Two articles on Freud.
Sigmund Freud
He opened a window on the unconscious where, he said, lust, rage
and repression battle for supremacy and changed the way we view
ourselves
Peter Gay | The Time 100 | March 29, 1999
http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/freud.html
There are no neutrals in the Freud wars. Admiration, even downright
adulation, on one side; skepticism, even downright disdain, on the
other. This is not hyperbole. A psychoanalyst who is currently
trying to enshrine Freud in the pantheon of cultural heroes must
contend with a relentless critic who devotes his days to exposing
Freud as a charlatan. But on one thing the contending parties agree:
for good or ill, Sigmund Freud, more than any other explorer of the
psyche, has shaped the mind of the 20th century. The very fierceness
and persistence of his detractors are a wry tribute to the staying
power of Freud's ideas.
There is nothing new about such embittered confrontations; they have
dogged Freud's footsteps since he developed the cluster of theories
he would give the name of psychoanalysis. His fundamental idea
that all humans are endowed with an unconscious in which potent
sexual and aggressive drives, and defenses against them, struggle
for supremacy, as it were, behind a person's back has struck many
as a romantic, scientifically unprovable notion. His contention that
the catalog of neurotic ailments to which humans are susceptible is
nearly always the work of sexual maladjustments, and that erotic
desire starts not in puberty but in infancy, seemed to the
respectable nothing less than obscene. His dramatic evocation of a
universal Oedipus complex, in which (to put a complicated issue too
simply) the little boy loves his mother and hates his father, seems
more like a literary conceit than a thesis worthy of a
scientifically minded psychologist.
Freud first used the term psychoanalysis in 1896, when he was
already 40. He had been driven by ambition from his earliest days
and encouraged by his doting parents to think highly of himself.
Born in 1856 to an impecunious Jewish family in the Moravian hamlet
of Freiberg (now Pribor in the Czech Republic), he moved with the
rest of a rapidly increasing brood to Vienna. He was his mother's
firstborn, her "golden Siggie." In recognition of his brilliance,
his parents privileged him over his siblings by giving him a room to
himself, to study in peace. He did not disappoint them. After an
impressive career in school, he matriculated in 1873 in the
University of Vienna and drifted from one philosophical subject to
another until he hit on medicine. His choice was less that of a
dedicated healer than of an inquisitive explorer determined to solve
some of nature's riddles.
Although the second pillar of Freud's psychoanalytic
structure, "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), further
alienated him from the mainstream of contemporary psychiatry, he
soon found loyal recruits. They met weekly to hash out interesting
case histories, converting themselves into the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society in 1908. Working on the frontiers of mental science, these
often eccentric pioneers had their quarrels. The two best
known "defectors" were Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. Adler, a Viennese
physician and socialist, developed his own psychology, which
stressed the aggression with which those people lacking in some
quality they desire say, manliness express their discontent by
acting out. "Inferiority complex," a much abused term, is Adlerian.
Freud did not regret losing Adler, but Jung was something else.
Freud was aware that most of his acolytes were Jews, and he did not
want to turn psychoanalysis into a "Jewish science." Jung, a Swiss
from a pious Protestant background, struck Freud as his logical
successor, his "crown prince." The two men were close for several
years, but Jung's ambition, and his growing commitment to religion
and mysticism most unwelcome to Freud, an aggressive atheist
finally drove them apart.
As he pursued his medical researches, he came to the conclusion that
the most intriguing mysteries lay concealed in the complex
operations of the mind. By the early 1890s, he was specializing
in "neurasthenics" (mainly severe hysterics); they taught him much,
including the art of patient listening. At the same time he was
beginning to write down his dreams, increasingly convinced that they
might offer clues to the workings of the unconscious, a notion he
borrowed from the Romantics. He saw himself as a scientist taking
material both from his patients and from himself, through
introspection. By the mid-1890s, he was launched on a full-blown
self-analysis, an enterprise for which he had no guidelines and no
predecessors.
The book that made his reputation in the profession although it
sold poorly was "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900), an
indefinable masterpiece part dream analysis, part autobiography,
part theory of the mind, part history of contemporary Vienna. The
principle that underlay this work was that mental experiences and
entities, like physical ones, are part of nature. This meant that
Freud could admit no mere accidents in mental procedures. The most
nonsensical notion, the most casual slip of the tongue, the most
fantastic dream, must have a meaning and can be used to unriddle the
often incomprehensible maneuvers we call thinking.
Freud was intent not merely on originating a sweeping theory of
mental functioning and malfunctioning. He also wanted to develop the
rules of psychoanalytic therapy and expand his picture of human
nature to encompass not just the couch but the whole culture. As to
the first, he created the largely silent listener who encourages the
analysand to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how foolish,
repetitive or outrageous, and who intervenes occasionally to
interpret what the patient on the couch is struggling to say. While
some adventurous early psychoanalysts thought they could quantify
just what proportion of their analysands went away cured, improved
or untouched by analytic therapy, such confident enumerations have
more recently shown themselves untenable. The efficacy of analysis
remains a matter of controversy, though the possibility of mixing
psychoanalysis and drug therapy is gaining support.
Freud's ventures into culture history, anthropology, literature,
art, sociology, the study of religion have proved little less
controversial, though they retain their fascination and plausibility
and continue to enjoy a widespread reputation. As a loyal follower
of 19th century positivists, Freud drew a sharp distinction between
religious faith (which is not checkable or correctable) and
scientific inquiry (which is both). For himself, this meant the
denial of truth-value to any religion whatever, including Judaism.
As for politics, he left little doubt and said so plainly in his
late and still best known essay, "Civilization and Its
Discontents" (1930), noting that the human animal, with its
insatiable needs, must always remain an enemy to organized society,
which exists largely to tamp down sexual and aggressive desires. At
best, civilized living is a compromise between wishes and
repression not a comfortable doctrine. It ensures that Freud,
taken straight, will never become truly popular, even if today we
all speak Freud.
In mid-March 1938, when Freud was 81, the Nazis took over Austria,
and after some reluctance, he immigrated to England with his wife
and his favorite daughter and colleague Anna "to die in freedom." He
got his wish, dying not long after the Nazis unleashed World War II
by invading Poland. Listening to an idealistic broadcaster
proclaiming this to be the last war, Freud, his stoical humor
intact, commented wryly, "My last war."
Yale historian Peter Gay's 22 books include Freud: A Life for Our
Times
*********************************************************************
A time to celebrate Freud
Will Hutton | The Hindu | May 8, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/2006/05/08/stories/2006050805371100.htm
IT IS time to rescue Sigmund Freud from his detractors. He deserves
a place alongside Einstein, Newton, Darwin and Kant as one of the
authors of modernity and one of the greatest intellectuals of all
time. Born on May 6, 150 years ago, this is the man who recognised
and tried to map the way our primal and dark impulses as human
beings interact with our intellects to deliver results ranging from
war to individual psychosis.
Nobody has been untouched by his lifelong struggle to make sense of
the results. There would have been no sexual revolution without his
insistence that the repression of our deepest primal sexual urges
can be profoundly costly. Without his introducing us to the world of
the subconscious and how it responds to our deep twin urges, we
would have understood ourselves immeasurably less well, even if some
of his secondary theories have not stood the test of time. And
although contemporary society has its psychoses, they are nothing
besides the way earlier civilisations created mental demons that
twisted peoples' minds and crushed their chance of happiness. Freud
permitted a collective escape. We are incomparably more happy and
more peaceful as a result.
Enemy of American Right
Yet for decades, he has been derided and scorned. He is one of the
American Right's deadliest iconic enemies and the more American
conservatism grows in influence, the more Freud is taking cultural
and intellectual hits. In its lexicon, he, above any other,
undermined morality. He is the author of cultural relativism because
his preoccupation is not with facts and reason, but the
psychological drivers of why anybody takes the position they do.
Freud, for example, would be less interested in debating the rights
and wrongs of the death penalty than why so many people on the
American religious Right feel the need for capital punishment. In
its terms, it is a pernicious transformation of the terms of debate.
Worst of all, Freud did not believe in god. Nor has the
psychoanalysis profession come to his assistance. Before this welter
of scepticism about the father of the discipline and its own
powerful need for professional legitimacy, it has wanted to produce
results that practically work rather than defend the sometimes
elusive and serpentine reflections of Freud. Anybody who has
experienced mental illness directly or indirectly will see its
point.
Freud's insights may be vast and earth-moving, but if you have a
violent child or cannot get over depression, you need interventions
that work now. Using anti-depressants or the techniques of cognitive
behaviour therapy to think and act more positively may not get to
the roots of the psychosis as Freud might have wanted, but they
bring much needed relief. Freudians accuse the apostles of cognitive
behaviour therapy as being "surface" therapists seeking a quick-fix;
the counter-accusation is that a lot happens on the surface and
results are all that count. So the feud goes on.
In his brilliant biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Freud is struck by
how long and how much effort the artist took over his paintings
three years over The Last Supper, four years over The Mona Lisa.
Only a supreme perfectionist would take so long, which Freud
admired. We should take the same time over trying to calm our minds.
Freud famously concludes that da Vinci's art was because of his
unique capacity to sublimate his deepest instincts. Only thus could
he have so perfectly represented in The Mona Lisa's smile "the
contrast between reserve and seduction, between devoted tenderness
and an equally demanding sensuality, which dominates the erotic life
of women."
Which psychologist today would be so brave as to try to understand
the mental life of the world's greatest artists? And in territory so
dark and difficult? The attack on Freud is that his focus on what
went on in childhood and the sublimation of sexual urges absolves
individuals from taking responsibility for their actions, and that
by placing so much emphasis on the life of the mind, the great
social forces that shape action are downgraded.
Freud is one of the greats, opening vistas that had not been seen
before and which illuminate us still. Criticise him, but do not
trash him. He is too good for that.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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