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Psychologies is a magazine for very personal reading, analysis and reflection. But it’s nice to share your thoughts – especially with those who are interesting to us. In this anniversary issue, psychoanalysts Andrey Rossokhin and Jean-Pierre Winter helped us “talk” with the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. He would have turned 155 next year.
Psychologies: In your opinion, why has our interest in the possibilities of psychological science grown so noticeably in recent years?
Sigmund Freud: I see a growing desire of people to protect and develop their individuality, which the current world seeks to average and “globalize”. As for psychoanalysis, the interest in it was great even in my time, and now it has become a part of everyday consciousness in general. On the other hand, the fashion for psychoanalysis is capable of destroying the most valuable thing in it. Judging by what is happening today on the street and on the TV screen, all the concepts that I defended – childish sexuality, the Oedipus complex, erroneous actions, repression – have literally become clichés. And it’s hardly good. Some people, with their consumerism, demands for immediate satisfaction of impulsive desires, loneliness, unrestrained pursuit of success, simply bloat with narcissism. Many have adopted my ideas to justify their self-satisfaction (look how awesome I have me!) or their unwillingness to take responsibility (it’s not me, it’s all my unconsciousness!).
Freud’s life dates
- May 6, 1856 Sigismund Shlomo FreudSigmund Freud was born in Freiberg in Moravia (now Příbor in the Czech Republic).
- 1860 Freud’s family moves to Leipzig, then to Vienna.
- 1873-1882 Freud studies physiology and biology at the medical faculty of the University of Vienna.
- 1885 Internship with Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris.
- 1886 Freud marries Martha Bernays and opens a medical practice in Vienna.
- 1895 Freud publishes Studies in Hysteria with Joseph Breuer. In parallel, he begins his own introspection and introduces the concept of the Oedipus complex.
- 1899 “The Interpretation of Dreams”.
- 1905 “Three essays on the theory of sexuality” and “Wit and its relation to the unconscious”.
- 1909 “Five Lessons of Psychoanalysis”.
- 1929 “Dissatisfaction with culture”.
- 1938 Freud emigrates to Britain.
- September 23, 1939 Died in London.
Haven’t we begun to understand our unconscious better over the years?
Z. F .: This is not the question. The unconscious is eternal. It knows no time, no difference between the sexes, no boundary between life and death. This is the area where the psychological problems of a person originate and which reveals itself in dreams, erroneous actions, forgetting words or facts. Today, as yesterday, the language of the unconscious is built on three major mechanisms: metaphor (when we replace one object, character or word with another); metonymy (when a part represents the whole, as in the expression “to ask for hands”) and conversion to its own opposite (big in a dream can be small in reality). As long as people exist, they will be at the mercy of these mental mechanisms, which most often escape their attention.
Does this also apply to dreams?
Z. F .: The processes I have described may vary in form, but not in substance. We will not find dreams about airplanes in the Bible, but the way, for example, an airplane is built into the dream of today’s patient will differ very little from how cows appear in Pharaoh’s dream, interpreted by Joseph. Our dreams all obey the same rule: they are a vision that realizes a repressed desire, and therefore they are like a rebus. Dream images are like hieroglyphs. They contain a message. Each of us has the key to understanding them without knowing it.
“SEXUAL DESIRE TERRIBLE US. IT IS ALWAYS DARK AND DISTURBING, NO MUCH WE WANT TO TAME IT.”
About it
- Psychoanalysis. The latest encyclopedia Book house, 2010.
- Sigmund Freud. Small collected works, Azbuka-klassika, 2010.
You have always been criticized for talking and thinking too much about the penis…
Z. F .: Indeed, these accusations are not new to me. Such critics wash away the role and significance of psychosexuality from psychoanalysis, turning a person exclusively into a subject of relationships. The problem is that, as much as my opponents would like to get rid of sexuality (denying the most important place that it occupies in human life), or even to tame sexual desire, this is impossible. It is neither animal, nor natural, nor “game”, as they are trying to instill in us today. This desire is dark and disturbing. This part of ourselves scares us, and the permissiveness of modern mores tries to mask this side of Eros. The absence of even a hint of sexuality in the “new” types of psychotherapy with resounding success, speaks of a desire to stifle sexual desire.
But perhaps the role of sexuality in human development has indeed changed? The sexual revolutions have done their job, we live in a free society…
Z. F .: This is another big misconception. Despite the fact that sexual morality has changed significantly and many of the old fears have disappeared, we cannot say that all the problems of men and women related to sexuality have been resolved. Moreover, I must disappoint you: the meaning of my discoveries lies in the fundamental impossibility of avoiding the deep internal conflicts associated with childhood sexuality and the fantasies generated by it. These are the very conflicts, overcoming which an infant becomes a child, a child becomes a boy or a girl, and those become a man and a woman.
Depression never interested you…
Z. F .: This is not true. I was always interested in her, only I called her neurasthenia. I even applied the famous name “melancholia” in the past to its severe forms.
Assuming that neurosis can be treated with drugs, you predicted the advent of antidepressants and tranquilizers.
Z. F .: Indeed, I thought that drugs would soon cure neuroses. But that was during a period of my life that I would call anti-Freudian—it was associated with my addiction to cocaine, with the desperation of the negative therapeutic reaction of patients who turned on me because they were already close to recovery. It just made my hands drop! But this was a mistake: although drugs help to get through hard times, drown out anxiety, they still never heal anyone. At some point, the patient must go through a different experience. By the way, I did not foresee that the consumer society would invent diseases for itself in order to support the pharmaceutical industry: Ritalin supposedly treats childhood hyperactivity, Viagra – impotence, etc. There is a drug for each specific mental disorder. But my theory is completely different: I think that most problems are the result of a mental conflict that can be identified and clarified through the word.
What do you think of other types of therapy other than psychoanalysis?
Z. F .: I refuse to get into a fight with these methods, which are usually based on behaviorism, cognitivism, or what is usually labeled as “neuroscience”. By the way, I am a neurologist by training. But I would still like to point out that these techniques are not new. Behaviorism is one of the oldest techniques in existence. Since time immemorial, there have been attempts to treat people by changing their behavior. These kinds of therapies might help, but that’s not the point. If someone gets better, then it’s a meeting with a therapist. No matter what the “theory” is, the main thing is the transference effect: the patient imagines that his analyst or psychotherapist knows more about him than he does. And this illusion, necessary for a while, is a condition for recovery. Something happens between two people that runs through the “department” of love, and this can have a therapeutic effect. I think humanity will always need both superficial methods of psychotherapy, designed for quick results, and knowledge of the deep secrets of the psyche, even if only a minority follow this path. True, stress, mental trauma and dissatisfaction with modern life lead many to understand that the inner world of each person is much larger and more complex than it seems. This becomes the beginning of the path to another “I”. And one way is psychoanalysis.
“THE INTERNAL WORLD OF EVERYONE OF US IS BIGGER AND MORE COMPLEX THAN IT SEEMS. UNDERSTANDING THIS CAN BE THE BEGINNING OF THE WAY TO ONE’S OTHER “I”.
What mistakes do you acknowledge?
Z. F .: I never imagined that pouring out my soul while lying on the psychoanalyst’s couch could be a pleasure in itself, and that some people would want to continue the analysis indefinitely. Because the fact that you meet regularly and for an indefinitely long time with someone who listens to you, is fundamentally contrary to the foundations on which I built my method. It was an axiom for me that everyone would want to end this extremely painful procedure as soon as possible – that is, to recover. Alas. I was probably wrong.