Inventing science? About Sigmund Freud, whose birth was 160 years ago today

Sigmund Shlomo Freud was an Austrian Jewish neurologist best known for developing theories and techniques of psychoanalysis, based on which events that the patient relegated to the subconscious cause neurotic attacks

Sigmund Freud Biography, Psychiatrist and Opinion Leader (1856-1939)

Sigmund Solomon Freud was an Austrian Jewish neurologist best known for developing theories and techniques of psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic, on May 6, 1856. It was Freud who developed the field of psychoanalysis, a method in which a psychologist discovers conflicts in the subconscious based on associations, dreams and free fantasies of the patient. His theories about children's sexuality, the libido, and the ego, among other things, were some of the most influential but also the most controversial academic concepts of the 20th century.

early career
Sigmund Freud was born in the then Austrian town of Freiberg on May 6, 1856. When he was four years old, his family moved to Vienna, the city where he lived and worked for most of the rest of his life. He received a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1881, got engaged and married a year later to Martha Berneis from Hamburg, the granddaughter of Rabbi Yitzhak Berneis. They had six children, the youngest of whom, Anna, was a respected psychoanalyst in her own right.
After graduation, Freud immediately established a private practice and began treating people suffering from various psychological disorders. He considered himself first and foremost a scientist, and not a doctor, he tried to understand the journey of human knowledge and experience.

Early in his career, Freud was influenced by the work of his Viennese friend and colleague, Josef Breuer, who discovered that when he encouraged a hysterical patient to talk freely about the first occurrences of symptoms, the symptoms sometimes gradually subsided. Inspired by Breuer, Freud postulated that neuroses stem from deep traumatic experiences in the patient's past. He believed that the original manifestations had been forgotten and were hidden from consciousness. His treatment made the patients enhance their memories, remember the experience and bring it to consciousness, and in the process, deal with it both intellectually and emotionally. He believed that then it was possible to unload the patient and help him get rid of the neurotic symptoms. Freud and Breuer published the theory together in the book 'Theories of Hysteria' (1895).

Publications in dispute

After a long period of working together, the relationship between Freud and Breuer ended. Breuer felt that Freud placed too much emphasis on the sexual origins of his patients' neuroses and was unwilling to consider other perspectives. Freud continued to refine his argument and in 1900, after a serious period of self-analysis, published the article "The Meaning of Dreams". In 1901 he wrote about the psychopathology of everyday life and in 1905 he published three essays on the theory of sexuality. The great reverence later given to Freud's theories was not felt in his time. Most of his contemporaries felt, like Breuer, that his emphasis on sexuality was either scandalous or worn out. In 1909 he was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States. Only after these visits and the publication of his book from 1916 - Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, did his fame increase sharply.

Eternal legacy
Freud's theories on "psychic energy," the Oedipus complex, and the importance of dreams were influenced by other scientific discoveries of his time. Charles Darwin's understanding of the human species as an advanced element of the animal kingdom justified Freud's research into human behavior (today it is not customary to think of evolution in this way, today it is understood that it is not a tree but more of a bush with many branches of which man is one of AB. ) In addition, the formulation of a new principle by Helmholtz, which stated that the energy in any given physical system is always constant (again, a distortion of the principle because it refers to closed systems and the human body is far from being such).
His ideas received much praise but also fierce criticism, but it is impossible to take away from him his great influence on the field of psychology.
The scientific basis for Freud's theories is controversial. In the eyes of his critics, the ability to empirically attack his conclusions is limited, and the therapeutic effectiveness of his teachings is not high in everything related to the treatment of mental illnesses. Many doubt whether it can be called science, since it is based on claims that cannot be refuted. As Freud's critic, the American psychologist John Kilstrom, put it: "There is no empirical evidence that development goes through an oral, anal, and phallic stage and that small children crave their validation and hate their fathers... There is no empirical evidence that the mechanisms of action that psychoanalysis predicts, such as transference, exist And the catharsis... it is better to treat Freud more as a writer than as a scientist. Psychologists can do without it"
Today it is also clear that most of these phenomena have drugs that eliminate psychological treatment or at least make it secondary.
After a life of constant investigation, he chose to commit suicide in his exile from the Nazis in London in 1939. He requested a lethal dose of morphine from his doctor after a battle with oral cancer.

quotes
"Religion is an illusion and its power comes from the fact that it integrates with our instinctive desires."
-Zigmond Freud

• More of the topic in Hayadan:
• We identified the brain activity of the subconscious
• Is an epileptic fit responsible for the creation of the monotheistic religion?
• The dreaming mind