Freud’s broad education, including knowledge of languages, literature, philosophy, and mythology, was particularly important in the development of his psychoanalytical theory.
The pivotal point in Freud’s career was his visit to Paris, where he attended the lectures of Martin Charcot. Charcot’s at Salpetriere demonstration that the root cause of hysteria was purely of psychic origin—and his use of hypnosis—had a lasting influence on Freud’s later research.
Freud’s Use of Hypnosis
Freud made the discovery that people under hypnosis are not only susceptible to influence in their voluntary actions but also capable of recalling past experiences they could no longer remember when awake.
He also observed that neurotic symptoms temporarily disappeared when a person, under the influence of hypnosis, was able to recall and recount distressing past experiences. From this, a cornerstone of psychoanalysis emerged: the neutralization of distressing and repressed experiences through their conscious realization.
However, Freud noticed that neurotic symptoms reappeared after some time. He understood that hypnosis was not effective in resolving the fundamental conflict. Therefore, he soon abandoned hypnosis in favor of psychoanalysis.
Work with Josef Breuer
After Ernst Brücke, the second most important figure in Freud’s biography became Josef Breuer. Freud initially treated the “nervous ailments” of his patients with hypnosis. From 1889 he worked more closely with his longtime friend, the Viennese doctor Josef Breuer.
The first and most important case in the history of psychoanalysis, Berta Pappenheim, who later became known under the pseudonym Anna O. It was Josef Breuer who treated the young girl and reported to Freud about the treatment. From 1880 to 1881, Breuer treated her “hysterical” symptoms, which were headaches, paralysis, dissociation, and states of anxiety.
Breuer quickly recognized psychological causes behind these signs and soon developed the so-called “talking cure.” Actually, it was the young girl who, in the hypnotic state, called the therapy “the talking cure.” At the same time, Anna O. reported on her symptoms, when and how they had occurred, and was thus able to slowly break down the pent-up feelings she had relived again.
From this, Freud and Breuer concluded that talking has a cathartic—i.e., cleansing—effect, which helps reduce neurotic symptoms.
Development of Psychoanalysis
After giving up on hypnosis, Freud developed psychoanalysis based on his own method of interaction with patients, which he called “free association.” During free association, patients spontaneously expressed their thoughts and feelings and talked about their dreams. Later, he analyzed the patients’ “material” from their free association and their dreams. Freud discovered such psychological phenomena as repression, transference, countertransference, and psychological defense mechanisms.
Freud’s patients, mostly women, belonged to the Viennese upper class. This part of society adhered to the rigid morality of the 19th century, called the “Victorian era.”
The reason that the symptoms of hysteria appeared, especially in young girls and women, was the conservative nature of the society, which prohibited any expression of erotic desires, especially in higher-class women. This led to internal conflicts between societal values and desires. Such inner tension was the triggering factor for the onset of neurosis in a large percentage of upper-class females.
Freud was a neurologist and possessed little knowledge in the field of psychiatry. His psychiatric experience was limited to a few weeks of training in one of the psychiatric hospitals in Vienna. Based on the observation of his upper-class female clients, Freud generalized and put sexuality as the cornerstone of the neurotic conflict and sexuality as the only origin of neurosis.
Fundamental Assumptions of Psychoanalysis
A basic assumption of psychoanalysis—and depth psychology as a whole—is the existence of the unconscious. Individuals are almost entirely unaware of the unconscious, yet it largely influences or even determines people’s actions. This idea of the unconscious has far-reaching effects, challenging the rationalist belief that humans act rationally by making conscious decisions. For Freud, the impossibility of truly free action was evident.
The second fundamental hypothesis states that psychological processes are essentially causally determined, meaning they are subject to the law of cause and effect. Freud was raised in the materialistic spirit of the 19th century and remained largely faithful to that mode of thinking throughout his life. He embraced the typically materialistic reductionism that reduces the mental to the psychological and the psychological to the organic. Consequently, life, the psychological, and the mental are ultimately mere outflows of matter and cannot exist independently of it. Moreover, the very idea that a human being could act freely is fundamentally at odds with this perspective. Within this framework, the notion of an individual soul—capable of surviving apart from the body after physical death—is inconceivable.
In contrary to Freud C.G. Jung’s psychology proposes a noncausal and nonmaterial nature of the psyche. However, it was and still is Freud’s psychology reflecting the causal dogma of today’s science.
Freuds Concept of Unconscious
Freud didn’t discover the “unconscious.” Psychologists and psychiatrists were aware of a deeper layer of psyche before Freud. However, Freud developed the first usable method of psychotherapy, a theory of the organization of the psyche, and created the psychoanalytical terms used until today.
The difference between consciousness and the unconscious is a key idea in psychoanalysis. The term “unconscious” actually has two meanings. On one hand, it refers to thoughts or images that are not currently in our awareness but could easily be recalled. On the other hand, it also refers to thoughts that a force keeps from entering our awareness. Freud calls the first kind the “preconscious.” Only the second kind—the dynamic unconscious, which is actively kept out of awareness—is what he means by the unconscious in psychoanalysis.
Timeless and Spaceless Notion of the Unconscious
Freud saw the unconscious as timeless and spaceless, with timelessness being its essential feature. By timelessness and spacelessness, he meant a state that has no temporal or spatial order. He based this thesis on his empirical findings from psychoanalytic experience. He noted that healing traumas is based on recognizing their root causes and addressing them, which enables healing. In the pattern of repetition of unconscious motifs, he observed that these elements are preserved in their original form, leading him to conclude that they are timeless and spaceless. However, this raises the question of how the timelessness of the past is possible.
Freud’s Topological Model of the Psyche
Originally, Freud asked where psychological processes take place and defined three locations: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. Consciousness is something everyone knows from personal experience; it refers to the awareness of one’s own existence.
Freud defined the preconscious as a “psychic space” containing material that is not currently conscious but can be brought into consciousness, such as memory, recollections, vocabulary, and learned skills. On the other side, he described the unconscious as a part of the psyche an individual doesn’t have any access to.
The Ego and the Id
According to Freud’s concept, the psyche is made up of different parts, or “instances.” He used a spatial model to explain the relationships between those parts.
In The Ego and the Id, he shows this idea with a drawing. The psychic individual develops from the Id under the influence of the external world, with the Ego forming superficially on top of it. For Freud, the Id is unconscious and is entirely driven by the pleasure principle. The Id includes contents and feelings that arise from the drives. It is the source of drive energy, the libido. The Id is also where repressed material is stored, meaning content and feelings that are kept from becoming conscious due to the Ego’s resistance.
The Ego contains two systems: perception-consciousness and the preconscious.