Essay Example on Freud's Impact: Shaping Psychology of Today

Introduction

Freud’s work through the influence of earlier psychologists such as Fechner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others helped shape the psychology of today. Freud, through his experiences, was able to develop theories that were good in explaining human behavior. His ideas had a significant impact on psychology that an entire school of thought was established, but was later replaced by another school of behaviorism theories. But his work on psychoanalysis was well received in psychology and had a lasting impact on psychology and psychotherapy. Freud's works include a wide range of subjects that involved the study of women, sexual intercourse, dreams, religion, and culture. His works are survived through the various books he wrote. Some of his notable books included the psychopathology of daily life, and the future as an illusion, civilization and its discontent, the interpretation of dreams and totem and taboo (Jay, 2020).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Though most of Sigmund Freud’s work is considered non-scientific in the modern world, his work had a significant impact on culture and psychology. He influenced some of the renowned psychologists today such as Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Anna Freud, and Otto, among many others (Bradford, 2016)

Interpretation of Dreams

Nietzsche proposed that the concept of the dream was complicated, involving symbolism that created a phenomenon of illusion accompanied by the cathartic process, which result in healthy living. Freud believed that dreams played an important part in the unconscious mind and can be used to explain how the brain works. He found that through dreams, the ego's defenses are dropped, and the repressed events and information can resurface through awareness, although in a partial manner. The basis of this theory was formed from a personal dream Freud had on one of his patients. His patient wasn't responding well to treatment as Freud had hoped, and this made Freud feel guilty and blame himself for the failure of the procedure. Freud had a dream that he had met with his patient at a party, and after examination, he found out that another doctor gave Irma a chemical drug and that the doctor's dirty syringe caused Irma's illness. Freud interpreted the dream as a way of trying to exonerate himself from the blame and guilt he felt by pinning the blame. This experience led to the conclusion that dreams perform the function of fulfilling one's wishes (Crenson, 1999).

The process where an individual wish is translated into what the person remembers is referred to as dreamwork. The resolve of dreamwork is to convert the terrifying desire into a reassuring form that enables an individual to lower his anxiety and sleep soundly (McLeod, 2018).

Psychoanalysis

Though Sigmund Freud is regarded as the founding father of psychoanalysis, a technique that is used up to date in the treatment of patients with mental illness Jack Breuer, a colleague and a teacher to Sigmund Freud, was the one who experimented on a patient named Bertha Pappenheim. The patient referred to as Anna O is widely considered a patient of Freud but in a real sense, she never actually met Freud, Breuer used to share information about the patient with Freud (Cherry, 2020).

Through his partnership with his teacher Joseph Breuer, they studied a patient's symptoms by the name Anna O. They later published a book analyzes on Hysteria, which formed the emergence of the talk therapy technique as a treatment method. Anna was grieving from Hysteria, an ailment in which a person suffers psychical symptoms without a clear cut physical attribute to the signs. Anna's symptoms included hallucinations, blurred vision, and partial paralysis. Anna was treated by being helped to remember some of her forgotten traumatic events. By talking about her experiences, she felt some relief, hence sometimes referred to as the 'talking cure.’ Freud concluded that Hysteria's condition was a result of her childhood sexual abuse, a conclusion that conflicted with his partner, resulting in falling off of the two (Cherry, 2020).

Unconscious Mind

Much of the works of Sigmund Freud on the unconscious mind is heavily influenced by the previous works of Nietzsche on the unconscious mind. Their analogies strike similar concepts, although the works of Nietzsche had been published years before Freud. Some of the ideas proposed by Nietzsche include the notion of suppression where unacceptable thoughts and desires are pushed into the unconscious mind to enable an individual to lead a more comfortable life (Chapman & Chapman-Santana, 1995).

In his study of the mind, Freud used the iceberg's comparison to define the three ranks of the brain, i.e., the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious. The iceberg analogy was demonstrated through a drawn image of the iceberg representing the mind; the analogy purpose was to try and explain the structure and how the brain works. On the tip of the ice is the consciousness that involves the thoughts that are of concern at the moment. The subconscious includes all the ideas and information that we are aware of and those that can be recovered.

The final and most substantial part of the mind is the unconscious mind, as it entails most of the processes that explain our behaviors. The unconscious involves the thoughts that we are not aware of, and information cannot be retrieved from the memory. Freud found out that through the process of repression, most individuals' desires and past events that are either painful or too terrifying to be accepted are hidden and locked away in the unconscious mind. This concept of suppression strikes a similar resemblance to the one proposed by Nietzsche, as seen earlier. The key supposition of Freud's theory is that the unconscious mind controls individuals' behavior, and the purpose of psychoanalysis is to unravel the hidden fears and desires into the conscious mind (McLeod, 2018).

Death Instinct

In his theory of the death instinct, Freud suggested that every human being has an unconscious wish for death. That is explained by why individuals engage in self-destructive behaviors. This theory has been greatly influenced by the works of Fechner on his description of complete stability and located repetition of compulsion as a pleasure- unpleasure principle approach. This pleasure –Freud adopted unpleasure principle in his 'economic function' theory in which he describes how mental forces are controlled through the pleasure-unpleasure principle, which is virtually identical to Fechner's work. In his quest to find simple theoretical explanations for the everyday life of work, death, and love, Freud significantly borrowed from Fechner. Thus he even acknowledged him by referring to him as the great Fechner (Leri, 2020).

The Psyche

The theory of three levels of the mind was further structurally developed by Freud, entailing what he termed the 'psychic apparatus.' The psychic apparatus comprised of not the physical but hypothetical mental functions of the brain; it involved the id, ego, and superego that are considered to govern the human personality.

There exists a formidable resemblance between Schopenhauer's concept of view of will and Freud's concept of id. Both Schopenhauer and Freud were against the highly regarding intellect and reasoning in man. According to Freud, the Id is the most basic of the human personality that involves simple urges. The ego mainly deals with reality and ensure that the calls demanded by the id are met. The superego controls the morals and values acquired from the society and environment in which one (Gupta, 1975).

Psychosexual Development

Perhaps the most controversial works of Freud’s theory is on psychosexual development and the Oedipus complex. Freud was brought up in a society where women were forced to suppress their sensual desires, which led to most women developing a neurotic illness. To investigate these illnesses, Freud sought to retrace the voluptuous past of his patients and how they handled their emotions involving their desires, experiences in hate and love, fear, shame, and guilt. Freud's theory of sexuality is heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, in which Schopenhauer proposed the concept of children having different desires and urges to varying stages of childhood (Young & Brook, 1994).

Sigmund put forward that children were born with sexual urge and desire in what he termed libido. He proposed that each stage of childhood and each child had sought pleasure from different items. The psychosexual stages include oral, phallic, anal, genital, and latent stages. Freud proposed that mental abnormality can occur in an individual if he or she fails to complete each step. For a person to become psychologically healthy, he/she should be able to complete each stage successfully failure to which may lead to a person fixated at only one step. For example, at the oral level, when a child is engaged in forceful feeding or deprivation at a later stage, he/she may be involved in oral activities such as smoking.

Mechanisms of Defense

Freud suggested that when the ego is threatened, it uses different defense mechanisms to protect itself. The defense mechanism involves processes such as denial, repression, and regression, among many others. The ego might defend itself from many issues, such as painful truth or unacceptable behavior. The concept of the defense mechanism is similar to the works done by Nietzsche in which he proposed the idea that the body protects itself by expressing unconscious hostile feelings onto others viewed as oppressors of the individual (Chapman & Chapman-Santana, 1995).

References

Bradford, A. (2016). Sigmund Freud: Life, Work & Theories. LiveScience.

Chapman, A. H., & Chapman-Santana, M. (1995, February). The Influence of Nietzsche on Freud's Ideas. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 166(2), pp. 251-253.

Cherry, K. (2019). The Life, Work, and Theories of Sigmund Freud. Very well mind.

Cherry, K. (2020, March 27). An Overview of Sigmund Freud's Theories. Retrieved from Verywell mind: http://www.verywellmind.com

Crenson, M. (1999). Freud's Theory of Dreams Evolves. New York: LA Times.

Gupta, R. K. (1975, Oct-Dec). Freud and Schopenhauer. Journal of the History of Ideas, 36(4), 721-728.

Jay, M. E. (2020). Sigmund Freud: Austrian Psychoanalyst. Britannica.

Leri, D. (2020). The Risk Of Serious Enquiry- Part Three: Fechner Makes a Difference. Semiophysics. Retrieved from http://www.miophysics.com

McLeod, S. A. (2018, April 05). What are the most interesting ideas of Sigmund Freud? Retrieved from Simply Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/sigmund-Freud.html

Young, C., & Brook, A. (1994, February 01). Schopenhauer and Freud. The International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 75(Pt 1), 101-118