Post Three

Besides Dr. Phil, Sigmund Freud is probably the most famous person to have ever worked in the field of psychology. He is known as the father of psychoanalysis, a practice that aims to release repressed emotions and experiences, i.e. make the unconscious conscious. Until Freud, it was almost universally agreed upon that mental illnesses were “organic,” meaning that psychiatrists believed they were due to some kind of deterioration or disease of the brain.  The idea that mental disorders could be caused by psychological reasons and not just by physical diseases in the brain had never been given much credence.

Freud was born in Austria in 1856 and trained as a neurologist at the University of Vienna. He set up a private practice in 1886, initially using hypnosis in his clinical work. However, he eventually began to use what he called “free association,” where he would encourage patients to talk freely about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. Freud thought that his patients’ dreams could be analyzed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of what he called repression, which underlay symptom formation. By 1896, Freud was using the term “psychoanalysis” to refer to his new clinical method and the theories that were based upon it.

Freud’s work is responsible for many terms we hear everyday, such as “Freudian slip,” “repression,” and “denial,” but he also made contributions to the field of psychology that are not as generally known, and even theories that are completely disproven. For instance, his theory of penis envy, the idea that girls between the ages of 3-5 distance themselves from their mothers and cling to their fathers because they “hold their mother responsible for their lack of a penis and do not forgive her for their being thus put at a disadvantage,” is now rightly viewed as ridiculous and offensively sexist. This article delves a little deeper into his perspective on women.

Freudian theory and practice have been challenged by empirical findings over the years. Some psychiatrists continue to train in, and practice, traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, but most psychiatrists today reject the majority of Freud's work and see it as being unsupported by evidence and best used for inspiration or historical study, if at all. Although Freud developed his method for the treatment of neuroses, some people today seek out psychoanalysis not as a cure for an illness, but as part of a process of self-discovery. Although much of his work did not stand up to the test of time, his ideas have become the basis for theories being used today. If it had not of been for Freud shifting the focus of psychiatry from physical ailments, the field of psychology may not have progressed to where it is today.