My Seminar paper is on chapter 3 titled Freud to Derrida,
but is focused on Freud. Sigmund Freud
was not considered to be a Philosopher at all, he saw himself as a Scientist
and as inventor of a new Science. The opening couple of pages of the chapter
basically give us a brief summary of Freud’s life. It tells us that In 1856
Freud was born in Moravia to an Austrian family of non-observant Jews. Four
years later Freud and his family moved to Vienna, this is where Freud began to
train as a doctor. He then joined the staff of the general hospital 1882, where
initially he specialised in Brain anatomy. He also joined with neurologist
Joseph Breuer, treating hysterical patients under hypnosis. In 1886 he married
Martha Bernays whom he had 6 children with, three girls and three boys.
In conjunction with Breuer, in 1895, Freud published a work
on hysteria which presented an original analysis on mental illness. Slowly over
time, Freud began to stop using hypnosis as a method of treatment and began to
use another method of treatment which he called psychoanalysis. Freud said that psychoanalysis consists of
nothing more than an exchange of words between patient and doctor. The premises underlying Freud’s new method was
that the hysterical symptoms that a patient may have were the result of memories
of a psychological trauma that had been repressed by the patient, but could be
recovered in the form of free association. Freud often encouraged his patients,
lying on a couch, to speak about whatever it was that came to mind. Through
these sessions Freud became convinced that these psychological traumas dated
back to infancy and had a sexual content to them.
In isolation from his medical colleagues, Freud continued in
practise in Vienna. In 1900 he published, what is considered to be the most
important of his works. It was called The
Interpretation of Dreams. In this book his main argument was that, similar
to neurotic symptoms dreams were a coded expression of repressed sexual
desires.
In 1902 Freud was appointed to an extraordinary chair of
neuropathology at Vienna University. He began to obtain Pupils and colleagues,
with the main two being Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, both of whom eventually
went their separate ways from Freud and founded their own schools. In 1923 Freud published a book called The Ego and The Id, in which he
presented us with a new detailed anatomy of the unconscious mind. He then went
on to publish a controversial book on the origin of religion called The Future of an Illusion. Freud himself
was an Atheist but this did not stop him from identifying with the Jewish
culture or from suffering the assaults of anti-Semitism. Psychoanalysis was
banned by the Nazis and in 1938 when Germany annexed from Austria, Freud was
forced to move to England. Finally on September 23rd, 1939 due to
suffering with Cancer of the Jaw for sixteen years Freud died of a lethal
injection of morphine administered by his physician at his own request. His
Psychoanalytic work was continued by his youngest daughter Anna.
The chapter then goes on to discuss Freud’s theories in more
detail. The next part is taken directly from the chapter, as it describes
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in the best possible way for us to understand it.
‘In a set of introductory lectures delivered between 1915 and 1917 Freud summed
up psychoanalytic theory in two fundamental theses. The first is that the
greater part of our mental life, whether of feeling, thought, or volition, is
unconscious. The second is that sexual impulses, broadly defined, are supremely
important not only as potential causes of mental illness but also as the motor
of artistic and cultural creation. If the sexual element in the work of art and
culture remains to a great extent unconscious, this is because socialization
demands the sacrifice of basic instincts. Such instincts become sublimated,
that is to say diverted from their original goals and channelled towards
socially acceptable activities. But sublimation is an unstable state, and
untamed and unsatisfied instincts may take their revenge through illness or mental
disorder’.
Kenny then goes on to say ‘the existence of the conscious,
Freud believed, is manifested in three different ways: through everyday trivial
mistakes, through reports of dreams, and through the symptoms of neurosis.
Dreams and neurotic symptoms, it is true, do not on their face, or as
interpreted by the unaided patient, reveal the beliefs, desires, and sentiments
of which the unconscious is deemed by Freud to consist. But the exercise of
free association in analysis, he believed, as interpreted by the analyst,
reveals the underlying pattern of the unconscious mind’. ‘It is sexual development that is the key to
this pattern. Infantile sexuality, Freud explained, begins with an oral stage,
in which pleasure is focused on the mouth. This is followed by an anal stage,
between the ages of one and three, and a ‘phallic’ stag, in which the child
focuses on its own penis or clitoris. At that time, Freud maintained, a boy is
sexually attracted to his mother, and resents his father’s possession of her.
But his hostility towards his father leads him to fear that his father will
retaliate by castrating him. So the boy abandons his sexual designs for his
mother, and gradually identifies with his father. This is the Oedipus complex,
a crucial stage in the emotional development of every boy’.
The main thing that concerns me with this theory is how has
Freud managed to do sufficient research on this to come to this conclusion? He
must of firstly, had to have watched children inappropriately touching themselves,
which if he did then by today’s standards that would be considered as
paedophilia. The only other way that he could have come to this conclusion is
through his ‘free association’ talks with patients, but even through these, I
highly doubt that the majority of his patients said that they resented their
fathers because they were sexually attracted to their mothers as children. And
even if they did I highly doubt it was because they just openly admitted it. I
think he would have had to talk them into thinking about it and also
manipulated the meaning of what he was discussing with them, for him to come to
those conclusions. What do you guys
think? Also I wonder what he had the same thought about girls as children, did
they resent their fathers to because they were sexually attracted to their
mothers? Or was it the other way round where they resented their mothers
because they were sexually attracted to their fathers? My opinions is that
Freud’s theories, even though they are very interesting and for the most part
seem to make sense on the surface, they have very little foundation to them
that you can honestly say are believable. I think he has taken his theories
from a little bit of what he actually found out through his patients and the
rest from how he wishes things worked. The
following extract from page 76 in Kenny’s book sides with what I believe. ‘Most
of his detailed theories, when they have been made precise enough to admit of
experimental testing, have been shown to lack foundation. Medical professionals
disagree how far psychoanalytic techniques are effective forms of therapy, and
if they are, whence they derive their efficacy’.
Kenny moves on to talk briefly about the ego, superego and
the id. Kenny explains that Freud says that the whole point of the ego is to
insure reconciliation between all parts of the soul. He says that as long as
the ego is in harmony with the id and the superego, all will be well. But if
there is conflict between the id and the superego this will lead to melancholia
and depression, or between the ego and the id, this will lead to neurosis. Also
when the ego comes into conflict with the external world psychosis develops.
Lastly Kenny closes his section on Freud by saying ‘people
who have never read a word of Freud can happily identify their own Freudian slips,
no philosopher since Aristotle has made a greater contribution to the everyday
vocabulary of psychology and morality.
