Freud’s life and works

Life of Freud

Author: [English] Ernest Jones Reposted from: Gu Wen Number of hits: 1690

Translated by Gu Wen "American Encyclopedia" (International Edition, 1982)

As a doctor who treated mental illness, Freud created a theory involving the structure and function of the human mind. His ideas have been widely used not only in psychiatry, but also in artistic creation, education and political activities. The main arguments of Freud's theory have been revised and developed by later generations. People realize that human behavior is not only dominated by sexual desire, but also socio-economic factors play a role in the formation of personality and upbringing in nature. Although Freud's theory has been criticized repeatedly, this has not damaged his image in the slightest. His outstanding teachings, therapeutic techniques and deep understanding of the hidden part of the human psyche created a new field of psychological research. The doctrines he founded fundamentally changed the view of human nature.

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian doctor, psychiatrist, and the founder of psychoanalysis, a new school of psychology. Freud put forward many revolutionary and controversial ideas in human behavior. He also established a new system for treating behavioral disorders.

On May 6, 1856, Freud was born into a middle-class family in Freiburg, Moravia (now Czechoslovakia). Both his parents were Jewish. His first name was Sigismund, plus the Jewish word Solomon, but when he was seventeen, he changed the first to Sigmund.

When Freud was three years old, his family moved to Vienna. The father, Jacob Freud, had two children from his first marriage who were about twenty years older than Sigmund. Instead of going to Vienna, they immigrated to Manchester, England. Sigmund was the eldest son of his father and his second wife, with two younger brothers and five younger sisters. Its early life was spent in extreme poverty.

The Age of Preparation

In his youth, Freud was very interested in general philosophical and humanitarian issues, but he felt that he must have a strict scientific training to restrain himself Rich imagination. therefore. With the support of a Jewish charity, he entered the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1873.

The director of the physiological laboratory where Freud did most of his research was Ernst von Brück, a demanding trainer and an impeccable figure in scientific research. His personality had an indelible impact on the young student. Freud's first published paper presented a remarkable work in which he demonstrated the identity of spinal ganglion cells in lower animals with those in higher animals, which had been a long-debated issue in the past. Freud's proof was a useful contribution to the theory of evolution. Soon after, he wrote another article describing the structure of nerve cells, thus laying the foundation for the theory of neurons, which is also the basis of modern neurology. Because of his dedication to these important research tasks, Freud took two years to receive his medical title. Even after the assessment, he confined his work to the laboratory. He disliked mathematical physics, whose work was always in histology, the study of tissue structure.

Next, Freud began to use a microscope to reveal the various nerve bundles of the human nervous system. His main work in this area was the study of the medulla oblongata, the lowest part of the mind. He finally figured out the connections between the spinal cord and the cerebellum. The most valuable part, however, is his comprehensive and thorough study of the auditory nerve and his demonstration that the sensory nuclei of the cranial nerves are identical with the sensory ganglia of the spinal cord, the latter being another major contribution to the theory of evolution. These research results were published between 1885 and 1886.

In 1882, Freud fell in love with his sister's friend Martha Bernas. Berners, five years younger than Freud, was born into a well-known Jewish family in Hamburg and was living in Vienna at the time.

Freud soon realized that he had to do a more practical job rather than pure research, so he entered the Vienna Hospital and became a resident intern. He had worked in various departments of the hospital for three years and thus was fully trained in all aspects of medicine, but his interest lay in his mentor T. H. Mainet was responsible for the psychiatry aspect. During his internship at the hospital, he published some comprehensive research results on cocaine, which attracted the attention of the medical community to this drug. Freud discovered that cocaine had narcotic properties, and he suggested to some of his friends who were ophthalmologists that it might be used in the treatment of eye diseases. A doctor named Kohler published this result and is known as the founder of local (cocaine) anesthesia.

At the end of his hospital work, Freud was awarded a small scholarship, which enabled him to travel to Paris and visit the famous neurotic at Sarpatrière. Study the scientist Jean-Martin Charcot. The four and a half months of studying in Paris became a major turning point in Freud's life and career. Charcot, the most famous neurologist at the time, devoted himself to the study of hysteria, which prompted Freud to embark on the same path. This was of great significance for him to shift his interest from the physical aspect to the psychological aspect. After returning to Vienna, he reported his experiences in Paris to the Medical Association, but was ignored, which foreshadowed that his future work would receive the same response.

Freud went into private practice as a neurologist in the spring of 1886 and got married in September of the same year. His marriage was very happy. He had six children, three sons and three daughters. The youngest daughter, Anna Freud, later became a famous psychoanalyst. Freud also worked as a neurologist in a children's clinic for several years and published two large volumes of authoritative work on various forms of polio. In this way, he became one of the important neurologists in Europe. His many years of work in this field had a major influence on the formation of his later psychological theories.

The early days of psychoanalysis

As early as 1882, an older colleague and friend of Freud, Joseph Breuer, told him that there was a A patient named Anna once benefited from "catharsis" therapy, which used hypnosis to recover painful memories. Freud told this situation to Charcot, but it did not arouse Charcot's idea. Freud used hypnotherapy on hysterical patients during his own medical practice, but the results were not satisfactory. Therefore, he went to Nancy in 1889 to seek advice from a famous hypnosis expert, Hippolyte Bornheim. At that time, he was using Breuer's catharsis method. Three years later, he observed that unacceptable wishes dominated forgotten painful memories, and he developed the concept of repression, one of the basic elements of Freud's theory. However, he asked Breuer to cooperate and published an epoch-making book - "Studies on Hysteria" together in 1895. By this time, Freud had already given up on hypnotism and began to use hypnosis. . The invention of the "free association" method was one of the two major achievements in Freud's life. The other achievement was the self-analysis that began two years later.

During these years, he read several papers to medical groups announcing his startling conclusion that various psychoneuroses were caused by unconscious sexual impulses. But the reaction he got was so lukewarm that people almost dismissed him as a weirdo. At this time, he had only one friend who expressed deep sympathy for him, and that was Wilhelm Fries, who lived in Berlin. Freud wrote to him frequently, describing the experimental steps he took to try to understand the deep psychology. His letters and records were published in 1954 under the title "The Origins of Psychoanalysis". Of particular note is a long record titled "The Plan," in which Freud attempted to describe various mental processes such as thinking and memory from a neuron perspective. This was his last attempt to relate mental processes to somatic processes.

The Great Discovery

The period from 1895 to 1900 was Freud’s most productive period.

They modestly called this small group the "Wednesday Psychological Study Group," which later developed into the "Vienna Psychoanalytic Society." Two of these people who are still known today are Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel. In the five years after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote little, but his 1904 book Psychopathology in Everyday Life is probably his most widely circulated work. . This book explores all kinds of flawed psychology, such as forgetting, gaffes, clerical errors, misplacing things, and more. The conclusions that Freud made in his book are now widely accepted. All his other theories have not reached this point. This book is a major contribution to determinism because it reveals that many seemingly accidental and meaningless actions, as well as many actions that are simply attributed to "free will", are actually the result of people's lack of consciousness. Driven by secret and contradictory desires.

The following year, 1905, he published three important books. In a long book, generally called "The Analysis of Dora", Freud elaborated on how to use dream interpretation to reveal and treat various symptoms of psychoneurosis; this is what we know about Freud. An important source of Ide's technology. The other is "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious," in which he thoroughly examines the many ways in which unconscious motives can manifest themselves indirectly.

During this year, he also published one of the most controversial treatises: "Three Essays on Sexuality". What is new and sensational in it is his comprehensive description of the sexual function of young children. He explains adult sexual perversions as the abnormal products of young children's sexual functions. This is Freud's first compelling book. Not only did he attract attention, but he also caused great indignation and was strongly condemned and ridiculed. Freud suddenly became the most unpopular person in scientific circles in various countries. In the following years, he encountered all kinds of abuse and attacks that only the greatest pioneers would suffer. But no matter how vicious the criticisms were, he never answered them. The only work he published to defend his views was "History of the Psychoanalytic Movement" (1906). This book mainly distinguished between his theory and the opposing theories put forward by Adler, Jung and others. Basic difference. To other questions, he responded like Charles Darwin: keep publishing new evidence.

In 1906, the famous historical psychoanalysts Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung, as well as some of their students, announced that they agreed with the conclusions of Freud's method. With the exception of the British doctor Ernest Jones, they were the first non-Viennese to support Freud. In April 1908, Jung organized the first International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Salzburg. Two years later, the International Psychoanalytic Association was formally established. For half a century, this organization has more than 30 chapters in many countries around the world. At that time, the First Congress was attended by forty-two delegates, among them Karl Abraham, Breud, Freud's Hungarian colleague Sandor Ferenc, Jung and Ernest Jones myself. The committee was charged with advising and assisting Floyd on matters of management, while also forming a barrier between him and his outside attackers.

As early as 1885 Freud worked as a temporary lecturer at the University of Vienna so that he could give informal lectures there. He was specially appointed as a professor in 1920 and became a full professor in 1920. However, he had no seat in the professors' meeting and no other privileges. Freud never held any formal teaching position at the University of Vienna.

The application of psychoanalysis in non-medical aspects

Freud published a large number of clinical papers and discussed the details of psychoanalytic research. He also Five long medical records have been published, providing a lot of information about his research methods. In addition, he wrote a series of articles devoted to psychoanalytic techniques.

But as can be seen from his The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud was aware from the beginning that his findings had broad implications, and he knew that they would reach far beyond the narrow confines of psychoneurosis and involve human beings. various issues. The knowledge gained in this relatively accessible field can be applied to problems in "normal" life that are difficult to explain. So he founded the journal Imagery in 1912 to discuss the non-medical applications of his research. The magazine "Imagery" supplemented the earlier creations of the "Annals of Psychoanalysis" (1909) and the "Psychoanalytic Herald" (1910), which soon became the "Journal of Psychoanalysis" "Replaced (1913).

The great creative writer's thorough observation of human psychology has long made Freud admire the delusions and delusions in "Jessen's "Gradiva"" written in 1907. "Dream", a wonderful study of the German writer Jessen's novel "Gradiva". In the works of this imaginative writer, Freud saw some of the same psychological mechanisms that he had described in his discussion of dreams and neuroses. Three years later, Freud published an ambitious research monograph: "Leonardo da Vinci and a Recollection of His Childhood." In the book, he traces Leonardo's conflict between artistic pursuits and scientific pursuits back to his childhood. Inspired by Freud, some of his students, especially Otto Rank, used Freud's methods to explain myths and folk songs, which increasingly revealed the various aspects of human imagination. The performance is much the same. Karl Abraham even used this method to explain the motivations for the religious revolution launched by the first monotheist Egyptian pharaoh Aaronnaten three thousand years ago.

In 1913 Freud's "Totem and Taboo" was published. The importance of this book is second only to "The Interpretation of Dreams". Through the study of many characteristics such as incest fear and emotional ambivalence, Freud found that these are characteristics common to the primitive psychology of children and savages. He emphasized the great significance of parricide by primitive people and believed that civilization, morality and religion originated from regret and other reactions to parricide.

World War I brought great hardship to the lives of Freud and his friends as food was reduced to a minimum, lack of heating and other troubles. The collapse of the Austrian currency after the war not only wiped out Freud's savings, but also forced him to fight hard to avoid bankruptcy. During the war, Freud published his only book on current affairs, Thoughts on War and the Age of Death (1915). He pointed out that in fact, disillusionment was not necessarily caused by war, but that disillusionment was caused by people's overestimation of human moral progress in the past; this fact was only revealed by the terrible war that occurred as a result. Eighteen years later, Freud was invited by the League of Nations to have a correspondence discussion with Einstein on the question of "why there are wars." On the one hand, Freud still had hope for the future; It also pointed out the various obstacles that still existed on the road to the elimination of war.

Heyday

In the first year of the war, Freud may have thought that his work would be over. It ended, so he published a series of important articles on the nature of psychology. These articles became the culmination of his life's main work.

In 1919, Freud founded an international publication. A publishing company specializing in publishing magazines and books on psychoanalysis. By the time of the Nazi seizure in 1938, the company had published five magazines and 150 books.

In the same year, Freud proposed a new revolutionary theory about human psychology in a book called "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". The introduction of this theory surprised his followers. Freud originally believed that the main principle in psychology was the pleasure-pain principle, and from it the reality principle, but in this book he proposed a more fundamental principle, which he called repetition. —The principle of compulsion (repetition-compulsion), which has the tendency to restore an earlier state.

On September 23, 1939, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, died in London at the age of 83.

Freud was born in Curavia, Austria in 1856. In 1873, he entered Vienna to study medicine. In 1881, he received a doctorate in medicine and served as a lecturer. In 1895, he founded psychoanalysis and proposed the theory of using psychoanalysis to treat epidemics.

The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was established in 1908. Soon psychoanalytic societies in various European countries were established one after another, and the International Psychoanalytic Association was established. In 1909, he gave lectures at Clark University in the United States and received wide response. In 1923, he divided human psychological structure into three levels and created a new field of psychological research. In 1938, Fascist Germany invaded Austria and immigrated to the United Kingdom.

Freud's main works include "Studies on Hysteria" (co-authored with Breuer), "The Interpretation of Dreams", "The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis", "The Interpretation of Dreams", " "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality", "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", "The Self and the Id", "Totems and Taboos", "Mass Psychology and Self-Analysis", "Compulsive Behavior and Religious Ritual", "Civilization and its Discontents" , "Moses and Monotheism", "Self and Ide", etc. His theories have had varying degrees of influence on psychology, medicine, anthropology, history, literature, art, and philosophy.

Freud has been teaching in Vienna since 1902. His greatest contribution was the invention of psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis. He had already studied the treatment of hysteria and hypnosis through induction and hypnosis in his early days. The method of neurosis, from which he later developed his treatment method, uncovered the unconscious or subconscious causes of the disease, and discovered that this disease can be cured through venting. He established the theory that "subconscious motives govern many human behaviors." In addition, Freud developed a theory about human sexual behavior from the basic understanding of human sexual life. The main idea of ??this theory is that taboos and social conventions inhibit sexuality and lead to neurotic attacks. Although his theory has been repeatedly misunderstood and denied, it has exerted great influence on psychology, psychiatry, and philosophy.