Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Freud is a name that tends to need little introduction in psychology. His theories about mental health were groundbreaking (as well as controversial) and were the first ones to argue that mental ill health might be caused by something other than a person’s biological make-up.

As well as this, he also believed that a person’s dreams could be analysed because their content was useful in revealing what a person had in their unconscious.

Sigmund Freud.

The unconscious

According to Freud, much of what is in a person’s mind is actually inaccessible to them as its content is stored in an area that he termed the ‘unconscious’ (you should not refer to this as the ‘subconscious’ as this is not correct).

The unconscious is alleged to contain feelings, thoughts and memories that are either too distressing or too inappropriate for the individual to be able to manage. Therefore, the individual represses them into their unconscious, although this is not done deliberately. For example, someone may witness a serious, fatal car accident and when questioned about it later, they find that they cannot recall much of what happened. Freud would argue that this is because the event has been repressed as it is too upsetting for the individual to deal with on a conscious level.

The unconscious is also thought to contain information relating to a person’s sexual wishes and desires. When Freud was working on his theories, it was unacceptable to discuss sex openly but Freud was convinced that such desires played a big part in the development of the person and, potentially of, mental illnesses.

The unconscious is thought to guide a lot of our behaviour and is thought to be the reason why we sometimes cannot explain why we have done something. Freud thought that up to 90% of thinking was guided by the unconscious.

Let’s take the example of the person witnessing the car accident as a way of showing how this might guide behaviour:

The individual who witnessed the car accident goes out to dinner one evening with their partner and hears sirens wailing from the next street. Suddenly, they begin to tremble and cry but they genuinely have no idea why they are doing this. A week or so later, they are a passenger in a car and the driver has to brake suddenly – they begin to panic and have to get out of the car but still have no idea what has caused their behaviour.

Their unconscious has the memory of the car accident in it and in certain circumstances this ‘leaks out’ into their conscious mind. However, as the memory is inaccessible to the individual, they cannot find a meaning as to why they are behaving in certain ways at certain times. If the memory were accessible, it would be fairly obvious why the sound of sirens and cars braking was so upsetting to them.

Much of a person’s unconscious thoughts, feelings and memories were, according to Freud, accessible when they were asleep and dreaming, although they may not be represented in a way that was clear.

Manifest content of dreams

The manifest content of a dream is thought to be about the person who is having the dream. It is the actual content of the dream which is taking place. So, if someone dreams that they are falling out of a window, this is the manifest content of their dream.

Latent content of dreams

The latent content of a dream is the underlying meaning of what the dream is actually about. The latent content is a set of ‘symbols’, which can be analysed to find out the true meaning of what the dreamer is dreaming. Therefore, dreaming that you are falling out of a window, does not mean that you have done this or fear that you will but that it represents something that you are feeling. Therefore, the latent content is what is ‘hidden’ behind the manifest content.

Dreamwork

Dreamwork is what the mind is doing when the person is dreaming – it is keeping unconscious thoughts hidden away. This way, the person is kept safe from all of the feelings, memories and emotions which may cause them distress.

Dreamwork is thought to contain the following elements:

  • Condensation: this occurs when many elements are brought together in one idea whilst dreaming. The ideas will need to be explored individually to find out their meaning
  • Displacement: this means that the dream fails to focus on something important and instead makes something trivial the focus instead
  • Secondary elaboration: a set of muddled up ideas are put together to produce a ‘story’ within the dream. Often, when trying to describe such a dream, the person will add bits in, which makes understanding the latent content very difficult

Symbols in dreams

Although usually attributed to him, Freud was not of the belief that one symbol would mean the same thing for everyone who dreamt about it. Everyone’s unconscious is completely unique to them, so it stands to reason that the way in which they dream things will be different too.

Some general examples of symbols are, however, still thought to have similar meanings for most people and a professional dream analyst may use them as a basis for their work with their client.

The table below gives some common symbols that are thought to be dreamt about most commonly:

Symbol in dreamPossible explanation
FallingLoss of control over life
Anxiety
Teeth falling outIll health
Feeling unattractive.
Being chasedFeeling threatened – although not always by a person.
SnakesTrouble in life
A sexual symbol (phallic)
Fear of change.
DeathChange
New beginnings
Trying to come to terms with an actual death.
NudityFear of revealing self to others
An urge for recognition.
RoadsQuestioning your path in life.
Activity – Dreaming

Strengths of Freud’s theory

  • Evidence is based on qualitative data, which gives rich information about a subject
  • Extremely influential in that others have worked on the theory since its original Freudian concept
  • Has given some ideas about the development of mental illnesses, which were previously thought to only be caused by biological influences

Weaknesses of Freud’s theory

  • A very biased sample was used, as Freud’s focus was only on well-off families from the Austrian town of Vienna and therefore it is hard to generalise the findings
  • The theory is unscientific and therefore it is impossible to measure its accuracy with any confidence
  • His theories are subject to biased interpretation as Freud himself drew his own conclusion from what he found with his participants. Again, this means that his data analysis was not scientific

Key study – Freud

Freud’s method of helping his patients who presented to him with mental health issues is known as ‘free association’. This means that he encouraged them to speak of whatever came into their mind, in the hope that it would identify an unconscious motivator for their behaviour.

One of his patients is referred to as ‘Little Hans’ whose parents had been monitoring his development since the age of three. Freud only met the boy a few times and communicated mostly through his parents. Hans had developed a fear of horses and this became the focus of the study.

Little Hans was used by Freud to try and find evidence for his theory of psychosexual stages of development. He argued that Hans was in the phallic stage of development and therefore he was likely to develop the Oedipus complex. This, Freud stated, was a complex wherein a boy would develop sexual feelings for his mother and a desire to ‘possess’ her and feelings of hatred for his father, who he wanted ‘out of the way’ because he feared his father would castrate him.

Freud maintained that the Oedipus complex could be resolved and this would be by the boy identifying with his father, which would enable him to ‘possess’ his mother without any form of guilt.

Aim

Freud’s involvement in this case study had two aims. Firstly, he wanted to find out how children develop and thought that he could use this case to further his own research by seeing it applied in real life. Secondly, he wanted to enable Hans to overcome his fear of horses.

Method

Freud gathered a lot of information about Hans from reports that were sent to him, on a regular basis, by Hans’s parents. There were a lot of different aspects to the study, not all of which are relevant so only the key factors are included here, which will be sufficient in enabling you to answer questions on this topic in the exam.

Freud focused on:

  • Hans’s dreams
  • Hans’s phobia of horses
  • Hans’s unconscious fears

Freud studied the content of Hans’s dreams to try and make sense of what might be in his unconscious and therefore responsible for his phobia. Freud wanted to cure Hans’s phobia by making him aware of what his unconscious wishes were.

To do this, Freud used psychoanalysis where he listened intently to what was said and used the symbols presented in Hans’s dreams to try to uncover unconscious desires. Freud analysed the findings himself using his own ideas about child development.

Results

As this was a case study there were a lot of findings and an interpretation of them all is not necessary here. The three main factors are thought to be based around:

  • Hans’s phobia of horses: Hans saw lots of horses where he lived and his big fear was that they would fall over and a side cart would cause him harm. He had seen this happen and the horse had actually died in the street in front of him. Hans had a specific fear of horses who had black hair around their mouth. Freud interpreted this to represent his father’s moustache and that perhaps the actual horse was symbolic of his father. Hans’s fear of horses, according to Freud, was actually a fear of his father due to his entering the phallic stage of development and going through the Oedipus complex.
  • Early dreams: Hans told Freud about a dream that he had when he was young. He thought that he had lost his mummy and Freud interpreted this as a symbol that Hans feared his mother would leave. Freud linked this to the Oedipus complex and stated that Hans feared that his father would take his mother away because of his feelings towards her.
  • A specific dream about giraffes: in Hans’s dream, two giraffes were present – one big one and one curled up. In the dream, the big giraffe shouted at Hans because he took the curled up one away. Freud and Hans’s father thought that the big giraffe was symbolic of a penis but Hans did not think this was true. Hans revealed that he sometimes slept in bed with his mother and father but his father did not like this.

Freud maintained that the big giraffe must be Hans’s father and the curled up one his mother; when the big giraffe shouted at Hans, this was interpreted as showing that Hans wanted his father ‘out of the picture’ and so he could have his mother all to himself. Freud further argued that this showed that Hans had sexual desires for his mother but lived in fear of his father.

Conclusion

Freud used the findings to give support for his psychosexual stages of development. His theory about the Oedipus complex does appear to be supported by the dreams and fears of Little Hans.

Strengths of the study

  • Freud’s work was done by case study, which means that he had a lot of information to use when drawing conclusions. This level of qualitative data gives validity to the data which was collected
  • The way in which Freud recorded the data was done so very carefully and this reflects modern therapeutic practices

Weaknesses of the theory

  • Little Hans and his family knew that he was being studied and therefore it is possible that only the information which they wanted to be studied was given to Freud
  • Case studies cannot be generalised to a wider population, as although they contain a very good level of information, they are usually only about one person, as was the case study here
  • It is possible that Hans learnt his fear of horses because he saw one die in front of him. The trauma of this may have led to him associating horses with feelings of distress and anxiety
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