FREUD AND HIS HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Introducing students to Freud (the person and the professional) and the historical context surrounding Freud's development of psychoanalytic theory
I provide students with a very brief overview of the history of ideas about the unconscious since the Enlightenment. I also stress the physiological/chemical/neurological explanations of mental illness with which Freud began. I characterize the Helmhotz School, noting that Freud was not exactly a member, but sympathetic. I draw on Erikson's discussion of the challenge posed by the Helmhotz credo to find causes equal in dignity and power to materialistic causes and how Freud found those in the realm of ideas in the mind. I discuss the treatments of Charot and Bernheim and how Freud borrowed form and yet departed from their work.
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I begin by asking students to free associate to 'Sigmund Freud.' This yields a mixture of positive and negative opinions of the man and his achievements. I keep these stereotypes in mind as we proceed, with the intention of showing how many of them are false or overly simplified. I stress his early efforts to help patients suffering with hysteria, stressing how much they were suffering, and how little help anyone had to offer before psychoanalysis.
I talk about Breuer's Anna O case and what a revolutionary change it brought about, including the discovery of a talking cure. All talk therapies today are indebted to this discovery.
I insist on the importance of interpreting Freud through his clinical work, as I stress in my book 'Psychoanalysis and Ethics' (Yale U Press, 1991), chapter 2. I help students appreciate the creativity of his work both as a clinician and a theorist.
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Most of what I do is to dispel myths, to un-teach anti-Freudian inaccuracies. Freud was a product of his time and culture, and he helped to shape our time and culture. He started as a medical doctor, but was intrigued by seemingly medical conditions that could be cured during hypnosis, only to return when the patient was awakened from the hypnotic state.
Most important points:
- Freud defined 'sex' differently than we do. He defined it, with regards to the sexual gratification of eating and toileting as something closer to: 'Any process involving the build up of 'tension' followed by a release of that tension.' Orgasm is one of these processes, and sneezing, eating, elimination all qualify. The tension of hunger is relieved by eating. Our sexualization of women's breasts doesn't mean the baby is getting some perverse thrill out of nursing.
- Freud also defined 'Instinct' differently than our modern biological definition. Libido and Thanatos are instinctive only in that they are biologically based and universal, not that they trigger specific behaviors, as in birds' nest-building. Dream Interpretation - dreams are NOT automatically assumed to be sexual.
I talk mostly about his time, the sexism of the era, the Victorian 'good girls don't, and don't even want to or think about sex' attitudes, the Darwinism as applied to social classes, etc. Also, that he was a pioneer and by analogy our Interstates follow some of the wagon trails across the west, but we also found other routes and even dug tunnels through the Rockies. Likewise, Freud had some ideas that needed modification as we got new information about the brain and mind, and as the culture has changed.
Matthew Westra
Psychology Coordinator
MCC-Longview
Matthew.westra@mcckc.edu
http://www.mcckc.edu/~westra/WESTRA.HTML
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Freud saw that various mental features were unconscious. He recognized that children had primitive sexual thoughts, and therefore could be abused through activity or over stimulation. He discovered that dreams have symbolic meanings specific to the dreamer, and could be used to help decipher symptoms like phobias and obsessions.
When I am lecturing, I may mention that he was ostracized by physicians because he felt that hysteria occurred in men as well as women. I will point out that he included many women in analytic training and encouraged them, and was not discriminatory.
Jerome S. Blackman, M.D.
Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Virginia Wesleyan College
Jsbmd1@cox.net
jblackmanmd@aol.com
It's time to stop criticizing him for what we no longer value and reexamine what has become accepted practice and the ways in which he accurately identified important human dynamics. Students invariably are impressed to learn that he continually reevaluated his own theories and observations and was open to changing his theories.
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I situate Freud in the context of philosophy and the history of western thought rather than simply reducing his thinking to his 'historical' context. I bring up the radical and newness of the conception of the unconscious. I draw attention to the notion that Freud's thinking 'de-centers' the self. (The so-called Copernican revolution of psychoanalysis.) This represents a shift in humanistic thought more generally.
I also bring up Freud's work on the 'hysterics' and his debt to Charcot. I do situate the hysterics historically and I attempt to enable students to imagine 'contemporary' examples of hysteria or hysterical conversion.
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I briefly compare norms during Freud's time with norms during students' parents' generation and today just to get students to recognize that influence on Freud's thinking.
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We usually discuss Freud's change from the topographic to the structural model based on Freud's understanding of unconscious guilt in phenomena like the negative therapeutic reaction, masochism and the like. We also discuss Freuds' views of anxiety - a blocked libido and later as a signal affect. When it comes to Freud's views of women I mention the contradiction between his theory (which is outmoded) and his promotion of female psychoanalysts.
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Include political context of WWI, Antisemitism; Relations with family members, students, and analysts; Introduce them to Freud's autobiography
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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Contributors were asked to:
Describe the most effective readings, media, or film resources you use to teach your students about Sigmund Freud, the person.
- How do you introduce these reading/media/film resources? What questions do you ask your students?
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Wallwork, E. (1991). Psychoanalysis and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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I suggest that those interested read Erik Erikson's chapter on Freud in Insight and Responsibility.
Erikson, E. (1964). Insight and Responsibility. New York: W.W. Norton.
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The Autobiography; History of the Psychoanalytic Movement; Peter Gay's biography and various other secondary readings
- I ask, what and how has he sublimated?
Freud, Sigmund (Strachey, J., trans.) (1935). An Autobiographical Study. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1916). The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement. New York: Nervous & Mental Disease.
Gay. P. (1988). Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Norton.
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I have students read selections from the Interpretation of Dreams at the outset of the course, focusing especially on the Irma Dream. I use the dream and Freud's associations to it as an introduction to thinking about unconscious mental processes and Freud's discovery of these processes. Meeting Freud as an interpreter of his own dreams makes students sympathetic to his perspective.
- I ask a bunch of questions about Freud's associations to various aspects of the Irma Dream.
Freud, S. (ed. R. Robertson;J. Crick, trans.) (1999). The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Oxford Univ. Press
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I use the Freud chapter from Monte's textbook Behind the Mask.
- BEFORE reading it I initiate a discussion about public images of Freud AND what they've been told/read in other psych classes. We then revisit these questions and talk about new impressions after reading Monte. I stress the importance of credibility of those who offer opinions on Freud and suggest that students rely most on opinions from faculty who have actually been trained in a psychoanalytic setting. And, I explain that faculty without actual experience in dynamic settings, have less credibility than those with that experience. I add that I have less credibility regarding behavioral psychology than those with extensive training in that area. This has always helped build my own credibility with them.
Monte. C. F. & Sollod, R. N. (2003). Beneath the Mask: An Introduction to Theories of Personality. New York: Wiley.
Rhonda Reinholtz, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
rreinholtz@wisc.edu
Freud, S. (1910). The origin and development of psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychology, 21, 181-218.
Lear, J. (1995, December 25). A Counterblast in the War on Freud: The Shrink is In. The New Republic, 18 – 25.
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333-371.
COURSE ASSIGNMENTS
I try to avoid discussing or assigning material about Freud's life. This leads to 'ad hominem' discussions rather than learning of his theories and its updates since. I sometimes mention that he studied with Charcot and worked with Breuer.
Jerome S. Blackman, M.D.
Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Virginia Wesleyan College
Jsbmd1@cox.net
jblackmanmd@aol.com
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