The Sexual Revolution: Sigmund Freud

During the “Jazz Age,” the most shocking thing to happen was a sexual revolution among
younger people, especially those attending colleges. The increasingly open approval of sex can be partly
thanked due to the influence of Sigmund Freud. He was the Austrian found of modern psychoanalysis.
While sex might be considered by some to be “scandalous” behavior and all inhibitions about sex were
bad, Sigmund Freud paved the way for men and women to see sexual freedom as healthy and not bad
because it is essential for mental health and all forms of sexual activity are good. (Tindell, 2020)

Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg and was the son of a poor, nonreligious Jewish wool
merchant. By the mid-1890s, Freud became convinced that problems in sexual development were the
dominant factor in neuroses, a mild mental illness. He stressed that early sexual desires, repressed into
the unconscious, play into the development of the personality. He developed a technique of reviewing
dreams to extract these childhood memories from the unconscious mind. In 1897, he began the
pioneering analysis of himself by utilizing dream analysis (Cook,2020).

Freud’s idea would not go without controversy and was met with a lot of resistance. He was
considered reckless and unethical. He would lie, manipulate, invented his own data, made assertions
with no proven evidence, and would use other scientists’ ideas as his own. He would rely his data on
only a few questionable clinical studies to justify his insistence that the mind is baffling in its opaqueness
and unpredictability, mysteriously “conflicted” by often unconscious efforts to repress powerful
impulses and sexual desires. Despite everything, Freud created a new vocabulary for mapping the inner
lives of people, explaining the dynamics of someone’s ego, the id, and later the superego after 1914. He
was not your typical traditional Christian and dismissed all forms of religion and said it was irrational
responses to infantile fears and father worship. “Science is no illusion” Freud stressed, and that religion
was just a mere illusion and nothing more. He saw psychoanalysis as the modern religion because it
provided the answers questions that religion had claimed authority over: How should we live? Why does
happiness elude us? What really matters? (Tindell, 2020)

Women and men had the same sexual energy, Freud would argue. He believes that human
behavior, no matter what gender, is driven by an array of intense sexual desires, repressed memories,
and pent up frustration and aggression. These natural conflicts would cause unhappiness because
humans always want more than they can attain. It did not take long for people to take notice and
penetrate society at large. By 1909, he was even surprised to find that he was famous and there were
books, movies, and plays that included references to his ideas and phrases. Traditionalist scoffed at the
scandalous behavior of the rebellious young women and put blame on women for tempting men more
than they do.

Psychoanalysis, which Sigmund Freud is known for, is 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. It soon became the world’s most
celebrated, yet controversial, the technique for helping troubled people come to terms with the psychic
demons haunting them by using “talk therapy.” “Talk therapy” is getting patients to tell the story of their
lives, inner demons, and repressed fears and urges. There were over 500 psychoanalysts in just New
York City alone in 1916.

In conclusion, Sigmund Freud created a scientific justification for young Americans for going
against social norms and indulging in sex. He opened the door for sexual freedom and taking the shame
out of it. I think his work was important and is still relevant today when it comes to enjoying sex. Even
though some of his theories were overdone, he claimed that sexual pleasure was essential for emotional
health, that all forms of sexual activity were good, and all inhibitions about sex were bad.

Resources

Cook, B. A. (2020). Sigmund Freud. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia.

Jacobs, Michael. Sigmund Freud. London: SAGE Publications, 2003. Accessed April 15, 2020.
ProQuest Ebook Central.

Thurschwell, P. (2009). Sigmund Freud: Vol. 2nd ed. Routledge.

Tindall, George B. America: a Narrative History. v. 2. 2010.