What big idea is associated with Sigmund Freud?
Please forgive my snark, but at first glance, this question appears to be asking for the kinds of answers used to pass Psych 101 exams. You know, the kinds of answers which resemble over-cooked vegetables, in that they boil down a famous person’s life’s work to a few empty words or phrases. I could offer such an answer. But I long ago stopped believing these kinds of answers have any value. For one, they most times disrespect the efforts of a great woman or man. For another, they’re often wrong.
A better path?
Take the time to study the person’s life and times. If possible, use candid, family photos. The photo of Freud with his daughter, Anna, will do. The one in which he’s standing between his sons is another. Then, when you have a sense of who this person was as a human being, only then put yourself in his or her place. To do this, you’ll need to research, then imagine, how they responded to their profession’s criticisms and rejections.
Finally, frame of this with a thorough knowledge of what was being discovered in other professions during the course of their life. To me, only then have you earned the right to list, let alone critique, this person’s life’s work.
For instance, with Freud, consider the rapid changes going on in Europe regarding how science was evolving in his time. In Freud’s childhood, discovering new laws of nature was the rage, e.g. the Laws of Thermodynamics. Freud often wrote about his desire to discover similar laws which govern the mind, laws unencumbered by “the black tide of occultism.” This idea, psychophysics; that the same laws govern both physics and the mind, guided many famous people in their work, among them Einstein, Bohr, Fechner, and Freud.
Imagine aspiring to do that, to discover a Law of the mind? Not an influence, or a tendency, or a therapeutic technique. An actual law. During his lifetime, Freud discovered many. His daughter, Anna, expanded on many of these in her lifetime. Good luck finding a therapist who hasn’t been affected by these discoveries, regardless of how they may deny this.
Think I’m just being a Freud fanboy? Then consider this. The most common answers to this question usually involve either sexual desire or Id, Ego, Superego. Regarding the sex stuff, few people realize that the word sex in Freud’s time DID NOT refer mainly to the act. Rather, for hundreds or years, the word “sex” referred to what we now call, “gender,” as in Jane Austin’s references to the “fairer sex.”
My point?
Freud’s FIRST BIG IDEA? He was saying, relationships between genders are the heart and soul of much of therapy. Hence, his emphasis on exploring what his clients in their childhoods observed about their parents. The meaning of the word sex only changed much later on, during the Twentieth Century. Sadly, most psych majors never get taught this. Yet relationships between genders has to be the most common focus in today’s talk therapies.
The next thing involves the influence of one of Freud’s early teachers; the French neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot was the most respected neurologist/hypnotist in Europe until his untimely death in 1993. Only after studying with Charcot, in Paris, in the winter of 1885–1886, and only after witnessing what must have appeared to be miracles, did he develop his passion for personality and the mind. Unfortunately, Charcot died not long after that, at which point his enemies so ridiculed him and his work that anyone exploring the mind with hypnosis was seen as a charlatan.
Imagine how this affected the young Freud just beginning his career? Again, we see part of Freud’s drive to find scientific laws which govern the mind, and his disdain for doing anything which could possibly be seen as rooted in the occult.
Freud’s SECOND BIG IDEA? Searching for these laws. How many therapists today, when they sit with their clients, are not following the particular laws and personality theories they got taught in school? Admittedly, few find spend the time to separate and notice Freud’s contributions. But why do you think schools compel us to memorize the ideas of all those more recent theorists? We are still searching for those laws.
This leads me to yet another unusual thing about Freud and his THIRD BIG IDEA; teach clients human nature as a part of the therapy. Unlike today, where people are either a therapist or in rare cases, a personality theorist, Freud (like Jung and Janet) was both. The point? Freud’s theories had to work in his therapy room. And his therapy had to add to and enrich his theories. Unlike today’s therapists then, Freud taught his clients his theories, including his three-part personality theory; (Id, Ego, Superego). But rather than do this as the cold remote person you’ve been led to see him as, he did this using the words; “the “It,” the “Me,” and the “Above Me.” In German, of course.
Finally, I’d like to include an excerpt from one of my books in which I talk about how I came to change my opinions of Freud. As well as how he in part inspired me to begin my own search for these answers.
On Reinventing the Wheel
Books such as this one often include things like sidebars and footnotes. I, myself, most times, find these side trips distracting at best and downright confusing at worst. At the same time, I do like reading more about the parts of a book I find interesting or confusing. Thus at the end of each chapter, you’ll find I’ve included what amount to footnotes, sidebars, notes I myself would have chosen to write in the margins, and references to further reading.
In part, I’ve chosen to do this as it mirrors what I do with books in my personal life. Thus despite my mother’s frequent admonishments to never deface a book by writing in it, I have come to love writing in the margins of books. I see this as my way to dialogue with the author of said book. More important, in the process, I get to treat myself as being equal to the author of said book, at least with regard to my ability to discern truth.
Am I always equal? As a human being, yes. I say this knowing others frequently know far more than I by virtue of their educations. At the same time, I believe no one learns truth from parroting another’s truth no matter how great the teacher. Thus despite the obvious virtues inherent in advising us to not reinvent the wheel, I believe this counsel misses the mark. By all means, feel free to retrace the steps of any teacher from which you may wish to learn. But do this step by step and include yourself in the process, only then comparing the teacher’s conclusions to your own.
What I’m saying is, human beings become wheel makers only by reinventing wheels. Failing this, at best, we become mere parrots of other people’s truth. Moreover, while I personally encourage you to seek whatever truth your heart desires, at the same time, I recommend you never take a teacher’s summary as the proof for a truth.
Worse yet is attempting to find the truth in a teacher’s words second hand. By this I mean, reading those dreadful analyses wherein a so-called expert bores us to tears by endlessly dissembling a teacher’s thoughts into mind-sized bites. In the end, this can only lead to misunderstandings and confusion, a lesson I learned the hard way only after years of trying to ingest these so called shortcuts to the truth.
For instance, I, for years, thought Freud a cold and arrogant prick. Then one day I realized I should at least try to read the prick in his own words. At which point, I naively drove to a bookstore thinking I’d just buy one of his books, never realizing my entire understanding would rest on the skill of the translator I chose. Freud wrote in German. I do not read German. Duh. Imagine my surprise then when I compared translations to see which would be most readable only to discover, to my dismay, that these translations often differed so greatly as to make Freud’s intent unknowable. They literally make Freud’s words appear to have been authored by different people. Which in truth, they were. It had just never occurred to me the degree to which these “auxiliary” authors can unintentionally obfuscate a source.
In the end, I fell in love with yet another man who risked all to put in writing his personal truth. More so when I later read a letter Freud wrote to a man who had originally been one of his greatest detractors, Fredrik Willem van Eeden, the originator of Lucid Dreaming. In this letter, Freud admits to van Eeden that he had based his book, Interpretation of Dreams, on his own life experiences. After which it seems van Eeden warmed to Freud, perhaps much like we warm to similarly brave souls.
My point is, please don’t take anyone’s word for what is true. Doing this means you’ll miss the chance to discover your own personal truth. This includes the truths of both translators of famous teachers and aspiring wise men like me. Thus I encourage you to take the time to reinvent what I’m saying in your own words. Only then can you hope to discover what is true for you. Including that it might just turn out that I am not a cold arrogant prick either. One can only hope.
You should know, I’m still hoping.