Freud and Psychoanalysis

University of Medical Studies in English

Martin Crnicki

Introduction

I would say psychiatrists and probably clinical psychologists have been unfair towards Sigmund

Freud. He is one of those thinkers from who all that remains are his mistakes and the reason for that is

that everything that he discovered or put forward is so incorporated in our culture now that we think it's

self-evident and so everything correct has been assimilated and that just leaves everything floating on

top open to criticism. Freud is also one of those thinkers who was always wrong in an interesting way. I

also think that many of the things that he puts forward is still argued. Take for example the Oedipus

complex. It’s much more useful than people want to admit, because the Oedipal complex is actually a

description of family psychology. Child gets incarcerated in the family with a parental relationship so

tight that he or she can't break free. Most probably since the child cannot formulate his or her idea of

independence. We might look at this as a “conspiracy” between the child and parent which prevents

them from moving towards a state of autonomy and encloses them in a state of family dependence.

Sigmund Freud – Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious Mind

“I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients under the influence
of an older friend and by my own efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious and psychic
life the role of instinctual urges and grew into a new science psychoanalysis. A part of psychology and a new
treatment for the neurosis. I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck People did not believe in my facts and
thought my theories unsavory Resistance was strong and unrelenting in the end I succeeded in inquiring pupils and
building it up in international psychoanalytic Association But the struggle is not over”

[http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/sigmund_freud_speaks_the_only_known_recording_of_his_voice_1938.html] On

December 7, 1938, a BBC radio interviewing Freud, age 81, at his deathbed suffering from incurable jaw cancer
Before Freud, he wasn’t the only one thinking this way. (Unconscious Mind, 2016) The first record of it

was in Ayurvedic medicine of the Hindu tradition along with 16th century literature; Shakespeare. In

Western philosophy; Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche pre-dated and strongly influenced Freud in

his thought. As much as people thought of the mind, it was thought of in philosophical terms. The mind

was the part of you that you're aware of. (Unconscious Mind, 2016) Descartes said “Cogito Ergo Sum”. [I

think therefore I am] (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2016). It seems self-evident that you're

aware of your own mind, but that was what Freud questioned.

First of all, the idea that you are a singular thing is a questionable idea to begin with. The idea that the

mind is of a uniform construction is also refutable. You can be placed into subcomponents which sets

the aforementioned propositions to question. The idea that your anger or your sexual desire could be an

autonomous part of your personality could in some sense overtake and control you. That's a classic

Freudian idea; people are made of sub personalities which are autonomous and living.

The unconscious is an active component of personality, one not accessible to voluntary recall. You can

dream things that you don't know because one of the things you might think is that your dreams watch

you act and they watch other people act and then they make a little drama out of that and that drama

has information in it but you don't know what that is in that you can't describe it.

It's analogous to the Piagetian idea. (Tanos, 2016) (Hummel & Huitt, 2003) Kids can play a game and you

can take them away from the game and then they won't know how to describe the rules even though

they can play the game. That's encoded behavior which has preset information in it (Unconscious Mind,

2016). You're not consciously aware of this, but you can be made aware of it. This might be

accomplished when the meaning of a dream or fantasy becomes apparent. That is our ability to think in

some ways which can be traced back to Freud.

Freud concentrated mostly on psychopathology of sexual and aggressive impulses (Gerber, 2019) I don't

think that there's any mystery in why aggressive impulses might be hard to integrate into the personality

and might stay repressed. I think in different times in society some things are allowed to surface, and

others are not as much. So back in Freud’s time, repression of sexuality and aggression was particularly

likely due to the incidence of sexually transmitted disease. It was a world ruled by man in which women

were second. Political rights for women didn’t exist, the separation of the genders was severe.

One of the things to consider is that there are many different kinds of unconscious. Functions of the

unconscious had been described. The unconscious stores memories often inaccessible to conscious

recall. You know that you remember your past, but you don't remember every waking moment.

You can imagine that memories are represented somehow. Neurologically maybe, even though the

neurological structure isn't exactly a representation of consciousness. The unconscious from a

conceptual perspective is the area where your memories are selectively accessible to you. That may lead

you to conclude that there are memories that you can’t voluntarily access. One reason is

straightforward which might be that you forget. The other might be that they are so painful that you

don’t want them to resurface. You will engage in “Freudian” repression to keep them from your

conscious. It’s understandable why one engages in repression of painful memories. Why would you

recall painful memories if they aren’t of any functional use?

If I provide someone with meaningful advice, that might mean that they would act differently depending

on how meaningful. The way that you look at the world is an unconscious process. You don't know while

you're looking, how it is or why it is that you're looking at the world in that way. It would be too

complicated and you wouldn't be able to concentrate on what was actually going on. Your attention is

controlled by unconscious force and this is a Freudian idea.

You know if you're sitting down to study, the intent is to study but you know that all kinds of distractions

are going to enter the in the periphery of your imagination. You’ll be sitting, reading and your attention

will flicker. You can really get going if you're trying to avoid doing schoolwork and then you might think

well what is it in you that's trying to avoid it. You took the course and you told yourself to sit down. Why

don't you listen? That’s basically why I don’t have control over my thoughts. No more than I have

control over this laptop.

There's the memory function of the unconscious and there's the pleasure-seeking function. The

unconscious contains habits once voluntary now are autonomous and dissociated parts of the

personality which may lead a parasitic existence. What you've done is practice certain habits, whatever

they might be and you want those things to under control. Often when people speak, their use of the

word like is noticeable. You build that machine right into you. It's neurologically wired and it's not under

conscious control. Anything you practice becomes part of you and that's another element of the

unconscious.

Totem and Taboo

RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN THE PSYCHIC LIVES OF SAVAGES AND NEUROTICS

Totemism
1: Belief in kinship with or a mystical relationship between a group or an individual and a
totem.
2: A system of social organization based on totemic affiliations.

Within the essays, Freud explores the presence of ‘incest’ in his modern society. Further, the exploration

is continued in its connection spiritual ceremony and belief. The spiritual and religious in relation to

totemism was defined as a symbol of “peculiar relation” to a clan/tribe in the form of an animal or plant.

“The Totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense.” (Freud, p.3)
With time, a father figure “controlled” the women and their children. This resulted in the sons of the

family, overthrowing him, killing and eating him after. In Freud’s theories of instinctual drives, Eros and

Thanatos; the sons guilt and instinctual drive to “mate with each other” led to the institution of law in

the clan. (Gerber, 2019) This was the origin to the incest taboo.

The totem, a symbol, was an animal - representation of the entire clan. This representation served as a

two-way mirror, their ‘wrongdoing’ staring them back. The guilt served a formation and surfacing of a

morality and judiciary. The judiciary being the totality of the clan also as judge, jury and executioner. If

one transgressed against the clan, he was excommunicated. The primitive nature of the tribe leaves the

quality of virtue open to interpretation in relation to all of the principles and ‘laws’ they had set in

motion. The preface made that Freud based his observations on previous anthropological study.

Briefly touching on Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts. Freud attempted to reconcile

religion and spirituality in relation to neurotic patients. I personally ascribe this to his Swiss counterpart,

Carl Jung. Who overshadowed Freud in the psychoanalytic world. Jung as opposed to Freud, did not

psychopathologize his patients. Freud in a general sense labelled his patients as the one with the issue;

the neurosis. (Neurosis – “the sickness of the mind”) Jung on the other hand was a proponent of the

unconscious and likened a “shared” sickness of the mind to both him and his patients. His model of the

psyche was more adequately explored. His categorization of the unconscious in stages was seemingly

more accurate than of Freud. As Freud took the neurotic by pathologizing and attributing sickness to a

traumatic origin.

The reason Totem and Taboo remains controversial as well as underrated; it brought rise to the tenets

of psychoanalysis and Freudian thought. It may be said that the unconscious mind traces its roots to the

origin of humankind. Freud aimed to extrapolate the meaning of the human condition in regards to the

neurotic. I strongly believe Freud was confident in the idea that there was much to be learned through
observation. In his anthropological study of the primitive people recluse from modern society, the tribes

remained in tune with their psa. The imperative, Eros and Thanatos; could be most apparent since they

were psychologically stagnate. They simply had no privilege of modern invention, knowledge, and books

to further develop their community.

Bibliography

References
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drives-50a82a11a389

Hummel, J., & Huitt, W. (2003). Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development. Retrieved from EdPsych:
http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cognition/piaget.html

Paris, J. (2017). Is Psychoanalysis Still Relevant to Psychiatry? The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 308-
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Tanos, E. (2016, June 26). Jean Piaget - Child Psychology. Retrieved from Nordic Secret:
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2016, February 12). Cogito Ergo Sum. Retrieved from
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Whitbourne, S. K. (2012, May 15). Freud’s Not Dead; He’s Just Really Hard to Find. Retrieved from
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