Sigmund Freud

The Mind in Conflict

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 Today’s Lecture
• Brief history of Freud’s ‘discovery’ of the
unconscious mind
• Touch upon Freud’s methods of
psychoanalysis
• Explore how Freud saw the mind as being in a
state of conflict
• Look at the implications of his ideas for
philosophy

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 The Unconscious Mind
• Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an
unconscious aspect of cognition

• The term "unconscious mind" was coined by the 18th century

philosopher Friedrich Schelling

• Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and

Nietzsche all refer to it

• "It is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to find a nineteenth-

century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize
the unconscious”

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 Hypnosis
• French neurologist
Jean Martin Charcot
• Initial work in Multiple
Sclerosis and Parkinson’s
Disease

• Became famous for

hypnotising hysterics

• Believed that hysteria was the

result of defects in the
patient’s nervous system

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Blanche Wittman

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The Hysteria Epidemic

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 Misogyny or History?
• Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical
literature of the 19th century.
• A physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of
all women suffered from hysteria
• One physician cataloged seventy-five pages of
possible symptoms of hysteria and called the
list incomplete

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Josef Breur
• an Austrian physician whose
works laid the foundation of
psychoanalysis.

• A close friend, mentor, and

collaborator with Freud

• Breuer is perhaps best

known for his work with
Anna O

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 The Case of Anna O
Joseph Breur told Freud of the incident in 1882:

• Anna nursed her father as he died of a long illness

• After his death she took to her bed
• Developed a severe nervous cough
• An aversion to food and water
• Began to suffer ‘absences’
• Hallucinations
• Violent and ‘naughty’ behaviour

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 Treating Anna
• Whilst in a trance, Anna would mutter to herself
• On one occasion, Breur repeated some of these words to
her
• Anna joined in and told the story in which these words
occurred
• She then woke up much calmer
• Breur found that in time as Anna O repeated a story, so a
symptom disappeared
• Each symptom could be traced back to a traumatic event
• This event remained in the ‘unconscious mind’

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 Studies on Hysteria 1895
• Book was co-authored by Breur and Freud

• Breuer describes the causes of hysteria by

supporting a neurophysiologic cause, while
Freud uses a psychological standpoint.

• Freud questioned Charcot’s claim that

heredity is the unique cause of hysteria
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 Freud’s technique
• Struggled with hypnosis
• Pioneered the ‘pressure technique’
• Began to use ‘free association’

• Realises that he is encountering ‘defence’

• The wishes of the unconscious mind are

repressed and disguised

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 Dynamic Theory of the Mind
• Freud begins to develop a model of the mind
which stresses conflict
• An event is experienced – ‘incompatible idea’
• The person tries to forget the idea
• The idea is redirected into a hysterical symptom

• In Freud’s view, the unconscious mind is

continuously at work affecting our behaviour,
which might reveal itself in slips of the tongue or
psychological symptoms

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 Illness is Ideogenic
• In the main, hysteria had been regarded as a
physical condition
• The Greeks characterised it as a ‘floating
womb’
• In contrast, Freud saw the origins of hysteria
are ideogenic
• Derived from experiences and ideas

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 Libido
Freud defined libido as the instinct energy or force,
contained in the id

• These libidinal drives can conflict with the

conventions of civilized behaviour

• This energy is redirected by the ego

• Excessive use of ego defenses results in neurosis

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Freud’s Drawing of the Mind

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Ice Berg

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Pleasure Principle versus
Reality Principle

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Censorship

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Evading the Policeman

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 Dreams
• During sleep the mind’s defenses are lower
• Incompatible ideas can ‘slip’ through

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Interpretation of Dreams
• “Dreams are the royal
road to a knowledge of
the unconscious
activities of the mind"

• Manifest and Latent

Content

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According to
Freud, dreams
were disguised,
hallucinatory
fulfilment of
repressed
wishes.
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if expressed in
undisguised
form, would so
disturb the
dreamer that he
would wake up.
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 Dream Disguise
• Condensation
one dream object stands for several associations
and ideas
• Displacement
a dream object's emotional significance is
separated from its real object or content
• Visualization
a thought is translated to visual images.
• Symbolism
• a symbol replaces an action, person, or idea
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The Case of Dora

The crisis that led her

father to bring Dora
to Freud was her
accusation that Herr
K had made a sexual
advance to her

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 Dora’s Dream 1
• The house was on fire. My father was standing
beside my bed and woke me up. I dressed
quickly. Mother wanted to stop and save her
jewel-case; but Father said: 'I refuse to let
myself and my two children be burnt for the
sake of your jewel-case.' We hurried
downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I
woke up.

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 Interpretation?
• The house on fire?

• The jewel case?

• Father’s refusal?

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 Freud’s Interpretation
• Freud stressed that Dora was actually
attracted to Herr K

• Hence the repression and neurotic symptoms

• Many feminist critics were furious about this

case

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Symbolization, in
which some neutral
object stands for some
aspect of sexual life

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‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’

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 Why I love Freud?
• Psychoanalytical readings allow a text to be
seen as much more complex than surface
meaning
• The act of interpretation is therefore ‘opens
up the text’
• Readers look for latent content as much as
manifest content
• It means that the writer is no longer in control
of their meanings
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BUT….Reductive Interpretations

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 Philosophical Implications
• Epistemological challenges
• Nature of consciousness
• Primacy of reason
• The Enlightenment Project
• The Socratic Inheritance

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 René Descartes

cogito ergo sum

Mind body dualism

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 Empiricism
• Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that
asserts that knowledge comes only or
primarily from sensory experience

• Freud’s view of the mind disagrees with this

view

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 Rationalism
• In politics, rationalism since the Enlightenment
historically emphasized a "politics of reason"
centred upon rational choice

• Freud’s thinking brings into question the primacy

of reason

• In fact, a reason governed society is ultimately a

neurotic society

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 Socratic Inheritance
The Socratic ideal of ‘know[ing] thyself

But what if you can’t get access to the self?

Does our mission become knowing thyselves?

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 A Much Criticised Figure
• Pseudo-scientist
• Misogynist
• Fantasist
• Misrepresented cases
• Ignored physiological elements of mental
illness

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 Legacy
• In 1939 W. H. Auden wrote, in a poem
dedicated to him:

"to us he is no more a person

now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different
lives"

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