Sigmund Freud: A Medical Historical Figure
Naidely Diaz
5B – DOH
Ms. Birdsall
December 20th, 2018
Early Life
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Moravia or what is now known as the Czech Republic. Sigmund Freud was born to a middle class Jewish family and was forced to live in Leipzig and Vienna due to the anti-semitism and the nazis that were taking over. He studied medicine in the University of Vienna and went on to become a neurologist and theorist. He worked alongside leading physiologists of his day, Ernst von Brücke. Freud was interested in the pharmaceutical effects of cocaine trying to use it as a pain reliever for surgery however it was proven a total failure due to its severely addictive effects. This caused him to earn a bad reputation in the medical field for quite some time.
Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud formed the basis for psychology and psychiatry today and he is recognized as being the founder of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. Psychoanalysis is a form of therapy that was popularized during the late 19th and early 20th century as a treatment for mental health disorders. The psychoanalysis theory believes that that the human personality can be divided into two halves. These two halves are the conscious and the unconscious psyche, with psyche being another word for mind. This theory states that these two parts are constantly struggling with one another and are constantly in conflict. The mature human behavior that people portray in everyday life is the compromise between these two parts. Psychoanalysis theory believes the human psyche or the mind, was composed of three parts. These parts were the id, the ego and the superego.
The id part of the mind is composed of our immediate desires or instinctual yearning for things that bring people pleasure. The id is in our unconscious mind often being impulsive, primitive and showing no regard for morality or values. Example of id is often innate and instinctive ranging from wanting a new iphone to simply just wanting to eat to satisfy hunger. The superego aspect of the mind is the part of a person that learns what is morally acceptable as right and wrong based on what it was taught to be socially acceptable by society. The superego psyche always leans on doing the right thing and always following the rules. The ego is the part of the psyche that people most often see as it is the mediator between the id and the superego. The ego listens to both sides, makes sense of all the information that was provided and gives the final decision about how the person should behave. To be able to understand psychoanalytic theory it is important to keep in mind that the ego is our reality, the id is our instincts and the superego is our morality. These all live within our conscious and unconscious mind.
In psychoanalytic theory Freud believed that humans were driven by the pleasure principle. This why the id operates at an unconscious level. In this principle people are driven to obtain easy physical and emotional rewards driven by instinct. This principle would want to drive people away from drudgery and discipline all which is found in society. Freud believed it was divided into two biological instincts called Eros and Thanatos. He once stated “Eros, or life instinct, helps the individual to survive; it directs life-sustaining activities such as respiration, eating, and sex” (Freud, 1925). The energy created by instincts is known as the libido and this is what he based his theory on. Eros was the life instinct which helped the individual survive and thanatos was the death instinct in which energy presented itself towards others as aggression and violence. Freud believe that Eros is stronger than Thanatos, and this was why people survived rather than self-destruct.
To keep the id under control the human body uses a psychological strategy called defense mechanisms to keep people safe from guilt and anxiety that it would bring if people were to give into our innermost desires. Freud believed these defense mechanisms were not under our conscious control and were non-voluntary. When the unconscious conflicts in the body become too intense the defense mechanisms fail because they are too restrictive on the individual. After this is when mental health symptoms begin to show up. So this is where psychoanalysis comes in as a method of treatment. The goal with psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious. In this theory the symptoms of a mentally ill person were due to the defense against a partial release of our unacceptable impulses. Psychoanalysis attempts to help the person identify and accept their defenses and create more forgiving defenses that allow mature expressions of those desires.
Freud compared psychoanalysis to dream analysis where they use dreams to identify the person’s inner desires or anxiety. He used a method called free association where he basically used Rorschach inkblots and word associations (when a word is said and the person is asked what is the first thing that comes to their mind) to hopefully be able to help the patient recall childhood memories and dreams that are perceived as threatening to be able to replace it.
Psychosexual Stages
Psychoanalytic theory also states that childhood experiences and unconscious desires influence behavior. Freud believed that when the libido or the sexual (pleasure) energy was stuck in various stages of the psychosexual development and stages, conflicts can occur that have lifelong effects. He predicted that the first five years of life were crucial to determining the adult personality. He believed gratification centered in different areas of the body at different stages of growth, making the conflict at each stage psychosexual.
He predicted that fixation or build up of frustration and overindulgence at a young age is what determined the adult personality. Frustration at a young age might have been described as the needs of the libido of the person not being met and overindulgence is heir needs have been so well met and satisfied that they are reluctant to leaving the of that stage. He stated that each of the psychosexual stages was associated with a particular conflict that had to be resolved before the person could pass onto the next stage. If the person spent more time receiving that type of libido, the more these characteristics were going to stand out for a person in adulthood. Frustration and overindulgence is what scientists call fixation. This means that the person is going to be more dependent on the type of stage that brings them pleasure.
The psychosexual stages of development are the oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages. In the oral stage occurs from birth to around one year old. In this stage the place of pleasure comes from the mouth or oral things. Feelings around ingestion and eating is what bring these babies pleasure. For example, things like biting, sucking, and breastfeeding are things that would make them happy. If a person’s demands aren’t met in this stage in adulthood they will resolve to smoking, nail biting, finger chewing, thumb sucking, hair biting as a way to relieve stress and anxiety. In other words, they will always yearn for this type of pleasure when they need comfort.
The anal stage occurs from when a child is 1 to 3 years old. In this stage the libido is focused on the anus as the child receives pleasure either from withholding or expelling feces. In this stage the parents tell their child when to go to the bathroom and this is where people first learn about testing the limits of authority. In this stage the child is fully aware that they are a person and they have their own wishes and desires that could potentially bring them problems with the demands of the outside world. This is the stage where the ego forms. If a child has an anal retentive personality, they receive pleasure from holding onto their poop when their mom or dad tells them that they need to go in the toilet. In adulthood this will make them stubborn, organized, tidy, punctual and very respectful of authority. On the other hand if a child is anal repulsive they like to share and be open to people, they are messy, disorganized and rebellious.
The phallic stage is when the child is 3 to 5 or 6 years old. In this stage Freud describes children having sexual feelings and they direct these feelings towards their parents. This is where Freud based his Oedipus (for boys) and Electra (for girls) Complex. The Oedipus complex (for both in this case) states that children experience an unconscious feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy and envy toward their same-sex parent.
In the latency stage from 5 or 6 to puberty is where no sexual development takes place because the libido is dormant. And the final stage the genital stage from puberty to an adult is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation where the sexual instinct is directed towards the opposite sex and not oneself like in the phallic stage. The end goal of this stage is to settle down in a loving one to one relationship with another person. Freud believed that society was a naturally a neuroses, neurosis meaning repression of the pleasure principle. This is why there is always conflicts and wars.
Sigmund Freud and His Impact on Medical History
Although many of Freud’s theories and beliefs are largely rejected in modern day medicine, he was one of the first people to establish the basis of psychiatry and psychotherapy. Back in the early 20th century when he first came out with his findings, people were proven to get better with his treatments. Although today they may not be the most effective, research has shown that psychoanalysis was better than no treatment at all.
Freud came up with the idea of transference where feelings towards one person are passed onto another. Ex; A person got angry at their boss and now they’re taking that anger out towards their co-worker. Today, that is seen everywhere and it is proven that everyone has unconsciously done that at some point in their lives. He also came up with paraphrases (today Freudian slips) where slips of the tongue gives psychiatrists a better understanding of someone’s underlying mental problems. Although psychoanalysis wasn’t the most perfect, it definitely set up the path for other people to add on to his ideas, change them and perfect them to be able to call modern day psychiatry effective.
Freud’s ideas can be related with Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. It relates to Freud’s ideas that people have inner instincts that drive people towards survival or what he called the id. In Maslow’s hierarchy, it is essential to humans to receive their basic physiological needs before they can seek out safety and love and fulfillment and such. Winslow might have even gotten his inspiration for his hierarchy from him.
Sigmund Freud is a very famous and important person to the history of medicine because before his time period psychiatry was unknown. Thanks to all the effort that he put into his theories and his studies is why in modern day doctors are be able to identify patients with a mental illness and get them the help they need, instead of calling them hysterical and locking them in a room by themselves until they die.