Final Blog Post: Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, a neurologist in the early 1900s, is mainly known for being the founder of psychoanalysis; “a system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association” (Oxford Dictionary).





Freud was born in Frieberg, a Morovian town in the Austrian empire. Around age 9 his family settled down in Vienna, where Freud excelled in honors classes at a prominent high school. Freud graduated from the University of Vienna and in March, 1881, and he left school with an MD. Freud began practicing medicine in 1882, where he began his medical career at the Vienna General Hospital. Working in the psychiatric clinic and as a locum in an asylum at the hospital eventually led to his interest and desire to practice more clinical work (“Early Career and Marriage” 2020).

Around the 1890’s Freud’s idea of psychoanalysis began receiving more attention. Freud began to develop and expand this idea while he worked to find successful treatments for patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. Freud began working with his teacher, Dr. Breuer, to help a patient by the name of Anna O, who was suffering from hysteria; “a psychological disorder whose symptoms include conversion of psychological stress into physical symptoms, selective amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior. The term has a controversial history as it was formerly regarded as a disease specific to women" (McLeod).












Dr. Breur believed that the hysteria was a result of traumatic events in Anna O’s childhood that had since been repressed into an unconscious part of her brain. Part of her treatment included discussing anxiety and fear that developed while Anna O was a child taking care of her sick father. By making her suppressed thoughts a part of her conscious mind, symptoms of her hysteria began to disappear (McLeod). 

This case was the turning point in Freud’s career. Freud began to imagine the mind as a structure that holds three levels. According to Freud, the surface of the mind is our consciousness, “thoughts that are the focus of our attention now.” Below that is our precociousness, “all which can be retrieved from memory”. The third layer was one that Freud regarded as the most significant: the unconscious mind. Freud explained that this layer consisted of “processes that are the real cause of most behavior” (McLeod). Freud believed that by analyzing all of these thoughts, people could learn more about the things that trouble them, why they may be happening, and adjust accordingly.


Freud also felt very strongly about the idea that our childhoods play a huge role in our personality in our adult lives. Anna O was the perfect example of this. She repressed the anxiety she felt from a traumatic childhood experience into her unconscious mind, causing her to suffer from a serious mental illness. Freud explains this process of mind molding with the pleasure principle; the idea that we are inclined towards easy physical and emotional awards (The School of Life, 2014).


Freud believed that the pleasure principle could lead to great attributes in adult life, but felt that it could be dangerous if it wasn’t implemented the right way. Freud explained that children are born with a libido, and go through three pleasure seeking phases while developing: oral, anal, and phallic (McLeod).


The oral phase deals with a person’s feelings around eating. “Chidren can develop neuroses based on how their parents deal with the oral phase. They may find pleasure in refusing food, or turn to food to calm themselves down, or hate the idea of depending on anyone else for food” (The School of Life, 2014).

The anal phase is the child’s withholding or expelling of feces. A too harsh or too relaxed stance on potty training in childhood could lead to “obsessiveness, tidiness, mean-ness, untidiness, generosity” (McLeod).

The phallic phase is associated with masturbation, in which Freud believes an “abnormal family set up” can lead to “vanity, self obsession, sexual anxiety, inadequacy, inferiority” (McLeod).


Freud explained that good mental health came from successfully completing each stage. But if a stage wasn’t completed, he believed that a person would become fixated and stuck in a particular stage in adult life.


Lastly, Freud developed the idea that dreams were clues that give us a glimpse into how our unconscious mind functions. Freud believed that dreams were wish-fulfillment, and that dreamwork transformed a “forbidden wish into a non-threatening form, thus reducing anxiety and allowing us to continue sleeping” (McLeod). According to Freud, dreams are the perfect environment for the lowering of an ego’s defenses, allowing some repressed thoughts to come into awareness.


In addition to psychoanalysis, Freud is known for terms like Freudian slip, anal personality, libido, dential, repression, cathartic, and neurotic. A Freudian slip is basically a slip of the tongue that actually reveals a subconscious feeling. Freud died from a drug overdose at the age of 83, but his ideas have lived on by making a positive impact on how society deals with and treats mental illnesses.












Section: 005




Links to Citations and Videos:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQaqXK7z9LM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73hdaSTzWg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud




Comments on other presentations:

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2020/05/voltaire.html

https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2020/05/final-report-blog-post-modern-day.html?showComment=1588728573397#c6344360877857410921





Not sure about runs before spring break, gonna guess about 5



After spring break: 4