SIGMUND FREUD
Posted by anthonynorth on March 28, 2007
It could be said that Sigmund Freud made us human, with all the foibles and ideosyncracies that entails. Born in Moravia (Czech Republic) to a Jewish family, he had an exceptional intellect from a child. Indulged by his mother over his other siblings, he studied medicine at Vienna and later studied hypnosis under Charcot before going into private practice in Vienna, devising psychoanalysis and treating mainly upper middle class, middle-aged women.
At his birth in 1865 the human mind seemed well mapped out. However, when Freud was in his 30s his father died, and it led to deep self-analysis. What he discovered during this phase of his life were a host of impulses he couldn’t understand. Freud had discovered the unconscious mind. In 1900 ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ was published, and a whole new outlook of humanity was born.
Later, Freud gathered a circle of psychoanalysts around him, including Adler and Jung, who later fell out with him, and for many years his theories were pored over, developing a form of therapy called ‘free association’ to allow a patient to bring impulses to consciousness from the unconscious; Freud’s great success was in realising that unconscious forces drive our conscious life. Splitting the unconscious into the id, ego and super ego, he thought repression of infantile sexuality lay behind most neurosis. Best seen in the Oedipus Complex, where a son can have erotic feelings for his mother, most of his later ideas are shunned today.
Accused of being unscientific, Freud decided the template for deciding what was normal and abnormal was his own mind. Bearing in mind the ideas that surfaced from this self-analysis, we get a picture of a man who was not normal at all, but full of his own frustrations and desires.
In 1938 he left Vienna, fleeing the Nazis, and came to London. Married with six children, he had had cancer of the jaw for many years, and in 1939 he died. But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.’ As well as heralding a more open attitude to sexuality, such ideas prompted Surrealism and form a central element in today’s ideas of Postmodernism.
© Anthony North, February 2003
This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.
rags847 said
Nice piece of sophism and Freud-bashing.
“It could be said that Sigmund Freud made us human, with all the foibles and ideosyncracies that entails.”
Freud did not make the human race have “foibles and idiosyncrasies,” he did not induce these qualities. He built an elaborate, sophisticated system of explanation. An assumption in Western thought is that increased knowledge, insight and understanding paves the way for less irrationality and suffering. Wouldn’t you agree.
“But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.’”
You are accusing Freud of creating the world he left behind when he died in 1939. He created Nazis! He, who narrowly escaped from the Nazis when he fled to England, and was unable to get his four sisters free from Vienna (the all died in concentration camps after his death). He made the world go mad? That’s a sick line of un-reasoning there.
“Accused of being unscientific, Freud decided the template for deciding what was normal and abnormal was his own mind. Bearing in mind the ideas that surfaced from this self-analysis, we get a picture of a man who was not normal at all, but full of his own frustrations and desires.”
Nonsense. He was a student of the Western cannon, extremely well-read in a wide variety of subjects, he close questioned and listened to patients for hours a day and he deeply introspected in order to divine insight and mechanisms of the psyche that were applicable to the whole species. I’m sure you have no problem when a great novelist or philosopher introspects deeply and returns with wisdom that can be related to universally. And to call him not “normal” is pure ad hominem attack.
You act as if he saw pink elephants. The reality is he was far more stable, productive and than most of the great creative geniuses that have advanced our knowledge. Oh, he was a psychologist. So, he must be perfect for you. If we were talking about a great poet, musician, writer, artist, philosopher then it is OK if they were mad. It is even expected. Yet, the are appreciated for their contribution.
Nope, nothing irrational about your need for a scapegoat to create with your imagination and then attack.
For a more informed view on Freud read my new post:
“SIGMUND FREUD AND CREATIVITY”
http://expansedconsciousness4321.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/sigmund-freud-and-creativity/
Here is an excerpt:
“Freud induced and revealed that everyone is in possession of the same mental structures and mechanisms and that those who suffer the greatest were not of a different kind, but merely farther down on a universally shared human continuum.
Freud’s profound need and ability to introspect deeply is directly responsible for a paradigm shift that has resulted in both our modern understanding of the human mind and in the humane treatment of those who suffer psychologically.”
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags847,
A typical reaction. Instead of taking offence, wy not debate without the aggressive manner? Freud responsible for Nazism? Where did THAT leap of judgement come from? If there is an intellectual seed for that vile system it lies in a perversion of Hegel and Nietzsche. Please don’t put words into my blog.
As for the accusation of Freud-bashing, if you read the pieces you have quoted again you will see ‘It could be said’ and ‘Accused of’. These are not definite statements, but analyses.
Was Freud normal? Of course not – he was a genius – and to not be normal is a great thing. Don’t put the man down. As for those foibles I speak of, he had a marvellous effect on our culture through the arts and literature, and thus our appreciation of ourselves.
Don’t mistake a balanced assessment as ‘nonsense’ simply because you may disagree.
rags847 said
“Balanced assessment”?
Where’s the other side of the argument that would make it “balanced”?
“It could be said that Sigmund Freud made us human, with all the foibles and ideosyncracies that entails.”
Freud caused humans to be more irrational. Where is the other side of that argument: the legacy of Freud’s explanatory system is that it gave a way to see and head-off irrationality before it got the upperhand, and thereby created a less irrational world.
“Freud had discovered the unconscious mind”. No, the concept of the unconscious mind had existed before Freud. Freud gave a systematic way of conceiving of the unconscious mind, its contents, and influence.
“Accused of being unscientific, Freud decided the template for deciding what was normal and abnormal was his own mind.” Freud didn’t decide anything of the sort. You place a Freud-bashing line in Freud’s mouth.
“But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.’”
Freud cause the world to go mad. And the balance to this statement is where? Your balancing statement that the world we have today is that much more rational, questioning, critical and humane due to Freud.
Excellent balance.
Anyone reading your piece would see it as Freud-bashing.
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags847,
We’re obviously not going to agree on this. As for the world today being much more rational, you must be joking. We supposedly have the knowledge and means to improve life and everything, and still make a mess of it.
Rational? I don’t think so.
Maybe if you looked around the site – clicked the title and saw my home and About page – you may lessen your insistence.
Or maybe not
rags847 said
We’re not going to agree? What do you disagree with? You have not responded with a single argument that disagrees with anything I wrote.
And you must be joking. You publish this nonsense that Freud made the world more irrational. You respond back with no argument regarding Freud or psychoanalysis or its effect on the world, but simply comment on irrational people. Nice attempt at a red herring (”Ignoratio elenchi (also known as irrelevant conclusion or irrelevant thesis) is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question … a deliberate attempt to change the subject or divert the argument”). As ridiculous as when doubling the police force we get you standing up and saying doubling the police force was bad and caused more crime, because crime went up … crime stayed the same … crime went down but not to 0.
Congratulations on recognizing their is irrationality in the world (you are half way to being a psychoanalyst already). It’s your notions of cause and effect that need some work. And your desire for a scapegoat.
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags847,
Okay:
‘Freud caused humans to be more irrational. Where is the other side of that argument: the legacy of Freud’s explanatory system is that it gave a way to see and head-off irrationality before it got the upperhand, and thereby created a less irrational world.’
At this point Freud still dealt with the ‘ill’. The idea of treating the well came later, so Freud did little to head off irrationality.
‘“Freud had discovered the unconscious mind”. No, the concept of the unconscious mind had existed before Freud. Freud gave a systematic way of conceiving of the unconscious mind, its contents, and influence.’
You destroy your own argument. Most people knew that Africa was there, but its individual parts were not ‘discovered’ until explored, in our terms. People knew something was in the mind, but ‘discovery’ involves explanation, which is what Freud attempted to do.
‘“Accused of being unscientific, Freud decided the template for deciding what was normal and abnormal was his own mind.” Freud didn’t decide anything of the sort. You place a Freud-bashing line in Freud’s mouth.’
I do nothing of the sort. It is the nature of theoretical contemplation that a thinker looks upon the world through his own mind filter, deciding things as he would see them. If this is Freud-bashing, you’ve just discounted the majority of western knowledge theory.
‘“But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.’”
Freud cause the world to go mad. And the balance to this statement is where? Your balancing statement that the world we have today is that much more rational, questioning, critical and humane due to Freud.’
There isn’t a balancing statement to this because it is not the case that the world is more rational. Through technology, etc, we’ve become more altruistic, but if the services, etc, that keep us ordered broke down, we would revert to the irrationality that lies beneath.
The further point here is that surrealism and postmodernism found cause in Freud, thus providing a much more irrational form of culture. Are are you saying that Picasso was a realist?
rags847 said
I could easy dismantle your fallacious reasoning, yet again.
But I’m still waiting for the trail of the century: Anthonynorth vs Sigmund Freud.
Laying at Freud’s and psychoanalysis’s feet.
(After all they explored [gasp!] dreams!)
The worst genocides of the 20th Century:
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine’s famine)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) ?
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20) 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000
Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98) 800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987) 570,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39) 500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000
Mullah Omar – Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) 300,000 (Bangladesh)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99) 100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) 100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (vietnamese civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83) 70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) 40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947) 30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain) 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999) 30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) 20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority) 20,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83) 13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957) 10,000 (war in Algeria)
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001) 3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) 3,000
Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06) 2,000
(Note: the crimes committed by right-wing dictators have always been easier to track down than the crimes against humanity committed by communist leaders, so the figures for communist leaders like Stalin and Mao increase almost yearly as new secret documents become available. To this day, the Chinese government has not yet disclosed how many people were executed by Mao’s red guards during the Cultural Revolution and how many people were killed in Tibet during the Chinese invasion of 1950. We also don’t know how many dissidents have been killed by order of Kim Il Sung in North Korea, although presumably many thousands).
Main sources:
Charny (1988) Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review
Stephane Courtois: Black Book on Communism (1995)
Matthews: Guiness Book of Records (2000)
Clodfelter: Warfare and Armed Conflicts (1992)
Elliot: Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (1972)
Bouthoul : A List of the 366 Major Armed Conflicts of the period 1740-1974, Peace Research (1978)
R.J. Rummel: Death by Government – Genocide and Mass Murder (1994)
Matt White’s website
Several general textbooks of 20th century history
Found at: http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
Or geez, maybe it was those paintings of melting clocks that incited it all.
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags847,
Well, that was a total waste of time. The entire content of your last comment was dealt with in the first paragraph of the first comment I made to you – as any reasonable person would accept.
There’s clearly no point continuing this tit for tat nonsense. I suggest you find some other person to bother.
rags847 said
Fine by me. You are never dealing with the crux of it: Your accusation of Freud’s alleged negative influence on human civilization.
Your first paragraph: “Where did THAT leap of judgement come from?”
No leap. Came from your main post [after just mentioning the Nazis, to boot]: “But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.’”
Because of Freud’s work, people were no longer in control of themselves. People. People everywhere. Not in control. Were in control. No longer.
No bothering to connect point A to point Z, though. Just state it. Therefore, it is true.
“At this point Freud still dealt with the ‘ill’. The idea of treating the well came later, so Freud did little to head off irrationality.”
Huh? Freud always sought to comprehend all of human behavior and psychology. He didn’t have an early period where he considered “ill” individuals experiencing different mental mechanisms then “well” people, and a later period where he “treated the well,” as you put it.
“So Freud did little to head off irrationality.” Huh? Let’s see … Freud had created a mad world by his death in 1939, because he incited mankind to irrationality, since he did little to head off irrationality, since only in a later period did he think of treating the well.
Am I following you there?
It really is a lot of work to follow you. This isn’t a debate. A proper debate starts with the facts, then debates interpretations. You have evidenced that you have no facts or you do and you know better, but this is the only way you can defend your Freud-bashing main post.
“You destroy your own argument. Most people knew that Africa was there, but its individual parts were not ‘discovered’ until explored, in our terms. People knew something was in the mind, but ‘discovery’ involves explanation, which is what Freud attempted to do.”
According to you, the explorer created Africa, didn’t just discover Africa.
“I do nothing of the sort. It is the nature of theoretical contemplation that a thinker looks upon the world through his own mind filter, deciding things as he would see them. If this is Freud-bashing, you’ve just discounted the majority of western knowledge theory.”
Can’t you make an attack and then not scurry away from it. This is your pattern, throughout. You attack Freud, trying to draw an extreme distinction between him, and science and reason. “Freud decided” describes conscious intent on Freud’s part. It is not a reference to an ubiquitous, unintentional, unconscious phenomena applicable to all domains that “the observer always changes what is observed” (applicable to scientists). You made a fallacious statement regarding how Freud conceived of and “decided” concepts as “normal” and “abnormal.”
“There isn’t a balancing statement to this because it is not the case that the world is more rational. Through technology, etc, we’ve become more altruistic, but if the services, etc, that keep us ordered broke down, we would revert to the irrationality that lies beneath.
The further point here is that surrealism and postmodernism found cause in Freud, thus providing a much more irrational form of culture. Are are you saying that Picasso was a realist?”
You have quite the view of the world. Technology has made us more altruistic and Freud and great painters made us mad. Talk about “discount[ing] the majority of western … theory.” We have been saved by the clock, the machine, the industrial era, the increasing mechanization and depersonalization of the human soul. Beautiful.
I can’t educate you on and go over the ABCs of Western culture and history. And like I said, you dodge and evade and divert, always careful to never substantiate your argument: that all would be better if Freud had been a ditch digger.
As far as Surrealism being the bad guy:
“Breton insisted that Surrealism was an ongoing revolt against the reduction of humanity to market relationships, religious gestures and misery and to espouse the importance of liberating of the human mind.”
Sounds rational and altruistic to me.
On equating psychoanalysis with Surrealism:
“Freud initiated the psychoanalytic critique of Surrealism with his remark that what interested him most about the Surrealists was not their unconscious but their conscious. His meaning was that the manifestations of and experiments with psychic automatism highlighted by Surrealists as the liberation of the unconscious were highly structured by ego activity, similar to the activities of the dream censorship in dreams, and that therefore it was in principle a mistake to regard Surrealist poems and other art works as direct manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly shaped and processed by the ego. In this view, the Surrealists may have been producing great works, but they were products of the conscious, not the unconscious mind, and they deceived themselves with regard to what they were doing with the unconscious. In psychoanalysis proper, the unconscious does not just express itself automatically but can only be uncovered through the analysis of resistance and transference in the psychoanalytic process.”
Food for thought.
Chew thoroughly.
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags 847,
There are 942 posts & 14,483 comments on this blog at this time and this is turning into the most surreal debate I have ever had here. I suppose this statement of yours sums it up:
‘Your accusation of Freud’s alleged negative influence on human civilization.’
I think no such thing. Your whole argument is based on a total misrepresentation of what I’m saying. I think Freud was one of the top ten geniuses of all time. I didn’t say this in the post in order to provide a balanced view of him. Further, the vast majority of his influence has been beneficial to humanity. Let me make some very clear statements:
I am not a Freud-basher.
Just because tech has allowed altruism to flourish does not mean I am a tech lover – another leap of judgement on your part.
Just because I question Freud’s scientific process, this does not mean I am totally enthralled by science – Freud was more philosophical – a marvellous pursuit – another leap of judgement on your part.
Freud had a massive, and beneficial, effect upon our culture and how we understand ourselves – I don’t even approach an accusation that he is repsonsible for atrocities – another leap of judgement on your part.
Freud muddied the ’self’ by introducing unconscious urges, etc. This is the crux of psycho-analysis, so there is nothing wrong in that statement.
Any further contribution by you which does not accept that this is my position will be deleted. If you wish to debate accepting that this is my position, fair enough. But debate must begin with a proper representation of what I’m saying, which I have just made very clear. I can take pointlessness only to a point.
rags847 said
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” said the gold digger to the billionaire dressed in flannel.
Well, I’m glad I “convinced you”.
I’m so glad you’ve “come around”.
Excellent.
In light of:
1. “Further, the vast majority of his influence has been beneficial to humanity”
and
2. “Freud had a massive, and beneficial, effect upon our culture and how we understand ourselves”
Might you consider that these lines of your post deserve to be recast:
1.”It could be said that Sigmund Freud made us human, with all the foibles and ideosyncracies that entails.”
This sentense is saying Freud caused us to have human failings. “Made us” denotes causation. “Made a sandwich.” “His crazy mother made him mad.” You are trying to say something like “the writer gave so many details of the murder’s inner life that he made him appear human.
Clearer: “It could be said that Sigmund Freud portrayed and exposed our very humanness, with all the foibles and idiosyncrasies that entails.”
2. “Accused of being unscientific, Freud decided the template for deciding what was normal and abnormal was his own mind.”
“Freud decided” – an action phrase describing a conscious act by Freud.
Clearer: “Criticized by some in the medical establishment for not relying on the scientific method, the special requirements of deep psychological investigation necessitated an inquirer who not only looked outward, closely listening to patients, and looked backward to learn from history, but also one willing to look deep within at realms of human experience that do not lend themselves up to easy quantification.”
3. “But it was a very different world he left behind. It was a world where unconscious forces crept into reality, with people no longer in control of their ‘self.”
“Left behind” – action phrase, again. Given this sentence and your first sentence, it seems to say Freud left behind the world he helped to make. Freud’s actions, again. As in, “the CEO retired and ‘left behind’ a restructured and stronger company.”
Clearer: “Despite giving modern humanity an increased number of tools for confronting themselves with their own irrationality, Freud knew change would come slowly. In fact, the world he witnessed in the last year of his life (1939) was a world entering a dark period of madness that could have only reconfirm his deepest worries about the destructive potential of our species.”
And finally:
“Freud muddied the ’self’ by introducing unconscious urges, etc. This is the crux of psycho-analysis, so there is nothing wrong in that statement.”
“Muddied” is a value-laden descriptor. Pejorative.
This should read “Freud complicated our view of ourselves.”
Not, Freud took an action onto our “self” that caused our “self” to be altered in a dirty way. There is a big difference between describing an action one person does to another and one person imparting knowledge to another that informs their reflective view of their own “self.” You phrasing is the equivalent of, “Freud made people more dirtier creatures by inducting primitive states in them.”
To make our own conception of ourselves more complex and sophisticated is not the equivalent of muddying.
“Turning into the most surreal debate I have ever had here.”
Surreal?
Well, that is on topic, at least!
anthonynorth said
Hi Rags847,
Nice try. I stick to every word I said in my post. It was a balanced view, done in the way of an encyclopedia entry, thus without my personal views.
From the beginning of the debate – I use this term loosely regarding yourself – I made it clear to you that you were wrong in your assessment of my words.
Do not try to turn the tables by statements such as you convinced me. I’m too world wise for such rubbish. You showed yourself as a fool. Admit it. Move on.
rags847 said
Excuse me, sir!
That is no balanced view. It would never be accepted as an encyclopedia entry. The wording is poor, unclear, and biased.
Only I debated, you scantily responded to anything I said and when you did it contained fallacious reasoning any logic 101 student could dismantle. And when I pointed this out, you conveniently ignored it.
You made nothing clear. Only I explicated clearly. You waited until post #10 to assert any statement about Freud directly. The only thing that is clear is your unclear writing “style.”
Are you serious? You don’t see the “”s around “convinced you” and “come around”?
You did. You pretend you didn’t. Your ingrained pattern – you are so eager to cloud, obfuscate and start fights versus debate and explicate clearly.
On what a “fool” is, there I will defer to your expertise, sir.
Who knows what a fool is better than you?
anthonynorth said
Is that it? I do hope so. I’ve better things to do.
rags847 said
That’s it. I’ve gotta damn Nietzsche paper, Hesse paper, Mann paper and some short Kafka papers to get rolling on.
Don’t tell me what the Surrealist did with their works!
Just kidding, I already have thesis statements.
Thanks for the vigor.
I leave you with a too little-known Freud quote:
“It would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity, one of the most tangible liberations from the constraints of nature to which mankind is subject, if we could succeed in raising the responsible act of procreating children to the level of a deliberate and intentional activity and in freeing it from its entanglement with the necessary satisfaction of a natural need.” – S. Freud