Freud, Sigmund

The psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who was born in Freiberg (now Príbor in the Czech Republic) on May 6 of Jewish parents and educated as a medical doctor in Vienna, founded the field of depth psychology (which he called psychoanalysis) and became one of the most influential thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His studies of the structure of the human psyche, the contents of the unconscious mind, the meaning and interpretation of dreams, repression, anxiety, and the role of the libido in the personality gave rise to many schools of psychological theory and therapy.

Throughout this life Freud maintained a deep-seated belief in the value of scientific inquiry and a deep antipathy toward religion. In New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1952 [1932]), Freud stated

Of the three forces which can dispute the position of science, religion alone is a really serious enemy. Art is almost always harmless and beneficent, it does not seek to be anything else but an illusion. ... Philosophy is not opposed to science; it behaves itself as if it were a science, and to a certain extent makes use of the same methods. ... Our best hope for the future is that the intellect—the scientific spirit, reason—should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. ... Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind. (p. 875)

However, Freud seemed ambivalent about the vast achievements of science and technology. On the one hand, he fully endorsed the desirability of human domination of nature. In perhaps his best-known work, Civilization and Its Discontents (1961 [1929]), Freud observes: "During the last few generations mankind has made an extraordinary advance in the natural sciences and in their technical application and has established his control over nature in a way never before imagined" (p. 39).

On the other hand, this domination has not brought with it a commensurate increase in human contentment. Human beings, Freud writes in Civilization and Its Discontents, "seem to have observed that this newly-won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature, which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier" (p. 39).

Freud's greater worry, however, was the potential for destructive misuse of humankind's new powers. In The Future of an Illusion (1961 [1927]) Freud confesses his deep anxiety in a single sentence: "Human creations are easily destroyed, and science and technology, which have built them up, can also be used for their annihilation" (p. 7). This dark theme is taken up again in Civilization and Its Discontents, where he states that humans "have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety" (p. 112).

Freud's psychoanalytical studies suggested to him that human beings overestimate themselves. In the middle of the calamity of World War I Freud wrote in Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1952 [1915]):

From the foregoing observations, we may already derive this consolation—that our mortification and our grievous disillusionment regarding the uncivilized behavior of our world-compatriots in this war are shown to be unjustified. They were based on an illusion to which we had abandoned ourselves. In reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed. (p. 760)

Ethics does not constitute an important theme in Freud's major works. In Civilization and Its Discontents he suggested that ethics represents an attempt to accommodate the demands of a culture. The pleasure-seeking drive of the id is opposed by social restrictions in the form of the super-ego, and the ego is forced to mediate between these two poles: "Ethics is thus to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt—as an endeavor to achieve, by means of a command of the super-ego, something which has not so far been achieved by means of any other cultural activities" (p. 108)

Freud offers candid, less psychologically-oriented remarks on ethics in letters to a friend, the Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister. Writing in 1918, Freud admits a lack of interest in issues of "good" and "evil" because he has found "little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience, most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. ... If we are to talk of ethics, I subscribe to a high ideal from which most of the human beings I come across depart most lamentably" (pp. 61–62).

In a letter written a decade later Freud characterized ethics as a "kind of highway code for traffic among mankind" (p. 123). His last brief comment on ethics appears in a 1929 letter in which he states that: "ethics are not based on an external world order but on the inescapable exigencies of human cohabitation" (p. 129).

Freud's theories of the mind have been criticized, modified, extended, and even rejected by some schools of thought. Feminist writers, for example, have criticizedFreud's essay on the psychology of women as deeply embedded in the gender stereotypes of his time. Yet even this critical stance must be measured against the strong presence of women in the field of psychoanalysis from its inception; Freud's own daughter Anna extended her father's work into the psychopathology of children.

More than six decades after his death, Freud continues to exert a powerful influence on how people view themselves as individuals and as a culture.

Jung, Carl Gustav;; Psychology.

Freud, Sigmund. (1952 [1915]). Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, trans. E. Colburn Mayne. Great Books of the Western World, Volume 54. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica. Gloomy essay written in 1915 amidst the onset of World War I.

Freud, Sigmund. (1961 [1927]). The Future of an Illusion, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton and Company. Freud's main assault on religion as the enemy of science.

Freud, Sigmund. (1961 [1929]). Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton and Company. Searching inquiry into the causes of human unhappiness viewed from the psychoanalytic viewpoint.

Freud, Sigmund. (1952 [1932]). New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, trans. W. J. H. Sprott. Great Books of the Western World, Volume 54. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica. Freud's 1932 revision of his 1915–1917 lectures; essentially the final form of his psychoanalytic theories.

Freud, Sigmund. (1963). Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, ed. Heinrich Meng and Ernst L. Freud; trans. Eric Mosbacher. New York: Basic Books. Candid thoughts expressed to a friend, casual but interspersed with sharp observations and criticisms.

Ricoeur, Paul. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Penetrating analytic guide to Freud's thought.

Roazen, Paul. (1968). Freud: Political and Social Thought. New York: Knopf. Freud's thought applied to politics and social theory.

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