What Freud Wrote. Sigmund Freud: biography of a psychiatrist, his contribution to science

Dr. Sigmund Freud is an Austrian psychologist, psychiatrist and neurologist who immortalized his name with the discovery of psychoanalysis.

On January 8, 1900, Dr. Sigmund Freud melancholy remarks in a letter to his friend, the famous ear-nose-throat doctor Wilhelm Fliess: "This new age is of particular interest to us because it contains the date of our death."

Key to hysteria.

In a few months, Freud will be 44 years old. In the new twentieth century, he will live another 39 years. The last 16 - along with the disease, which, in the end (despite his vitality and the efforts of the best doctors), will bring him to the grave.

Well, in the meantime, everything is going more or less well: the onset of the new century is marked by the release of his new work "The Interpretation of Dreams", in which the area of ​​the irrational is subjected to careful rational analysis. He proceeds from the fact that it is in dreams that the rudiments of the entire psychology of neuroses are contained. There is also the key to understanding hysteria.

All together makes it possible to trace the "work of sleep", to penetrate into the world of the secret, unsteady, speaking to everyone in the language of the unconscious. It gives meaning to dreams, translates the language of dreams into the language of thought. There is reason to celebrate victory!

In 1885, Freud was trained by the famous Dr. Charcot, before whom he simply reveres. Charcot lectures and practices in the clinic of nervous diseases, where he deals mainly with patients with hysteria. Heals with hypnosis.

It was there, in Paris, that Freud groped his way to what would later be called "psychoanalysis", which would glorify his name.

“In a whole series of cases, falling in love is nothing but a mental capture by an object, dictated by sexual primal impulses for the purpose of direct sexual satisfaction and with the achievement of this goal, and fading away; this is what is called base, sensual love. But, as you know, the libidinal situation rarely remains so simple. Confidence in the new awakening of a need that had just died away was probably the immediate motive why the capture of a sexual object turned out to be prolonged and he was "loved" even in those periods of time when there was no attraction. Sigmund Freud.

But as a harmonious and logical system, psychoanalysis will take shape on a dark autumn night in 1895, when, in a state close to mild insanity, Freud suddenly feels that all the barriers are moving apart and the veils are falling. In a letter to Fliss, he writes: “Everything fell into place, all the gears came into engagement, and it seemed that in front of me was like a machine that functioned clearly and independently. Three systems of neurons, "free" and "bound" states, primary and secondary processes, the main tendency of the nervous system to reach compromises, two biological laws - attention and protection, concepts of quality, the reality of thought, inhibition caused by sexual causes, and finally , factors on which both conscious and unconscious life depends - all this has come to its interconnection and still continues to acquire connectedness. Naturally, I'm overjoyed!"

But he is not only happy about this. He understands well that if Martha had not been around, everything would have turned out differently. After nine years of marriage, preceded by a four-year engagement, he could argue that she was more than a wife. Martha was his guardian angel.

The wife of a genius.

She came from a well-known Jewish family, the Berneys, who were famous for their cultural traditions. He fell in love with her as soon as he saw her, but circumstances prevented their connection.

At that time he was still poor, success came slowly, and he could not take responsibility and start a family. For several years of engagement, they went through ardor, impatience, jealousy, but only in the autumn of 1886, in the decorous solemn atmosphere of the Wandsbek town hall, they were officially named husband and wife.

She will bear him three sons and three daughters. Both the children and the house will be entirely supported by Marta, who will take care of all household chores so that he can calmly do his work. She will share with him his finest hours, and the dark days of melancholy, all the ups and downs.

“It is human nature to value and desire above all else what he cannot achieve.” Sigmund Freud.

She will not pay attention to the rumors spread by his student Carl Jung about not only the friendly relations of her husband with her own sister Minna, who settled in their house after the death of the groom. She will try not to notice his "strange" relationship with Wilhelm Fliess, which lasted more than one year.

It is to him, Fliess, that Freud writes, with what impatience he looks forward to the next meeting, because his life is dreary, and only a meeting with him can make him feel better.

During one of these meetings, he faints, which turns out to be a reason to claim that some uncontrollable homosexual feeling is the cause of the fainting. Martha will also survive her husband's cooling off for sex (this is at the age of 40), which came after the birth of their last and most beloved child - daughter Anna. Marta will turn a blind eye to everything, for the sake of preserving her family, at home ...

Illness and self-control.

At the turn of the 1890s, the first serious illnesses began to fall on him. The Lord endowed him with willpower and clarity of spirit, his parents gave him vitality, but sooner or later every person begins to have health problems. There are no exceptions to this rule.

For quite a long time, Dr. Freud has been haunted by repeated attacks of tachycardia with an enviable frequency with severe arrhythmia, severe chest pains radiating to the left arm. More and more often he experiences shortness of breath.

“Patients are nothing more than the dregs of society. The only use they can bring is to help us earn a living and provide material for study. We can't help them anyway." Sigmund Freud.

Being a heavy, incorrigible smoker, he cannot live for an hour without a cigarette, and then a cigar. And even with a strong will, he is not able to give up tobacco.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Sigmund Freud.

Already at the age of 72, answering a questionnaire sent to many famous people (the questions concerned tobacco addiction), Freud writes: “I started smoking at 24, first cigarettes, and soon only cigars; I still smoke today ... and I think with horror of giving up this pleasure ... I remain faithful to this habit or this vice and I believe that I owe a high capacity for work and better self-control to a cigar.

Summarizing.

As for self-control, the great scientist has it at its best. In April 1923, he discovers on the inside of the jaw, to the right of the palate, a neoplasm that is increasing every day.

He gathers his will into a fist and courageously resists the disease. Barely in his 70s, his name is world famous, and several years ago he was included in the list of Jewish philosophers - Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Freud, Einstein - distinguished by the University of London and the Jewish Historical Society with a series of special reports.

He wrote fundamental scientific works, he has a school, students. It would seem that you can stop, take stock. But if cancer means physical death for him, then the rejection of work and creativity means intellectual, spiritual death.

"Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanity." Sigmund Freud.

And he continues to work furiously, overcoming constant pain. In creativity, he draws strength to resist this vile monster that has settled in his larynx.

In 1927, the book "The Future of an Illusion" was published, in which he examines the origin of religious ideas from the standpoint of psychoanalysis. In 1930, “Dissatisfaction with Culture” appears, in which the dissatisfaction of modern man with culture and civilization is associated with the excessive redundancy of the prohibitions imposed on him by society.

Exodus.

Meanwhile, in Germany next to Austria, the Nazis who came to power continue to rule the ball. They persecute all those whose views do not coincide with the views of their Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler.

In May 1938, a demonstrative execution was held on one of the Berlin squares - books were thrown into a giant fire. Some - because they were written by Jews, others - because they were not Jews, but anti-fascists. Dr. Sigmund Freud is both.

The Auto-da-fe is being repeated in Frankfurt, where it was only three years ago that he was awarded the Goethe Prize. Stoves are lit in concentration camps, into whose furnaces no longer books are thrown, but people.

On March 11, 1938, the Nazis occupy Vienna. Exactly four days after the Anschluss, a group of security officials break into the apartment of Sigmund Freud. But this is only the beginning: a week later the Gestapo comes and takes away their beloved daughter Anna. True, she is released in the evening of the same day, but this visit overflows the cup of his patience.

Freud decides to leave the country, but the new regime puts all sorts of obstacles in his way. The American Ambassador Bullitt helps to leave. Powerful and influential support is coming from all sides, and the Nazis are yielding to the pressure.

In July 1938, he arrives in London, comparing this with the exodus of Jews from Egypt. He will still have time to publish the book "Moses and Monotheism", he even begins a work that should be called "A Short Course in Psychoanalysis", but he will not be able to finish it.

... He burned down in front of his relatives in just a few months. A new tumor that appeared near the eye socket in early 1939 was inoperable...

Dr. Sigmund Freud was well aware that doctors were powerless - it was pointless to continue the cruel torture. On September 21, while in a London clinic, he reminded his personal doctor Shura, who moved with him to England, of a conversation that took place between them many years ago, when the illness was just beginning: “You promised not to leave me when my time comes.”

Max Schur, reluctantly, fulfilled his promise: the first subcutaneous injection of a dose of morphine was followed by another. This went on every 12 hours for two days.

On September 23, 1939, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who immortalized his name with the discovery of psychoanalysis, fell into a coma from which he was never destined to get out.

"I believe in bearded men and long-haired women..." Sigmund Freud.

Freud S., 1856-1939). An outstanding physician and psychologist, the founder of psychoanalysis. F. was born in the Moravian city of Freiburg. In 1860, the family moved to Vienna, where he graduated from the gymnasium with honors, then entered the medical faculty of the university and in 1881 received a doctorate in medicine.

F. dreamed of devoting himself to theoretical research in the field of neurology, but was forced to go into private practice as a neurologist. He was not satisfied with the physiotherapy procedures used at that time for the treatment of neurological patients, and he turned to hypnosis. Under the influence of medical practice, F. developed an interest in mental disorders of a functional nature. In 1885-1886. he attended the Charcot J. M. clinic in Paris, where hypnosis was used in the study and treatment of hysterical patients. In 1889 - a trip to Nancy and acquaintance with the work of another French school of hypnosis. This trip contributed to the fact that F. had an idea about the main mechanism of functional mental illness, about the presence of mental processes that, being outside the sphere of consciousness, influence behavior, and the patient himself does not know about it.

The decisive moment in the formation of the original theory of F. was the departure from hypnosis as a means of penetration to the forgotten experiences that underlie neuroses. In many, and just the most severe cases, hypnosis remained powerless, as it encountered resistance that it could not overcome. F. was forced to look for other ways to pathogenic affects and eventually found them in the interpretation of dreams, freely floating associations, small and large psychopathological manifestations, excessively increased or decreased sensitivity, movement disorders, slips of the tongue, forgetting, etc. drew on the phenomenon of the patient transferring feelings to the doctor that took place in early childhood in relation to significant persons.

Research and interpretation of this diverse material F. called psychoanalysis - the original form of psychotherapy and research method. The core of psychoanalysis as a new psychological direction is the doctrine of the unconscious.

The scientific activity of F. covers several decades, during which his concept has undergone significant changes, which gives grounds for the conditional allocation of three periods.

In the first period, psychoanalysis basically remained a method of treating neuroses, with occasional attempts at general conclusions about the nature of mental life. Such works by F. of this period as "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900), "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901) have not lost their significance. F. considered the suppressed sexual desire - "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905) - to be the main motivating force in human behavior. At this time, psychoanalysis began to gain popularity, around F. there was a circle of representatives of various professions (doctors, writers, artists) who wanted to study psychoanalysis (1902). F.'s extension of the facts obtained in the study of psychoneuroses to an understanding of the mental life of healthy people was met with great criticism.

In the second period, the concept of F. turned into a general psychological doctrine of the personality and its development. In 1909, he lectured in the United States, which was then published as a complete, albeit brief, presentation of psychoanalysis - "On Psychoanalysis: Five Lectures" (1910). The most widespread work is the "Introduction to Psychoanalysis Lectures", the first two volumes of which are a record of lectures delivered to physicians in 1916-1917.

In the third period, the teachings of F. - Freudianism - underwent significant changes and received its philosophical completion. Psychoanalytic theory has become the basis for understanding culture, religion, civilization. The doctrine of instincts was supplemented by ideas about the attraction to death, destruction - "Beyond the principle of pleasure" (1920). These ideas, received by F. in the treatment of wartime neuroses, led him to the conclusion that wars are the result of the death instinct, that is, due to human nature. The description of the three-component model of human personality - "I and It" (1923) belongs to the same period.

Thus, F. developed a number of hypotheses, models, concepts that captured the originality of the psyche and firmly entered the arsenal of scientific knowledge about it. Phenomena were involved in the circle of scientific analysis that traditional academic psychology was not accustomed to take into account.

After the occupation of Austria by the Nazis, F. was persecuted. The International Union of Psychoanalytic Societies, having paid the fascist authorities in the form of a ransom a significant amount of money, obtained permission to leave F. to England. In England he was greeted enthusiastically, but F.'s days were numbered. He died on 23 September 1939 at the age of 83 in London.

FREUD Sigmund

1856–1939) was an Austrian neuropathologist and founder of psychoanalysis. Born May 6, 1856 in Freiberg (now Příbor), located near the border of Moravia and Silesia, about two hundred and forty kilometers northeast of Vienna. Seven days later, the boy was circumcised and given two names - Shlomo and Sigismund. He inherited the Hebrew name Shlomo from his grandfather, who died two and a half months before the birth of his grandson. Only at the age of sixteen did the young man change his name Sigismund to the name Sigmund.

His father Jacob Freud married Amalia Natanson, Freud's mother, being much older than her and having two sons from his first marriage, one of whom was the same age as Amalia. By the time their first child was born, Freud's father was 41 years old, while his mother was three months away from turning 21. Over the next ten years, seven children were born in the Freud family - five daughters and two sons, one of whom died a few months after his birth, when Sigismund was less than two years old.

Due to a number of circumstances related to economic decline, the growth of nationalism and the futility of further life in a small town, the Freud family moved in 1859 to Leipzig, and then a year later to Vienna. Freud lived in the capital of the Austrian Empire for almost 80 years.

During this time, he brilliantly graduated from the gymnasium, in 1873 at the age of 17 he entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, from which he graduated in 1881, receiving a medical degree. For several years, Freud worked at the E. Brücke Physiological Institute and the Vienna City Hospital. In 1885-1886, he completed a six-month internship in Paris with the famous French physician J. Charcot at the Salpêtrière. Upon his return from the internship, he married Martha Bernays, eventually becoming the father of six children - three daughters and three sons.

Having opened a private practice in 1886, Z. Freud used various methods of treating nervous patients and put forward his understanding of the origin of neuroses. In the 1990s, he laid the foundations for a new method of research and treatment called psychoanalysis. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he developed the psychoanalytic ideas put forward by him.

Over the next two decades, S. Freud made further contributions to the theory and technique of classical psychoanalysis, used his ideas and methods of treatment in private practice, wrote and published numerous works devoted to refining his initial ideas about the unconscious drives of a person and the use of psychoanalytic ideas in various fields. knowledge.

Z. Freud received international recognition, was friends and corresponded with such prominent figures of science and culture as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Romain Rolland, Arnold Zweig, Stefan Zweig and many others.

In 1922, the University of London and the Jewish Historical Society organized a series of lectures on five famous Jewish philosophers, including Freud along with Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Einstein. In 1924, the Vienna City Council awarded Z. Freud the title of honorary citizen. On his seventieth birthday, he received congratulatory telegrams and letters from all over the world. In 1930 he was awarded the Goethe Prize for Literature. In honor of his seventy-fifth birthday, a memorial plaque was erected in Freiberg on the house in which he was born.

On the occasion of Freud's 80th birthday, Thomas Mann read out his address to the Academic Society of Medical Psychology. The appeal was signed by about two hundred famous writers and artists, including Virginia Woolf, Herman Hess, Salvador Dali, James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Aldous Huxley, H. G. Wells.

Z. Freud was elected an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the French Psychoanalytic Society, and the British Royal Medical Psychological Association. He was given the official title of Corresponding Member of the Royal Society.

After the Nazi invasion of Austria in March 1938, the life of S. Freud and his family was in danger. The Nazis seized the library of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, visited the house of Z. Freud, conducted a thorough search there, confiscated his bank account, and summoned his children Martin and Anna Freud to the Gestapo.

Thanks to the help and support from the American Ambassador to France, W.S. Bullitt, Princess Marie Bonaparte and other influential persons Z. Freud received permission to leave and at the beginning of June 1938 left Vienna in order to move to London via Paris.

Z. Freud spent the last year and a half of his life in England. In the very first days of his stay in London, he was visited by HG Wells, Bronislaw Malinovsky, Stefan Zweig, who brought Salvador Dali with him, secretaries of the Royal Society, acquaintances, friends. Despite his advanced age, the development of cancer, which was first discovered in him in April 1923, accompanied by numerous operations and steadfastly endured by him for 16 years, S. Freud carried out almost daily analyzes of patients and continued to work on his handwritten materials.

On September 21, 1938, Z. Freud asked his attending physician Max Schur to fulfill the promise that he had given him ten years ago at their first meeting. In order to avoid unbearable suffering, M. Schur twice administered a small dose of morphine to his famous patient, which turned out to be sufficient for a worthy death of the founder of psychoanalysis. On September 23, 1939, Z. Freud died without knowing that a few years later, his four sisters, who remained in Vienna, would be burned in a crematorium by the Nazis.

From the pen of Z. Freud came out not only a variety of works on the technique of medical use of psychoanalysis, but also such books as The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Wit and its relation to the unconscious (1905), "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (1905), "Delirium and Dreams in Gradiva" by W. Jensen (1907), "Memories of Leonardo da Vinci" (1910), "Totem and Taboo" (1913) , Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1916/17), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Mass Psychology and Analysis of the Human Self (1921), Self and It (1923), Inhibition, Symptom and Fear (1926), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Dostoevsky and Parricide (1928), Dissatisfaction with Culture (1930), Moses the Man and Monotheistic Religion (1938) and others.

1840 - Jacob Freud moved to Freiberg.

1835, August 18 - in the city of Brody in North-Eastern Galicia (now Lviv region, Ukraine), the mother of Sigmund Freud, Amalia Malka Natanson (1835-1930), was born. She spent part of her childhood in Odessa, where her two brothers settled, then her parents moved to Vienna.

1855, July 29 - Freud's parents, Jakob Freud and Amalia Natanson, were married in Vienna. This is the third marriage of Jacob, there is almost no information about his second marriage to Rebecca.

1855 - John (Johan) was born Freud- the son of Emmanuel and Maria Freud, the nephew of Z. Freud, with whom he was inseparable for the first 3 years of his life.

1856 - Paulina Freud was born - daughter of Emmanuel and Maria Freud, niece of Z. Freud.

Sigismund ( Sigmund) Shlomo Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the Moravian town of Freiberg in Austria-Hungary (now it is the city of Příbor, and it is located in the Czech Republic) in a traditional Jewish family of 40-year-old father Jakub Freud and his 20-year-old wife Amalia Natanson. He was the firstborn of a young mother.

1958 - the first of Freud's sisters, Anna, was born. 1859 - Bertha is born Freud- second daughter of Emmanuel and Mary Freud, niece of Z. Freud.

In 1859 the family moved to Leipzig and then to Vienna. In the gymnasium, he showed linguistic abilities and graduated with honors (the first student).

1860 - Rose (Regina Deborah), Freud's second and most beloved sister, is born.

1861 - Martha Bernays, the future wife of Z. Freud, was born in Wandsbek near Hamburg. In the same year, the third sister of Z. Freud, Maria (Mitzi), was born.

1862 - Dolfi (Esther Adolfina), the fourth sister of Z. Freud, was born.

1864 - Paula (Paulina Regina), the fifth sister of Z. Freud, was born.

1865 - Sigmund begins his undergraduate studies (a year earlier than usual, Z. Freud enters the Leopoldstadt communal gymnasium, where he was the first student in the class for 7 years).

1866 - Alexander (Gothold Ephraim), brother of Sigmund, was born, the last child in the family of Jacob and Amalia Freud.

1872 - during the summer holidays in his hometown of Freiberg, Freud experiences his first love, the chosen one is Gisela Fluss.

1873 - Z. Freud enters the University of Vienna at the Faculty of Medicine.

1876 ​​- Z. Freud meets Joseph Breuer and Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow, who later became his best friends.

1878 - changed the name Sigismund to Sigmund.

1881 - Freud graduated from the University of Vienna and received the degree of doctor of medicine. The need to earn money did not allow him to stay at the department and he first entered the Physiological Institute, and then to the Vienna Hospital, where he worked as a doctor in the surgical department, moving from one department to another.

In 1885 he received the title of Privatdozent, and he was given a scholarship for a scientific internship abroad, after which he went to Paris to the Salpêtrière clinic to the famous psychiatrist J.M. Charcot, who used hypnosis to treat mental illness. The practice at Charcot's clinic made a great impression on Freud. before his eyes there was a healing of patients with hysteria, who suffered mainly from paralysis.

On his return from Paris, Freud opens a private practice in Vienna. He immediately decides to try hypnosis on his patients. The first success was inspiring. In the first few weeks, he achieved instant healing of several patients. A rumor spread throughout Vienna that Dr. Freud was a miracle worker. But soon there were setbacks. He became disillusioned with hypnotic therapy, as he had been with drug and physical therapy.

In 1886, Freud marries Martha Bernays. Subsequently, they have six children - Matilda (1887-1978), Jean Martin (1889-1967, named after Charcot), Oliver (1891-1969), Ernst (1892-1970), Sofia (1893-1920) and Anna ( 1895-1982). It was Anna who became a follower of her father, founded child psychoanalysis, systematized and developed psychoanalytic theory, made a significant contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis in her writings.

In 1891, Freud moved to the house at Vienna IX, Berggasse 19, where he lived with his family and received patients until forced emigration in June 1937. The same year marks the beginning of the development by Freud, together with J. Breuer, of a special method of hypnotherapy, the so-called cathartic (from the Greek katharsis - cleansing). Together they continue the study of hysteria and its treatment by means of the cathartic method.

In 1895, they published the book "Studies in Hysteria", which for the first time speaks of the relationship between the emergence of neurosis and unsatisfied drives and emotions repressed from consciousness. Freud also occupies another state of the human psyche, similar to hypnotic - a dream. In the same year, he discovers the basic formula for the secret of dreams: each of them is the fulfillment of a wish. This thought struck him so much that he even jokingly offered to nail a commemorative plaque in the place where it happened. Five years later he expounded these ideas in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, which he consistently regarded as his finest work. Developing his ideas, Freud concludes that the main force that directs all actions, thoughts and desires of a person is the energy of libido, that is, the power of sexual desire. The human unconscious is filled with this energy, and therefore it is in constant confrontation with consciousness - the embodiment of moral norms and moral principles. Thus he comes to describe the hierarchical structure of the psyche, consisting of three "levels": consciousness, preconscious and unconscious.

In 1895, Freud finally abandoned hypnosis and began to practice the method of free association - the treatment of conversation, later called "psychoanalysis". He first used the concept of "psychoanalysis" in an article on the etiology of neuroses, published in French on March 30, 1896.

Between 1885 and 1899, Freud engaged in intensive practice, in-depth self-analysis and worked on his most significant book, The Interpretation of Dreams.
After the publication of the book, Freud develops and improves his theory. Despite the negative reaction of the intellectual elite, Freud's extraordinary ideas are gradually gaining acceptance among the young doctors of Vienna. The turn to real fame and big money took place on March 5, 1902, when Emperor François-Joseph I signed an official decree conferring the title of assistant professor to Sigmund Freud. In the same year, students and like-minded people gather around Freud, a psychoanalytic circle "on Wednesdays" is formed. Freud writes The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904), Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious (1905). On Freud's 50th birthday, his students present him with a medal made by K. M. Schwerdner. The reverse side of the medal depicts Oedipus and the Sphinx.

In 1907, he established contact with the school of psychiatrists from Zurich, and the young Swiss doctor K.G. became his student. Jung. Freud pinned great hopes on this man - he considered him the best successor to his offspring, capable of leading the psychoanalytic community. 1907, according to Freud himself, is a turning point in the history of the psychoanalytic movement - he receives a letter from E. Bleuler, who was the first in scientific circles to express official recognition of Freud's theory. In March 1908, Freud became an honorary citizen of Vienna. By 1908, Freud had followers all over the world, the Wednesday Psychological Society, which met with Freud, was transformed into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and on April 26, 1908, the first International Psychoanalytic Congress was held at the Bristol Hotel in Salzburg, in which 42 psychologists, half of which were practicing analysts.

Freud continues to work actively, psychoanalysis is widely known throughout Europe, in the USA, in Russia. In 1909 he lectured in the USA, in 1910 the Second International Congress on Psychoanalysis was held in Nuremberg, and then the congresses became regular. In 1912, Freud founded the periodical "International Journal of Medical Psychoanalysis". In 1915-1917. he lectures on psychoanalysis in his homeland, the University of Vienna, and prepares them for publication. His new works are being published, where he continues his research into the mysteries of the unconscious. Now his ideas go beyond just medicine and psychology, but also concern the laws of development of culture and society. Many young doctors come to study psychoanalysis directly to its founder.

In January 1920, Freud was awarded the title of ordinary university professor. An indicator of true glory was the honoring in 1922 by the University of London of the five great geniuses of mankind - Philo, Memonides, Spinoza, Freud and Einstein. The Vienna house at 19 Berggasse was filled with celebrities, Freud's receptions were signed up from different countries, and it seemed to have been booked for many years to come. He is invited to lecture in the USA.

In 1923, fate puts Freud to severe trials: he develops jaw cancer, caused by addiction to cigars. Operations on this occasion were constantly carried out and tormented him until the end of his life. Out of print comes "I and It" - one of the most important works of Freud. . The disturbing socio-political situation gives rise to riots and unrest. Freud, remaining true to the natural-science tradition, increasingly turns to the topics of the psychology of the masses, the psychological structure of religious and ideological dogmas. Continuing to explore the abyss of the unconscious, he now comes to the conclusion that two equally strong principles control a person: this is the desire for life (Eros) and the desire for death (Thanatos). The instinct of destruction, the forces of aggression and violence, manifest themselves too clearly around us not to notice them. In 1926, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Sigmund Freud receives congratulations from all over the world. Among the congratulators are Georg Brandes, Albert Einstein, Romain Rolland, mayor of Vienna, but academic Vienna ignored the anniversary.

On September 12, 1930, Freud's mother died at the age of 95. Freud in a letter to Ferenczi wrote: "I did not have the right to die while she was alive, now I have this right. One way or another, the values ​​of life have changed significantly in the depths of my consciousness." On October 25, 1931, a memorial plaque was installed on the house where Sigmund Freud was born. On this occasion, the streets of the city are decorated with flags. Freud writes a letter of thanks to the mayor of Příbor, in which he remarks:
"Deep in me still lives a happy child from Freiburg, the first-born of a young mother, who received his indelible impressions of the land and air of those places."

In 1932, Freud completed work on the manuscript "Continuation of lectures on introduction to psychoanalysis". In 1933, fascism came to power in Germany and Freud's books, along with many others that were not pleasing to the new authorities, were set on fire. To this, Freud remarks: "What progress we have made! In the Middle Ages they would have burned me; today they are content with burning my books." In the summer, Freud begins work on The Man Moses and Monotheistic Religion.

In 1935, Freud became an honorary member of the Royal Society of Physicians in Great Britain. On September 13, 1936, the Freuds celebrated their golden wedding. On that day, four of their children came to visit them. The persecution of the Jews by the National Socialists is growing, the warehouse of the International Psychoanalytic Publishing House in Leipzig is being arrested. In August, the International Psychoanalytic Congress took place in Marienbad. The place of the congress was chosen in such a way as to enable Anna Freud to quickly return to Vienna to assist her father if necessary. in 1938, the last meeting of the leadership of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association took place, at which a decision was made to leave the country. Ernest Jones and Marie Bonaparte rush to Vienna to help Freud. Foreign demonstrations force the Nazi regime to allow Freud to emigrate. The International Psychoanalytic Publication has been sentenced to liquidation.

On August 23, 1938, the authorities close the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. On June 4, Freud leaves Vienna with his wife and daughter Anna and travels by Orient Express via Paris to London.
In London, Freud first lives at Elsworthy Road 39, and on September 27 he moves to his last home, Maresfield Gardens 20.
The family of Sigmund Freud has lived in this house since 1938. Until 1982, Anna Freud lived here. Now here is a museum and a research center at the same time.

The exposition of the museum is very rich. The Freud family was lucky - they managed to take out almost all the furnishings of their Austrian home. So now visitors have the opportunity to admire samples of Austrian wooden furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries, chairs and tables in the Bedermeier style. But, of course, the "hit of the season" is the psychoanalyst's famous couch, on which his patients lay during the sessions. In addition, Freud collected ancient art all his life - samples of ancient Greek, ancient Egyptian, ancient Roman art are lined with all horizontal surfaces in his office. Including the desk where Freud used to write in the morning.

In August 1938, the last pre-war International Psychoanalytic Congress took place in Paris. In late autumn, Freud again begins to conduct psychoanalytic sessions, taking four patients daily. Freud writes an Outline of Psychoanalysis, but never manages to complete it. In the summer of 1939, Freud's condition began to deteriorate more and more. On September 23, 1939, just before midnight, Freud dies after begging his doctor Max Schur (under a prearranged condition) for an injection of a lethal dose of morphine. On September 26, the cremation of Freud's body took place in Golder's Green crematorium. The funeral speech is held by Ernest Jones. After him, Stefan Zweig delivers a mourning speech in German. The ashes from the body of Sigmund Freud are placed in a Greek vase, which he received as a gift from Marie Bonaparte.

Today, Freud's personality has become legendary, and his works are unanimously recognized as a new milestone in world culture. Interest in the discoveries of psychoanalysis is shown by philosophers and writers, artists and directors. During the life of Freud, Stefan Zweig's book "Medicine and the Psyche" was published. One of its chapters is devoted to the "father of psychoanalysis", his role in the final revolution of ideas about medicine and the nature of diseases. After the Second World War in the United States, psychoanalysis becomes a "second religion" and outstanding masters of American cinema pay tribute to it: Vincenta Minnelli, Elia Kazan, Nicholas Rey, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin. One of the greatest French philosophers, Jean Paul Sartre, wrote a script about the life of Freud, and a little later, Hollywood director John Huston made a film based on his motives... Today it is impossible to name any major writer or scientist, philosopher or director of the twentieth century who has not experienced would have been directly or indirectly influenced by psychoanalysis. So the promise of the young Viennese doctor, which he gave to his future wife Martha, came true - he really became a great person.

According to the materials of the International Psychoanalytic Conference "Sigmund Freud - the founder of a new scientific paradigm: psychoanaliz in theory and practice" (to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud).

Want to explore the depths of your unconscious? -psychotherapist psychoanalytic school is ready to accompany you on this exciting journey.

Austrian psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and neurologist

short biography

Sigmund Freud(the correct transcription is Freud; since German Sigmund Freud, IPA (German) [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]; full name Sigismund Shlomo Freud, German Sigismund Schlomo Freud; May 6, 1856, Freiberg, Austrian Empire - September 23, 1939, London) - Austrian psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and neurologist.

Sigmund Freud is best known as the founder of psychoanalysis, which had a significant impact on psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, literature and art of the 20th century. Freud's views on human nature were innovative for his time and throughout the life of the researcher did not stop causing resonance and criticism in the scientific community. Interest in the theories of the scientist does not fade to this day.

Among Freud's achievements, the most important are the development of a three-component structural model of the psyche (consisting of "It", "I" and "Super-I"), the identification of specific phases of the psychosexual development of the personality, the creation of the theory of the Oedipus complex, the discovery of protective mechanisms functioning in the psyche, the psychologization of the concept "unconscious", the discovery of transference and counter-transference, as well as the development of such therapeutic techniques as the method of free association and the interpretation of dreams.

Despite the fact that the influence of Freud's ideas and personality on psychology is undeniable, many researchers consider his works to be intellectual charlatanism. Almost every postulate fundamental to Freud's theory has been criticized by prominent scientists and writers such as Karl Jaspers, Erich Fromm, Albert Ellis, Karl Kraus and many others. The empirical basis of Freud's theory was called "inadequate" by Frederick Krüss and Adolf Grünbaum, psychoanalysis was dubbed "fraud" by Peter Medawar, Freud's theory was considered pseudoscientific by Karl Popper, which, however, did not prevent the outstanding Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist, director of the Vienna Neurological Clinic Viktor Frankl in his fundamental work "Theory and Therapy of Neuroses" admit: "And yet, it seems to me, psychoanalysis will be the foundation for the psychotherapy of the future. […] Therefore, the contribution made by Freud to the creation of psychotherapy does not lose its value, and what he did is incomparable.”

During his life, Freud wrote and published a huge number of scientific works - the complete collection of his works is 24 volumes. He held the titles of Doctor of Medicine, Professor, Honorary Doctor of Laws from Clark University and was a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, recipient of the Goethe Prize, was an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the French Psychoanalytic Society and the British Psychological Society. Not only about psychoanalysis, but also about the scientist himself, many biographical books have been published. More papers are published each year on Freud than on any other psychological theorist.

Childhood and youth

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the small (about 4,500 inhabitants) town of Freiberg in Moravia, which at that time belonged to Austria. The street where Freud was born, the Schlossergasse, now bears his name. Freud's paternal grandfather was Shlomo Freud, he died in February 1856, shortly before the birth of his grandson - it was in his honor that the latter was named. Sigmund's father, Jacob Freud, was married twice and had two sons from his first marriage - Philip and Emmanuel (Emmanuel). The second time he married at the age of 40 - to Amalia Natanson, who was half his age. Sigmund's parents were Jews of German origin. Jacob Freud had his own modest textile business. Sigmund lived in Freiberg for the first three years of his life, until in 1859 the consequences of the industrial revolution in Central Europe dealt a crushing blow to his father's small business, practically ruining it - as, indeed, almost all of Freiberg, which was in significant decline: after As the restoration of the nearby railroad was completed, the city experienced a period of rising unemployment. In the same year, the Freuds had a daughter, Anna.

The family decided to move and left Freiberg, moving to Leipzig, where they spent only a year and, having not achieved significant success, moved to Vienna. Sigmund endured the move from his native town quite hard - the forced separation from his half-brother Philip, with whom he was in close friendly relations, had an especially strong effect on the state of the child: Philip partly even replaced Sigmund's father. The Freud family, being in a difficult financial situation, settled in one of the poorest districts of the city - Leopoldstadt, which at that time was a kind of Viennese ghetto inhabited by the poor, refugees, prostitutes, gypsies, proletarians and Jews. Soon, Jacob's business began to improve, and the Freuds were able to move to a more livable place, although they could not afford luxury. At the same time, Sigmund became seriously interested in literature - he retained the love of reading, instilled by his father, for the rest of his life.

Memories of early childhood

"I was the son of my parents […] , quietly and comfortably living in this small provincial nest. When I was about three years old, my father went bankrupt, and we had to leave our village and move to a big city. There followed a series of long and difficult years, of which, it seems to me, nothing is worth remembering.

Initially, the mother was engaged in teaching her son, but then she was replaced by Jacob, who really wanted Sigmund to get a good education and enter a private gymnasium. Home preparation and exceptional learning abilities allowed Sigmund Freud to pass the entrance exam at the age of nine and enter the gymnasium a year ahead of schedule. By this time, there were already eight children in the Freud family, and Sigmund stood out among everyone with his diligence and passion for learning everything new; his parents fully supported him and tried to create such an atmosphere in the house that would contribute to the successful study of his son. So, if the rest of the children studied by candlelight, Sigmund was given a kerosene lamp and even a separate room. So that nothing distracts him, the rest of the children were forbidden to play music that interfered with Sigmund. The young man was seriously interested in literature and philosophy - he read Shakespeare, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, knew German perfectly, studied Greek and Latin, spoke French, English, Spanish and Italian fluently. While studying at the gymnasium, Sigmund showed excellent results and quickly became the first student in the class, graduating with honors ( summa cum laude) at the age of seventeen.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Sigmund doubted his future profession for a long time - however, his choice was rather meager due to his social status and the then prevailing anti-Semitic sentiments and was limited to commerce, industry, law and medicine. The first two options were immediately rejected by the young man because of his high education, jurisprudence also faded into the background along with youthful ambitions in politics and military affairs. Freud received the impulse to make a final decision from Goethe - once having heard how at one of the lectures the professor was reading an essay by a thinker called "Nature", Sigmund decided to enroll in the Faculty of Medicine, although he did not have the slightest interest in medicine - subsequently he repeatedly he admitted this and wrote: “I did not feel any predisposition to practicing medicine and the profession of a doctor,” and in later years he even said that in medicine he never felt “at ease”, and in general he never considered himself a real doctor.

Professional development

In the fall of 1873, seventeen-year-old Sigmund Freud entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. The first year of study was not directly related to the subsequent specialty and consisted of many courses in the humanities - Sigmund attended numerous seminars and lectures, still not finally choosing a specialty to his taste. During this time, he experienced many difficulties associated with his nationality - because of the anti-Semitic sentiments that prevailed in society, numerous skirmishes took place between him and fellow students. Steadfastly enduring regular ridicule and attacks from his peers, Sigmund began to develop in himself stamina, the ability to give a worthy rebuff in an argument and the ability to resist criticism: “From early childhood I was made to get used to being in opposition and being banned by the “majority agreement”. Thus the foundations were laid for a certain degree of independence in judgment.

Sigmund began to study anatomy and chemistry, but he enjoyed the lectures of the famous physiologist and psychologist Ernst von Brücke, who had a significant influence on him. In addition, Freud attended classes taught by the eminent zoologist Karl Klaus; acquaintance with this scientist opened up broad prospects for independent research practice and scientific work, to which Sigmund gravitated. The efforts of the ambitious student were crowned with success, and in 1876 he got the opportunity to carry out his first research work at the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste, one of the departments of which was headed by Klaus. It was there that Freud wrote the first article published by the Academy of Sciences; it was devoted to revealing sex differences in river eels. During his work under Klaus, "Freud quickly distinguished himself from other students, which allowed him to twice, in 1875 and 1876, become a fellow of the Institute of Zoological Research of Trieste."

Freud retained an interest in zoology, but after receiving the position of a research fellow at the Institute of Physiology, he completely fell under the influence of Brücke's psychological ideas and moved to his laboratory for scientific work, leaving zoological research. “Under his [Brücke] guidance, the student Freud worked at the Vienna Physiological Institute, sitting for many hours at the microscope. […] He has never been happier than during his years in the laboratory studying the structure of nerve cells in the spinal cord of animals.” Scientific work completely captured Freud; he studied, among other things, the detailed structure of animal and plant tissues and wrote several articles on anatomy and neurology. Here, at the Physiological Institute, in the late 1870s, Freud met the physician Josef Breuer, with whom he developed strong friendships; both of them had similar characters and a common outlook on life, therefore they quickly found mutual understanding. Freud admired Breuer's scientific talents and learned a lot from him: “He became my friend and helper in the difficult conditions of my existence. We are used to sharing all our scientific interests with him. From these relations, naturally, I derived the main benefit.

In 1881, Freud passed his final exams with excellent marks and received a doctorate, which, however, did not change his lifestyle - he remained working in the laboratory under Brücke, hoping to eventually take the next vacant position and firmly associate himself with scientific work. . Freud's supervisor, seeing his ambition and given the financial difficulties he faced due to family poverty, decided to dissuade Sigmund from pursuing a research career. In one of the letters, Brücke remarked: “Young man, you have chosen a path that leads nowhere. There are no vacancies in the Department of Psychology for the next 20 years, and you do not have enough means of subsistence. I see no other solution: leave the institute and start practicing medicine.” Freud heeded the advice of his teacher - to a certain extent this was facilitated by the fact that in the same year he met Martha Bernays, fell in love with her and decided to marry her; in connection with this, Freud needed money. Martha belonged to a Jewish family with rich cultural traditions - her grandfather, Isaac Bernays, was a rabbi in Hamburg, his two sons - Mikael and Jakob - taught at the Universities of Munich and Bonn. Martha's father, Berman Bernays, worked as a secretary for Lorenz von Stein.

Freud did not have enough experience to open a private practice - at the University of Vienna he acquired exclusively theoretical knowledge, while clinical practice had to be developed independently. Freud decided that the Vienna City Hospital was best suited for this. Sigmund started with surgery, but after two months he abandoned this idea, finding the work too tiring. Deciding to change his field of activity, Freud switched to neurology, in which he was able to achieve some success - studying the methods of diagnosing and treating children with paralysis, as well as various speech disorders (aphasia), he published a number of works on these topics, which became known in scientific and medical circles. He owns the term "cerebral palsy" (now generally accepted). Freud gained a reputation as a highly skilled neurologist. At the same time, his passion for medicine quickly faded away, and in the third year of work at the Vienna Clinic, Sigmund was completely disappointed in her.

In 1883, he decided to go to work in the psychiatric department, headed by Theodor Meinert, a recognized scientific authority in his field. The period of work under the guidance of Meinert was very productive for Freud - exploring the problems of comparative anatomy and histology, he published such scientific works as “A case of cerebral hemorrhage with a complex of basic indirect symptoms associated with scurvy” (1884), “On the question of the intermediate location oliviform body", "A case of muscle atrophy with extensive loss of sensitivity (violation of pain and temperature sensitivity)" (1885), "Complex acute neuritis of the nerves of the spinal cord and brain", "Origin of the auditory nerve", "Observation of severe unilateral loss of sensitivity in a patient with hysteria » (1886). In addition, Freud wrote articles for the General Medical Dictionary and created a number of other works on cerebral hemiplegia in children and aphasia. For the first time in his life, work overwhelmed Sigmund with his head and turned into a true passion for him. At the same time, the young man, striving for scientific recognition, experienced a feeling of dissatisfaction with his work, since, in his own opinion, he did not achieve really significant success; Freud's psychological state was rapidly deteriorating, he was regularly in a state of melancholy and depression.

For a short time, Freud worked in the venereal division of the department of dermatology, where he studied the relationship of syphilis with diseases of the nervous system. He devoted his free time to laboratory research. In an effort to expand his practical skills as much as possible for further independent private practice, from January 1884 Freud moved to the department of nervous diseases. Shortly thereafter, a cholera epidemic broke out in Montenegro, neighboring Austria, and the country's government asked for help in providing medical control at the border - most of Freud's senior colleagues volunteered, and his immediate supervisor at that time was on a two-month vacation; due to circumstances, for a long time, Freud served as chief physician of the department.

cocaine research

In 1884, Freud read about the experiments of a certain German military doctor with a new drug - cocaine. There have been claims in scientific papers that this substance can increase endurance and significantly reduce fatigue. Freud was extremely interested in what he had read and decided to conduct a series of experiments on himself. The first mention of this substance by scientists is dated April 21, 1884 - in one of the letters, Freud noted: "I got some cocaine and will try to test its effect, using it in cases of heart disease, as well as nervous exhaustion, especially in the terrible state of weaning from morphine." The effect of cocaine made a strong impression on the scientist, the drug was characterized by him as an effective analgesic, which makes it possible to carry out the most complex surgical operations; an enthusiastic article on the substance came out from Freud's pen in 1884 and was called "On coca". For a long time, the scientist used cocaine as an anesthetic, using it on his own and prescribing it to his fiancee Martha. Fascinated by the "magic" properties of cocaine, Freud insisted on its use by his friend Ernst Fleischl von Marxow, who was ill with a serious infectious disease, had a finger amputation and suffered from severe headaches (and also suffered from morphine addiction). Freud advised a friend to use cocaine as a cure for morphine abuse. The desired result was not achieved - von Marxov subsequently quickly became addicted to a new substance, and he began to have frequent attacks similar to delirium tremens, accompanied by terrible pains and hallucinations. At the same time, from all over Europe, reports of cocaine poisoning and addiction began to arrive, about the deplorable consequences of its use.

However, Freud's enthusiasm did not diminish - he explored cocaine as an anesthetic in various surgical operations. The result of the work of the scientist was a voluminous publication in the Central Journal of General Medicine on cocaine, in which Freud outlined the history of the use of coca leaves by South American Indians, described the history of the plant's penetration into Europe, and detailed the results of his own observations of the effect produced by the use of cocaine. In the spring of 1885, the scientist gave a lecture on this substance, in which he recognized the possible negative consequences of its use, but noted that he did not observe any cases of addiction (this happened before the deterioration of von Marx's condition). Freud ended the lecture with the words: "I do not hesitate to advise the use of cocaine in subcutaneous injections of 0.3-0.5 grams, without worrying about its accumulation in the body." Criticism was not long in coming - already in June the first major works appeared, condemning Freud's position and proving its inconsistency. Scientific controversy regarding the appropriateness of the use of cocaine continued until 1887. During this period, Freud published several more works - "On the Question of the Study of the Effects of Cocaine" (1885), "On the General Effects of Cocaine" (1885), "Cocaine addiction and cocainophobia" (1887).

By the beginning of 1887, science had finally debunked the last myths about cocaine - it "was publicly condemned as one of the scourges of mankind, along with opium and alcohol." Freud, by that time already addicted to cocaine, until 1900 suffered from headaches, heart attacks and frequent nosebleeds. It is noteworthy that Freud not only experienced the destructive effect of a dangerous substance on himself, but also unwittingly (since at that time the perniciousness of cocainism had not yet been proven) spread to many acquaintances. E. Jones stubbornly concealed this fact of his biography and preferred not to cover it, however, this information became reliably known from published letters in which Jones stated: “Before the danger of drugs was identified, Freud already posed a social threat, since he pushed everyone who knew to take cocaine.

The birth of psychoanalysis

In 1885, Freud decided to take part in a competition held among junior doctors, the winner of which received the right to a scientific internship in Paris with the famous psychiatrist Jean Charcot. In addition to Freud himself, there were many promising doctors among the applicants, and Sigmund was by no means the favorite, which he was well aware of; the only chance for him was the help of influential professors and scientists in academia, with whom he had previously had the opportunity to work. Enlisting the support of Brucke, Meinert, Leidesdorf (in his private clinic for the mentally ill, Freud briefly replaced one of the doctors) and several other scientists he knew, Freud won the competition, receiving thirteen votes in his support against eight. The chance to study under Charcot was a great success for Sigmund, he had great hopes for the future in connection with the upcoming trip. So, shortly before his departure, he enthusiastically wrote to his bride: “Little Princess, my little Princess. Oh how wonderful it will be! I will come with money ... Then I will go to Paris, become a great scientist and return to Vienna with a big, just a huge halo over my head, we will immediately get married, and I will cure all the incurable nervous patients.

In the autumn of 1885, Freud arrived in Paris to see Charcot, who at that time was at the height of his fame. Charcot studied the causes and treatment of hysteria. In particular, the main work of the neurologist was the study of the use of hypnosis - the use of this method allowed him to both induce and eliminate such hysterical symptoms as paralysis of the limbs, blindness and deafness. Under Charcot, Freud worked at the Salpêtrière clinic. Encouraged by Charcot's methods and impressed by his clinical success, he offered his services as an interpreter of his mentor's lectures into German, for which he received his permission.

In Paris, Freud was passionately involved in neuropathology, studying the differences between patients who experienced paralysis due to physical trauma and those who developed symptoms of paralysis due to hysteria. Freud was able to establish that hysterical patients vary greatly in the severity of paralysis and injury sites, and also to identify (with the help of Charcot) the existence of certain links between hysteria and problems of a sexual nature. At the end of February 1886, Freud left Paris and decided to spend some time in Berlin, getting the opportunity to study childhood diseases at the Adolf Baginsky clinic, where he spent several weeks before returning to Vienna.

On September 13 of the same year, Freud married his beloved Martha Bernay, who subsequently bore him six children - Matilda (1887-1978), Martin (1889-1969), Oliver (1891-1969), Ernst (1892-1966), Sophie ( 1893-1920) and Anna (1895-1982). After returning to Austria, Freud began working at the institute under the direction of Max Kassovitz. He was engaged in translations and reviews of scientific literature, conducted a private practice, mainly working with neurotics, which "immediately put on the agenda the issue of therapy, which was not so relevant for scientists engaged in research activities." Freud knew about the success of his friend Breuer and the possibilities of successfully applying his "cathartic method" in the treatment of neuroses (this method was discovered by Breuer while working with the patient Anna O, and later was reused together with Freud and was first described in "Studies in Hysteria") , but Charcot, who remained an unquestioned authority for Sigmund, was very skeptical about this technique. Freud's own experience told him that Breuer's research was very promising; beginning in December 1887, he increasingly resorted to the use of hypnotic suggestion in his work with patients. However, he achieved the first modest success in this practice only a year later, in connection with which he turned to Breuer with a proposal to work together.

“The patients who came to them were mostly women suffering from hysteria. The disease manifested itself in various symptoms - fears (phobias), loss of sensitivity, aversion to food, split personality, hallucinations, spasms, etc. Using mild hypnosis (a suggested state similar to sleep), Breuer and Freud asked their patients to talk about events that had once been accompany the onset of symptoms. It turned out that when the patients were able to remember about it and “speak out”, the symptoms disappeared at least for a while.<…>Hypnosis weakened the control of consciousness, and sometimes completely removed it. This made it easier for the hypnotized patient to solve the task that Breuer and Freud set - to "pour out the soul" in the story of the experiences repressed from consciousness.

Yaroshevsky M. G. "Sigmund Freud - an outstanding researcher of the mental life of a person"

In the course of his work with Breuer, Freud gradually began to realize the imperfection of the cathartic method and of hypnosis in general. In practice, it turned out that its effectiveness was far from being as high as Breuer claimed, and in some cases the treatment did not work at all - in particular, hypnosis was not able to overcome the patient's resistance, expressed in the suppression of traumatic memories. Often there were patients who were not at all suitable for introduction into a hypnotic state, and the condition of some patients worsened after the sessions. Between 1892 and 1895, Freud began to search for another method of treatment that would be more effective than hypnosis. To begin with, Freud tried to get rid of the need to use hypnosis, using a methodical trick - pressure on the forehead in order to suggest to the patient that he must definitely remember the events and experiences that had previously taken place in his life. The main task that the scientist solved was to obtain the desired information about the patient's past in his normal (and not hypnotic) state. The use of the laying on of the palm had some effect, allowing us to move away from hypnosis, but still remained an imperfect technique, and Freud continued to search for a solution to the problem.

The answer to the question that so occupied the scientist turned out to be quite accidentally suggested by the book of one of Freud's favorite writers, Ludwig Börne. His essay "The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days" ended with the words: "Write whatever you think about yourself, about your successes, about the Turkish war, about Goethe, about the criminal trial and its judges, about your bosses - and through for three days you will be amazed at how much completely new, unknown to you ideas lie in you. This thought prompted Freud to use the entire array of information that clients reported about themselves in dialogues with him as a key to understanding their psyche.

Subsequently, the method of free association became the main method in Freud's work with patients. Many patients reported that pressure from the doctor - the insistent compulsion to "pronounce" all the thoughts that come to mind - prevents them from concentrating. That is why Freud abandoned the “methodical trick” with pressure on the forehead and allowed his clients to say whatever they wanted. The essence of the technique of free association is to follow the rule according to which the patient is invited to freely, without concealment, express his thoughts on the topic proposed by the psychoanalyst, without trying to concentrate. Thus, according to Freud's theoretical propositions, thought will unconsciously move towards what is significant (what worries), overcoming resistance due to lack of concentration. From Freud's point of view, no thought that appears is random - it is always a derivative of the processes that happened (and are happening) with the patient. Any association can become fundamentally important for establishing the causes of the disease. The use of this method made it possible to completely abandon the use of hypnosis in sessions and, according to Freud himself, served as an impetus for the formation and development of psychoanalysis.

The result of the joint work of Freud and Breuer was the publication of the book Studies in Hysteria (1895). The main clinical case described in this work - the case of Anna O - gave impetus to the emergence of one of the most important ideas for Freudianism - the concept of transfer (transfer) (this idea first occurred to Freud when he was thinking about the case of Anna O, who was at that time a patient Breuer, who told the latter that she was expecting a child from him and imitating childbirth in a state of insanity), and also formed the basis of the ideas that appeared later about the oedipal complex and infantile (childish) sexuality. Summarizing the data obtained during the collaboration, Freud wrote: “Our hysterical patients suffer from memories. Their symptoms are remnants and symbols of memories of known (traumatic) experiences. The publication of the Hysteria Studies is called by many researchers the "birthday" of psychoanalysis. It is worth noting that by the time the work was published, Freud's relationship with Breuer had finally broken off. The reasons for the divergence of scientists in professional views to this day remain not completely clear; Freud's close friend and biographer Ernest Jones believed that Breuer categorically disagreed with Freud's opinion about the important role of sexuality in the etiology of hysteria, and this was the main reason for their breakup.

Early development of psychoanalysis

Many respected Viennese doctors - mentors and colleagues of Freud - turned away from him after Breuer. The statement that it is repressed memories (thoughts, ideas) of a sexual nature that underlie hysteria provoked a scandal and formed an extremely negative attitude towards Freud on the part of the intellectual elite. At the same time, a long-term friendship between the scientist and Wilhelm Fliess, a Berlin otolaryngologist, who attended his lectures for some time, began to emerge. Fliess soon became very close to Freud, who was rejected by the academic community, had lost his old friends and was in desperate need of support and understanding. Friendship with Fliss turned into a true passion for him, capable of being compared with the love for his wife.

On October 23, 1896, Jacob Freud died, whose death Sigmund experienced especially acutely: against the backdrop of despair and a sense of loneliness that seized Freud, he began to develop a neurosis. It is for this reason that Freud decided to apply analysis to himself, examining childhood memories through the method of free association. This experience laid the foundations of psychoanalysis. None of the previous methods were suitable for achieving the desired result, and then Freud turned to the study of his own dreams. Freud's introspection was extremely painful and very difficult, but it turned out to be productive and important for his further research:

“All these revelations [discovered in oneself love for mother and hatred for father] at the first moment caused “such an intellectual paralysis that I could not have imagined.” He is unable to work; the resistance that he had previously encountered in his patients, Freud now experiences in his own skin. But the "conquistador-conqueror" did not flinch and continued on his way, resulting in two fundamental discoveries: the role of dreams and the Oedipus complex, the foundations and cornerstones of Freud's theory of the human psyche.

Josep Ramon Casafont. "Sigmund Freud"

In the period from 1897 to 1899, Freud worked hard on the work, which he later considered his most important work, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900, German Die Traumdeutung). An important role in preparing the book for publication was played by Wilhelm Fliess, to whom Freud sent the written chapters for evaluation - it was at the suggestion of Fliess that many details were removed from the Interpretation. Immediately after its publication, the book did not have any significant impact on the public and received only minor publicity. The psychiatric community generally ignored the release of The Interpretation of Dreams. The importance of this work for the scientist throughout his life remained undeniable - for example, in the preface to the third English edition in 1931, the seventy-five-year-old Freud wrote: “This book<…>in full accordance with my current ideas ... contains the most valuable of the discoveries that a favorable fate has allowed me to make. Insights of this kind fall to the lot of a person, but only once in a lifetime.

According to Freud's assumptions, dreams have overt and covert content. Explicit content is directly what a person talks about, remembering his dream. The latent content is a hallucinatory fulfillment of some desire of the dreamer, masked by certain visual pictures with the active participation of the Self, which seeks to bypass the censorship restrictions of the Superego, which suppresses this desire. The interpretation of dreams, according to Freud, lies in the fact that on the basis of free associations that are found for individual parts of dreams, certain substitute representations can be evoked that open the way to the true (hidden) content of the dream. Thus, thanks to the interpretation of fragments of a dream, its general meaning is recreated. The process of interpretation is the "translation" of the explicit content of the dream into the hidden thoughts that initiated it.

Freud expressed the opinion that the images perceived by the dreamer are the result of the work of the dream, expressed in displacement(irrelevant representations acquire a high value, originally inherent in another phenomenon), thickening(in one representation, the set of values ​​formed through associative chains coincides) and substitution(replacement of specific thoughts with symbols and images), which turn the latent content of a dream into an explicit one. A person's thoughts are transformed into certain images and symbols through the process of visual and symbolic representation - in relation to a dream, Freud called this primary process. Further, these images are transformed into some meaningful content (the dream plot appears) - this is how recycling works ( secondary process). However, recycling may not occur - in this case, the dream turns into a stream of strangely intertwined images, becomes abrupt and fragmentary.

First psychoanalytic association

“Since 1902, several young doctors have gathered around me with the definite intention of studying psychoanalysis, putting it into practice and spreading it.<…>They met at my place on certain evenings, had discussions in the established order, tried to understand what seemed a strange new area of ​​\u200b\u200bresearch and arouse interest in it.<…>

The small circle soon grew, changing membership several times over the course of several years. In general, I can confess that in terms of the wealth and variety of talents, he was hardly inferior to the staff of any clinical teacher.

Z. Freud. "Essay on the History of Psychoanalysis" (1914)

Despite the rather cool reaction of the scientific community to the release of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud gradually began to form around himself a group of like-minded people who became interested in his theories and views. Freud became occasionally accepted in psychiatric circles, sometimes using his techniques in work; medical journals began to publish reviews of his writings. Since 1902, the scientist regularly received in his house interested in the development and dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas of doctors, as well as artists and writers. The beginning of the weekly meetings was laid by one of Freud's patients, Wilhelm Stekel, who had previously successfully completed a course of treatment for neurosis with him; it was Shtekel who, in one of his letters, invited Freud to meet at his house to discuss his work, to which the doctor agreed, inviting Shtekel himself and several especially interested listeners - Max Kahane, Rudolf Reiter and Alfred Adler. The resulting club was called the "Psychological Society on Wednesdays"; its meetings were held until 1908. For six years, the society acquired a fairly large number of listeners, whose composition changed regularly. It steadily gained popularity: "It turned out that psychoanalysis gradually aroused interest in itself and found friends, proved that there are scientists who are ready to recognize it." Thus, the members of the "Psychological Society", who subsequently received the greatest fame, were Alfred Adler (member of the society since 1902), Paul Federn (since 1903), Otto Rank, Isidor Zadger (both since 1906), Max Eitingon, Ludwig Biswanger and Karl Abraham (all from 1907), Abraham Brill, Ernest Jones and Sandor Ferenczi (all from 1908). On April 15, 1908, the society was reorganized and received a new name - the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association.

The development of the "Psychological Society" and the growing popularity of the ideas of psychoanalysis coincided with one of the most productive periods in Freud's work - his books were published: "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901, which deals with one of the important aspects of the theory of psychoanalysis, namely reservations), "Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious" and "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality" (both 1905). Freud's popularity as a scientist and medical practitioner grew steadily: “Freud's private practice increased so much that it took up the entire working week. Very few of his patients, both then and later, were residents of Vienna. Most of the patients came from Eastern Europe: Russia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, etc.” Freud's ideas began to gain popularity abroad - interest in his works manifested itself especially clearly in the Swiss city of Zurich, where, since 1902, psychoanalytic concepts were actively used in psychiatry by Eugen Bleuler and his colleague Carl Gustav Jung, who were engaged in research on schizophrenia. Jung, who held Freud's ideas in high regard and admired himself, published The Psychology of Dementia praecox in 1906, which was based on his own developments of Freud's concepts. The latter, having received this work from Jung, appreciated it quite highly, and a correspondence began between the two scientists, which lasted almost seven years. Freud and Jung first met in person in 1907 - the young researcher was strongly impressed by Freud, who, in turn, believed that Jung was destined to become his scientific heir and continue the development of psychoanalysis.

Photo in front of Clark University (1909). From left to right: Top row Cast: Abraham Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi. bottom row People: Sigmund Freud, Granville S. Hall, Carl Gustav Jung

In 1908 there was an official psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg - rather modestly organized, it took only one day, but was in fact the first international event in the history of psychoanalysis. Among the speakers, in addition to Freud himself, there were 8 people who presented their work; the meeting gathered only 40-odd listeners. It was during this speech that Freud first presented one of the five main clinical cases - the case history of the "Rat Man" (also found in the translation of "The Man with the Rats"), or the psychoanalysis of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The real success that opened the way for psychoanalysis to international recognition was Freud's invitation to the United States - in 1909, Granville Stanley Hall invited him to give a course of lectures at Clark University (Worcester, Massachusetts). Freud's lectures were received with great enthusiasm and interest, and the scientist was awarded an honorary doctorate. More and more patients from all over the world turned to him for advice. Upon his return to Vienna, Freud continued to publish, publishing several works, including The Family Romance of the Neurotics and Analysis of the Phobia of a Five-Year-Old Boy. Encouraged by the successful reception in the United States and the growing popularity of psychoanalysis, Freud and Jung decided to organize a second psychoanalytic congress, held in Nuremberg on March 30-31, 1910. The scientific part of the congress was successful, in contrast to the unofficial part. On the one hand, the International Psychoanalytic Association was established, but at the same time, Freud's closest associates began to divide into opposing groups.

The split of the psychoanalytic community

Despite disagreements within the psychoanalytic community, Freud did not stop his own scientific activity - in 1910 he published Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (which he gave at Clark University) and several other small works. In the same year, Freud published the book Leonardo da Vinci. Childhood Memories”, dedicated to the great Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.

On the Divergence with Alfred Adler

“I believe that Adler's views are incorrect and therefore dangerous for the future development of psychoanalysis. They are scientific errors due to faulty methods; however, these are honorable errors. Although rejecting the content of Adler's views, one can recognize their logic and importance.

After the second psychoanalytic congress in Nuremberg, the conflicts that had matured by that time escalated to the limit, initiating a split in the ranks of Freud's closest associates and colleagues. The first to come out of Freud's inner circle was Alfred Adler, whose disagreements with the founding father of psychoanalysis began as early as 1907, when his work An Investigation into the Inferiority of Organs was published, which aroused the indignation of many psychoanalysts. In addition, Adler was greatly disturbed by the attention that Freud paid to his protégé Jung; in this regard, Jones (who characterized Adler as "a gloomy and captious man, whose behavior oscillates between grumpiness and sullenness") wrote: "Any unrestrained childhood complexes could find expression in rivalry and jealousy for his [Freud's] favor. The requirement to be a "beloved child" also had an important material motive, since the economic situation of young analysts depended for the most part on those patients whom Freud could refer to them. Due to the preferences of Freud, who made the main bet on Jung, and the ambition of Adler, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. At the same time, Adler constantly quarreled with other psychoanalysts, defending the priority of his ideas.

Freud and Adler disagreed on a number of points. First, Adler considered the desire for power to be the main motive that determines human behavior, while Freud assigned the main role to sexuality. Secondly, the emphasis in Adler's studies of personality was placed on the social environment of a person - Freud paid the most attention to the unconscious. Thirdly, Adler considered the Oedipus complex a fabrication, and this was completely contrary to Freud's ideas. However, while rejecting the fundamental ideas for Adler, the founder of psychoanalysis recognized their importance and partial validity. Despite this, Freud was forced to expel Adler from the psychoanalytic society, obeying the demands of the rest of its members. Adler's example was followed by his closest colleague and friend, Wilhelm Stekel.

On the Divergence with Carl Gustav Jung

“It may turn out that we overestimate Jung and his work in the future. In front of the public, he looks unfavorable, turning away from me, that is, from his past. But in general, my opinion on this issue is very similar to yours. I do not expect any immediate success, but I anticipate an unceasing struggle. Anyone who promises mankind liberation from the burden of sex will be hailed as a hero and will be allowed to spout any nonsense he pleases.

from a letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones

A short time later, Carl Gustav Jung also left the circle of Freud's closest associates - their relationship was completely spoiled by differences in scientific views; Jung did not accept Freud's position that repressions are always explained by sexual trauma, and in addition, he was actively interested in mythological images, spiritualistic phenomena and occult theories, which greatly annoyed Freud. Moreover, Jung disputed one of the main provisions of Freud's theory: he considered the unconscious not an individual phenomenon, but the heritage of ancestors - all people who have ever lived in the world, that is, he considered it as a "collective unconscious". Jung also did not accept Freud's views on libido: if for the latter this concept meant psychic energy, fundamental for the manifestations of sexuality directed at various objects, then for Jung libido was simply a designation of general tension. The final break between the two scientists came after the publication of Jung's Symbols of Transformation (1912), which criticized and challenged Freud's basic postulates, and proved extremely painful for both of them. In addition to the fact that Freud lost a very close friend, his differences of opinion with Jung, in whom he initially saw the successor, the continuation of the development of psychoanalysis, became a strong blow for him. The loss of support of the entire Zurich school also played its role - with the departure of Jung, the psychoanalytic movement lost a number of talented scientists.

In 1913, Freud completed a long and very difficult work on the fundamental work "Totem and Taboo". “Since writing The Interpretation of Dreams, I have not worked on anything with such confidence and enthusiasm,” he wrote about this book. Among other things, the work on the psychology of primitive peoples was considered by Freud as one of the largest scientific counterarguments to the Zurich school of psychoanalysis headed by Jung: "Totem and taboo", according to the author, was supposed to finally separate his inner circle from dissidents. Of the latter, Freud subsequently wrote the following:

“The two regressive, departing from psychoanalysis movements [Adler’s ‘individual psychology’ and Jung’s ‘analytical psychology’], which I now have to compare, also show similarities in that, with the help of lofty principles, as if from the point of view of the eternal, they defend those favorable to them prejudice. For Adler, this role is played by the relativity of all cognition and the individual's right to dispose of scientific material individually with the help of artistic means. Jung cries out about the cultural-historical right of youth to throw off the shackles that tyrannical old age, numb in its views, wished to impose on them.

Sigmund Freud. "Essay on the history of psychoanalysis"

Disagreements and quarrels with former associates extremely tired the scientist. As a result (at the suggestion of Ernest Jones), he decided to create an organization whose main goals would be to preserve the fundamental foundations of psychoanalysis and protect the personality of Freud himself from the aggressive attacks of opponents. Freud accepted with great enthusiasm the proposal to unite a trusted circle of analysts; in a letter to Jones, he admitted: “My imagination was immediately captured by your idea of ​​​​creating a secret council, composed of the best and most trusted people among us, who will take care of the further development of psychoanalysis when I am gone ...”. The Society was born on May 25, 1913 - in addition to Freud, it included Ferenczi, Abraham, Jones, Rank and Sachs. A little later, at the initiative of Freud himself, Max Eitingon joined the group. The existence of the community, called the "Committee", was kept secret, its activities were not advertised.

War and post-war years

"Committee" in full force (1922). From left to right: stand Cast: Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, Ernest Jones. sitting Cast: Sigmund Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Hans Sachs

The First World War began, and Vienna fell into decay, which naturally affected Freud's practice. The economic situation of the scientist was rapidly deteriorating, as a result of which he developed depression. The newly formed Committee turned out to be the last circle of like-minded people in Freud's life: "We became the last associates that he was ever destined to have," recalled Ernest Jones. Freud, who was experiencing financial difficulties and had enough free time due to the reduced number of patients, resumed his scientific activity: “<…>Freud withdrew into himself and turned to scientific work.<…>Science personified his work, his passion, his rest and was a saving remedy from external hardships and internal experiences. The following years became very productive for him - in 1914, Michelangelo's Moses, An Introduction to Narcissism, and An Essay on the History of Psychoanalysis came out from under his pen. In parallel, Freud worked on a series of essays that Ernest Jones calls the most profound and important in the scientific activity of a scientist - these are "Instincts and Their Fate", "Repression", "The Unconscious", "A Metapsychological Complement to the Doctrine of Dreams" and "Sadness and Melancholy ".

In the same period, Freud returned to the use of the previously abandoned concept of "metapsychology" (the term was first used in a letter to Fliess dated 1896). It became one of the key in his theory. By the word "metapsychology" Freud understood the theoretical foundation of psychoanalysis, as well as a specific approach to the study of the psyche. According to the scientist, a psychological explanation can be considered complete (that is, “metapsychological”) only if it establishes the existence of a conflict or connection between the levels of the psyche ( topography), determines the amount and type of energy expended ( economy) and the balance of forces in consciousness, which can be directed to work together or oppose each other ( dynamics). A year later, the work "Metapsychology" was published, explaining the main provisions of his teaching.

With the end of the war, Freud's life only changed for the worse - he was forced to spend the money set aside for old age, there were even fewer patients, one of his daughters - Sophia - died of the flu. Nevertheless, the scientific activity of the scientist did not stop - he wrote the works “Beyond the pleasure principle” (1920), “Psychology of the masses” (1921), “I and It” (1923). In April 1923, Freud was diagnosed with a palate tumor; the operation to remove it was unsuccessful and almost cost the scientist his life. Subsequently, he had to endure 32 more operations. Soon, the cancer began to spread, and part of Freud's jaw was removed - from that moment on, he used an extremely painful prosthesis that left non-healing wounds, in addition to everything else, it prevented him from speaking. The darkest period in Freud's life came: he could no longer lecture, because the audience did not understand him. Until his death, his daughter Anna took care of him: “It was she who went to congresses and conferences, where she read the texts of speeches prepared by her father.” A series of sad events for Freud continued: at the age of four, his grandson Geinele (the son of the late Sophia) died of tuberculosis, and some time later his close friend Karl Abraham died; Sadness and grief began to take hold of Freud, and words about his own approaching death began to appear more and more often in his letters.

Last years of life and death

In the summer of 1930, Freud was awarded the Goethe Prize for his significant contribution to science and literature, which brought great satisfaction to the scientist and contributed to the spread of psychoanalysis in Germany. However, this event turned out to be overshadowed by another loss: at the age of ninety-five, Freud's mother Amalia died of gangrene. The most terrible trials for the scientist were just beginning - in 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, and National Socialism became the state ideology. The new government adopted a number of discriminatory laws against Jews, and books that contradicted Nazi ideology were destroyed. Along with the works of Heine, Marx, Mann, Kafka and Einstein, the works of Freud were also banned. The Psychoanalytic Association was dissolved by government order, many of its members were repressed and their funds were confiscated. Many of Freud's associates persistently suggested that he leave the country, but he flatly refused.

In 1938, after the annexation of Austria to Germany and the ensuing persecution of Jews by the Nazis, Freud's position became much more complicated. After the arrest of his daughter Anna and interrogation by the Gestapo, Freud decided to leave the Third Reich and go to England. It turned out to be difficult to carry out the plan: in exchange for the right to leave the country, the authorities demanded an impressive amount of money, which Freud did not have. The scientist had to resort to the help of influential friends in order to obtain permission to emigrate. Thus, his longtime friend William Bullitt, then the US ambassador to France, interceded for Freud before President Franklin Roosevelt. The German ambassador to France, Count von Welzek, also joined the petitions. Through joint efforts, Freud received the right to leave the country, but the question of "debt to the German government" remained unresolved. Freud was helped to resolve it by his longtime friend (as well as a patient and student) - Princess Marie Bonaparte, who lent the necessary funds.

In the summer of 1939, Freud suffered particularly badly from a progressive illness. The scientist turned to Dr. Max Schur, who was caring for him, reminding him of his earlier promise to help die. At first, Anna, who did not leave a single step from her sick father, opposed his desire, but soon agreed. On September 23, Schur injected Freud with a dose of morphine sufficient to end the life of an old man weakened by an illness. At three o'clock in the morning, Sigmund Freud died. The scientist's body was cremated at Golders Green, and the ashes were placed in an ancient Etruscan vase donated to Freud by Marie Bonaparte. A vase with the ashes of a scientist stands in the mausoleum of Ernest George (Eng. Ernest George Mausoleum) in Golders Green. On the night of January 1, 2014, unknown people made their way to the crematorium, where there was a vase with the ashes of Martha and Sigmund Freud, and broke it. After that, the caretakers of the crematorium moved the vase with the ashes of the spouses to a safer place.

Major contribution to science

Among Freud's achievements, the most important are the development of a three-component structural model of the psyche (consisting of "It", "I" and "Super-I"), the identification of specific phases of the psychosexual development of the personality, the creation of the theory of the Oedipus complex, the discovery of protective mechanisms functioning in the psyche, the psychologization of the concept "unconscious", the discovery of transference and counter-transference, and the development of such therapeutic techniques as the method of free association and the interpretation of dreams.

One of the main scientific achievements of Freud is the development of an original for his time structural model of the human psyche. In the course of numerous clinical observations, the scientist suggested the existence of a confrontation between drives, revealing that socially determined prohibitions often limit the manifestation of biological drives. Based on the data obtained, Freud developed the concept of mental organization, identifying three structural elements of personality: "It" (or "Id", German Das es), "I" (or "Ego", German Ego) and "Super-I" (or "Super-Ego", German Das Über-Ich). " It”, according to the Freudian concept, denotes an unknown force that controls a person’s actions and serves as the basis for two other manifestations of personality, containing energy for them. " I"- this, in fact, is the personality of a person, the personification of his mind, "I" controls all the processes taking place in the psyche of the individual, and its main function is to maintain the relationship between instincts and actions. " Super-I"is a mental instance, which includes" parental authority, self-observation, ideals, conscience - in the metaphorical meaning of the "Super-I" acts as an inner voice, censor, judge."

Freud's other most important achievement was the discovery psychosexual phases of development person. In the most general sense, the term "psychosexual development" refers to "the movement of the child from infantile methods of satisfying drives to more mature ones, which ultimately allow sexual contact with a person of the opposite sex." Psychosexual development is extremely important for the formation of a personality - it is during the passage of all its stages that the prerequisites for future sexual, emotional and communication problems are laid. Freud identified five such stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital.

The basis for Freud's entire psychoanalytic theory was the concept oedipus complex, the essence of which is to designate the ambivalent attitude of the child to his parents; the term itself characterizes the manifestation of unconscious inclinations by a person, in which love borders on hatred for parents. In Freud's understanding, the boy is erotically attached to his mother and seeks to possess her, and he perceives his father as a rival and an obstacle to the fulfillment of this desire (for a girl, the situation is reversed and is called the "Electra Complex"). The Oedipus complex develops at the age of three to six years, and its successful resolution (identification with the parent of the same sex, or “identification with the aggressor”) is fundamentally important for the child. The resolution (“destruction”) of the complex leads to the transition from the phallic stage of development to the latent stage and is the foundation for the formation of the “Super-I”; the authority of the parents, thus, "moves" into the psyche - the resolved Oedipus complex becomes the main source of feelings of guilt (which the "Super-I" affects the "I") and at the same time marks the end of the period of infantile sexuality of the individual.

Important for the development of Freudianism was the description by scientists defense mechanisms functioning in the human psyche. According to Freud, defense is a psychological mechanism for confronting anxiety, which, in contrast to constructive actions aimed at solving a problem situation, distorts or denies reality, Frager and Feidiman note. Defense mechanisms refer to the "I" of a person who has to confront a mass of various threats from the outside world and the desires of the "It", which are restrained by the "Super-I"; Freud assigned a significant role to their research, but did not attempt to classify them - this was undertaken by his daughter Anna, who systematized the mental phenomena previously described by the scientist in her work “Self and Defense Mechanisms” (1936). Freud described the following defense mechanisms: repression, projection, substitution, rationalization, reactive formation, regression, sublimation, and denial.

The cornerstone of Freud's theory was the discovery unconscious- parts of the human psyche, which differs from consciousness in volume, content and principles of functioning. In topographic theory, the unconscious is considered one of the systems of the mental apparatus. After the appearance of a three-component model of consciousness (“It”, “I” and “Super-I”), the unconscious is expressed exclusively with the help of an adjective, that is, it reflects a mental quality that is equally characteristic of each of the three structures of the psyche. The main features of the unconscious, according to Freud, are as follows: the content of the unconscious is a representation of drives; the content of the unconscious is regulated by primary processes, in particular, condensation and displacement; fueled by the energy of drives, the contents of the unconscious tend to return to consciousness, manifesting themselves in behavior (the return of the repressed content), but in fact they can appear in the preconscious only in the form distorted by the censorship of the "Super-I"; children's desires are very often fixed in the unconscious.

One of the main tools of the psychoanalyst in working with the patient is the free association method. Free associations are statements based on an arbitrary presentation of any thoughts regarding anything. The method of the same name underlies psychoanalysis and is one of its main techniques. In psychoanalysis, free associations are considered as a signal of the presence of ideas or fantasies that cannot be realized by a person without the analytical help of a psychologist, since they are in the preconscious. Any association can become fundamentally important for establishing the causes of the disease. The use of this method made it possible to completely abandon the use of hypnosis in sessions and, according to Freud himself, served as an impetus for the formation and development of psychoanalysis.

Another important tool of the psychoanalyst in his work is represented by the technique dream interpretation. Dream interpretation is the process of discovering the meaning and meaning of dreams, aimed at deciphering their unconscious content. According to Freud, dreams are mental phenomena that are a reflection of something that exists in the human soul, which the dreamer himself does not know about; thus, the individual never realizes the true meaning of his dream. The work of a psychoanalyst, accordingly, comes down to revealing this meaning to a person. By building free associations to individual parts of a dream, a person reveals its true essence, unconsciously focusing on its real content. The process of interpretation is to translate explicit dream content(that is, its plot) in hidden content.

No less important for psychoanalytic therapy is the phenomenon discovered by Freud. transfer and counter-transfer. Transfer is a phenomenon observed in the relationship between two people and is manifested in the transfer of feelings and attachments to each other. In the process of psychoanalysis, the transfer is characterized as a shift of unconscious ideas, desires, drives, stereotypes of thinking and behavior from one individual to another, while the experience of the past becomes a model of interaction in the present. The term "counter-transfer", respectively, refers to the reverse process of transfer, namely, the transfer by the analyst to his client of an emotional relationship to a person from his past.

Scientific heritage

Works of Sigmund Freud

• 1899 Dream interpretation
• 1901 Psychopathology of everyday life
• 1905 Three essays on the theory of sexuality
• 1913 Totem and taboo
• 1915 Attractions and their fates
• 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• 1921 Mass psychology and analysis of the human "I"
• 1927 The future of one illusion
• 1930 Dissatisfaction with culture

Freud's ideological predecessors

The development of Freud's psychoanalytic concept was significantly influenced by many different scientists and researchers. First of all, researchers note the impact of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, the biogenetic law of Ernst Haeckel, the "cathartic method" of Joseph Breuer and Jean Charcot's theory of the effects of hypnosis for the treatment of hysteria. Freud drew many ideas from the works of Gottfried Leibniz (in particular, from his doctrine of monads - the smallest spiritual and mental particles), Carl Gustav Carus (namely, the assumption that unconscious mental activity manifests itself through experiences and dreams), Eduard Hartmann and his "Philosophy of the Unconscious", Johann Friedrich Herbart (who claimed that certain human drives can be pushed beyond the threshold of consciousness) and Arthur Schopenhauer (who singled out the "will to live", which Freud designated as Eros). The German philosopher and psychologist Theodor Lipps, who devoted several works to unconscious mental processes, had a significant influence on the formation of Freud's views. Psychoanalysis was also influenced by the ideas of Gustav Fechner - the concepts of the pleasure principle, psychic energy, as well as interest in the study of aggression originate from his developments.

In addition, Freud was influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Clemens Brentano and many eminent scientists - for example, Ernst Brucke. Many of the concepts original for their time, now traditionally associated with the name of Freud, were actually partially borrowed - for example, Goethe and Schiller studied the unconscious as an area of ​​the psyche; one of the elements of mental organization - "It" - was borrowed by Freud from the German physician Georg Groddeck; the theory of the Oedipus complex - inspired by the work of Sophocles "Oedipus Rex"; the method of free association was born not as an independent technique, but in the course of reworking the approach of Josef Breuer; the idea of ​​​​interpreting dreams was also not new - the first ideas about their symbolism were expressed by Aristotle.

Influence and significance of Freud's ideas

The researchers note that the influence of Freud's ideas on Western civilization of the 20th century was deep and lasting - Larry Hjell (Ph.D., Associate Professor at the State University of New York) and Daniel Ziegler (Ph.D., Dean of the Graduate School of Villanova University) note that "in all In the history of mankind, very few ideas have had such a wide and powerful impact. According to these authors, the main merits of the scientist include the creation of the first detailed theory of personality, the development of a system of clinical observations (based on his own analysis and therapeutic experience), the formation of an original method of treating neurotic disorders that cannot be studied in any other way. Robert Frager (Ph.D., founder and president of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology) and James Faydiman (Ph.D., lecturer at the University of San Francisco and Stanford University) call Freud's scientific views radical and innovative for their time, arguing that the scientist's ideas are still continue to have a significant impact on psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, literature and art. Frager and Feidiman note that a number of Freud's discoveries - for example, the recognition of the importance of dreams and the discovery of the energy of unconscious processes - are now generally accepted, although many other aspects of his theory are actively criticized. The researchers conclude: "Regardless of time, Freud is a figure in psychology to be reckoned with."

The famous Russian psychologist Mikhail Yaroshevsky is also of the opinion that Freud's works determined the direction of the development of psychology in the 20th century and are still of interest, and modern psychotherapy has learned the lessons of the scientist, "selecting everything that disturbs creative thought in them." Carlos Nemirovsky, psychiatrist, member of the Association for Psychoanalysis of Buenos Aires and the International Association for Psychoanalysis, calls Freud a tireless researcher, an enthusiast far from conformism, and writes: “Today we can supplement, challenge or change emphasis in Freud’s legacy, but still his method—his approach to research—continues to exist with only minor changes.” The French psychoanalyst Andre Green, in turn, argues: "No orthodox follower of Freud, although he has made a significant contribution to science, is not able to offer anything fundamentally new."

One of the brightest followers of the scientist, the French psychologist and philosopher Jacques Lacan, characterized Freud's teachings as a "Copernican coup". Freud's colleague and student Sandor Ferenczi, describing the influence of the scientist on medicine, wrote: “Oddly enough, but before Freud, researchers considered it almost immoral to consider sexual problems and the psychological side of love relationships”; this is what led Freud to rethink the practice and theory of therapy, which completely failed in attempts to treat neuroses. Ferenczi noted that the most important achievement of the scientist is the creation of a specific language and technique for the study of the unconscious, helping in the process of interpreting dreams and neurotic, psychotic symptoms in everyday life. Like Lacan, Ferenczi calls Freud's discoveries "the great revolution", comparing them to the introduction of percussion, radiology, bacteriology and chemistry into medicine. The researcher ends the article with the words: “Freud exploded the strict demarcation line between the sciences of nature and the spirit.<…>Freud's influence on medicine had a profound effect on the development of this science. It is possible that the desire for its development existed before, but the actual implementation required the emergence of a personality of such significance as Freud.

The Russian philosopher Sergei Mareev suggested that Freudianism can be considered as one of the three main worldview systems of the 20th century, along with Marxism and Christianity; Mareev writes that Freud's influence was mostly manifested in psychology and philosophy. According to the researcher, Freud's contribution to philosophy lies in the advancement of a fundamentally new statement, which says that "the mental life of a person is not at all a stream of impressions and reactions, but contains a certain substance, a certain constant, which not only is not influenced by external impressions, but On the contrary, it defines them from within, giving them a meaning that is completely inexplicable either from present or past experience. Thus, Mareev explains, Freud challenged the dominant idea in empirical science of the soul as an intangible principle - accordingly, the founding father of psychoanalysis returned the concept of "soul" to a strictly scientific meaning (albeit partially re-formed); as a consequence, this concept has gone beyond the framework of philosophy alone, to which it was previously attributed by empiricists.

Another domestic researcher, psychologist Lyudmila Obukhova, writes that the main secret of Freud's enormous influence lies in the dynamic theory of personality development he developed, which proved that "for the development of a person, the other person is of primary importance, and not the objects that surround him." Referring to James Watson, Obukhova noted that Freud was far ahead of his time and (along with Charles Darwin) "broke down the narrow, rigid boundaries of common sense of his time and cleared new territory for the study of human behavior." E. P. Koryakina notes the significant influence of Freud on the development of cultural thought in the 20th century - the main contribution of the scientist in this field is to create an original concept of culture, according to which all cultural values ​​are a product of sublimation, or, in other words, the process of subordinating culture to energy “It and redirecting it from sexual to spiritual (artistic) purposes. Koryakina writes: “Culture, in the understanding of psychoanalytic theory, is based on coercion and prohibition of instincts, it is a mechanism for suppressing primary desires that threaten society, it directs instincts, including aggressiveness, in a different direction, and that is why culture, from the point of view of Freud, is the source of the mental ill health of the individual.

Freud had a significant impact on the evolution of personality theories - his views on human development, united within the framework of psychoanalysis, are still well known in psychology. Few ideas in the history of human civilization have had such a wide and deep influence as Freud's. The popularity of Freud's concepts continues to expand and penetrate into various scientific fields. As Jerome Neu (Ph.D., professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz) remarked, “Freud still has a lot to learn.”

Criticism

In the West, Freud's psychoanalysis, already at its very appearance, was criticized, in particular by phenomenologically oriented authors such as K. Jaspers, A. Kronfeld, K. Schneider, G.-J. Weitbrecht and many others. Initially, the rejection of Freud's concept by European psychiatrists was resolute and widespread - with a few exceptions, such as E. Bleiler and V. P. Serbsky. Freud's school was considered by most psychiatrists to be a marginal sect engaged in the psychotherapy of neuroses, the very concept of which seemed to be a phantom - an undifferentiated combined group of somato-neurological disorders bordering on the norm. However, in 1909 began the "conquest" of Freud's teachings of the United States, and after the Second World War - and German psychiatry.

K. Jaspers treated Freud as a person and a scientist with unconditional respect and recognized the significant contribution of his theories to science, but considered the psychoanalytic direction of research to be an unproductive vulgarization of the ideas of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, “a product of myth-creating fantasies”, and the psychoanalysis movement itself was sectarian. Highly appreciating individual private hypotheses of Freud and the empirical material he collected, Jaspers nevertheless pointed out the fantastic nature of many of his generalizations. Jaspers called psychoanalysis "popular psychology", which allows the layman to easily explain anything. Freudianism for K. Jaspers, as well as Marxism, is a surrogate for faith. According to Jaspers, "psychoanalysis bears a significant share of the responsibility for the general decline in the spiritual level of modern psychopathology."

E. Kraepelin also had a negative attitude towards Freudianism, arguing:

On the basis of varied experience, I assert that prolonged and persistent questioning of patients about their intimate experiences, as well as the usual strong emphasis on sexual relations and related advice, can lead to the most adverse consequences.

- Kraepelin, E. Introduction to Psychiatric Clinic

Renowned anthropologists Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Cora Dubois, and Franz Boas have collected data that refutes the universality of such basic Freudian concepts as libido, destruction and death instincts, innate infantile sexual stages, and the Oedipus complex. A number of these concepts have been subjected to experimental testing, as a result of which it was revealed that they are erroneous. Robert Sears, reviewing these experimental data in his Review of Objective Research on Psychoanalytic Concepts, concluded:

According to the criteria of the physical sciences, psychoanalysis is not genuine science...<…>Psychoanalysis relies on methods that do not repeat observations, lack self-evidence or denotative validity, and bear some of the subjective bias of the observer. When such a method is used to discover psychological factors that should have objective validity, it fails completely.

Psychoanalysis was persecuted in Germany with the rise of the Nazis to power and very soon found itself in a similar situation in the USSR (although Freud's theories were quite popular there for a short time). Psychoanalysis as a scientific direction in psychology appeared in Russia before 1917, its followers published their own scientific journal, among the supporters of Freud's teachings were prominent members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A special analytic group for children with neurotic disorders was organized in Petrograd; by the end of the decade, an educational institute, an outpatient clinic, and an experimental school based on psychoanalytic principles were successfully functioning. Freud's works were actively translated into Russian. One of the capital's higher educational institutions was engaged in the training of psychoanalysts. However, by the mid-1920s, psychoanalysis was forced out of the realm of official science. The most acute contradictions between supporters and opponents of Freud manifested themselves in the course of a discussion about the possibility of combining psychoanalysis with Marxism:

“The object of criticism in the course of these debates was often not Freud himself, but various interpreters and interpreters of his ideas.<…>Therefore, in order to frame an indictment against psychoanalysis, it was not at all difficult to find any number of stupid ideas that passed off as Freudian - for example, the assertion of a certain analyst (quoted in the course of one of the Soviet polemical campaigns against Freud) that the communist slogan "Proletarians of all countries unite!“ is actually an unconscious manifestation of homosexuality. Similar crude and simplistic interpretations were found in the field of literary criticism, where psychoanalysis seemed to achieve little beyond the search for phallic symbols. But it is clear that such a complex and multifaceted theory as psychoanalysis must be judged by its best, and not its worst, manifestations.

Frank Brenner. "Fearless Thought: Psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union"

Since the 1930s, from the point of view of official Soviet psychological science, Freud has become "criminal No. 1". This was largely facilitated by a personal dislike for the psychoanalysis of Joseph Stalin. In the Soviet Union, Freud's theories were henceforth understood exclusively "as dirty words associated with sexual depravity." For the official ideology, Freudianism was unacceptable for another reason: psychoanalysis considered the individual in isolation, not taking into account his connection with society. The result of the confrontation was very sad: “Already in 1930, all activity of the Soviet psychoanalytic movement was stopped, and from that moment it was allowed to mention the Freudian theory only in terms of condemnation. Like so many other promising cultural trends brought about by the revolution itself, psychoanalysis was uprooted and destroyed by the Stalinist terror.”

However, the criticism of psychoanalysis was due not only to political reasons. After Freud's death in 1939, heated debates around psychoanalysis and the scientist himself did not stop - on the contrary, they flared up with renewed vigor. Controversy in assessments of Freud's contribution to science is observed to this day. Biologist and Nobel laureate Peter Medawar described psychoanalysis as "the most grandiose intellectual fraud of the twentieth century". The philosopher of science Karl Popper was critical of Freud's teachings. Popper argued that the theories of psychoanalysis do not have predictive power and that it is impossible to set up an experiment that could refute them (that is, psychoanalysis is not falsifiable); therefore, these theories are pseudoscientific. In addition to Karl Popper, Freud's ideas were criticized by Frederick Krüss and Adolf Grünbaum, who noted the insufficiency of the empirical basis of psychoanalysis and the unverifiability of its main provisions; scientists called Freudianism built on speculative reasoning and "insights".

So, A. Grünbaum pointed out that the lasting therapeutic success, on which Freud's statement about the etiological evidence of the method of free associations is based, never really took place, which Freud was forced to admit both at the beginning and at the very end of his career, and temporary therapeutic the results are quite explainable not by the true effectiveness of this method, but by the placebo effect. “Isn't it too simple to be true that someone can lay a mentally disturbed subject on a couch and reveal the etiology of her or his illness by free association? Compared with finding out the causes of major somatic diseases, this seems almost miraculous, unless true”, - writes A. Grunbaum. He notes that over the past century, psychoanalysis treatment has not been shown to be more effective than a control group of the same patients whose repressions have not been lifted. Grünbaum questions the effectiveness of the method of free association in determining the causes of both neurotic symptoms and dreams or errors and slips of the tongue (and calls the combination of the first, second and third, which gives the impression of "the laudable all-embracing of the central theory of repression", "pseudo-unification" and " dubious unification"). He mentions that, according to careful research, the so-called "free associations" are not really free, but depend on the analyst's subtle hints to the patient, and therefore cannot reliably vouch for the content of the alleged repressions they supposedly remove.

Freud's scientific heritage was criticized by Erich Fromm, who believed that the scientist, being influenced by "bourgeois materialism", "could not imagine psychic forces that did not have a physiological source - hence Freud's appeal to sexuality." Fromm was also skeptical about the structure of the human personality put forward by Freud (“It”, “I” and “Super-I”), considering it hierarchical - that is, denying the possibility of the free existence of a person who is not under the yoke of society. Recognizing the merit of the scientist in the study of the unconscious, Fromm found Freud's view of this phenomenon too narrow - according to the founding father of psychoanalysis, the conflict between being and thinking is the conflict between thinking and infantile sexuality; Fromm considered such a conclusion erroneous, criticizing the very understanding of sexuality by Freud, who ignored it as a possible product of impulses due to socio-economic and cultural factors. Another important "pillar" of psychoanalytic theory - the concept of the Oedipus complex - was also criticized by Fromm:

Freud made the mistake of explaining the boy's attachment to his mother in terms of sexuality. Thus, Freud misinterpreted his discovery, did not understand that attachment to the mother is one of the deepest emotional ties (not necessarily sexual) rooted in the true (humanistic) existence of a person. Another aspect of the 'Oedipus complex', which is the hostility of the son to the father, was also misinterpreted by Freud, who viewed this conflict as sexual, while its origins lie in the nature of the patriarchal society": "Another part of the Oedipus complex, that is, hostile rivalry with the father, culminating in the desire to kill him, is also a valid observation, which, however, does not have to be connected with affection for the mother. Freud attaches universal significance to a feature characteristic only of a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, the son is subject to the will of the father; he belongs to the father, and his fate is determined by the father. To be his father's heir—that is, to succeed in a broader sense—he must not only please his father, he must submit to him and replace his will with that of his father. As you know, oppression leads to hatred, to the desire to get rid of the oppressor and ultimately destroy him. This situation is clearly seen, for example, when an old peasant, as a dictator, controls his son, his wife, until he dies. If this does not happen soon, if the son, having reached the age of 30, 40, 50, still has to accept the supremacy of the father, then he will really hate him as an oppressor. Nowadays, this situation is largely relaxed: the father usually does not own property that the son could inherit, since the promotion of young people depends largely on their ability, and only in rare cases, for example, when owning a private business, does the father's longevity keep the son in a subordinate position. Nevertheless, such a situation arose not very long ago, and we can rightfully say that for several millennia within the patriarchal society there was a conflict between father and son, based on the father's control over the son and the desire of the son to free himself from this dictate. Freud saw this conflict, but did not understand that it was a feature of a patriarchal society, but interpreted it as a sexual rivalry between father and son.

Leibin V. M. "Discoveries and limitations of Freud's theory"

Erich Fromm, in fact, criticized every significant aspect of Freudian theory, including the concepts of transference, narcissism, character and interpretation of dreams. Fromm argued that psychoanalytic theory was adapted to the needs of bourgeois society, "the concentration on the problems of sex actually led away from the criticism of society and, thus, was partly reactionary political in nature. If the basis of all mental disorders is the inability of a person to solve his sexual problems, then there is no need for a critical analysis of the economic, social and political factors that stand in the way of a developing individuality. On the other hand, political radicalism began to be regarded as a peculiar sign of neurosis, especially since Freud and his followers considered the liberal bourgeois to be a model of a mentally healthy person. Left or right radicalism began to be explained as the consequences of neurotic processes like the Oedipus complex, and political beliefs other than those of the liberal middle class were declared neurotic in the first place.

Robert Carroll, Ph.D., in The Skeptic's Dictionary, criticized the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious memory of childhood traumas as contradicting modern understanding of how implicit memory works: "Psychoanalytic therapy is in many ways based on the search for what probably does not exist (repressed memories), an assumption that is probably wrong (that childhood experiences are the cause of patients' problems), and a therapeutic theory that has little chance of being true (that bringing repressed memories into consciousness is an essential part of the course of treatment)."

Leslie Stevenson, philosopher, lecturer emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, who discussed Freud's concepts in detail in Ten Theories of Human Nature (Eng. Ten Theories of Human Nature, 1974), noted that supporters of Freudianism can "easily analyze in a pejorative way the motivation of his critics" - that is, to attribute to unconscious resistance any attempts to doubt the truth of the concept they share. In essence, Freudianism is a closed system that neutralizes any evidence of falsification, and can be perceived as an ideology, the adoption of which is mandatory for every psychoanalyst. Empirical verification of Freud's psychoanalytic concept is an almost impossible task for a number of reasons: firstly, the consequences of a traumatic childhood are by no means always amenable to elimination; secondly, the “correct” theory can give poor results if it is “incorrectly” applied in clinical practice; thirdly, the criteria for cure of neurotic diseases are not clearly defined. Stevenson also notes:

“Psychoanalysis is rather not a set of scientific hypotheses that must be empirically tested, but primarily a way of understanding people, discerning the meaning of their actions, mistakes, jokes, dreams and neurotic symptoms. […] Many Freudian concepts can be seen as an addition to the usual ways people understand each other in terms of everyday concepts - love, hate, fear, anxiety, rivalry, etc. And in an experienced psychoanalyst one can see someone who has gained a deep intuitive understanding of the springs of human motivation and mastered the art of interpreting the actions of these many different complex mechanisms in specific situations, regardless of the theoretical views that he holds.

Stevenson L. "Ten theories about human nature"

Freud's personality was also subjected to serious criticism. In particular, he was reproached for being "unscientific", it was claimed that his clinical studies were often erroneous, and he himself showed sexism. In addition, the scientist was accused of summing up the psychological basis for almost any disease - up to allergies or asthma. The application of psychoanalysis methods to literary works has been repeatedly criticized: the interpretation of literary texts from the standpoint of Freudian theory, according to a number of researchers, is based on the “false and erroneous” assumption, according to which the unconscious thoughts and desires of the author are expressed on paper, and many literary heroes are nothing more than , as projections of the psyche of their creator. Some opponents of Freud called him not a scientist, but a brilliant playwright, "Shakespeare of the 20th century", "in the dramas invented by which the villain ("It"), the hero ("Super-I") fight, and everything revolves around sex.

According to the American Psychoanalytic Association, despite the fact that psychoanalysis is widespread in many humanities, psychology departments (at least in the United States) treat it only as a historical artifact. A number of authors point out that, from a scientific point of view, Freud's teaching is dead both as a theory of development and as a therapeutic technique: there has never been any empirical evidence that a person goes through the stages of psychosexual development, nor has there been evidence that transfers and catharsis are the reasons for the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy. There is also no evidence that psychoanalysis is a more productive method of treatment than other forms of psychotherapy at the moment. Drew Western, professor of medicine at Harvard University, for example, calls Freud's theory archaic and outdated.

The well-known psychologist G. Yu. Eysenck was also involved in the study of Freud's teachings. He came to the conclusion that there was no convincing experimental support for Freud's theories. Eysenck noted that for a long time "the superiority of psychoanalysis was simply assumed on the basis of pseudoscientific arguments without any objective evidence", and the cases described by Freud are not such evidence, since what he claimed to be a "cure" in there was no real cure. In particular, the famous "wolf man", contrary to allegations of this, was not cured at all, since in fact the symptoms of his disorder persisted in the next 60 years of the patient's life, during which he was constantly treated. The treatment of the “rat-man” was also unsuccessful. The situation is similar with the well-known case of Breuer's "cure" of Anna O.: in fact, as historians have shown, the diagnosis of hysteria made by the patient was erroneous - the woman suffered from tuberculous meningitis and was in the hospital for a long time with symptoms of this disease.

Based on many studies, Eysenck concludes that remission without treatment ("spontaneous remission") develops in neurotic patients as often as cure after psychoanalysis: about 67% of patients with serious symptoms recovered within two years. Based on the fact that psychoanalysis is not more effective than placebo, Eysenck concludes that the very theory underlying it is wrong, and also that "it is completely unethical to prescribe it to patients, charge them for it, or train therapists in such an ineffective method" . In addition, Eysenck cites data that psychoanalysis can also have a negative effect on patients, worsen their psychological and physical condition.

Books about Sigmund Freud

• Dadoon, Roger. Freud. - M.: Kh.G.S, 1994. - 512 p.
• Casafont, Josep Ramon. Sigmund Freud / trans. from Spanish A. Berkova. - M.: AST, 2006. - 253 p. - (Biography and creativity).
• Jones, Ernest. The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud / trans. from English. V. Starovoitov. - M.: Humanitarian AGI, 1996. - 448 p.
• Shterensis, Mikhail. Sigmund Freud. - ISRADON / IsraDon, Phoenix, 2012. - 160 p. - (Mark on history).
• Nadezhdin, Nikolai. Sigmund Freud. "Beyond Consciousness". - Major, 2011. - 192 p. - (Informal biographies).
• Ferris, Paul. Sigmund Freud / trans. from English. Ekaterina Martinkevich. - Minsk: Poppuri, 2001. - 448 p.
• Stone, Irving. Passions of the mind. Biographical novel about Sigmund Freud / trans. from English. I. Usacheva. - M.: AST, 2011. - 864 p.
• Babin, Pierre. Sigmund Freud. A tragedian in the age of science / transl. from fr. Elena Sutotskaya. - M.: AST, 2003. - 144 p. - (Science. Discovery).
• Berry, Ruth. Sigmund Freud. Guide for beginners. The Life and Teachings of the Founder of Psychoanalysis. - Hippo, 2010. - 128 p.
• Wittels, Fritz. Freud. His personality, teaching and school / transl. with him. G. Taubman. - KomKniga, 2007. - 200 p.
• Marcus, Gerorg. Sigmund Freud and the secrets of the soul. Biography / trans. from English. A. Zhuravel. - AST, 2008. - 336 p.
• Brown, James. Psychology of Freud and post-Freudians / transl. from English. - M.: Refl-book, 1997. - 304 p. - (Actual psychology).
• Lukimson P. Freud: a case history. - M. : Young Guard, 2014. - 461 p., L. ill. - (Life of remarkable people; Issue 1651 (1451)). - 5000 copies.

Reflection in culture

Literature and cinema

Freud has been repeatedly mentioned in works of art. As a character, the scientist appeared in the novels:

• Passions of the Mind (1971) by Irving Stone
• Ragtime (1975) Edgar Doctorow
• "White Hotel" (1981) by D. M. Thomas,
• "When Nietzsche Wept" (1992) by Irvin Yalom
• "Casket of Dreams" (2003) D. Madson,
• Freudian Murder (2006) Jed Rubenfeld
• The Little Book (2008) by Selden Edwards
• "Vienna Triangle" (2009) Brenda Webster.

Z. Freud and his theory had a significant influence on the famous Russian and American writer Vladimir Nabokov - despite the latter’s carefully documented and well-known dislike for Freud and psychoanalytic interpretations in general, the influence of the founding father of psychoanalysis on the writer can be traced in many novels; thus, for example, Nabokov's descriptions of incest in the novel Lolita are clearly similar to Freud's understanding of the theory of seduction. In addition to Lolita, references to Freud's work are found in many other works of Nabokov, despite the latter's numerous attacks on psychoanalysis and Freud's branding as a "Viennese charlatan". For example, the author of a book The Talking Cure: Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis Jeffrey Berman, professor of English at the University of Albany, writes, "Freud is the central figure in Nabokov's life, always shadowing the writer."

Freud has repeatedly become the hero of dramatic works - for example, "Hysteria" (1993) by Terry Johnson, "The Talking Treatment" (2002) by Christopher Hampton (filmed by David Cronenberg in 2011 under the title "A Dangerous Method"), "Porcupine" (2008) Michael Merino, Freud's Last Session (2009) by Mark Germine.

The scientist has also become a character in numerous films and television series - a complete list of them in the IMDb catalog is 71 paintings.

Museums and monuments

Several monuments were erected in honor of Freud - in London, in Vienna near the scientist's alma mater - his statue (there is also his stele in the city); there is a memorial plaque on the house where the researcher was born in Příbor. In Austria, Freud's portraits were used in the design of shillings - coins and banknotes. There are several museums dedicated to the memory of Freud. One of them, the Museum of Freud's Dreams, is located in St. Petersburg; it was opened in 1999 for the centenary of the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams and is dedicated to the theories of the scientist, dreams, art and various antiquities. The museum is an installation on the theme of dreams and is located in the building of the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The larger Sigmund Freud Museum is located in Vienna at Bergasse 19 - in the house where the scientist worked most of his life. The museum was created in 1971 with the assistance of Anna Freud and currently occupies the premises of the former apartment and researcher's offices; his collection contains a large number of original interior items, antiquities belonging to the scientist, the originals of many manuscripts and an extensive library. In addition, the museum displays films from the archive of the Freud family, provided with comments by Anna Freud, there are lecture and exhibition halls.

The Sigmund Freud Museum also exists in London and is located in the building where the founder of psychoanalysis lived after being forced to emigrate from Vienna. The museum has a very rich exposition containing original household items of the scientist, transported from his home in Bergasse. In addition, the exhibition includes many antiques from Freud's personal collection, including works of ancient Greek, Roman and ancient Egyptian art. There is a research center in the museum building.

Monument to Freud (Vienna)

The most famous Austrian psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and neurologist Sigmund Freud became a pioneer in the field of psychoanalysis. His ideas marked the beginning of a real revolution in psychology and cause heated discussions even to this day. Let us turn to a brief biography of Sigmund Freud.

Story

The history of Freud began in the city of Freiberg, which today is called Příbor and is located in the Czech Republic. The future scientist was born on May 6, 1856 and became the third child in the family. Freud's parents had a good income thanks to the textile trade. Sigmund's mother is the second wife of his father Jacob Freud, who already had two sons. However, a sudden revolution destroyed the bright plans, and the Freud family had to say goodbye to their home. They settled in Leizpig, and after a year they went to Vienna. Freud was never attracted to talk about family and childhood. The reason for this was the atmosphere in which the boy grew up - a poor, dirty area, constant noise and unpleasant neighbors. In short, Sigmund Freud at that time was in an environment that could have a negative impact on his learning.

Childhood

Sigmund always avoided talking about his childhood, although his parents loved their son and had high hopes for his future. That is why hobbies for literature and philosophy were encouraged. Despite his youthful age, Freud gave preference to Shakespeare, Kant and Nietzsche. In addition to philosophy, foreign languages, especially Latin, were a serious hobby in the life of a young man. The personality of Sigmund Freud truly left a serious mark on history.

Parents did everything to ensure that nothing interfered with their studies, and this allowed the boy to enter the gymnasium ahead of time without any problems and successfully complete it.

However, after graduation, the situation was not as rosy as expected. Unjust legislation provided a meager choice of future professions. In addition to medicine, Freud did not consider any other options, considering industry and commerce unworthy industries for the activities of a person with an education. However, medicine did not arouse Sigmund's love, so after school the young man spent a lot of time thinking about his future. Psychology eventually became Freud's choice. The lecture, where Goethe's work "Nature" was analyzed, helped him to make a decision. Medicine remained on the sidelines, Freud became interested in studying the nervous system of animals and published worthy articles on this topic.

graduation

After receiving his diploma, Freud dreamed of delving into science, but the need to earn a living took its toll. For some time I had to practice under the guidance of quite successful therapists. Already in 1885, Freud decided to make an attempt and open a personal neuropathology office. Good references from the therapists under whom Freud worked helped him get the coveted work permit.

cocaine addiction

A little-known fact about well-known psychoanalysts is cocaine addiction. The action of the drug impressed the philosopher, and he published many articles in which he tried to reveal the properties of the substance. Despite the fact that a close friend of the philosopher died from the destructive effects of the powder, this did not bother him at all, and Freud continued to study the secrets of the human subconscious with enthusiasm. These studies led Sigmund himself to addiction. And only many years of persistent treatment helped to get rid of addiction. Despite the difficulties, the philosopher never quit his studies, wrote articles and attended various seminars.

The development of psychotherapy and the formation of psychoanalysis

Over the years of working with famous therapists, Freud managed to make many useful contacts, which in the future led him to an internship with the psychiatrist Jean Charcot. It was during this period that a revolution took place in the mind of the philosopher. The future psychoanalyst studied the basics of hypnosis and personally observed how, with the help of this phenomenon, the condition of Charcot's patients improved. At this time, Freud began to practice in the treatment of such a method as an easy conversation with patients, giving them the opportunity to get rid of the thoughts accumulated in their heads and change their perception of the world. This method of treatment became truly effective and made it possible not to use hypnosis on patients. The whole recovery process took place exclusively in the clear consciousness of the patient.

After successfully applying the conversation method, Freud concluded that any psychosis is the consequences of the past, painful memories and experienced emotions, which are quite difficult to get rid of on your own. In the same period, the philosopher introduced the world to the theory that most human problems are the consequences of the Oedipus complex and infantilism. Freud also believed that sexuality is the basis of many psychological problems in humans. He substantiated his assumptions in the work "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality". This theory made a splash in the world of psychology, heated discussions between psychiatrists continued for a long time, sometimes reaching real scandals. Many were even of the opinion that the scientist himself became a victim of a mental disorder. Such a direction as psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud explored until the end of his days.

Freud's works

One of the most popular works of the psychotherapist to date has become a work called "The Interpretation of Dreams." Initially, the work did not receive recognition among colleagues, and only in the future, many figures in the field of psychology and psychiatry appreciated Freud's arguments. The theory was based on the fact that dreams, as the scientist believed, have a strong influence on the physiological state of a person. After the book was published, Freud began to be invited to lecture at various universities in Germany and the United States. For a scientist, this was truly a great achievement.

After the "Interpretation of Dreams" the world saw the following work - "Psychopathology of everyday life. It became the basis for creating a topological model of the psyche.

Freud's fundamental work is considered to be a work called "Introduction to Psychoanalysis". This work is the basis of the concept, as well as ways of interpreting the theory and methods of psychoanalysis. The work clearly shows the philosophy of thinking of the scientist. In the future, this base will serve as the basis for creating a set of mental processes and phenomena, the definition of which is "Unconscious".

Freud was also haunted by social phenomena, his opinion about what influences the consciousness of society, the behavior of the leader, the privileges and respect that power gives, the psychoanalyst expressed in the book “Psychology of the Masses and Analysis of the Human Self”. The books of Sigmund Freud do not lose their relevance to this day.

Secret Society "Committee"

The year 1910 brought discord to the team of followers and students of Sigmund Freud. The scientist's opinion that psychological disorders and hysteria are the suppression of sexual energy did not resonate with the philosopher's students, disagreement with this theory led to controversy. Endless discussions and disputes drove Freud crazy, and he decided to leave only those who adhered to the foundations of his theory nearby. Three years later, in fact, a secret society arose, which was called the "Committee". The life of Sigmund Freud is full of great discoveries and interesting research.

Family and Children

For decades, the scientist had no contact with women, one might even say that he was afraid of their society. Such strange behavior caused a lot of jokes and assumptions, which put Freud in awkward situations. The philosopher has long argued that he will do fine without female interference in his personal space. But Sigmund still did not manage to hide from the female charm. The love story is quite romantic: on the way to the printing house, the scientist almost fell under the wheels of a carriage, a frightened passenger sent Freud an invitation to the ball as a token of apology. The invitation was accepted, and already at the event, the philosopher met Martha Beirnays, who became his wife. All the time from the engagement to the beginning of their life together, Freud also communicated with Martha's sister Minna. On the basis of this, there were frequent scandals in the family, the wife was categorically against it and urged her husband to stop all communication with her sister. Constant scandals tired Sigmund, and he followed her instructions.

Martha bore Freud six children, after which the scientist decided to completely abandon sexual activity. Anna was the last child in the family. It was she who spent the last years of his life with her father and after his death continued his work. The London Children's Psychotherapy Center is named after Anna Freud.

last years of life

Continuous research and painstaking work greatly influenced Freud's condition. The scientist was diagnosed with cancer. After receiving news of the disease, a series of operations followed, which did not bring the desired result. Sigmund's last wish was to ask the doctor to put him out of his misery and help him die. Therefore, in September 1939, a large dose of morphine ended Freud's life.

The scientist made a truly great contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Museums were built in his honor, monuments were erected. The most important museum dedicated to Freud is located in London, in the house where the scientist lived, where, due to circumstances, he moved from Vienna. An important museum is located in the hometown of Příbor, in the Czech Republic.

Facts from the life of a scientist

In addition to great achievements, the biography of the scientist is full of many interesting facts:

• Freud bypassed the numbers 6 and 2, thus he avoided the "hellish room", whose number is 62. Sometimes the mania reached the point of absurdity, and on February 6, the scientist did not appear on the streets of the city, thereby hiding from the negative events that could happen that day .
• It's no secret that Freud considered his point of view to be the only true one and demanded the utmost attention from the listeners of his lectures.
• Sigmund had a phenomenal memory. He easily memorized any notes, important facts from books. That is why the study of languages, even such complex ones as Latin, was relatively easy for Freud.
• Freud never looked people in the eye, many drew attention to this feature. Rumor has it that it was for this reason that the famous couch appeared in the psychoanalyst's office, which helped to avoid these awkward looks.

The publications of Sigmund Freud are the subject of discussion in the modern world as well. The scientist literally turned the concept of psychoanalysis and made an invaluable contribution to the development of this field.