the older child or teenager imitating his
or her favorite star, musician, or sports hero in an effort to
an identity.
A more unusual example is a woman who lived next to my grandparents.
Her husband had died and she began to dress in his clothes, albeit
tailored to her figure. She began to take up various of his habits,
as smoking a pipe. Although the neighbors found it strange and referred
to her as "the man-woman," she was not suffering from any confusion
her sexual identity. In fact, she later remarried, retaining to the end
her men's suits and pipe!
I must add here that identification is very important to Freudian
as the mechanism by which we develop our superegos.
Identification with the aggressor is a version of
introjection
that focuses on the adoption, not of general or positive traits, but of
negative or feared traits. If you are afraid of someone, you can
conquer that fear by becoming more like them. Two of my daughters,
up with a particularly moody cat, could often be seen meowing, hissing,
spitting, and arching their backs in an effort to keep that cat from
out of a closet or dark corner and trying to eat their ankles.
A more dramatic example is one called the Stockholm
Syndrome. After
a hostage crisis in Stockholm, psychologists were surprised to find
the hostages were not only not terribly angry at their captors, but
downright sympathetic. A more recent case involved a young woman named
Patty Hearst, of the wealthy and influential Hearst family. She was
by a very small group of self-proclaimed revolutionaries called the
Symbionese
Liberation Army. She was kept in closets, raped, and otherwise
mistreated.
Yet she apparently decided to join them, making little propaganda
for them and even waving a machine gun around during a bank robbery.
she was later tried, psychologists strongly suggested she was a victim,
not a criminal. She was nevertheless convicted of bank robbery and
to 7 years in prison. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter
Regression is a movement back in psychological time when one
is faced with stress. When we are troubled or frightened, our behaviors
often become more childish or primitive. A child may begin to suck
thumb again or wet the bed when they need to spend some time in the
Teenagers may giggle uncontrollably when introduced into a social
involving the opposite sex. A freshman college student may need to
an old toy from home. A gathering of civilized people may become a
mob when they are led to believe their livelihoods are at stake. Or an
older man, after spending twenty years at a company and now finding
laid off, may retire to his recliner and become childishly dependent on
Where do we retreat when faced with stress? To the last time in life
when we felt safe and secure, according to Freudian theory.
Rationalization is the cognitive distortion of "the facts" to
make an event or an impulse less threatening. We do it often enough on
a fairly conscious level when we provide ourselves with excuses. But
many people, with sensitive egos, making excuses comes so easy that
never are truly aware of it. In other words, many of us are quite
to believe our lies.
A useful way of understanding the defenses is to see them as a
combination
of denial or repression with various kinds of rationalizations.
All defenses are, of course, lies, even if we are not conscious of
them. But that doesn't make them less dangerous -- in fact it makes
more so. As your grandma may have told you, "Oh what a tangled web we
Lies breed lies, and take us further and further from the truth, from
After a while, the ego can no longer take care of the id's demands, or
pay attention to the superego's. The anxieties come rushing back, and
break down.
And yet Freud saw defenses as necessary. You can hardly expect a
especially a child, to take the pain and sorrow of life full on! While
some of his followers suggested that all of the defenses could be used
positively, Freud himself suggested that there was one positive
which he called sublimation.
Sublimation is the transforming of an unacceptable impulse,
it be sex, anger, fear, or whatever, into a socially acceptable, even
productive
form. So someone with a great deal of hostility may become a hunter, a
butcher, a football player, or a mercenary. Someone suffering from a
deal of anxiety in a confusing world may become an organizer, a
businessperson,
or a scientist. Someone with powerful sexual desires may become an
a photographer, or a novelist, and so on. For Freud, in fact, all
creative activities were sublimations, and predominantly of the sex
The stages
As I said earlier, for Freud, the sex drive is the most important
motivating
force. In fact, Freud felt it was the primary motivating force not only
for adults but for children and even infants. When he introduced his
about infantile sexuality to the Viennese public of his day, they were
hardly prepared to talk about sexuality in adults, much less in
It is true that the capacity for orgasm is there neurologically from
birth. But Freud was not just talking about orgasm. Sexuality meant not
only intercourse, but all pleasurable sensation from the skin. It is
even to the most prudish among us that babies, children, and, of
adults, enjoy tactile experiences such as caresses, kisses, and so on.
Freud noted that, at different times in our lives, different parts
our skin give us greatest pleasure. Later theorists would call these
zones. It appeared to Freud that the infant found its greatest
in sucking, especially at the breast. In fact, babies have a penchant
bringing nearly everything in their environment into contact with their
mouths. A bit later in life, the child focuses on the anal pleasures of
holding it in and letting go. By three or four, the child may have
discovered
the pleasure of touching or rubbing against his or her genitalia. Only
later, in our sexual maturity, do we find our greatest pleasure in
intercourse. In these observations, Freud had the makings of a
psychosexual
stage theory.
The oral stage lasts from birth to about 18 months. The
of pleasure is, of course, the mouth. Sucking and biting are favorite
activities.
The anal stage lasts from about 18 months to three or four
old. The focus of pleasure is the anus. Holding it in and letting it go
are greatly enjoyed.
The phallic stage lasts from three or four to five, six, or
years old. The focus of pleasure is the genitalia. Masturbation is
The latent stage lasts from five, six, or seven to puberty,
is, somewhere around 12 years old. During this stage, Freud believed
the sexual impulse was suppressed in the service of learning. I must
that, while most children seem to be fairly calm, sexually, during
grammar school years, perhaps up to a quarter of them are quite busy
masturbating
and playing "doctor." In Freud's repressive era, these children were,
least, quieter than their modern counterparts.
The genital stage begins at puberty, and represents the
resurgence
of the sex drive in adolescence, and the more specific focusing of
in sexual intercourse. Freud felt that masturbation, oral sex,
homosexuality,
and many other things we find acceptable in adulthood today, were
This is a true stage theory, meaning that Freudians believe that we
all go through these stages, in this order, and pretty close to these
The Oedipal crisis
Each stage has certain difficult tasks associated with it where
are more likely to arise. For the oral stage, this is weaning. For the
anal stage, it's potty training. For the phallic stage, it is the
crisis, named after the ancient Greek story of king Oedipus, who
inadvertently
killed his father and married his mother.
Here's how the Oedipal crisis works: The first love-object for all
us is our mother. We want her attention, we want her affection, we want
her caresses, we want her, in a broadly sexual way. The young boy,
has a rival for his mother's charms: his father! His father is bigger,
stronger, smarter, and he gets to sleep with mother, while junior pines
away in his lonely little bed. Dad is the enemy.
About the time the little boy recognizes this archetypal situation,
he has become aware of some of the more subtle differences between boys
and girls, the ones other than hair length and clothing styles. From
naive perspective, the difference is that he has a penis, and girls do
not. At this point in life, it seems to the child that having something
is infinitely better than not having something, and so he is pleased
this state of affairs.
But the question arises: where is the girl's penis? Perhaps she has
lost it somehow. Perhaps it was cut off. Perhaps this could happen to
This is the beginning of castration anxiety, a slight misnomer
the fear of losing one's penis.
To return to the story, the boy, recognizing his father's
superiority
and fearing for his penis, engages some of his ego defenses: He
his sexual impulses from his mother to girls and, later, And he
identifies with the aggressor, dad, and attempts to become more and
like him, that is to say, a man. After a few years of latency, he
adolescence and the world of mature heterosexuality.
The girl also begins her life in love with her mother, so we have
problem of getting her to switch her affections to her father before
Oedipal process can take place. Freud accomplishes this with the idea
envy: The young girl, too, has noticed the difference between boys
and girls and feels that she, somehow, doesn't measure up. She would
to have one, too, and all the power associated with it. At very least,
she would like a penis substitute, such as a baby. As every child
you need a father as well as a mother to have a baby, so the young girl
sets her sights on dad.
Dad, of course, is already taken. The young girl displaces from him
to boys and men, and identifies with mom, the woman who got the man she
really wanted. Note that one thing is missing here: The girl does not
from the powerful motivation of castration anxiety, since she cannot
what she doesn't have. Freud felt that the lack of this great fear
for the fact (as he saw it) that women were both less firmly
heterosexual
men and somewhat less morally-inclined.
Before you get too upset by this less-than-flattering account of
sexuality, rest assured that many people have responded to it. I will
it in the discussion section.
Your experiences as you grow up contribute to your personality, or
character,
as an adult. Freud felt that traumatic experiences had an especially
effect. Of course, each specific trauma would have its own unique
on a person, which can only be explored and understood on an individual
basis. But traumas associated with stage development, since we all have
to go through them, should have more consistency.
If you have difficulties in any of the tasks associated with the
-- weaning, potty training, or finding your sexual identity -- you will
tend to retain certain infantile or childish habits. This is called fixation.
Fixation gives each problem at each stage a long-term effect in terms
our personality or character.
If you, in the first eight months of your life, are often frustrated
in your need to suckle, perhaps because mother is uncomfortable or even
rough with you, or tries to wean you too early, then you may develop an
oral-passive
character. An oral-passive personality tends to be rather dependent
on others. They often retain an interest in "oral gratifications" such
as eating, drinking, and smoking. It is as if they were seeking the
they missed in infancy.
When we are between five and eight months old, we begin teething.
satisfying thing to do when you are teething is to bite on something,
mommy's nipple. If this causes a great deal of upset and precipitates
early weaning, you may develop an oral-aggressive personality.
people retain a life-long desire to bite on things, such as pencils,
and other people. They have a tendency to be verbally aggressive,
argumentative,
sarcastic, and so on.
In the anal stage, we are fascinated with our "bodily functions." At
first, we can go whenever and wherever we like. Then, out of the blue
for no reason you can understand, the powers that be want you to do it
only at certain times and in certain places. And parents seem to
value the end product of all this effort!
Some parents put themselves at the child's mercy in the process of
training. They beg, they cajole, they show great joy when you do it
they act as though their hearts were broken when you don't. The child
the king of the house, and knows it. This child will grow up to be an anal
expulsive (a.k.a. anal aggressive) personality. These
tend to be sloppy, disorganized, generous to a fault. They may be
destructive, and given to vandalism and graffiti. The Oscar Madison
in The Odd Couple is a nice example.
Other parents are strict. They may be competing with their neighbors
and relatives as to who can potty train their child first (early potty
training being associated in many people's minds with great
intelligence).
They may use punishment or humiliation. This child will likely become
constipated
as he or she tries desperately to hold it in at all times, and will
up to be an anal retentive personality. He or she will tend to
especially clean, perfectionistic, dictatorial, very stubborn, and
In other words, the anal retentive is tight in all ways. The Felix
character in The Odd Couple is a perfect example.
There are also two phallic personalities, although no-one
given them names. If the boy is harshly rejected by his mother, and
threatened by his very masculine father, he is likely to have a poor
of self-worth when it comes to his sexuality. He may deal with this by
either withdrawing from heterosexual interaction, perhaps becoming a
book-worm,
or by putting on a rather macho act and playing the ladies' man. A girl
rejected by her father and threatened by her very feminine mother is
likely to feel poorly about herself, and may become a wall-flower or a
hyper-feminine "belle."
But if a boy is not rejected by his mother, but rather favored over
his weak, milquetoast father, he may develop quite an opinion of
(which may suffer greatly when he gets into the real world, where
loves him like his mother did), and may appear rather effeminate. After
all, he has no cause to identify with his father. Likewise, if a girl
daddy's little princess and best buddy, and mommy has been relegated to
a sort of servant role, then she may become quite vain and
self-centered,
or possibly rather masculine.
These various phallic characters demonstrate an important point in
characterology: Extremes lead to extremes. If you are frustrated in
way or overindulged in some way, you have problems. And, although each
problem tends to lead to certain characteristics, these characteristics
can also easily be reversed. So an anal retentive person may suddenly
exceedingly generous, or may have some part of their life where they
terribly messy. This is frustrating to scientists, but it may reflect
reality of personality!
Freud's therapy has been more influential than any other, and more
influential
than any other part of his theory. Here are some of the major points:
Relaxed atmosphere. The client must feel free to express
The therapy situation is in fact a unique social situation, one where
do not have to be afraid of social judgment or ostracism. In fact, in
therapy, the therapist practically disappears. Add to that the
physically
relaxing couch, dim lights, sound-proof walls, and the stage is set.
Free association. The client may talk about anything at all.
The theory is that, with relaxation, the unconscious conflicts will
inevitably
drift to the fore. It isn't far off to see a similarity between
therapy and dreaming! However, in therapy, there is the therapist, who
is trained to recognize certain clues to problems and their solutions
the client would overlook.
Resistance. One of these clues is resistance. When a client
to change the topic, draws a complete blank, falls asleep, comes in
or skips an appointment altogether, the therapist says "aha!" These
resistances
suggest that the client is nearing something in his free associations
he -- unconsciously, of course -- finds threatening.
Dream analysis. In sleep, we are somewhat less resistant to
unconscious and we will allow a few things, in symbolic form, of
to come to awareness. These wishes from the id provide the therapist
client with more clues. Many forms of therapy make use of the client's
dreams, but Freudian interpretation is distinct in the tendency to find
sexual meanings.
Parapraxes. A parapraxis is a slip of the tongue, often
a Freudian slip. Freud felt that they were also clues to unconscious
conflicts.
Freud was also interested in the jokes his clients told. In fact, Freud
felt that almost everything meant something almost all the time --
a wrong number, making a wrong turn, misspelling a word, were serious
of study for Freud. However, he himself noted, in response to a student
who asked what his cigar might be a symbol for, that "sometimes a cigar
is just a cigar." Or is it?
Other Freudians became interested in projective tests, such
the famous Rorschach or inkblot tests. The theory behind these test is
that, when the stimulus is vague, the client fills it with his or her
unconscious themes. Again, these could provide the therapist with
Transference, catharsis, and insight
Transference occurs when a client projects feelings toward
therapist that more legitimately belong with certain important others.
Freud felt that transference was necessary in therapy in order to bring
the repressed emotions that have been plaguing the client for so long,
to the surface. You can't feel really angry, for example, without a
person to be angry at. The relationship between the client and the
therapist,
contrary to popular images, is very close in Freudian therapy, although
it is understood that it can't get out of hand.
Catharsis is the sudden and dramatic outpouring of emotion
occurs when the trauma is resurrected. The box of tissues on the end
is not there for decoration.
Insight is being aware of the source of the emotion, of the
traumatic event. The major portion of the therapy is completed when
and insight are experienced. What should have happened many years ago
because you were too little to deal with it, or under too many
conflicting
pressures -- has now happened, and you are on your way to becoming a
Freud said that the goal of therapy is simply " to make the
unconscious
conscious."
Discussion
The only thing more common than a blind admiration for Freud seems
be an equally blind hatred for him. Certainly, the proper attitude lies
somewhere in between. Let's start by exploring some of the apparent
in his theory.
The least popular part of Freud's theory is the Oedipal complex and
the associated ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy. What is the
reality behind these concepts? It is true that some children are very
to their opposite sex parent, and very competitive with their same-sex
parent. It is true that some boys worry about the differences between
and girls, and fear that someone may cut their penis off. It is true
some girls likewise are concerned, and wish they had a penis. And it is
true that some of these children retain these affections, fears, and
aspirations
into adulthood.
Most personality theorists, however, consider these examples
aberrations
rather than universals, exceptions rather than rules. They occur in
that aren't working as well as they should, where parents are unhappy
each other, use their children against each other. They occur in
where parents literally denigrate girls for their supposed lack, and
about cutting off the penises of unruly boys. They occur especially in
neighborhoods where correct information on even the simplest sexual
is not forthcoming, and children learn mistaken ideas from other
If we view the Oedipal crisis, castration anxiety, and penis envy in
a more metaphoric and less literal fashion, they are useful concepts:
do love our mothers and fathers as well as compete with them. Children
probably do learn the standard heterosexual behavior patterns by
the same-sex parent and practicing on the opposite-sex parent. In a
male-dominated
society, having a penis -- being male -- is better than not, and losing
one's status as a male is scary. And wanting the privileges of the
rather than the male organ, is a reasonable thing to expect in a girl
aspirations. But Freud did not mean for us to take these concepts
metaphorically.
Some of his followers, however, did.
A more general criticism of Freud's theory is its emphasis on
sexuality.
Everything, both good and bad, seems to stem from the expression or
repression
of the sex drive. Many people question that, and wonder if there are
other forces at work. Freud himself later added the death instinct, but
that proved to be another one of his less popular ideas.
First let me point out that, in fact, a great deal of our activities
are in some fashion motivated by sex. If you take a good hard look at
modern society, you will find that most advertising uses sexual images,
that movies and television programs often don't sell well if they don't
include some titillation, that the fashion industry is based on a
game of sexual hide-and-seek, and that we all spend a considerable
of every day playing "the mating game." Yet we still don't feel that
life is sexual.
But Freud's emphasis on sexuality was not based on the great amount
of obvious sexuality in his society -- it was based on the intense
of sexuality, especially among the middle and upper classes, and most
especially
among women. What we too easily forget is that the world has changed
dramatically over the last hundred years. We forget that doctors and
recommended strong punishment for masturbation, that "leg" was a dirty
word, that a woman who felt sexual desire was automatically considered
a potential prostitute, that a bride was often taken completely by
by the events of the wedding night, and could well faint at the
It is to Freud's credit that he managed to rise above his culture's
sexual attitudes. Even his mentor Breuer and the brilliant Charcot
fully acknowledge the sexual nature of their clients' problems. Freud's
mistake was more a matter of generalizing too far, and not taking
change into account. It is ironic that much of the cultural change in
attitudes was in fact due to Freud's work!
The unconscious
One last concept that is often criticized is the unconscious. It is
not argued that something like the unconscious accounts for some of our
behavior, but rather how much and the exact nature of the beast.
Behaviorists, humanists, and existentialists all believe that (a)
motivations and problems that can be attributed to the unconscious are
much fewer than Freud thought, and (b) the unconscious is not the great
churning cauldron of activity he made it out to be. Most psychologists
today see the unconscious as whatever we don't need or don't want to
Some theorists don't use the concept at all.
On the other hand, at least one theorist, Carl Jung, proposed an
unconscious
that makes Freud's look puny! But we will leave all these views for the
appropriate chapters.
Positive aspects
People have the unfortunate tendency to "throw the baby out with the
bath water." If they don't agree with ideas a, b, and c, they figure x,
y, and z must be wrong as well. But Freud had quite a few good ideas,
good that they have been incorporated into many other theories, to the
point where we forget to give him credit.
First, Freud made us aware of two powerful forces and their demands
on us. Back when everyone believed people were basically rational, he
how much of our behavior was based on biology. When everyone conceived
of people as individually responsible for their actions, he showed the
impact of society. When everyone thought of male and female as roles
determined
by nature or God, he showed how much they depended on family dynamics.
The id and the superego -- the psychic manifestations of biology and
-- will always be with us in some form or another.
Second is the basic theory, going back to Breuer, of certain
symptoms as caused by psychological traumas. Although most theorists no
longer believe that all neurosis can be so explained, or that it is
to relive the trauma to get better, it has become a common
understanding
that a childhood full of neglect, abuse, and tragedy tends to lead to
unhappy adult.
Third is the idea of ego defenses. Even if you are uncomfortable
Freud's idea of the unconscious, it is clear that we engage in little
manipulations
of reality and our memories of that reality to suit our own needs,
especially
when those needs are strong. I would recommend that you learn to
these defenses: You will find that having names for them will help you
to notice them in yourself and others!
Finally, the basic form of therapy has been largely set by Freud.
for some behaviorist therapies, most therapy is still "the talking
and still involves a physically and socially relaxed atmosphere. And,
if other theorists do not care for the idea of transference, the highly
personal nature of the therapeutic relationship is generally accepted
important to success.
Some of Freud's ideas are clearly tied to his culture and era. Other
ideas are not easily testable. Some may even be a matter of Freud's own
personality and experiences. But Freud was an excellent observer of the
human condition, and enough of what he said has relevance today that he
will be a part of personality textbooks for years to come. Even when
come up with dramatically different ideas about how we work, they
their ideas with Freud's.
Freud's work is preserved in a 23 volume set called The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. For a
briefer overview, you might want to try Freud's A General
Introduction
to Psychoanalysis or New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
They are a part of The Standard Edition, but can also be found
separately
and in paperback. Or you might try a collection, such as The Basic
of Sigmund Freud.
Some of Freud's most interesting works are The Interpretation of
Dreams, his own favorite, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
about Freudian slips and other day-to-day oddities, Totem and Taboo,
Freud's views on our beginnings, Civilization and Its Discontents,
his pessimistic commentary on modern society, and The Future of an
on religion. All are a part of The Standard Edition, but all
available as separate paperbacks as well.
The father of psychoanalysis has been psychoanalyzed many times.
there is his official biography, by his student Ernest Jones. More
is a biography by Peter Gay. A highly critical account of Freud's work
is Jeffrey Masson's The Assault on Truth. The best book I've
come across on Freud and the entire psychoanalytic movement is Revolution in Mind: The Creation of
Psychoanalysis, by George Makari. The commentary on and
criticism of Freud's work is unending!
& Copyright , 2009,& C. George Boeree