3: Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
Chapter Outline
Why begin an exploration of scientific psychology with Sigmund Freud? First, he is probably the most well known person associated with psychology. Nevertheless, college students may be more likely to discuss Freud’s work in English classes than advanced psychology courses. The second reason is that he is also one of the most debated figures in the field. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is probably the most controversial and misunderstood psychological theorist. When reading Freud’s theories, it is important to remember that he was a medical doctor, not a psychologist. There was no such thing as a degree in psychology at the time that he received his education, which can help us understand some of the controversy over his theories today. Freud was the first to systematically study and theorize the workings of the unconscious mind in the manner that we associate with modern psychology, but controversies surround his theory of psychoanalysis, focusing on the centrality of sex to theory, the emphasis on early childhood, the role and composition of the unconscious, the therapy he developed, and most importantly for this class, his methodology. At the same time, his theory can be related to every area of psychology. It is most relevant for personality, development, psychological disorders, and therapy but can be threaded throughout the course as a important part of the history of psychology.
To understand the origins of the theory, it is helpful to be familiar with the political, social, and cultural influences of Freud’s day in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. During this era, a climate of sexual repression, combined with limited understanding and education surrounding human sexuality, heavily influenced Freud’s perspective. Given that sex was a taboo topic, Freud theorized that negative emotional states (neuroses) stemmed from suppression of unconscious sexual and aggressive urges. In the 1890s, he proposed that his patients had be sexually abused and repressed the memories, but he later rejected the idea and theorized instead about infantile sexuality, unconscious fantasies that will be discussed below. People like Florence Rush have argued that in so doing, Freud abandoned his patients. Freud sought a scientific approach, but the field of psychology was young, and he was creating a new approach. His own recollections and interpretations of patients’ experiences and dreams seemed sufficient evidence that psychosexual stages were universal events in early childhood. It’s also important to recognize the influence of sexism of the time the time and a rapidly changing society.
Freud was born is what is now Freiberg, in what is now the Czech Republic, but moved to Vienna, Austria, when he was only 4 year old. At the time he entered medical school in 1873, Vienna and many European cities were rapidly growing. Figure 3.2 illustrates a train station at the time, signifying the rapid modernization and social mobilization that was underway, but it was also a time of great sexual repression. Understanding how this theory and all theories are part of the context in which they were developed is a sociocultural project. Freud’s original theory of psychoanalysis has been developed in many ways because enough people find value in the theory and seek to improve on it.
Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the methods by with Freud developed his theory
- Describe the assumptions of the psychodynamic perspective
- Define and describe the nature and function of the id, ego, and superego
- Define and describe the defense mechanisms
- Define and describe the psychosexual stages of personality development
Methods and Data
In the early years of his career, Freud worked with Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician. During this time, Freud became intrigued by the story of one of Breuer’s patients, Bertha Pappenheim, who was referred to by the pseudonym Anna O. (Launer, 2005). Anna O. had been caring for her dying father when she began to experience symptoms such as partial paralysis, headaches, blurred vision, amnesia, and hallucinations (Launer, 2005). In Freud’s day, these symptoms were commonly referred to as hysteria. Anna O. turned to Breuer for help. He spent 2 years (1880–1882) treating Anna O. and discovered that allowing her to talk about her experiences seemed to bring some relief of her symptoms. Anna O. called his treatment the “talking cure” (Launer, 2005). Despite the fact the Freud never met Anna O., her story served as the basis for the 1895 book, Studies on Hysteria, which he co-authored with Breuer. Based on Breuer’s description of Anna O.’s treatment, Freud concluded that hysteria was the result of sexual abuse in childhood and that these traumatic experiences had been hidden from consciousness. Breuer disagreed with Freud, which soon ended their work together. However, Freud continued to work to refine talk therapy and build his theory on personality.
Hysteria was a diagnosis frequently given to young women during the time Freud was training to be a doctor. It was used to cover a broad range of symptoms, frequently referred to as a catchall because any complaint a woman made to her doctor might lead to a diagnosis of hysteria. Freud’s description of Anna O. is not unusual for his patients in general:
Dr. Breuer’s patient was a girl of twenty-one, of high intellectual gifts. Her illness lasted for over two years, and in the course of it she developed a series of physical and psychological disturbances which decidedly deserved to be taken seriously. She suffered from a rigid paralysis, accompanied by loss of sensation, of both extremities on the right side of her body; and the same trouble from time to time affected her on her left side. Her eye movements were disturbed and her power of vision was subject to numerous restrictions. She had difficulties over the posture of her head; she had a severe nervous cough. She had an aversion to taking nourishment, and on one occasion she was for several weeks unable to drink in spite of a tormenting thirst. Her powers of speech were reduced, even to the point of her being unable to speak or understand her native language. Finally, she was subject to conditions of ‘absence’, of confusion, of delirium, and of alteration of her whole personality, to which we shall have presently to turn our attention. (Freud, 2010, p. 182)
This was short description of a patient Freud never actually met, but Freud wrote 5 case studies about patients he worked with, sometimes for years. The theory of psychoanalysis was developed through these and other case studies, frequently discussed with Freud’s Vienna Circle, a group of psychoanalysts that met regularly. Notes from therapy sessions was Freud’s data.
The Structure of the Mind
Freud’s focus on the unconscious was probably one of the most influential aspects of his work. Our unconscious refers to that mental activity of which we are unaware and are unable to access (Freud, 1923). The theory begins with the idea that most of what we experience and what motivates us is below the level of our awareness and what we know is the tip of the iceberg. To explain his concept of conscious versus unconscious experience, Freud compared the mind to an iceberg (Figure 4.2). He said that only about one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and the rest of our mind is unconscious. That little bit you might be able to see while looking down into the water, would be the preconscious: the bit we might be able to pull into consciousness if we focus on it. According to Freud, unacceptable urges and desires are kept in our unconscious through a process called repression. For example, we sometimes say things that we don’t intend to say by unintentionally substituting another word for the one we meant. You’ve probably heard of a Freudian slip, the term used to describe this. Freud suggested that slips of the tongue are actually sexual or aggressive urges, accidentally slipping out of our unconscious. Speech errors such as this are quite common. Seeing them as a reflection of unconscious desires, linguists today have found that slips of the tongue tend to occur when we are tired, nervous, or not at our optimal level of cognitive functioning (Motley, 2002).
According to Freud, our personality develops from a conflict within and between two forces: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives versus our internal (socialized) control over these drives. Our personality is the result of our efforts to balance these two competing forces. Freud suggested that we can understand this by imagining three interacting systems within our minds. He called them the id, ego, and superego (Figure 4.3).
The unconscious id contains our most primitive drives or urges and is present from birth. It directs impulses for hunger, thirst, and sex. Freud’s theories about how the id operates, changed over time. He initially focused on what he called the “pleasure principle,” in which the id seeks immediate gratification and avoids what might cause displeasure. Freud theorized that sexual desire was the driving force of the human psyche, referring to the drive as libido. There is already the possibility of conflict in the id when we find we desire two outcomes that cannot both exist, such as in the figure of speech, You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Freud, however, later theorized another source of opposition within the id, arising the conflict between Eros and Thanatos. Eros was the son of the Greek goddess Aphrodite and, under the Romans, became Cupid. Eros is driven by libido. Freud introduced the idea of Thanatos, the Greek god who collected the dead, as a death drive to explain aggression and repetition. Eros and Thanatos were conceptualized as instinctual drives to create and to destroy, offedring an explanation for many of the conflicts Freud’s patients experienced.
The ego develops in infance to help control and gratify the id, and the superego develops in the third stage as a child interacts with others, learning the social rules for right and wrong. The superego acts as our conscience; it is our moral compass that tells us how we should behave. It strives for perfection and judges our behavior, leading to feelings of pride or—when we fall short of the ideal—feelings of guilt. In contrast to the instinctual id and the rule-based superego, the ego is the rational part of our personality. It’s what Freud considered to be the self, and it is the part of our personality that is seen by others. Its job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the context of reality; thus, it operates on what Freud called the “reality principle.” The ego helps the id satisfy its desires in a realistic way.
The id and superego are in constant conflict, because the id wants instant gratification regardless of the consequences, but the superego tells us that we must behave in socially acceptable ways. Thus, the ego’s job is to find the middle ground. It helps satisfy the id’s desires in a rational way that will not lead us to feelings of guilt. According to Freud, a person who has a strong ego, which can balance the demands of the id and the superego, has a healthy personality. Freud maintained that imbalances in the system can lead to neurosis (a tendency to experience negative emotions), anxiety disorders, or unhealthy behaviors. For example, a person who is dominated by their id might be narcissistic and impulsive. A person with a dominant superego might be controlled by feelings of guilt and deny themselves even socially acceptable pleasures; conversely, if the superego is weak or absent, a person might become a psychopath. An overly dominant superego might be seen in an over-controlled individual whose rational grasp on reality is so strong that they are unaware of their emotional needs, or, in a neurotic who is overly defensive (overusing ego defense mechanisms).
Defense Mechanisms
Freud believed that feelings of anxiety result from the ego’s inability to mediate conflicts. When this happens, Freud believed that the ego seeks to restore balance through various protective measures known as defense mechanisms (Figure 11.7). When certain events, feelings, or yearnings cause an individual anxiety, the individual wishes to reduce that anxiety. To do that, the individual’s unconscious mind uses ego defense mechanisms, unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety. The ego, usually conscious, resorts to unconscious strivings to protect the ego from being overwhelmed by anxiety. When we use defense mechanisms, we are unaware that we are using them. Further, they operate in various ways that distort reality. According to Freud, we all need ego defense mechanisms.
While everyone needs defense mechanisms, Freud believed that overuse of them may be problematic. For example, let’s say Joe is a high school football player. Deep down, Joe feels sexually attracted to males. His conscious belief is that being gay is immoral and that if he were gay, his family would disown him and he would be ostracized by his peers. Therefore, there is a conflict between his conscious beliefs (being gay is wrong and will result in being ostracized) and his unconscious urges (attraction to males). The idea that he might be gay causes Joe to have feelings of anxiety. How can he decrease his anxiety? Joe may find himself acting very “macho,” making gay jokes, and picking on a school peer who is gay. This way, Joe’s unconscious impulses are further submerged, but he may hurt people who know him and limit the relationships he can have.
There are several different types of defense mechanisms. For instance, in repression, anxiety-causing memories from consciousness are blocked. As an analogy, let’s say your car is making a strange noise, but because you do not have the money to get it fixed, you just turn up the radio so that you no longer hear the strange noise. Eventually you forget about it. Similarly, in the human psyche, if a memory is too overwhelming to deal with, it might be repressed and thus removed from conscious awareness (Freud, 1920). This repressed memory might cause symptoms in other areas.
Another defense mechanism is reaction formation, in which someone expresses feelings, thoughts, and behaviors opposite to their inclinations. In the above example, Joe made fun of a gay peer while himself being attracted to males. In regression, an individual acts much younger than their age. For example, a four-year-old child who resents the arrival of a newborn sibling may act like a baby and revert to drinking out of a bottle. In projection, a person refuses to acknowledge her own unconscious feelings and instead sees those feelings in someone else. Other defense mechanisms include rationalization, displacement, and sublimation.
Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud believed that personality develops during early childhood: Childhood experiences shape our personalities as well as our behavior as adults. He asserted that we develop via a series of stages during childhood. Each of us must pass through these childhood stages, and if we do not have the proper nurturing and parenting during a stage, we will be stuck, or fixated, in that stage, even as adults. In each psychosexual stage of development, the child’s pleasure-seeking urges, coming from the id, are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone. The stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital (Table 11.1).
| Table 4.1: Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage | Age (years) | Erogenous Zone | Major Conflict | Adult Fixation Example |
| Oral | 0–1 | Mouth | Weaning off breast or bottle | Smoking, overeating |
| Anal | 1–3 | Anus | Toilet training | Neatness, messiness |
| Phallic | 3–6 | Genitals | Oedipus/Electra complex | Vanity, overambition |
| Latency | 6–12 | None | None | None |
| Genital | 12+ | Genitals | None | None |
In the oral stage (birth to 1 year), pleasure is focused on the mouth. Eating and the pleasure derived from sucking (nipples, pacifiers, and thumbs) play a large part in a baby’s first year of life. The pleasure the infant or anyone experience from oral stimulation was conceived as sexual, and it is this idea that is the most controversial part of Freud’s theory. During feeding and particularly when babies are weaned from the bottle or breast, there can be conflict. The mother is not always available and weaning is the removal of a pleasurable activity. According to Freud, an adult who smokes, drinks, overeats, or bites her nails is fixated in the oral stage of her psychosexual development; she may have been weaned too early or too late, resulting in these fixation tendencies, all of which seek to ease anxiety.
Anal Stage
After passing through the oral stage, children enter what Freud termed the anal stage (1–3 years). In this stage, children experience pleasure in their bowel and bladder movements, so it makes sense that the conflict in this stage is over toilet training. During this stage of development, children work to master control of themselves. Freud suggested that success at the anal stage depended on how parents handled toilet training. Parents who offer praise and rewards encourage positive results and can help children feel competent. Parents who are harsh in toilet training can cause a child to become so fearful of soiling that they over-control and become fixated at the anal stage, leading to the development of an anal-retentive personality. The anal-retentive personality is stingy and stubborn, has a compulsive need for order and neatness, and might be considered a perfectionist. This is now understood as obsessive-compulsive disorder. If parents are too lenient in toilet training, the child may fail to develop sufficient self-control, become fixated at this stage, and develop an anal-expulsive personality. The anal-expulsive personality is messy, careless, disorganized, and prone to emotional outbursts.
Phallic Stage
Freud’s third stage of psychosexual development is the phallic stage (3–6 years), corresponding to the age when children become aware of their bodies and recognize the differences between boys and girls. The erogenous zone in this stage is the genitals. Conflict arises when the child feels a desire for the opposite-sex parent, and jealousy and hatred toward the same-sex parent. For boys, this is called the Oedipus complex, involving a boy’s desire for his mother and his urge to replace his father who is seen as a rival for the mother’s attention. At the same time, the boy is afraid his father will punish him for his feelings, so he experiences castration anxiety. The Oedipus complex is successfully resolved when the boy begins to identify with his father as an indirect way to have the mother. Failure to resolve the Oedipus complex may result in fixation and development of a personality that might be described as vain and overly ambitious.
Girls experience a comparable conflict in the phallic stage—the Electra complex. The Electra complex, while often attributed to Freud, was actually proposed by Freud’s protégé, Carl Jung (Jung & Kerenyi, 1963). A girl desires the attention of her father and wishes to take her mother’s place. Jung also said that girls are angry with the mother for not providing them with a penis—hence the term penis envy. While Freud initially embraced the Electra complex as a parallel to the Oedipus complex, he later rejected it, yet it remains as a cornerstone of Freudian theory, thanks in part to academics in the field (Freud, 1931/1968; Scott, 2005). Freud used the concept of the Electra complex to explain the moral inferiority of females (a belief at the time): Because girls could not experience castration anxiety, they were not able to repress their early desires for the their father as effectively as boys, which is why hysteria was a disorder that affected mostly young women.
Latency Period
Following the phallic stage of psychosexual development is a period known as the latency period (6 years to puberty). This period is not considered a stage, because sexual feelings are dormant as children focus on other pursuits, such as school, friendships, hobbies, and sports. Children generally engage in activities with peers of the same sex, which serves to consolidate a child’s gender-role identity.
Genital Stage
The final stage is the genital stage (from puberty on). In this stage, there is a sexual reawakening as the incestuous urges resurface. The young person redirects these urges to other, more socially acceptable partners (who often resemble the other-sex parent). People in this stage have mature sexual interests, which for Freud meant a strong desire for the opposite sex. Individuals who successfully completed the previous stages, reaching the genital stage with no fixations, are said to be well-balanced, healthy adults.
While most of Freud’s ideas have not found support in modern research, we cannot discount the contributions that Freud has made to the field of psychology. It was Freud who pointed out that a large part of our mental life is influenced by the experiences of early childhood and takes place outside of our conscious awareness; his theories paved the way for others.
While Freud’s focus on biological drives led him to emphasize the impact of sociocultural factors on personality development, his followers quickly realized that biology alone could not account for the diversity they encountered as the practice of psychoanalysis spread during the time of the Nazi Holocaust. The antisemitism which was prevalent during this period of time may have led mainstream psychoanalysts to focus primarily on the universality of the psychological structures of the mind.
Freud as a Way of Understanding the Science of Psychology
The purpose of this exploration of Freud, beyond learning about psychoanalysis, has been to explore what can be learned about the field of psychology. While Freud remains one of the most famous people connected to psychology, he was not a psychologist and is typically viewed as unscientific. Psychologists still train to become psychoanalysts though. There are currently 4 institutes where people can receive training in psychoanalysis for professionals with a masters or doctorate degree. Karl Popper (1902-1994) was a philosopher who helped develop methodology as we know it. He made a clear distinction between the non-scientific work of Freud and the scientific work of Albert Einstein on the basis of falsifiability as previously discussed. The following video describes this in more detail:
Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. . . . If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes. (Hawking, 2001, p. 31)
The social sciences, in particular, have found problems with this approach, arguing against its reduction of complex and interrelated phenomena to discrete components, shallowness of predictions that can be tested, blindness to the social construction of so called “objective facts,” disregard for social norms and values, and social nature of research through financial support and credentials. Often the divide between the positivists and the anti-positivists can be viewed as divide between those who pursue quantitative methodologies (using statistics and mathematical models) and those who use qualitative methodologies, such as Freud. What do you think make a good science of psychology?
Key Terms
- anal stage
- psychosexual stage in which children experience pleasure in their bowel and bladder movements
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- conscious
- mental activity (thoughts, feelings, and memories) that we can access at any time
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- defense mechanism
- unconscious protective behaviors designed to reduce ego anxiety
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- displacement
- ego defense mechanism in which a person transfers inappropriate urges or behaviors toward a more acceptable or less threatening target
- ego
- aspect of personality that represents the self, or the part of one’s personality that is visible to others
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- genital stage
- psychosexual stage in which the focus is on mature sexual interests
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- id
- aspect of personality that consists of our most primitive drives or urges, including impulses for hunger, thirst, and sex
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- latency period
- psychosexual stage in which sexual feelings are dormant
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- oral stage
- psychosexual stage in which an infant’s pleasure is focused on the mouth
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- phallic stage
- psychosexual stage in which the focus is on the genitals
- projection
- ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety disguises their unacceptable urges or behaviors by attributing them to other people
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- psychosexual stages of development
- stages of child development in which a child’s pleasure-seeking urges are focused on specific areas of the body called erogenous zones
- rationalization
- ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety makes excuses to justify behavior
- reaction formation
- ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety swaps unacceptable urges or behaviors for their opposites
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- regression
- ego defense mechanism in which a person confronted with anxiety returns to a more immature behavioral state
- repression
- ego defense mechanism in which anxiety-related thoughts and memories are kept in the unconscious
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- sublimation
- ego defense mechanism in which unacceptable urges are channeled into more appropriate activities
- superego
- aspect of the personality that serves as one’s moral compass, or conscience
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- unconscious
- mental activity of which we are unaware and unable to access
Summary
Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective
Sigmund Freud presented the first comprehensive theory of personality, psychological development, and mental illness. He was also the first to recognize that much of our mental life takes place outside of our conscious awareness. Freud proposed three components to our personality: the id, ego, and superego. The job of the ego is to balance the sexual and aggressive drives of the id with the moral ideal of the superego. Freud also said that personality develops through a series of psychosexual stages. In each stage, pleasure focuses on a specific erogenous zone. Failure to resolve a stage can lead one to become fixated in that stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits. Successful resolution of the stages leads to a healthy adult.
The theory is regarded as pseudoscientific because it emerged from a small set of case studies and introspection and much of the theory cannot be studied scientifically. The theory offers explanation but not a way to predict behavior. Nevertheless, scientific research has found evidence for some predictions based on the theory, and therapists around the world have continued to develop and use psychoanalysis to treat mentally ill patients.
