Sigmund Freud - Development of Psychoanalysis

Development of Psychoanalysis

In October 1885, Freud went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis. He was later to recall the experience of this stay as catalytic in turning him toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience.

Once he had set up in private practice in 1886, Freud began using hypnosis in his clinical work. He adopted the approach of his friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods he had studied in that it did not use suggestion. The treatment of one particular patient of Breuer's proved to be transformative for Freud's clinical practice. Described as Anna O she was invited to talk about her symptoms whilst under hypnosis (she would coin the phrase "talking cure" for her treatment). In the course of talking in this way these symptoms became reduced in severity as she retrieved memories of early traumatic incidents in her life. This led Freud to eventually establish in the course of his clinical practice that a more consistent and effective pattern of symptom relief could be achieved, without recourse to hypnosis, by encouraging patients to talk freely about whatever ideas or memories occurred to them. In addition to this procedure, which he called "free association", Freud found that patient's dreams could be fruitfully analysed to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material and to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which underlay symptom formation. By 1896 Freud had abandoned hypnosis and was using the term "psychoanalysis" to refer to his new clinical method and the theories on which it was based.

On the basis of his early clinical work Freud postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for the psychoneuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis), a formulation now known as Freud's seduction theory. By 1897, however, Freud had abandoned this theory, now arguing that the repressed sexual thoughts and fantasies of early childhood were the key causative factors in neuroses, whether or not derived from real events in the child's history. This would lead to the emergence of Freud's new theory of infantile sexuality, and eventually to the Oedipus complex.

Freud's development of these new theories took place during a period in which he experienced several medical problems, including depression and heart irregularities, which became particularly acute after the death of his father in 1896. Suspecting them to be psychosomatic in origin and disturbed by a superstitious belief that he would die at the age of 51, Freud began exploring his own dreams and childhood memories. During this self-analysis, he became aware of the hostility he felt towards his father and also became convinced that he had developed sexual feelings towards his mother in infancy ("between two and two and a half years"), citing a memory of seeing her naked on a train journey. Richard Webster argues that Freud's account of his self-analysis shows that he "had remembered only a long train journey, from whose duration he deduced that he might have seen his mother undressing", and that Freud's memory was an artificial reconstruction.

After the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in November 1899, interest in his theories began to grow, and a circle of supporters developed. However, Freud often clashed with those supporters who criticized his theories, the most famous of whom was Jung. Part of the disagreement between them was due to Jung's interest in and commitment to spirituality and occultism, which Freud saw as unscientific.

Karen Horney, a pupil of Karl Abraham and Freud's most outspoken critic, opposed Freud's theory of femininity, leading him to defend it against her. The disagreement was over how to interpret penis envy, rather than whether it existed. Horney understood Freud's conception of the castration complex as a theory about the biological nature of women, one in which women were biologically castrated men, and rejected it as scientifically unsatisfying. Horney's opposition, along with that of Melanie Klein, produced the first psychoanalytic debate on femininity. British neurologist, Ernest Jones, although usually an "ultra-orthodox" Freudian, sided with Horney and Klein.

Jacques Lacan attempted to attract Freud's attention by sending him his thesis. Freud replied to Lacan by sending him a postcard in January 1933; it read, "Thank you for sending your thesis."