Download Freud and Psychoanalysis

Freud and Psychoanalysis
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Life and career
Intellectual influences
Intellectual biases
Early theory
Later theory
Influence and importance
Freud’s Life
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Born in Moravia 1856
Moved to Vienna soon
Parents were Jewish middleclass
Vienna almost all life
London just before death in 1939
Education
• Enter U of Vienna in 1873
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Good classical education
Studied medicine
Never much desire to practice
Lectures
• Brentano
• Main influence was Brücke – colleague of Helmholtz
– Studied hypnosis with Charcot
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Career
Wanted academic career but anti-Semitism
Work with Breuer
First major publication was Interpretation of Dreams in 1900
Therapist – modest living
WW I deeply affected
Escaped Nazis in 1937
Unconscious
Hypnosis
Materialism
Hegel
Darwin
Major Intellectual Influences
• Jewish
Major Intellectual Influences – The Unconscious
• Like all German philosopher-psychologists accepted the Leibnitsian idea
• Studied
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Hypnosis
Free association
Mistakes
Dreams
Self-analysis
• Gave it a dynamic twist
• Hypnosis
Major Intellectual Influences II
– Charcot
– Saw relationships between hypnosis and hysteria
• Materialism
– General German biological perspective
– All mental life reduced to material forces
– Newtonian
• Conscious and unconscious ideas reduced to forced
• Newton of the Mind
Intellectual Influences III
• Hegel
– A cultural Geist – collective, racial mind
– Conflict – thesis, anthesis, synthesis
• Darwin
– Instinct
• As chief motive force
• German Trieb has a more mechanical connotation
– Struggle and competition __ Darwin through Hegelian eyes
– Mind was a process rather than a structure
Intellectual Influences – Jewish Background
• The outsider
• Intellectual and intellectualize
• Messiah
Three Major Biases
• Medical-Scientific
• Aristocratic – Victorian
• Pessimism
The Medical-Scientific Bias
• Emphasis on body
• Determinism
• Causal-genetic
• Energy as fundamental process
• Disease analogy
– Symptom-cause distinction
– Causes not always directly observable
– Therefore inferred causes crucial
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The Aristocratic – Victorian Bias
Supreme rationalist – not always understood
Never trust masses
Women are less rational
Young non-rational
The Pessimist
Ultimately bad more real than good
Feelings of impending doom
Middle-aged and old when most writing
World War I devastating
– Destroyed intellectual confidence
– New war technologies
– Destroyed cultural institutions and monuments
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Characteristics of Theory
Scientific?
Reliance on inferred constructs
Reliance on analogy
Closed system
• His claims
Freud’s Claim of Science
– Theory rests on firm science in biology and physics
– Theory rests on systematic observation
– Science deals with causes and his theory was fully deterministic
Criticisms of Scientific Nature of Theory
• Most sciences can make predictions
– He never claimed theory could predict
– Could postdict
– However, also true of most theories of human behavior
• No experimental possibilities
• Freud always claimed experiments were irrelevant to his theory
• And almost all experimental tests have failed
Inferred Constructs
• Like all sciences inferred constructs loom large in his theory
– Also true of physics and biology
• Atoms
• Genes
– The unseen have a greater reality
– Also leads to sloppiness
Closed System
• No practical way to prove theory wrong
• Even criticisms are seen as support for the theory
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Development of Theory
Theory has several stages
Pre-psychoanalytic stage
The early theory
Later developments
Pre-Psychoanalytic Stage
• Early work with drugs
• Stumbled into work with neurotic patients
– Assumed to have “weak” nerves”
– Fit interest in physiology
• Work in 1890s – two accounts
– Published work
– Project for a Scientific Psychology
The Early Work on Hysteria
• Treated hysteric women
– Initially hypnosis
– Then work with Breuer
• Talking cure and free association
• Hysteria must have psychological roots
• Book with Breuer important
• Intellectually moved beyond Breuer
The Controversy Over Early Sexual Abuse
• Many women reported sexual abuse
– So sexual trauma must be cause
– But then “discovery” that cases were often not true
• Crucial development in theory
– Such reports were symptoms
– But implicate early sexual feelings
– Repression and symptoms as coverups
• But Masson’s book In the Freud Archives
The Project for a Scientific Psychology I
• Basically letters and notes to Fliess
• Stimulated by recent developments in neurology
– Neurons are structurally separate
– Assumed barrier between neurons
The Project II
• Assumed neurons mirrored entire system
• Efficiency requires binding of energy and then release
• Please-pain was crucial – hedonism
– Pain was binding of energy that needed release
– Please was discharge of energy
• At “ego” (not yet fully developed) was neurons that could divert and
direct energy
Early Psychoanalytic Theory
• Self analysis
• Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
– Great intellectual act
– Laid down structural theory
• Conscious
• Unconscious
• Preconscious
– But no designation of id-ego-superego yet
• Psychosexual development
– Distribution of energy and changes through life
– Psychosexual stages
• Nature of libido
• Stages
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The Psychosexual Stages
Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency
Genital
• Also primary vs. secondary processes
– Reality principle
– Impulse control
– Not fully worked out in terms of ego yet
Extensions to other Areas
• Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
• Totem and Taboo (1913)
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The Case Studies
Only published a half dozen
Controversy about how important they were as data for theory
Doctored to fit theory?
Interesting and creative
Case of Dora
• Philipp Bauer brought daughter Ida (15) to Freud for cough but she refused
treatment (1898)
• Later began full treatment in 1900
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Various hysteria systems
Cough and hoarseness
Vague depression
Female problems
Had been treated with various electrical treatments
Ida’s (Dora) Family
• Close to father
• Disliked mother
• Frau K (Hans Zellenka)
– Father and Frau K had an affair (1895)
– Dora had crush on Frau K.
• Imparted facts of life to her
• Unhappiness in own marriage
• Often shared bed on family vacations
• Herr K.
– Tried to kiss her when she was 13
– Later tried to seduce her
Freud’s Analysis
• Saw everything in sexual terms
– Repressed homosexuality
– Failure to respond to Herr K.
– Hysteric symptoms
• Failed to treat real condition
• Ida had continued unhappy and neurotic life
Theoretical Crisis in 1910s
• Grouping of instincts
• Conscious and unconscious
• Socialization and guilt
Problems with Instincts
• Previously
– Instincts that promote survival of self (hunger)
– Species (hunger & sex)
• Aggression seems more important
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“Mourning and melancholia”
Repetition compulsion
Sadism
War
• Hunger and sex
New Theory of Instincts
– Preservation
– And life enhancing
• Aggression and death
Conscious/Unconscious Distinction Problems
• Earlier theory had grouped parts of the mind on basis of
conscious/unconscious
• Control and repression
– Previously went with conscious part
– Now seen to be largely unconscious
– Made the distinction messy
• Also narcissism
Socialization and Guilt
• Began to see guilt as crucial
– Allied with aggression directed inward
– But had to be directed outward
• Part of socialization
– But not deliberate
– Oedipus complex
• The components
A New Structural Theory
– Id
– Ego
– Superego
• Based now on controlling function rather than conscious status
• Later theories
– More emphasis on ego
– Anxiety and defense mechanisms
The Revision of the Theory
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
• Ego and Id
• Civilization and Its Discontents
Evaluation of the Theory
• Never played a large role in scientific psychology
– Role of emotions
– Spotlight in development
– Not easy to translate into experiments or even observations
• Considerable influence in therapy
– But that is rapidly declining
– Never much documental of success
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Emphasis in Culture
Huge influence
Advertising
Child-rearing
Limitations of rationality
Mistrust of the obvious
Criticisms
• Not much empirical support for any part of the theory
– Repression never been documented
– Nor has dynamic unconscious
• Done great mischief