Sigmund Freud: biography and work of the famous psychoanalyst

Sigmund Freud he is perhaps the most famous, controversial and charismatic thinker in twentieth century psychology.

His theories and his work have left an important mark on the way in which explanations have been given for decades of development in the childhood, the personality, the memory, sexuality or therapy. Many psychologists have been influenced by his work, while others have developed his ideas in opposition to him.

Today, scientific psychology develops outside the ideas of Sigmund Freud. However, that does not detract from the historical value of this researcher. Next we will review his life and his work through a biography of Sigmund Freud, in which we will know his vital and intellectual trajectory.

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Brief biography of Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis

Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, a method that aims to treat mental illness. Freudian psychoanalysis is a theory that attempts to explain the behavior of human beings and is based on the analysis of unconscious sexual conflicts that originate in childhood.

This theory holds that instinctual drives that are repressed by consciousness remain in the unconscious and affect the subject. The unconscious is not observable by the patient: the psychoanalyst is the one who must make these unconscious conflicts accessible through Dream Interpretation, Failed Acts, and Free Association.

The concept called “free association”, deals with a technique that seeks for the patient to express, during the sessions of therapy, all his ideas, emotions, thoughts and images as they are presented to him, without restrictions or ordinances. After this opening, the psychoanalyst must determine which factors, within these manifestations, reflect an unconscious conflict.

Early years and university training

Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Austrian Empire, in the year 1856, in the bosom of a Ukrainian family of Jewish origin and a humble economic situation.

When 1860 arrived, his family moved to Vienna, and he settled in this city during the following years. At the age of 17, the young Freud entered the University of Vienna to study medicine, graduating shortly thereafter. Then, around 1877, he specialized in the study of the nervous system in fish, an area in which he excelled as a researcher.

Then, in 1882, he began working as a doctor at the Vienna General Hospital. In 1886 he married Martha Bernays and began to practice privately specializing in disorders based on alterations in the nervous system. However, he soon became interested in the purely psychological. Around 1889, he began to develop psychoanalytic theory.

Sigmund Freud's relationship with Charcot and Breuer: Origin of Psychoanalysis

To understand his theory, you have to know that it all started in Paris, where Sigmund Freud was thanks to a scholarship. There he spent a lot of time next to Jean-Martin Charcot, a famous neurologist who studied the hypnotic phenomenon, and thus began his interest in suggestion and the study of hysteria. After the fellowship ended, Freud returned to Vienna and shared Charcot's theories with other doctors, but they all rejected him except Josef Breuerof him, a friend of his.

What's more, Breuer played a huge role in Sigmund Freud's life as a father figure, advising him on the different aspects of the career they shared, financially supporting him to establish his office as a private physician, creating the cathartic method and writing with it the inaugural work of the history of the psychoanalysis.

The famous case of Anna O.

In case of Anna O. (her real name was Bertha Pappenheim) marked a before and afterin the career of a young Freud. Anna O. she was a Breuer patient suffering from hysteria, but they both took care of her problem. The patient was a young woman who fell ill in the fall of 1880. When she was 21 years old, her father unexpectedly fell ill and she was forced to take care of him. So much was her attention to her father that the great neglect she gave herself led her to anemia and weakness. But these problems; who soon put her to bed, were followed by even more alarming ailments: paralysis, a severe language disturbance and other symptoms that appear after the death of her father, and for which she is diagnosed as hysterical.

Breuer's treatment focused on inducing the patient into a hypnotic state and persuading her to recalling the circumstances prior to the first appearance of each of the symptoms suffered. Upon emerging from the hypnotic trance, these hysterical symptoms disappeared one by one. The doctor performed this treatment twice a day, and Anna O. he used to call it "cure by the word". Breuer christened it the cathartic method. In the case of Anna O. It was concluded that she had suffered sexual abuse in her childhood by a relative, and although it seemed that the therapy was working, a sexual transference appeared between the patient and the doctor. Then there were problems with a false pregnancy of the patient, in love with her therapist, and Breuer withdrew harassed by the jealousy of his wife.

Breuer and hysteria

Breuer concluded that the patients who showed the symptoms of hysteria did not have physical ailments but, in fact, her symptoms were the result of the permanent action of certain traumatic experiences of the past and that had been repressed, although not forgotten, and furthermore, that by releasing these repressed thoughts, expressing them and consciously accepting them, the symptoms they disappeared.

Breuer did not initially make his discoveries public, but he shared them with Freud. The latter used this method, but left hypnosis aside and instead established the "free association" procedure.

Later, the relationship between Breuer and Freud began to decline due to various discussions in the field of science. Breuer adhered to a classical scientist conception that did not accept the total separation between physiology and psychology, while Freud bet on the creation of a whole new theoretical system for psychology and an absolute independence from any other medical branch.

On the other hand, Breuer conceived of the cathartic method with hypnosis, but without the adoption of "free association" or other modifications and extensions suggested by Sigmund Freud. The friendship ended up breaking definitively a year after a joint publication.

The unconscious mind

Sigmund Freud developed a topographic map of the mind in which he described the characteristics of the structure and functioning of the mind. In this model, the conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg. Many of our primitive urges and desires rest in the unconscious mind that are mediated by preconsciousness.

Freud developed the theory that some events and desires caused so much fear and pain in his patients that remained stored in the dark subconscious, affecting behavior in a negative way. This happened due to the process that she called "repression".

In her theory, she gives great importance to the unconscious mind, since the objective of psychoanalysis is to make conscious what is disturbing in the unconscious.

However, he still lacked to know the mechanisms by which unconscious psychological processes take place. As we will see, it did not take long for him to develop a series of concepts created to understand the way in which, hypothetically, the unconscious dominates the conscious.

The psychic instances

Later, Freud developed a model of the mind that was made up of the IT, the SELF, and the SUPER-SELF, and called it the "psychic apparatus." As he IT, the ME Y SUPER-ME they are not physical areas, but hypothetical conceptualizations of important mental functions.

• The IT it operates on the unconscious level. It responds to the pleasure principle and is composed of two types of biological instincts or impulses that he called Eros and Thanatos. Eros, or life instinct, helps individuals to survive; she directs life-sustaining activities like breathing, food, or sex. The energy created by the impulses of life is known as libido. In contrast, the Thanatos or death instinct, are a series of destructive forces that are present in all living beings. When energy is directed towards others, it is expressed in aggression and violence. Freud thought that Eros is more powerful than Thanatos, it already makes it easier for people to survive instead of self-destructing.

• The ME (or ego) develops during childhood. Its objective is to satisfy the demands of IT within social acceptance. In contrast to the IT, the SELF follows the reality principle and operates in the conscious and subconscious.

• The SUPER-ME (or superego) is responsible for ensuring that moral standards are followed, so he acts with the principle of morality and motivates us to act with socially acceptable behavior and responsable. SUPER-ME can make a person feel guilty for not following the rules. When there is a conflict between the objectives of the IT and the SUPER-ME, the ME acts as a mediator. The SELF has defense mechanisms to prevent anxiety from these conflicts. These levels or instances overlap, that is, they are integrated and in this way the human psyche functions. This is a process that goes on from the moment a person is born.

When one is born it is all IT, their needs for food, hygiene, sleep and contact must be satisfied immediately, because she does not have the ability to wait, that is, she is governed by a pleasure principle, it is impatient. Little by little he is learning to wait, he perceives that someone encourages him, distinguishes situations, that is the moment in which the SELF arises and as he grows he continues with his learning.

Among these learnings, he distinguishes that there are things that he cannot do and others that he can, then that is when the SUPER-ME begins to form. A child guides her behavior as indicated by the adults who give her rewards or punishments according to whether or not she responds to the norms or indications that they give.

Defense mechanisms

Freud tells us about defense mechanisms, such as the techniques of the unconscious, in charge of minimizing the consequences of too intense events. In this way, through these mechanisms, the individual is able to function normally. It is a response of the I, which defends itself both from the excessive pressure of the IT, when it demands the satisfaction of the impulses, and from the excessive control of the SUPER-I; Thanks to them, the SELF also protects itself from the presence of past experiences of a traumatic nature.

The defense mechanisms are incorrect ways of resolving psychological conflict and can lead to disturbances in the mind, behavior, and in the most extreme cases to the somatization of the psychological conflict and the physical dysfunctions that express. These are some of the defense mechanisms:

Displacement

It refers to the redirection of an impulse (usually an aggression) towards a person or an object. For example, someone who gets frustrated with his boss and kicks his dog.

Sublimation

It is similar to displacement, but the momentum is channeled into a more acceptable shape. A sexual drive is sublimated toward a non-sexual purpose, targeting socially valued objects, such as artistic activity, physical activity, or intellectual research.

Repression

It is the mechanism that Freud discovered first. It refers to the ego erasing events and thoughts that would be painful if they were kept at the conscious level.

Projection

It refers to individuals who attribute their own thoughts, motives or feelings to another person. The most common projections can be aggressive behaviors that provoke a feeling of guilt, and sexual fantasies or thoughts.

Denial

It is the mechanism by which the subject blocks external events so that they are not part of consciousness and treats obvious aspects of reality as if they did not exist. For example, a smoker who refuses to face that smoking can cause serious health problems for him.

• If you want to know more about this topic, you can visit the article "Defense mechanisms"

Stages of Freud's theory

The time in which the author of the psychosexual theory lived, and in which strong repression of desires was common sexual, especially in the female sex, Sigmund Freud understood that there was a relationship between neurosis and repression sexual. Therefore, it was possible to understand the nature and variety of the disease by knowing the sexual history of the patient.

Freud considered that children are born with a sexual desire that they must satisfy, and that there are a series of stages, during which the child seeks pleasure from different objects. This is what led to the most controversial part of his theory: the theory of psychosexual development.

Oral stage

It begins at birth and continues through the first 18 months of life. This stage focus on the pleasure in the mouth, that is the erogenous zone. The child sucks everything he finds because it pleases him and so he knows his surroundings. Therefore, in this phase the child already experiments with his sexuality. If the adult, for example, prohibits you from sucking your finger, hand, etc. he is obstructing her from exploring and exploring her surroundings. Which can bring future problems for the child.

Anal stage

The anal phase of development occurs between 18 months and three years of age. At this stage the concern of the child and her parents revolves around the anus, it is the stage of toilet training. The sexual enjoyment for the child is in defecation. He feels that he gives up a production of his body, a part of himself and that is why it is so important to him.

It is a stage of great importance and it is essential that toilet training be done progressively, without pressure. Mishandling this stage will have a negative impact on future behaviors.

Phallic stage

The phallic phase of Sigmund Freud's theory begins at age three and extends to age six. At this stage the genitalia are the object of pleasure and interest in sexual differences and genitalia appears, so it is very It is important not to repress and properly manage this stage, since it could obstruct the capacity for research, knowledge and learning general. Freud assures that men begin to experience sexual feelings towards their mothers and see their fathers as competitors, for which they fear being castrated, a process that results in the Oedipus complex. Later, children identify with their fathers and repress feelings towards their mothers to leave this phase behind.

Latency stage

Freud's latency phase develops between the age of six and the onset of puberty. It coincides with the school stage and for a long time it was mistakenly believed that sexuality it was dormant, latent. What happens is that during this period the child's interest is focused on knowing, learning and investigating. A good management of the previous stages contributes very favorably to school success.

Genital stage

This phase occurs at puberty, and once again, the focus is on the genitals. Individuals show curiosity about genital sexuality and it is essential that they find in their parents and in the adult world the openness and availability to talk about sex and to clarify and respond to their Doubts.

Dream analysis

Freud considered that dreams were important to be able to explain what was happening in the unconscious, since while we dream the defenses of the I are not present. Because of this, much repressed material becomes conscious, albeit in a distorted way. Remembering fragments of dreams can help uncover buried emotions and memories. Therefore, dreams play an important role in the unconscious mind and serve to give clues to how it operates.

Sigmund Freud distinguished between manifest content (what is remembered from the dream) and latent content, the symbolic meaning of the dream (what it is trying to say). The first is superficial and the second manifests itself through the language of dreams. The author of the "Dream Interpretation Theory" mentions that all dreams represent the realization of a wish by the dreamer, even nightmares. According to his theory, the "censorship" of dreams produces a distortion of their content. So what may appear to be a meaningless set of dream images, through analysis and your "deciphering" method, can actually be a coherent set of ideas.

His legacy in Western thought

Freudian ideas made a great impact, and his work gathered a wide group of followers. Among them we can mention: Karl Abraham, Sandor Ferenczi, Alfred Adler, Carl Gustav Jung, Otto Rank and Ernest Jones. Some, like Adler and Jung, moved away from Freud's principles and created their own psychological conception.

There is no doubt that psychoanalysis has been revolutionary for psychology and it has served as the basis for the development of a large number of psychological theories and schools. In its beginnings, and even today, it has been a doctrine that has awakened great passions, for and against. Possibly one of the main criticisms, it refers to the lack of objectivity in the observation and the difficulty of deriving specific hypotheses verifiable from this theory, but no matter how much they criticize it, in the development of psychology, there is a before and after of this character famous.

Bibliographic references:

• Arlow, B. (1964), Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory. New York: International Universities Press.
• Borch-Jacobsen, M. (1996). Remembering Anna O.: A Century of Mystification. London: Routledge.
• Chapman, C.N. (2007). Freud, Religion and Anxiety. Morrisville.
• Crews, F., et al. The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute. New York: The New York Review of Books. pp. 206 - 212.
• Edmunson, M. (2007). The Death of Sigmund Freud. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Grünbaum, A. (1984). The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique. University of California Press.
• Jones, E. (1953). Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, vol. 1. London: Hogarth Press.
• Neu, J. (2003). Freud's Guide. Translation Mario Santana. Madrid: Akal Cambridge.
• Webster, R. (2005). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: The Orwell Press.