Facts from the Life of Sigmund Freud - Case Study Example

Sigmund Freud Ask anyone to a famous psychologist and the of Sigmund Freud is likely to come up. One of the great minds in the early 20th century, Freud was born into a nominally Jewish family in Moravia, now in the Czech Republic, in 1856. He was the founder of the whole field of psychoanalysis and he would have a huge impact upon modern thinking about how the human mind works, even among those who disagree with his ideas or at least criticise them. . He also became interested in the possible symbolic significance of various cultural objects. Having as his mentor Dr Joseph Breuer was an important beginning for Freud. Never a practising Jew, given the birth name of Sigismund, he shortened it to Sigmund. Freud believed that the mind was in fact a complex energy source and should be investigated in a psychological way. Always a bright child and at the head of every class he was in, according to Gregory (1987, page 268), he was educated in Vienna. He began to study for a medical degree in 1873 and undertook research into the vertebrate nervous system and published his first scientific paper on this subject in 1878. On obtaining his medical qualification he decided to specialize in clinical neurology. His work on aphasia, that is loss of speech, especially with regard to Dr Breuer’s patient Miss O., attracted lots of scientific attention. Physical reasons for her many symptoms could not be found. Both Breuer and Freud wrote about how her condition, described at the time as hysteria, was the result of some psychological trauma in earlier life. When the patient was able, through hypnosis, to understand where her symptoms originated from , she was able to overcome them one by one. Although Freud was not the first person to discuss the idea of the unconcious mind having an effect upon the conscious, it was through his work that the idea became widely known. Freud moved to Paris, which was then the world centre for neurologists and the study of neurology. At that time he believed strongly in the use of hypnosis in clinical practice. He came to realise that neurosis was much more complex than had been previously realized. After a relatively short time he returned to Vienna where he married and set up in practice as a neuropsychologist. He spent several years searching for causes – concluding that in many cases the origin of problems was the suppression of early bad memories, repressed ideas which caused psychological trauma, especially with regard to sexual matters. This is something he added to Breuer’s theories. He developed over an extended period the theory that all human have an unconscious mind in which aggressive and sexual impulses are always in conflict with the minds defences against them. His theories seemed to be capable of encompassing and explaining many different types of human behaviour. They seem to provide causal theories for many kinds of human misery. The problem, as described by Thornton ( 2010) is that these causes are not scientifically observable or measurable. Freud is associated with the Oedipus Complex. This was based upon his hysterical female patients in Vienna, many of whom seemed to have repressed memories about seduction by male relatives in their early childhood. Many of these so called recollections, or repressed memories, obtained under hypnotic conditions, proved to be fantasies, according to Freud. This is what is now often termed ‘False Memory Syndrome’ .Others believe, according to Thornton ( 2010), that there was, even in Vienna’s polite middle class society, a much higher level of child sexual abuse than Freud felt able to acknowledge. . In 1906 he produced ‘Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, a work which shocked many, yet nevertheless had an influence upon modern day ideas about the development of human personality. Earlier (1900) he had written ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ based to a great deal on his analysis of his own dreams. According to Thornton ( 2010) these dreams had their origins in the huge emotional upset Freud suffered when his father died and the sequence of dreams which came out of this. Much of the medical fraternity did not agree with his ideas, but he did have his followers, including psychologists such as Jung and Adler. With Jung he founded both the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association. Both Jung and Adler however had changed their opinions by the time of the First World War, despite the fact that Jung was considered for a time as Freud’s successor. In 1923 Freud produced his short, but influential book ‘The Ego and the Id ‘.This described a new way of considering the mind - the division into three parts, the id, the ego and the superego, terms that are still used. The work resulted, according to Gregory, (page 270) was the formation of two distinct schools of psychoanalytical thought – ego-psychology and object –relation-theory. Over time Freud and his ideas, especially in translation into English, became widely known to more general public. By 1926 his thinking on the subject of psychoanalysis was more or less completed. He chose to think of it as being a branch of science, but knew there were problems with proving this. The German’s had began burning Freud’s books as early as 1933 according to the BBC History web page. In America, according to Gregory ( page 269), it would be after the Second World War, and Freud’s death, before Freudian ideas affected psychiatry there to any great extent. By that time Freud was living in London, having fled there away from anti Semitic Nazi persecution in 1938. He had battled with mouth cancer for many years, possibly as a result of the many cigars he smoked. In 1923 he was diagnosed with cancer of the jaw. He died in London in 1939 Many of Freud’s ideas have now been rejected according to Westen, ( page 630, 1999). Westen describes how in the late 1950s and into the1960s more and more psychologists were found to be rejecting the use of psychoanalysis because they felt it to be based upon ideas that could not be scientifically validated. Instead they turned to newer ideas such as behaviourism and the theory that psychological problems had as their basis maladaptive patterns of learned behavior. Conclusion In the public mind it is Freud who is the great psychologist, even if some of his ideas are now seen as having less value than they were once credited with. Modern day psychology is ever more complex, and perhaps far removed from Freud’s early ideas, yet it can trace its roots back to a young man’s thoughts in far off Vienna. Even if his theories are hard to prove it is true that many have been helped by psychoanalysis to at least relieve symptoms, although to say that they were cured would perhaps usually be going too far. References Freud , S.,( 1900) The Interpretation of Dreams ( published in German as ‘Die Traumdeutung’ in 1899 ) Freud , S., ( 1906) Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex Freud , S. ( 1923) The Ego and the Id Gregory, R., , editor, ( 1987) The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press, Sigmund Freud, BBC History Page, retrieved 12th March 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/freud_sigmund.shtml Thornton, P., ( 2010) Sigmund Freud, retrieved 12th March 2011 from http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/#H2 Westen, Drew, (1999) , Psychology, Mind, Brain and Culture, Cambridge Ma, Wiley Read More