A Primer Of Freudian Psychology

Prof. Calvin S. Hall

• Publisher: Hauraki Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786258984
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

BASICS OF HUMAN BEHAVIORAbsorbing, easy to read and understand, here is a fascinating presentation of Freud's principal theories on psychology. Culled from forty years of writing by the founder of psychoanalysis, this is the first book which gives, in a comprehensive and systematic form, Freud's thinking on the organization, dynamics and development of the normal human personality.Calvin S. Hall outlines Freud's penetrating diagnosis of the balances existing between the mind and emotions, and points out his important discoveries about the parts played by instincts, the conscious and unconscious, and anxiety in the functioning of the human psyche. In discussing the elements that form personality, the author explains the ideas of the pioneer thinker in psychology on defense mechanisms, the channeling of instinctual drives, and the role of sex in the boy and girl maturing into man and woman.Lucid, illuminating and instructive, this is an important book for everyone who wants to understand human behavior—in himself and in others."A Primer of Freudian Psychology is compact, readable, accurate."—Gordon W. Allport, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

CHAPTER ONE—Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

I. FREUD’S SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE

Although Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, Moravia, and died in London, England, he belongs to Vienna, where he lived for nearly eighty years. Had the Nazis not taken over Austria in 1937, forcing Freud to seek haven in England, his whole life, except for the first three years of it, would have been spent in the Austrian capital.

Freud’s long life, from 1856 to 1939, spans one of the most creative periods in the history of science. The same year that the three-year-old Freud was taken by his family to Vienna saw the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. This book was destined to revolutionize man’s conception of man. Before Darwin, man was set apart from the rest of the animal kingdom by virtue of his having a soul. The evolutionary doctrine made man a part of nature, an animal among other animals. The acceptance of this radical view meant that the study of man could proceed along naturalistic lines. Man became an object of scientific study, no different, save in complexity, from other forms of life.

The year following the publication of the Origin of Species, when Freud was four years old, Gustav Fechner founded the science of psychology. This great German scientist and philosopher of the nineteenth century demonstrated in 1860 that mind could be studied scientifically and that it could be measured quantitatively. Psychology took its place among the other natural sciences.

These two men, Darwin and Fechner, had a tremendous impact upon the intellectual development of Freud as they did upon so many other young men of that period. Interest in the biological sciences and psychology flourished during the second half of the nineteenth century. Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, by their fundamental work on the germ theory of disease, established the science of bacteriology; and Gregor Mendel, by his investigations on the garden pea, founded the modern science of genetics. The life sciences were on a creative rampage.

There were other influences that affected Freud even more profoundly. These came from physics. In the middle of the century, the great German physicist, Hermann von Helmholtz, formulated the principle of the conservation of energy. This principle stated, in effect, that energy is a quantity just as mass is a quantity. It can be transformed but it cannot be destroyed. When energy disappears from one part of a system it has to appear elsewhere in the system. For example, as one object becomes cooler an adjacent object becomes warmer.

The study of energy changes in a physical system led to one momentous discovery after another in the field of dynamics. The fifty years between Helmholtz’s statement of the conservation of energy and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was the golden age of energy. Thermodynamics, the electromagnetic field, radioactivity, the electron, the quantum theory—these are some of the achievements of this vital half-century. Such men as James Maxwell, Heinrich Hertz, Max Planck, Sir Joseph Thomson, Marie and Pierre Curie, James Joule, Lord Kelvin, Josiah Gibbs, Rudolph Clausius, Dmitri Mendelyeev—to name only a few of the titans of modern physics—were literally changing the world by their discoveries of the secrets of energy. Most of the labor-saving devices that make our lives so much easier today flowed from the vast cornucopia of nineteenth-century physics. We are still reaping the benefits of this golden age, as the newly installed atomic age bears witness.

But the age of energy and dynamics did more than provide man with electrical appliances, television, automobiles, airplanes, and atomic and hydrogen bombs. It furnished him with a new conception of man. Darwin conceived of man as an animal. Fechner proved that the mind of man did not stand outside of science but that it could be brought into the laboratory and accurately measured. The new physics, however, made possible an even more radical view of man. This is the view that man is an energy system and that he obeys the same physical laws which regulate the soap bubble and the movement of the planets.

As a young scientist engaged in biological research during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Freud could hardly avoid being influenced by the new physics. Energy and dynamics were seeping into every laboratory and permeating the minds of scientists. It was Freud’s good fortune, as a medical student, to come under the influence of Ernst Brücke. Brücke was Director of the Physiology Laboratory at the University of Vienna and one of the greatest physiologists of the century. His book, Lectures on Physiology, published in 1874, the year after Freud entered medical school, set forth the radical view that the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply. Freud greatly admired Brücke and quickly became indoctrinated by this new dynamic physiology.

Thanks to Freud’s singular genius, he was to discover some twenty years later that the laws of dynamics could be applied to man’s personality as well as to his body. When he made his discovery Freud proceeded to create a dynamic psychology. A dynamic psychology is one that studies the transformations and exchanges of energy within the personality. This was Freud’s greatest achievement, and one of the greatest achievements in modern science. It is certainly the crucial event in the history of psychology.

II. FREUD CREATES A DYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY

Although Freud was trained in medicine and received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1881, he never intended to practice medicine. He wanted to be a scientist.

In pursuit of this goal, he entered the medical school of the University of Vienna in 1873, when he was seventeen years old, and undertook his first original piece of research in 1876. In this initial investigation he was looking for the recondite testes of the eel! He found them. For about fifteen years thereafter Freud devoted himself to investigations of the nervous system. Not exclusively so, however, because he found that the financial rewards of scientific research would not support a wife, six children, and sundry relatives. Moreover, the anti-Semitism that prevailed in Vienna during this period prevented Freud from receiving university advancement Consequently, much against his wishes and upon the advice of Brücke, he was forced to take up the practice of medicine. In spite of his practice, he found time for neurological research, and eventually earned a reputation as a promising young scientist.

In a way it was fortunate that Freud was forced to practice medicine. Had he remained a medical scientist he might never have created a dynamic psychology. Contact with patients stimulated him to think in psychological terms.

When Freud began the practice of medicine it was natural, in view of his scientific background, that he should specialize in the treatment of nervous disorders. This branch of medicine was in a backward state. There was not a great deal that could be done for people suffering from aberrations of the mind. Jean Charcot, in France, was having some success with hypnosis, particularly in the treatment of hysteria. Freud spent a year in Paris (1885-86) learning Charcot’s method of treatment. However, Freud was not satisfied with hypnosis because he felt that its effects were only temporary and did not get at the seat of the trouble. From another Viennese physician, Joseph Breuer, he learned of the benefits of the cathartic or “talking-out-your-problems” form of therapy. The patient talked while the physician listened.

Although Freud was later to develop new and improved therapeutic techniques, the “talking-out” or free-association method provided him with a great deal of knowledge about the underlying causes of abnormal behavior. With true scientific curiosity and zeal, he began to probe deeper and deeper into the minds of his patients. His probing revealed dynamic forces at work which were responsible for creating the abnormal symptoms that he was called upon to treat. Gradually there began to take shape in Freud’s mind the idea that most of these forces are unconscious.

This was the turning point in Freud’s scientific life. Putting physiology and neurology aside, he became a psychological investigator. The room in which he treated his patients became his laboratory, the couch his only piece of equipment, and the ramblings of his patients his scientific data. Add to these the restless, penetrating mind of Freud, and one has named all of the ingredients that went into the creation of a dynamic psychology.

In the 1890’s, with characteristic thoroughness, Freud began an intensive self-analysis of his own unconscious forces in order to check on the material supplied by his patients. By analyzing his dreams and saying to himself whatever came into his mind, he was able to see the workings of his own inner dynamics. On the basis of the knowledge gained from his patients and from himself he began to lay the foundation for a theory of personality. The development of this theory engaged his most creative efforts for the rest of his life. Later, he was to write, “My life has been aimed at one goal only; to infer or to guess how the mental apparatus is constructed and what forces interplay and counteract in it.”

It was during the nineties that The Interpretation of Dreams was written, although it was not published until the last days of the century and given the publication date 1900. It was an auspicious beginning for the new century. This book, which is now considered to be one of the great works of modern times, is more than a book about dreams. It is a book about the dynamics of the human mind. The last chapter, in particular, contains Freud’s theory of the mind.

Few laymen read the book when it first appeared, and it was ignored in medical and scientific circles. It took eight years to sell the first printing of six hundred copies. But the initial failure of The Interpretation of Dreams did not faze Freud. With the confidence of a man who knows that he is on the right track, Freud continued to explore man’s mind by the method of psychoanalysis. At the same time that he was helping his patients to overcome their troubles, they were helping him to extend his knowledge of unconscious forces.

In spite of the poor reception accorded The Interpretation of Dreams, a succession of brilliant books and articles flowed from Freud’s pen during the next ten years. In 1904, he published The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which presented the novel thesis that slips of the tongue, errors, accidents, and faulty memory are all due to unconscious motives. The following year three more significant works appeared. One of these, A Case of Hysteria, gave a detailed account of Freud’s method of tracking down the psychological causes of mental disorders. Three Essays on Sexuality set forth Freud’s views on the development of the sex instinct. By many authorities this is considered to be Freud’s most important work aside from The Interpretation of Dreams. Whether one agrees with this evaluation or not—and the present writer does not—the Three Essays earned for Freud the unwarranted reputation of being a pan-sexualist. The third volume, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, showed how the jokes that people tell are the product of unconscious mechanisms.

Although, for a number of years, Freud worked pretty much in isolation from the rest of the scientific and medical world, his writings and the success of the psychoanalytic method in treating neurotic patients brought his name to the attention of a small group of people. Among these were Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, both of whom were later to withdraw their support of psychoanalysis and develop rival schools. But they were important followers of Freud in the years before the First World War and helped to establish psychoanalysis as an international movement.

In 1909, Freud received his first academic recognition by being invited to speak at the twentieth anniversary celebration of the founding of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Stanley Hall, the president of Clark University and himself a distinguished psychologist, recognized the importance of Freud’s contribution to psychology and helped to promote his views in the United States.

More and more recognition came to Freud, and following the First World War his name became known to millions of people throughout the world. Psychoanalysis was the rage, and its influence was felt in every theater of life. Literature, art, religion, social customs, morals, ethics, education, the social sciences—all felt the impact of Freudian psychology. It was considered fashionable to be psychoanalyzed and to use such words as subconscious, repressed urges, inhibitions, complexes, and fixations in one’s conversation. Much of the popular interest in psychoanalysis was due to its association with sex.

Throughout his life Freud continued to write. Hardly a year passed when he did not publish at least one important book or article. His collected works, which are now appearing in a standard English edition, will fill twenty-four volumes. Freud is said to have been a master of prose writing. He had a felicity of expression that is unequaled among scientific writers. Without talking down to his readers, he nevertheless managed to convey his ideas in a lively, interesting, and lucid form.

Freud never felt that his work was finished. As new evidence came to him from his patients and his colleagues, he expanded and revised his basic theories. In the 1920’s, for example, when Freud was seventy years old, he completely altered a number of his’ fundamental views. He revamped his theory of motivation, completely reversed his theory of anxiety, and instituted a new model of personality based upon the id, the ego, and the superego. One does not expect to find such flexibility in a man of seventy. Resistance to change is more characteristic of older people. But Freud cannot be judged by ordinary standards. He learned the lesson early in life that scientific conformity means intellectual stultification.

III. WHAT WAS FREUD?

What was Freud? By profession he was a physician. He treated sick people by methods that he himself had devised. Today he would be called a psychiatrist Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that treats mental diseases and abnormalities. Freud was one of the founders of modern psychiatry.

Although he had to earn his living by practicing medicine, Freud was not by choice a medical doctor. In 1927 he confessed that “after forty-one years of medical activity, my self-knowledge tells me that I have never really been a doctor in the proper sense. I became a doctor through being compelled to deviate from my original purpose.”

What was this original purpose? It was to understand some of the riddles of nature and to contribute something to their solution.

“The most hopeful means of achieving this end seemed to be to enroll myself in the medical faculty; but even then I experimented—unsuccessfully—with zoology and chemistry, till at last, under the influence of Brücke, which carried more weight with me than any other in my whole life, I settled down to physiology, though in those days it was too narrowly restricted to histology.”

By preference Freud was a scientist. As a young medical student and later in his connections with various hospitals, he made studies of physiological phenomena. He learned how to collect data by careful observation, to correlate his findings and draw conclusions, and to check his inferences by further observation. Although Freud did not make any outstanding discovery as a physiologist, this early experience in the laboratory provided him with excellent discipline in scientific method. It taught him how to be a scientist.

In the 1890’s, Freud discovered what kind of scientist he wanted to be. In a letter to a friend he wrote, “It is psychology which has been the goal beckoning me from afar.” For the rest of his life, some forty years, Freud was a psychologist.

What is the relation of psychology to psychoanalysis? Freud himself answered this question in 1927: “Psychoanalysis falls under the h...