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Sigmund Freud: The Mind in Conflict
Sigmund Freud: The Mind in Conflict
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The Unconscious Mind
• Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an
unconscious aspect of cognition
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Hypnosis
• French neurologist
Jean Martin Charcot
• Initial work in Multiple
Sclerosis and Parkinson’s
Disease
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Blanche Wittman
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The Hysteria Epidemic
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Misogyny or History?
• Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical
literature of the 19th century.
• A physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of
all women suffered from hysteria
• One physician cataloged seventy-five pages of
possible symptoms of hysteria and called the
list incomplete
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Josef Breur
• an Austrian physician whose
works laid the foundation of
psychoanalysis.
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The Case of Anna O
Joseph Breur told Freud of the incident in 1882:
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Treating Anna
• Whilst in a trance, Anna would mutter to herself
• On one occasion, Breur repeated some of these words to
her
• Anna joined in and told the story in which these words
occurred
• She then woke up much calmer
• Breur found that in time as Anna O repeated a story, so a
symptom disappeared
• Each symptom could be traced back to a traumatic event
• This event remained in the ‘unconscious mind’
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Studies on Hysteria 1895
• Book was co-authored by Breur and Freud
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Dynamic Theory of the Mind
• Freud begins to develop a model of the mind
which stresses conflict
• An event is experienced – ‘incompatible idea’
• The person tries to forget the idea
• The idea is redirected into a hysterical symptom
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Illness is Ideogenic
• In the main, hysteria had been regarded as a
physical condition
• The Greeks characterised it as a ‘floating
womb’
• In contrast, Freud saw the origins of hysteria
are ideogenic
• Derived from experiences and ideas
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Libido
Freud defined libido as the instinct energy or force,
contained in the id
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Freud’s Drawing of the Mind
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Ice Berg
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Pleasure Principle versus
Reality Principle
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Censorship
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Evading the Policeman
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Dreams
• During sleep the mind’s defenses are lower
• Incompatible ideas can ‘slip’ through
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Interpretation of Dreams
• “Dreams are the royal
road to a knowledge of
the unconscious
activities of the mind"
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According to
Freud, dreams
were disguised,
hallucinatory
fulfilment of
repressed
wishes.
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if expressed in
undisguised
form, would so
disturb the
dreamer that he
would wake up.
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Dream Disguise
• Condensation
one dream object stands for several associations
and ideas
• Displacement
a dream object's emotional significance is
separated from its real object or content
• Visualization
a thought is translated to visual images.
• Symbolism
• a symbol replaces an action, person, or idea
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The Case of Dora
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Dora’s Dream 1
• The house was on fire. My father was
standing beside my bed and woke me up. I
dressed quickly. Mother wanted to stop and
save her jewel-case; but Father said: 'I refuse
to let myself and my two children be burnt for
the sake of your jewel-case.' We hurried
downstairs, and as soon as I was outside I
woke up.
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Interpretation?
• The house on fire?
• Father’s refusal?
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Freud’s Interpretation
• Freud stressed that Dora was actually
attracted to Herr K
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Symbolization, in
which some neutral
object stands for some
aspect of sexual life
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‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’
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Why I love Freud?
• Psychoanalytical readings allow a text to be
seen as much more complex than surface
meaning
• The act of interpretation is therefore ‘opens
up the text’
• Readers look for latent content as much as
manifest content
• It means that the writer is no longer in control
of their meanings
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BUT….Reductive Interpretations
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Philosophical Implications
• Epistemological challenges
• Nature of consciousness
• Primacy of reason
• The Enlightenment Project
• The Socratic Inheritance
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René Descartes
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Rationalism
• In politics, rationalism since the Enlightenment
historically emphasized a "politics of reason"
centred upon rational choice
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Socratic Inheritance
The Socratic ideal of ‘know[ing] thyself
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A Much Criticised Figure
• Pseudo-scientist
• Misogynist
• Fantasist
• Misrepresented cases
• Ignored physiological elements of mental
illness
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Legacy
• In 1939 W. H. Auden wrote, in a poem
dedicated to him:
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