Freud – Man, Legend, Fraud
Freud remains a towering figure in psychology, 130 odd years after founding psychodynamic analysis and enriching many a couch seller. The success of his work was such that psychoanalysis is still a byword for psychotherapy at large, though many other schools have since emerged (Gestalt, PCA, Transactional Analysis, etc.) His model of the human mind deeply changed our imaginations, societies, arts, zeitgeist and further research in most humanities fields.
Sigmund Freud: Legacy and criticism requires holding both realities at once. Freud was neither a saint nor a simple fraud. He was a complex, brilliant, and deeply human thinker whose influence continues to shape how we talk about the mind, desire, trauma, and identity — even when his original theories are rejected.
Read on a massive scale, his ideas on the model of the human mind (id, ego, superego) have also invited, massive criticism. Researchers have filed never-ending critiques of his work, from fields as wide as sociology, gender studies, philosophy, arts, modern psychology, neurology, psychiatry and physiology. Discussing Freud and his possible limitations yet feels for a therapist a bit like a pub band criticising the Beatles. His legacy is so colossal and his influence on the development of psychology so huge that it can immediately feel arrogant or misplaced.
Yet and he is so quoted and misquoted, attacked and worshipped that we thought we’d address the “issue” openly, by providing a bit of context to understand Freud better, his life, his work, his biases, his findings and his methods.
Before and after Freud
Josef Breuer – Widely credited as founder of psychoanalysis
Freud came of age in the late 1890’s, an odd historical time. He got his doctorate in medicine in 1881 and set up his physiology practice, in a time of accelerating change. Socially, a sort of “plague” of hysteria was apparently descending on middle-classes and the bourgeoisie. Charcot, Breuer and Brücke were investigating the “hysteria issue” and laying some groundwork and tools, some of which Freud would later adopt (free association for example).
It is also a time of huge upheaval in the intellectual world. Rationalism and a profound belief in science was rushing this age into “new sciences”, such as biology and political science. Marx had recently elaborated a new social model (The Communist Manifesto – 1848) that would submerge the century, politics and sociology, toppling empires and millenary orders. More recently yet, Darwin had rewritten our understanding of nature and God (The origin of species – 1859).
What revolutions Darwin had visited on biology and Marx on socio-politics, Freud was proposing to do
Jean-Martin Charcot – Head of neurology at Hôpital Salpétrière
on the human mind. Nothing less than a self-standing coherent, “scientific” system to explain the human psyche and solve mental “issues”. For the whole human mind, including the unconscious, the repressed, the lustful, the vicious, the embarrassing. Whatever ails us repressed, and benefits us realised consciously. And to only use psychological means for that examination.
In other words, in a time when fanatical belief in rationalism had brought rapid change (see political “science”; biological “science”, etc.) Freud went further: Develop a scientific method to investigate our total psychic life, repressed trauma and all. And on top of everything, he was not going to dissect viscera or examine brains (though he famously did, during his early career in medical neurology). All was going to be “talk therapy” and yet scientific!
To give a sense of the colossal leap forward he suggested, we may contrast his work and ambitions with that of another revered influential researcher: Pavlov, who was a contemporary of Freud. In 1897 Pavlov published the work for which is received a Nobel prize in 1904 and is mostly known for “The work of the digestive glands”. A fascinating research, that would inform social sciences, management, education and other fields.
But a research ultimately largely based on physiology, what happens if we cut off this gland here, or tie up that digestive tract, written at heart by a physiologist. Pavlov had obviously noticed that his dogs were salivating when they saw his helper who typically fed them, but he did not investigate much beyond the physiological.
Pavlov’s work brought profound change in our mental maps when we think about conditioning. But it was much narrower in terms of real-world applicability (conditioned reflexes) in the grand scheme of things, at least compared to what Freud was attempting. A complete break from traditional “rationality”, an interpretative method to scientifically understand potentially anything that ails us, and is repressed in us.
Freud: The man
Sigismund Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg, a Moravian town in the Austrian empire, a Galician Jew. His father Jakob was a wool merchant, born in the Hassidic tradition and self-described “enlightened Jew” following the Haskalah movement, a rational and open type of worship. Jakob Freud had been married twice before already, and had two children with his first wife. By the time Freud was born, one of Jakob’s children had already had kids of his own, putting him in the unusual position of having a cousin/uncle and triggering a lifelong interest in family structures.
Jakob was by all accounts a friendly and congenial figure, always full of deep wisdom and lightheartedness. His “meekness” as Sigmund Freud would describe it, in confronting anti-Semites and anti-Semitic abuse did leave a profound mark in Sigmund’s mind. Sigmund Freud deeply resented this meekness triggering a lifelong quest for “strong” authority figures and support for Jewish causes.
His family soon moved to Austria. The new family wanted to impress their host culture by contributing a lawyer or a doctor, trades which they imagined would somehow prove their quality and contribution to society.
Freud initially thought of reading law but he loved science, was convinced atheist and wanted to be a doctor. Not just any science, first neurology, and then accidentally at first but soon irreversibly, towards psychology. The mind-body connection. Physical ails and behaviours that seem possible to cure through psychology.
Freud was conceited towards religion, of any stripe, which he likened to a set of primitive fables parading as divine laws. Interestingly many religious writers and philosophers have attempted to describe the unconscious from a theological standpoint, from Aristotle, to St Thomas d’Aquinas. For Jung, Freud’s most talented student, religion was that functional unconscious, and nothing of a fable. Maybe it is worth remembering that Freud developed his theory during a time marked by absolute faith in science and rationalism.
Freud wanted to understand the unconscious consistently, repeatedly, predictably, however infinitely varied ways it could manifest itself. And modern neurology and psychology would probably support that interest. Much has been discovered about the huge impact of the unconscious on our total mental life.
Most of what we “think” is unconscious. The mind does, indeed, work 24/7. Freud didnt even know that at the time, but he had latched his life mission on this mark: To understand the unconscious (with an assumption, also usually confirmed, that making conscious the unconscious is of immediate therapeutic gain).
Freud: The Legend
By developing a consistent method to understand the totality of the human psyche in this world (not in art or metaphysics) Freud became a God-like figure.
By offering a highly controversial set of investigative tools (unconscious, Eros & Thanatos, id, superego, etc.) Freud’s success, once assured, became hugely controversial. Relying on a near-infinite open mindedness, on highly charged imagery of sex, death, paradox and principleless unconscious, his work triggered all the excesses of interpretation in the population that not long previously discarded his work as obscene.
As for most revolutionary work, it was first ridiculed, then mass-adopted (for ill or want). Psychology and neuroscience went from a short span of time from a purely physiological understanding of the human mind, to one entirely free thinking, where a tie could be a penis, where a son could hate his father and love his mother.
Obviously, ushering such gigantic intellectual change did not go without excesses and misunderstandings. Freud, belittled and ridiculed for many years, suddenly became a household name.
Suddenly everything seemed possible, a surreal thought, and its contrary. For a world bound by the limitations of physiology, the mental freedom afforded by Freud suddenly opened gigantic gates. Denying anything suddenly became “sign that you are resisting something”. Everything was sexual at heart. Men holding fish, excrements and death were good. Dreams, wanton and chaotic as they might seem, were now the ultimate truth.
Freud was in many ways a victim of his own success. And so was his method. The enduring image of psychology being specifically Freudian psychology is profoundly misleading and unhelpful. The cliché of the sullen analytical psychologist presiding over the patient slumped on a couch is very overrated. Psychoanalysis has its uses and areas of valid expertise but there again so do many other therapeutic schools. Psychoanalysis is also extremely long and expensive, which in the real world simply doesn’t stack up when it comes to delivering the most therapeutic benefit to patients as quickly as reasonable.
Freud: The Fraud
Liar, fraud, self-deluded genderist, god-complex pseudo-researcher, sexist pig, coke-head, paternalistic bourgeois and many more insults were hurled at Freud, during his time and most recently. To the point that it seems to have become somehow fashionable as a sort of art form, or thought leadership, to criticise Freud in the last 2 or 3 decades. How to distinguish unfair uninformed criticism, from valid one and valid other psychotherapeutic approaches that have since emerged?
Where do we start? Freud was a colossus of psychology but a flawed one, to be sure, in many aspects.
His method lacked scientific rigour:
Freud goes to great lengths to Freud veers here and there in his arguments, choosing this dream and that for example, without particular explanation. He did follow some scientific protocols such as for example, conducting literature reviews and couching his observations in a “method”.
But this is pretty much where the scientific method ends. In fact, many of his interpretations still read as wildly subjective and unscientific, which feels ironic to read from someone who goes to such lengths to prove the scientificness of his approach. He did not have control groups, clearly “finessed” many of his observations so they fitted his theory, not the other way around.
A lot of it objectively comes from Breuer and Charcot
Freud had a chief merit in knowing who to work with. In fact a lot of psychoanalytical school comes from his two main bosses/influences, Martin Charcot and Josef Breuer. In many ways we can argue, that Freud’s work was equal parts original thought and equal parts “cement” with pre-existing ideas. Freud was also a genius sampler and socialiser…
Josef Breuer is probably the main one. Much of Freud’s method comes directly from tools Breuer was using when he brought Freud in on some of his cases, like free-association and early hypnosis. Freud was very familiar with Breuer, a fatherly figure of 14 years more, at the beginning of his career. It is also Breuer who provided him with the case of Anna O. in 1880 (real name Bertha Pappenheim) A case that would be seminal in the genesis of psychoanalysis, with each man coming out of with a different view, and a consumed break from each other. The co-wrote a seminal book in psychology, a sort of proto-psychoanalysis, in “Studies on hysteria. Breuer contributed one (the famous case of Anna O.) and Freud four, coming from his starting practice.
Charcot had a profound influence on Freud, who observed Charcot during a 4 month internship at “Hôpital de la Salpétrière” in Paris. Jean-Martin Charcot led the neurology department, widely recognised at the time as best in the world, where famous scientists of the time came to intern. Seeing Charcot’s work profoundly changed Freud. He developed the scientific side of his model at the contact of Charcot mostly. He also took away from Charcot his belief that sex lied centrally to human psychology. He also learned more about hypnosis and free word association from Charcot.
Breuer famously commented that Freud “sees sex in everything”, a claim that would still meet a broad consensus in 2022. Breuer would later also comment on Freud’s odd tendency to jump to broad conclusions, more seemingly concerned with easy scientific recognition than objective analysis.
His work relied on specific data and population sample:
Much of what Freud discovered, wrote about and theoricised came from highly specific material:
- Neurotics
- Late 19th century bourgeoisie
- Mostly white women, Jewish, bourgeois and cloistered
Much could be said about the “neurotic” phenomenon in european bourgeoisie in the late 19th century. As an ail it seemed largely socially constructed (only affected women) and seemingly over-represented in the bourgeoisie. This taints Freud’s worldview in many intuitive ways when you read it again 130 years later.
His claims of objectivity were debatable:
Freud famously declared to have “self-analysed” himself. A claim that would nowadays probably yield a burst of laughter or kind patience from any psychotherapist. A lot of psychology ultimately rests in our “external set of eyes”. It is way too difficult to acquire perfect self-knowledge and nothing can replace another perspective on oneself.
His material was not always original:
Freud pinched and pulled from a wide variety of contemporaries, something in itself not particularly shocking as he typically quoted such work. But he did not always reference all his inspirations, taking much away from his claim of unique method and specific expertise. Another one of Charcot’s students, who would also become a psychologist of note, Janet, bickered for many years with Freud accusing him of plagiarising his ideas. There is a certain consistency to the accounts of plagiarism that make many psychologists now see him more as a genius assimilator and synthetiser of poetry, philosophy and psychology rather than an original thinker.
In summary
Freud was and will always be the man who brought mass consciousness of psychology. For all the plagiarism and subjectivity, he was the one who put out the first comprehensive modelling of the human mind. He is not necessarily the one who came up with the specific tools, Breuer himself had already coined “talking cure” and “free association” for example. But he is the one who put together a model, that he then applied to thousands of “hysterics” across the years.
Having a self-standing model, and having tested it thousands of times over in the real-world to tweak it, was the true watershed moment of Freud, not whether it worked perfectly, or was his own in full or not. Applying it during his years of practice to thousands of patients ultimately allowed him to perfect a model that still pretty much stands today in essence. It would be perfected on and expanded, infinitely critiqued from there on, ironically etching it in eternity.
Saying Freud was dumb or wrong ultimately sounds a bit misplaced considering his enduring legacy in the real world. To use a nerdy metaphor, it sounds a bit like saying Newton was dumb and wrong because his Principia did not speak yet of quantum mechanics. Whether by charm, plagiarism, political sense, marketing sense, or social cunning, or simply because no one yet had done it yet, Freud still brought us a profound understanding of the unconscious, automatic and paradoxical nature of human thinking.
