PSYCHOANALYSIS THE LIFE OF SIGMUND FREUD WEDNESDAY APRIL 8TH 2015 SIGMUND FREUD 1856 1939 http www biography com people sigmund freud 9302400 SIGMUND FREUD Was born in what is now the Czech Republic but lived in Vienna for almost his entire life He grew up fearing his father and loving his mother He was treated as the favorite of his siblings and given a lot more opportunity to succeed He was considered a brilliant student He read Darwin early in his schooling and decided to study medicine in hopes of a career in research SIGMUND FREUD Spent 8 years getting his undergrad Had an early interest in sex within his biology curriculum Was happy to spread the good word on cocaine Couldn t start an academic lab for economic reasons so he decided to enter private practice as a clinical neurologist which he didn t particularly like He and his fiancee were poor for many years and he was very controlling over her despite spending so much time away at work Expected her to give up her family for him but he spent hardly any time with her or their six kids Used to go on vacation with his sister in law not his wife THE CASE OF ANNA O An intelligent and attractive woman Suffered from hysteria paralysis memory loss mental deterioration nausea and disturbances of vision and speech Her symptoms first appeared while she was nursing her dying father She was initially treated by physician Josef Breuer who was like a father figure to Freud THE CASE OF ANNA O Breuer first treated Anna O with hypnosis during which she would talk about specific experiences that seemed to underly her symptoms and that would help her Most of her stories involved thoughts and incidents that she found repulsive She called this chimney sweeping and the talking cure THE CASE OF ANNA O Breuer had to stop seeing her due to positive transference the process by which a patient responds to the therapist as if the therapist were a significant person in the patient s life in this case Anna s father He too cared for her in kind of a weird Oedipal way Lots of mixed results on how she fared Freud would say later that after ending treatment Anna O was far from cured though more recent historical data suggests he was biased and that her symptoms were actually very mild afterward She became a social worker and feminist WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING This case brought catharsis and talk therapy to Freud s attention CATHARSIS Freud had grown tired of hypnosis but liked to use catharsis He extended this logic to developing a method called free association a psychotherapeutic technique in which the patient just says whatever comes to mind The idea is to bring into conscious awareness repressed memories or thoughts that were at the source of abnormal behavior Many seemed to reach back to childhood and be of a sexual nature so he concluded that neurosis had its basis in sex THE CHILDHOOD SEDUCTION CONTROVERSY Freud s conclusions about the high frequency of child sexual abuse seduction typically occurring within the family weren t very well received Perhaps for this reason he did a 180 and concluded that these stories stemming from freeassociation must be fantasies that they considered real In the 1980s research on Freud determined that a lot of sexual stories from his clients were actually true but that calling them fantasies made them more palatable to Freud s audience We may never know this is still debated FREUD S SEX LIFE Didn t have a great sex life which perhaps influenced his opinion that people should try to be more than their sexual urges He was unhappy that his wife became pregnant so easily and that she was often sick during her pregnancies and wasn t into it for more than procreation purposes He did surround himself by beautiful women FREUD S SEX LIFE As soon as he gave up sex at age 41 he developed a lot of neuroses He diagnosed himself with anxiety neurosis and neurasthenia attributing this to a buildup of sexual tension So this was either a self fulfilling prophecy or a little bit of research is me search DREAM ANALYSIS Now equipped with these neuroses Freud decided to analyze himself via his dreams Free association wouldn t work because he couldn t be therapist and patient at the same time He felt everything had a cause determinism so the content of dreams must come from subject matter in the unconscious Dream analysis a psychotherapeutic technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts DREAM ANALYSIS Freud found a lot of hostility toward his father and a lot of sexual feelings for his mother and his oldest daughter Published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 where he outlined the Oedipus complex Carl Jung would be greatly influenced by this book THE PINNACLE OF SUCCESS Freud began publishing a LOT In 1901 he published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in which he described The Freudian Slip An act of forgetting or a lapse in speech that reflects unconscious motives or anxieties It s when you say one thing and mean your mother THE PINNACLE OF SUCCESS Freud was urged to conduct a weekly discussion group on psychoanalysis Though many of Freud s students such as Jung and Adler would go on to refute Freud s theories with psychoanalytic ideas of their own Freud did not tolerate dissonance He was the expert on psychoanalysis and nobody else He would have a break with Adler in 1911 and with Jung in 1914 THE DOWNFALL OF FREUD Freud was super famous by 1923 but he was diagnosed with mouth cancer probably something to do with the 20 cigars he smoked every day THE DOWNFALL OF FREUD As Hitler came to power Freud s books were burned because of their emphasis on sex What progress we are making In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me nowadays they are content with burning my books quoted in Jones 1957 p 182 Freud s influence became less apparent and his reputation was stamped out by the Nazis He remained in Vienna until it was almost too late and the U S government intervened on his behalf so that he could make it safely to England THE DOWNFALL OF FREUD He didn t have long once he got to England but he worked pretty much until the day he died Freud instructed his physician not to prolong his suffering and he was administered a lethal overdose of morphine DISCUSSION QUESTIONS What was Anna O s influence on Freud s thinking
View Full Document
Unlocking...