Sigmund Freud was born on 6th May, 1856 in Freibergy Morvia. His father Jacob was a merchant and his mother Amelia (3rd wife of Jacob) who called him "My Golden Sigi". From his father Freud inherited his sense of humor, shrewd skepticism, liverism and thinking and "sentimentalism" from his mother.
His family shifted to Vienna when Sigmund was only 4 years old. Earlier in Vienna were unpleasant. Though he remembered very little between the age, 3 and 4, Freud said, "They were hard times and not worth remembering."
Freud's continuous memory became at the age of 7 years. Incidents he remembered at the age, between 3 & 7, were spoiling the chair with his dirty hands for which he promised his mother that he would grew up great and buy a new chair. Similar was with his father that he promised him to buy a red bed. This shows that love was stronger than aggression.
Freud'S TEENAGE
Freud was so industrious that he was always maintaining his standard in educational field. In 1870, when he was 17 years old, he was inspired by the Philosophical Idealism of Franz Brenteno. At the same time, he was also inspired to do double Ph.d. in physiology and philosophy by the neurological positivism of Ernst Bruke. He passed his Matriculation examination in the year 1873.
EDUCATION IN UNIVERSITY
Freud studied in Medical School at the University of Vienna. Here he concentrated on his studies of Biology for 6 years under the well known German scientist Ernst Bruke. Freud received his medical degree in 1881. After his 2-1 / 2 year in University, he began first of his numerous original researches (1876). Before that in 1875, he was allowed to found the Zoological experimental station at Trieste, one of the first of its kinds in the world.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
MARRIAGE
Freud married Martha Bernays in 1886.
FAMILY
Freud had 6 children during the 8 years of his marriage life. Amongst them, Anna Freud was his youngest daughter. Eventually, Anna became model-life for Freud's child development studies. They had very close relationship. Ultimately Anna became her father's colleague and successor. She was a founder of Child Psycho-Analysis.
THEORIES OF SIGMUND
THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Sigmund Freud was the first psychologist to use the term Psychoanalysis. Joseph Breuer was important person who led him to psychoanalysis. The new technique showed the relations between the physician and the patient, and gave surprising results distinguishing it from the "Cathartic Method". Freud gave new name Psychoanalysis to this method.
Freud could show with his extensive work with patients that factors which influence thought and action exist outside of awareness that unconscious conflict play important part in deciding abnormal behaviour and also that the past shapes the present. This technique of psychoanalysis is still employed today in the same manner but with more assurance and better understanding of its limitation.
STRUCTURAL THEORY OF MIND
Freud arrived at knowledge of physical apparatus by studying individual development of human being. Physical provinces are given names of "Id" that is present at the time of birth. Id performs the task of gaining control of the demand of the instincts by deciding whether they are to be allowed, satisfaction or by suppressing their excitation totally.
From what was originally cortical layer supported with the organs for receiving stimuli, and with arrangements for acting as a defensive shield against stimuli, a special organization has arisen that acts as an intermediatory between the Id and the external work. This region of our mind is known as Ego. The ego has voluntary movements at its command between the sense, perception and the muscular action. Ego strives after pleasure and seeks to avoid displeasure.The long period of childhood, when the growing human being lives on dependence on his parents leaves behind it a precipitated formation in his ego of a special agency in which the parental influence is prolonged. This is known as superego. It transpires that Id and Superego have one thing in common. Both of them represent the influences of the past - Id is the
influence of hereditary, Superego is influence of really what is taken over from other people, whereas the Ego is stressed by individual's experience i.e. by eventual and contemporary events.
THEORY OF SEXUALITY
In 1905, he wrote Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. He stated that between the ages of 3 and 5, the children reach a turning point where they felt that strong attraction towards the parent of opposite sex. This was known as Oedipal and Electra-complexes.Generally at the end of 5th year, early period of child sexual comes about to end. This period is succeeded by latency. During latency period an
ethical restrains are developed so that it can work as valid defense against the desire of Oedipus complex. Oedipus Complex is animated in unconsciousness that embarks variations when puberty takes place. On attaining puberty period that sexual instincts develop to full intensity or gravity. This is biological peculiarity. That is a determining factor of origin of neurosis. Freud's another "Bold Psychoanalytic theory" was not popular at that time and was thought to be scandalous.
THEORY OF HYPNOSIS
In 1885, Freud went to Paris where he became familiar with the technique of hypnosis. During 1890, he founded the Psychoanalytic theory. He then realized the effect of hypnosis as temporary, he adopted the alternative theory of treatment suggested by his friend Joseph Breuer and Freud together published their theory in studies in Hysteria in 1894. They also jointly formulated that a patient needs to confront these past issues in order to overpower phobia. Their findings were considered Revolutionary.
EGO DEFENSE MECHANISM
According to Freud's model of the mind, the unconscious parts of the mind are continually trying to break through, to dominate the unconsciousness, but they are held back by the ego. The ego, therefore, experiences three sources of threat those from the id those from the super-ego and those from reality itself. In order to cope with these, it uses defense mechanisms some of the major ego-defense mechanisms outlined by Freud are : Denial, Repression, Regression, Projection, Reaction Formation, Identification with aggressor.
WHO WAS SIGMUND FREUD ?
If we would think about the life and works of Freud, then an obvious question is bound to arise, 'who was Freud ?' yes, Freud was a doctor by profession. But we will certainly consider him as a psychiatrist. In fact, Freud never wanted to be a doctor, but economic compulsions made him accept that profession. In 1927 he confessed that "After 41 years of work in the field, my self-knowledge shows that I never was a doctor, and keeping away my original aim,I was compelled to become a doctor. Then what was his main aim ? His main aim was to understand and solve some of the problems of nature. If considered interest-wise, Freud was a scientist. He went deep into the study of physiology as being closely related to different hospitals.His research on psychoanalysis was based on the treatment he provided to the hysteria patients. He gave reply to the question of relation between Psychoanalysis to psychology in 1927. Psychoanalysis is included in psychology and not as per the old meaning of psychology.
Freud PSYCHIATRIST OR PSYCHOANALYST ?
Freud was a Psychiatrist and Psychologist, but more than that, he was
a philosopher, indications of which are available from a letter written to his friend: "In my youth, I was very much interested in obtaining philosophical knowledge. Now I will strive to fulfill my wish by remaining in the present field itself." To get attracted towards philosophy by a psychiatrist in 19th Century was no mean achievement. Freud was very much impressed by German philosopher Guithe. His philosophy was socio-humanistic. Freud can be considered a social reformist also, as he tried to imbibe the scientific way of life in his book "Civilization and its Discontents."
Thus he started his career as scientist, later on he became a Psychiatrist and while trying to find out the reasons for mental disorders, he was able to give fillip to the cause of psychology. Some how Freud is misunderstood among the educated also.
Such a great scientist was compelled to reside in London in his last years. As driven by the pressures from Nazis on Austria and Hitler's tyranny, if he would not have left Vienna, which he considered it as his motherland, he would have spent his whole life in Vienna itself.He died at the age of 82 due to mouth cancer. And he was cremated at Golder's Green in London.
MAY 6, 1856
Sigmund Freud was born. Father Jacob was a merchant and Amilia, the mother, called him 'my Golden Sigi'.
1860
Freud's family moved to Vienna.
1866-1872
Freud developed friendship with classmate Eduard Silberstein.
1873-1875
Freud passed his matriculation and entered the medical school in University of Vienna. He changed his name from Sigismand to Sigmund.
1876
He studied under Claus and Brueke.
1877
Freud worked with Josef Breuer who had a patient called Anna O.
1881
Freud got his medical degree.
1882
Freud was employed as a doctor at Theodore Meynert's Psychiatric Clinic. He was engaged to Martha Bernays.
1884
Researched on the medicinal effects of coca.
1885
Studied under Jean Charcot in Paris who was using hypnosis to treat hysteria.
1886
Freud married Martha.
1887-1889
Freud became interested in hypnotherapy. He came in close contact with Dr. Wilhelm Fliess. Freud's letters were bought by Princess Marie Buonaparte.
1893-1894
He worked together with Josef Breuer on studies on Hysteria.
1895
Freud managed for the first time to analyze one of his own dreams.
1896
Freud used the term 'psychoanalysis' for the first time. His father died.
1897
He began his self-analysis.
1898
He published "The Psychical Mechanism".
1899-1900
The first copies of "The Interpretation of Dream" his best book, were published.
1901
Freud began the analysis of eighteen year old Dora.
1902
Formed Psychological Wednesday Society.
1903
Wilhelm Fliess and Freud met for the last time in Vienna.
1904
Published 'Psychopathology of Everyday Life.' Also he travelled for the first time with his brother Alexander to Athens.
1905
Three Essays on the Theory of sexuality, Jokes and their relation to unconscious and Fragments of an Analysis of A case of Hysteria (Dora) appeared.
1906
C. G. Jung began his correspondence with Freud.
1907
Met Jung in Vienna. Publication of Delusion and Dreams in W. Jensen's 'Gradiva'
1908
The first Congress of "Freudian Psychology" took place in Salzburg.
1909-1910
He formed International Psychoanalytical Society with Carl Jung and his journey to America, to give series of lectures at Clark University.
1912
Founded the Psychoanalytical journal 'Image'
1913
Broke relation with C.G. Jung.
1914
Outbreak of First world war.
1916
The first part of "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis."
1917
George Groddeck joined the Psychoanalytical movement.
1918
Freud lost his entire fortune which was tied up in Austrian State Bonds.
1919
The International Psychoanalytical Press was founded in Vienna.
1920
The English language journal "International Journal of Psychoanalysis was founded."
1922
Freud was working on A seventeenth Century Demonological neurosis.
1923
At the age of 67, he presented structural model of id, ego and super ego. Also the first signs of Freud's oral cancer were detected.
1924
Freud turned down offer of $ 1,00,000 by Samuel Goldwyn to co-operate in making movies on famous love stories. A conflict broke out with Otto Rank over the meaning of the birth trauma in Psychoanalysis.
1925
The first volumes of Freud's collected Works appeared.
1926
On his 70th birthday Freud received various honors.
1927
Freud made the election announcement for the Viennese Social Democrats.
1929
Arnold Zweig published an essay entitled "Freud and Humankind" in which he described Freud as a liberator from religious and pathological terror.
1930
He was honored with the Goethe Prize for Literature. A heart attack forced Freud to give up smoking.
1931
The financial situation of the International Psychoanalytical Press became critical. Freud appealed for help from the psychoanalytical organizations.
1932
In order to give financial assistance to the International Psychoanalytical Press, he wrote the "New Introductory Lectures on psychoanalysis."
1933
Hitler became Reichs Chancellor. Freud corresponds with Einstein on the question "Why War" ? Nazis burnt his books in Berlin.
1935
Freud was elected Honorary Member of the British Royal Society of Medicine.
1936
Thomas Mann gave a celebratory address in the concert Hall on "Freud and the Future".
1937
Austria is merged with German Reich. Freud left Vienna for London,
SEPTEMBER 26, 1939
Freud body was cremated at Golder's Green on the morning of September 26 in presence of a large number of mourners.
WORK EXPERIENCE
WORK EXPERIENCE
Freud initially worked with Vienna General Hospital. Latter on he settled in his private practice in the treatment of Psychological disorder.Freud also watched and observed people's everyday behaviour. He noted that how people expressed their hidden desire. This was also known as Freudian's slip. He in 1901, he wrote the psychopathology of everyday life. Physicians like Alfred Alder, Sendor Ferenezi and Cal.
Gustav Jung started following this theory. Thus there were good number of group of people following this theory. They were regularly meeting every Wednesday night in Freud's apartment. Later on in 1908, this group was known as the "Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Freud received an honorary doctorate from Clark University where he was invited to deliver lectures. Freud published over 20 volumes of theory and clinical study which he joined concept and term including Libido, subconsciousness, an inferiority complex that imbedded western culture.Freud studied three cases in 1884. Amongst them was the case of a young baker whom Freud observed from 3rd October, 1884 until the baker's death on 17 December 1884, which he diagnosed as one of endocarditis with pneumonia together with acute multiple neuritis. (spinal and cerebral all confirmed by Kunradt's autopsy.Another case was of muscular atrophy with curious sensory changes. Freud made the diagnosis of Syringomyelia of which, at that time, very few cases were known. The patient, a thirty-six year old weaver, was under Freud's observation and treatment for six weeks from 10th November 1884 onward and then left the hospital.
The case was reported in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift which was published in March and April 1985. It was also published in Neurologisches Centralblatt.
Dr. Josef Breuer of Vienna, a famous physician and experimental physiologist was given treatment to a girl who had fallen ill of a severe hysteria, while she was nursing her sick father. By consistently repeating the same laborious process, he succeeded in freeing her of all her inhibitions and paralyses.But at the end of the treatment he found her trouble, rewarded by great therapeutic success and also by unexpected insight into the nature of the puzzling neurosis. Breuer restrained from publishing anything about the case for almost 10 years. When Freud returned to Vienna in 1886, Breuer due to the personal influence of Freud, who over ruled him to take up the subject afresh. Both of them together published a preliminary paper 'On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena in 1893 and in 1895 a book entitled 'Studies on Hysteria', in which they described therapeutic procedure as cathartic.
ANNA FREUD
Anna Freud was born in Vienna. She was the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud. She had taken after her father and was equally intelligent. There was the close relationship between the father and his daughter.She served as a subject in many of her father's child development studies. As she grew, she became her father's colleague. She helped her father in handling many cases.Hers was also a great contribution to the society as far as psychoanalysis was concerned. She chaired the 'Vienna Psychoanalytic Society'. During 1904-5, she organized a residential war nursery for homeless children. She was the founder of Child Psychoanalysis.She migrated with her father to London in 1938.
CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Though Freud was interested in the conscious, he was much more interested in less explored areas of the mind. Those parts were what Freud called the unconscious and preconscious. The conscious is small part of the mind, it consists of what we are aware of at any given moment / movement.The unconscious consist of instinctual elements. These elements have never been conscious and never will be the part of conscious. This material is repressed from the conscious is neither forgotten nor remembered.
The preconscious is the part of unconscious, which has the ability to actually be remembered. The preconscious includes memories, like a middle name or a street, so they can be later used in the conscious.Freud divided mind into three parts. To this investigation is provided by fact without parallel, which defies all explanation - the fact of unconscious.Our own personal experience tells us the meaning of consciousness. People both inside and outside the science of psychology, agree with the assumption that consciousness is mental, and has to be determine phenomenology of the mind between perceptions, feelings, intellective processes and volitions.
There are some physical or somatic processes, which have a conscious process parallel to them, and these conscious process do not form unbroken series which are complete in themselves. To arrive at some assessment of the conscious processes we have to stress in psychology upon these formatting processes. Most of the philosophers do not agree with this position and feel that the idea of mental thing being unconscious is self-contradictory. The second hypothesis explains the somatre process as being mental and does not regard the quality of consciousness. This makes an important division in this unconsciousness. There are same processes which can become conscious, then unconscious and can again be conscious without any problems and can be remembered, what is conscious is only for a moment. Our perception confirms that the stimuli can persist for some time and can be repeated, while it can also pass by in a flash. What is an unconscious condition can easily become conscious or preconscious. There are hardly any mental processes, which cannot remain preconscious. They press on and become conscious. There is other mental material which does not have such easy access to consciousness, but which can be translated into the conscious form.
Thus we have three qualities to the mental process, conscious, preconscious and unconscious. The degradation between these three is neither absolute nor permanent. The preconscious becomes conscious without any effort on one's part.The unconscious with our effort can become conscious, though we may have an impression that we are overcoming strong resistance. While attempting the same on someone, we must keep in mind that conscious filling up of the breaks in perceptions. We have made. The conscious in him the unconscious material in question. So far we have realized that the material present in the mind is in two versions, the first is conscious reconstruction and the second is its unconscious condition.
FREUD'S IDEAS AND THE STORY OF ANALYSIS
Sigmund Freud was the first psychoanalyst. His deep understanding to human mind, appeared to be revolutionary at the turning motion of the century are now widely accepted by most schools of psychological thought. The role of unconscious activity had began to recognized by many other people during and before Freud's time. Freud was the pre-eminent pioneer in understanding importance of unconsciousness.Freud could show through his wide spread voluminous work with patients that factors which influence thought and action exist outside of awareness, that unconscious conflict play a great part in deciding abnormal behaviour and also that the past shapes the present. Freud believed deeply in the value of his discoveries even though his ideas matched with resistance. Freud saw that those who tried to change themselves or others, they faced actual difficulties. Mostly psychoanalysis is based on assumption, and the analysis of subject is exclusively reserved to philosophical thought, but the justification would lie in the result. There are two things about what we called our physic. Firstly bodily organ and secondly the nervous system which is also known as consciousness, that is based on data which is difficult to explain.The process of consciousness based on data is not helpful for effective understanding.
The assumption start out of aforesaid ends. The mental life is concerned with localization. Certain portions which we imagine can be resembled to a Telescope or Microscope or something of that kind. We have arrived at our knowledge of psychical apparatus by studying individual development of human being. Psychical provinces are given names of Id and that is present at birth. On the whole the impact of the real external world around us has undergone, a special development and a matter of research. From what was originally cortical layer, supported with the organs for receiving stimuli and with arrangements for acting as a defensive shield against stimuli, special organization has arisen.That acts as intermediately between the id and the external world. This region of our mind is known as 'ego'.
The ego has voluntary movement at its command between the sense perception and the muscular action. It has the task of self-preservation. As for as external events are concerned they perform that task by becoming aware of stimuli, by storing up experiences about the memory, by avoiding excessively strong stimuli, by dealing with moderali stimuli and ultimately by learning to bring about expedient changes in the external world to its all advantage. As for as internal affairs are concerned, pertaining to id, it performs that task by seeking control over the demands of instincts, by deciding as to whether the same are to be allowed satisfaction, by temporarily suspending that satisfaction to times and situations favorable in the external world or by suppressing excitations entirely. It is guided in its activity by relevant consideration of tensions produced by stimuli, whether such tensions are in it or introduced into it. The tension in general lowers the pleasures is not an absolute height of tension but something in the line of change in them. The ego is sought after pleasure and again it seeks to avoid displeasure. Displeasure in inviting the signal of anxiety. This from time to time ego gives up its connection with the external world and goes to withdraw into the state of sleep, in which it causes far reaching changes in organization.
During the childhood, children are dependent on their parents and therefore the dependence leaves behind it a preceped formation in ego of a special agency where the parental influences are prolonged. It is called "Super-ego". The super-ego is differentiated from the ego, which constitutes a third power, which the ego must take into account. The particulars of relation between ego and super-ego become intelligible when they are found back to the child's attitude towards parents. It thus transpires that id and super-ego have one thing in common. Both of them represent the influences of the past - id the influence of heredity, the super-ego influence, really, of what is taken over from other people whereas the ego is tressed by individual's experience that is by eventual and contemporary events
PSYCHO - ANALYSIS AS AN INTERPRETATIVE ART
Newly substantially varied the picture of treatment greatly based on this new technique, the physicians could bring surprising results that appeared justifiable to introduce difference in the procedure from Cathari method . Freud gave treatment according to this method which is extended to many other forms of neurotic disorder to which he gave the name 'Psycho analysis'. Psychoanalysis is an art in itself that carried decepts of Breuer's discoveries. (Breuer's discoveries of neurotic symptoms are crucial substitutes for rest of mental acts that were disregarded). This theory became advantageous to the physicians over the subject of analysis and interpretations. While treating the patients, the physician should try to match his the subconscious mental activities with that to of patient without employing higher reflection of physician's (his) unconscious mental activity.
The analysis would be more effective after physician applies higher degree of skill. This will would enable the physician to know the suppressed feelings or desires, which could be expressed by patient himself. However the method has no standard normatives or rules but is left to the tactful discretion of the physician. Impartial conclusions based on such analysis do bring trustworthy results, by being put applications in similar cases. Even in contemporary ages, this theory is not considered outdated by physicians so as to achieve promising result enhanced effectively.
THE TRANSITION TO PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
Studies of two authors clearly reveal the contrast between their views. According to Breuer pathogenic ideas produced their traumatic effect because they arose during 'hypnoid states' in which mental functioning was subject to limitations. Where as or on the other hand Freud rejected this explanation and inclined to believe that an idea becomes pathogenic provided it contents was in contrast to the predominant trend of the subject's mental life, so that it provokes him into defense. This led Freud to move away from the cathartic method. Breuer's withdrawal gave a turning point of fresh development.
SYMBOLISM AND FREE ASSOCIATION
SYMBOLISM
During investigation, the form of expression brought about by the dream-work, surprisingly it was observed that certain objects, arrangements and relations are represented in a sense indirectly by 'symbols' which are used by the dreamer without understanding them and to which as a rule he offers no associations. Translation of this has to be provided by the analyst who himself can experience and discover it by experimentally fitting it into the context.Later it was realized that linguistic usage, mythology and folklore enable the most ample analogies to dream symbols. The use of a common symbolism extends / leaves for beyond the use of common language.
FREE ASSOCIATION
The effect of hypnotic condition upon the patient helped to increase his
ability to make associations helped to increase his ability to make associations that enabled him to reach the path-inaccessible to his conscious reflection - which led from the symptom to the thoughts and memories connected with it. The abandonment of hypnosis appeared to make situation hopeless until Freud recalled the remark of Bernheim's to the effect that things which had been experienced in the habit of sleepwalk were only assumed to be forgotten and that they could be brought into recollection at any time if the physician insisted forcibly enough that the patient new them. It was Freud's earnest industrious effort to insist on his un-hypnotized patients giving them their associates, so that from the material thus provided he might find the way leading to what was forgotten and discarded. Freud realized later that instance was of no use and that copious ideas always arose in patient's mind, but those ideas were held back from being communicated and even from becoming conscious by definite objections put by the patient in his own way. The technique of educating a patient to give up his critical attitude and making use of material for the purpose of uncovering connections. There was a strong belief as regard to determination mental events which definitely played a part for hypnosis "The Fundamental Technical Rule" of this procedure of 'Free Association' has form since it is being maintained in psychoanalytical work.
• Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out and out unbeliever.
• The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief.
• When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly surprised at the weakness of his intellect.
• Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.
• Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular movies, would proceed unobtrusively.
• Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture : from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.
• Religion would then be the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children. If this view is right, it is to be supposed that a turning away from religion is bound to occur with the fatal inevitability of a process of growth.
• When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life
• In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable
• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
• The gods retain their threefold task : they must exercise the terrors of nature, they must reconcile men to the cruelty of fate, particularly as it is shown in deaths and they must compensate them for the sufferings and preventions which a civilized life in common has imposed on them.
• When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet.
• Every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him
• A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for the life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.
• I slowly acquiesced in the idea I was later to hear expressed in the words thou owest nature a death.
• After forty-one years of medical activity, my self-knowledge tells me that I have never really been a doctor in proper sense. I became a doctor through being compelled to deviate from my original purpose; and the triumph of my life lies in my having, after a long and round about journey, found my way back to my earliest path.
• The mechanism of anxiety-neurosis is to be sought in the deflection of somatic sexual excitation from the physical field, and an abnormal use of it, due to this deflection.
• From clinical standpoint the (actual) neuroses must necessarily be put along side the intoxications and such disorders as Graves' disease.
• Everything that I experience with patients I find here : days when I slink about oppressed because I have not been able to understand anything of my dreams, my fantasies, and the moods of the day, and then again days in which a flash illuminates the connections and enables one to comprehend what has gone before as a preparation for today's vision.
• One is very crazy when one is in love.
• It would have seemed more sensible to me to establish a Jewish homeland on a less historically burdened land. But I know that such rational viewpoint would never have gained the enthusiasm of the masses and financial support of the wealthy.. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of an Herodian wall into national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the native.
• A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming passion - in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant, and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology.
• Complete theories do not fall ready-made from the sky.
• Every single hysteric and neurotic. remember painful experiences of the remote past. still cling to them emotionally; they cannot get free of the past and for its sake they neglect what is real and immediate.
• Psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and the belief in God, has shown us that the personal God is psychologically nothing but an exalted father, and daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.
• (Freud, in a letter to Jung, comments on the difficulty of preparing an important case history for publication) : I am finding it very difficult. it is almost beyond my powers of presentation; the paper will probably be intelligible to no one outside our immediate circle. How bungled our reproductions are, how wretchedly we dissect the great art works of psychic nature !
• It is a long superseded idea, and one derived from superficial appearances, that the patient suffers from a sort of ignorance, and that if one removes this ignorance by giving him information (about the causal connection of his illness with his life, about his experiences in childhood and so on) he is bound to recover. The pathological factor is not his ignorance in itself, but the root of this ignorance in his inner resistances; it was they that first called this ignorance into being, and they still maintain it now. The task of the treatment lies in combating these resistances. Informing the patient of what he does not know because he has repressed it is only one of the necessary preliminaries to the treatment. If knowledge about the unconscious were as important for the patient as people inexperienced in psychoanalysis imagine, listening to lectures or reading books would be enough to cure him. Such measures, however, have as much influence on the symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger.
• One should never economize on health, education and travel.
