This is a thinker who helps us understand

why our lives and relationships are full of

so much confusion and pain. He tells us why

life is hard, and how to cope.

His own life incurred a lot of anxiety. Sigmund

Schlomo Freud was born to a middle-class Jewish

family in 1856.

His professional life was not an immediate

success. As a medical student, he dissected

hundreds of eels in an unsuccessful attempt

to locate their reproductive organs.

He promoted cocaine as a medical drug, but

it turned out to be a dangerous and addictive idea.

A few years later he founded the discipline

that would ultimately make his name.

A new psychological medicine he called

PSYCHOANALYSIS

The landmark study was his 1900 book The Interpretation

of Dreams.

Many others followed.

Despite his success, he was often unhappy.

During some particularly strenuous research

he recorded, “The chief patient I am preoccupied

with is myself…” He was convinced he would

die between 61 and 62 and had great phobias

about those numbers. (Although he actually

died much later, at age 83.)

Perhaps because of his frustrations, Freud

achieved a series of deep insights into the

sources of human unhappiness.

He proposed that we are all driven by the:

Pleasure Principle

which inclines us towards easy physical and

emotional rewards:

and away from unpleasant things like drudgery

and discipline. As infants we are guided more

or less solely according to the pleasure principle,

Freud argued.

But it will, if adhered to without constraints,

lead us to dangerous reckless things:

like never doing any work

eating too much

or, most notoriously, sleeping with members

of own family.

We need to adjust to what Freud called

THE REALITY PRINCIPLE

Though we all have to bow to this reality

principle, Freud believed that there were

better and worse kinds of adaptations. He

called the troublesome ones

NEUROSES

Neuroses are the result of faulty negotiations

with –or in Freud’s language, repression

of–the pleasure principle.

Freud described a conflict between three parts

of our minds: the

ID

driven by the pleasure principle, and the

THE SUPEREGO

driven by a desire to follow the rules and

do the right thing according to society.

and the

EGO

which has to somehow accomodate the two.

To understand more about these dynamics, Freud

urged us to think back to the origins of our

neuroses in childhood.

As we grow up, we go through what Freud termed:

THE ORAL PHASE

where we deal with all the feelings around

ingestion and eating.

If our parents aren’t careful we might pick

up all kinds of neuroses here: we might take

pleasure in refusing food, or turn to food

to calm ourselves down, or hate the idea of

depending on anyone else for food.

Then comes

THE ANAL PHASE

which is closely aligned with what we now

call “potty-training”.

During this period, our parents tell us what

to do--and when to go. At this phase we begin

to learn about testing the limits of authority.

Again, if things go wrong, if we don’t feel

authority is benign enough, we might, for

example, choose to withhold out of defiance.

Then, as adults, we might become “anally

retentive”; in other words, not able to

give or surrender.

Next comes:

THE PHALLIC PHASE

which goes until about age 6. Freud shocked

his contemporaries by insisting that little

children have sexual feelings. Moreover, in

the phallic phase children direct their sexual

impulses towards their parents, the most immediately

available and gratifying people around.

Freud famously described what he called

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

Where we are unconsciously predisposed towards

“being in love with the one parent and hating the other.”

What is complex is that no matter how much

our parents love us, they cannot extend this

to sexual life and will always have another

life with a partner. This makes our young

selves feel dangerously jealous and angry

– and also ashamed and guilty about this
anger. The complex provides a huge amount
of internalised worry for a small child.

Ultimately, most of us experience some form of confusion around our parents

that later ties into our ideas of love.

Mum and dad may both give us love, but they

often mix it in with disturbed behaviour.

Yet because we love them, we remain loyal

to them and also to their bizarre, destructive

patterns. For example, if our mother is cold,

we will be apt nevertheless to long for her.

And as a result, however, we may be prone

to always associate love with a certain distance.

Naturally, the result is very difficult adult

relationships. Often the kind of love we’ve

learned from mum and dad means we can’t

fuse sex and love because the people we learnt

about love from are also those we were blocked

from having sex with. We might find that the

more in love with someone we are, the harder

it becomes to make love to them. This can

reach a pitch of crisis after a few years

of marriage and some kids.

Freud compared the issues we so often have

with intimacy to hedgehogs in the winter:

they need to cuddle for warmth, but they also

can’t come too close because they’re prickly.

There’s no easy solution. Freud says we

can’t make ourselves fully rational, and

we can’t change society, either. In his

1930 book Civilisation and its Discontents,

Freud wrote that society provides us with

many things, but it does this by imposing

heavy dictates on us: insisting that we sleep

with only a few (usually one) other, imposing

the incest taboo, requiring us to put off

our immediate desires, demanding that we follow

authority and work to make money. Societies

themselves are neurotic–that is how they

function - and it’s why there are constant

wars and other troubles.

Freud attempted to invent a treatment for

our many neuroses: psychoanalysis. He thought

that with a little proper analysis, people

could uncover what ails them and better adjust

to the difficulties of reality.

In his sessions he analysed a number of key

things.

He looked at people’s dreams, which he saw as expressions of

WISH FULFILLMENTS

He also looked at

PARAPRAXES

or slips of the tongue.

We now call these revealing mistakes

FREUDIAN SLIPS

Like when we write ‘thigh’ when we wanted

to write ‘though’.

He also liked to think about jokes. He believed

that jokes often help us make fun of something

symbolic like death or marriage, and thus

relieve some of our anxiety about these topics.

There’s a temptation to say Freud just made

everything up, and life isn’t quite so hard

as he makes it out to be. But then one morning

we find ourselves filled with inexplicable

anger towards our partner, or running high

with unrelenting anxiety on the train to work,

and we’re reminded all over again just how

elusive, difficult, and Freudian

our mental workings actually are.

We could still reject his work, of course.

But as Freud said,

“No one who disdains the key will ever be able to unlock the door.”

We could all use a bit more of Freud’s ideas

to help us unpick ourselves.