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===1885–1899=== {{Infobox interventions | Name = | Image = Words "Die Psychoanalyse" in Sigmund Freud's handwriting, 1938.jpg | Caption = The words {{lang|de|Die Psychoanalyse}} in Sigmund Freud's handwriting, 1938 | ICD10 = | ICD9 = {{ICD9proc|94.31}} | MeshID = D011572 | OtherCodes = }} In 1885, Freud was given the opportunity to study at the [[Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital|Salpêtrière]] in Paris under the famous neurologist [[Jean-Martin Charcot]]. Charcot had specialised in the field of [[hysterical paralysis]] and established hypnosis as a research tool, the experimental application of which actually made it possible to eliminate [[Signs and symptoms|symptoms]] of this kind. Paralysed people could suddenly walk again, and blind ones could see. Although this 'messianic' effect is not known to last long, as Freud soon discovered in his own experiments, the phenomenon of hypnotic false-healing played a decisive role in reinforcing his idea of a purely psychological background to the complex neurotic clinical picture. A few years later (1887–88), he worked as a [[neurologist]] in a children's hospital (the Public Institute for Children's Diseases in [[Vienna]]), where some little patients suffered from neurotic symptoms. All attempts to develop a suitable treatment failed; in fact, the detailed examinations did not reveal any organic defects. In the [[monograph]] written on this subject, Freud documents his [[Differential diagnosis|differential-diagnostically]] supported suspicion that neurotic symptoms probably would have psychological causes.<ref>Stengel, E. 1953. ''Sigmund Freud on Aphasia (1891)''. New York: [[International Universities Press]].</ref> Finishing the ineffective hypnosis, the idea of psychoanalysis began to receive serious attention; Freud initially called it ''[[Free association (psychology)|free association]]''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Tarzian |first1=Martin |last2=Ndrio |first2=Mariana |last3=Fakoya |first3=Adegbenro O |title=An Introduction and Brief Overview of Psychoanalysis |journal=Cureus |date=2023 |volume=15 |issue=9 |pages=e45171 |doi=10.7759/cureus.45171 |doi-access=free |issn=2168-8184 |pmid=37842377|pmc=10575551 }}</ref> His first attempt to explain neurotical symptoms on this path was presented in ''[[Studies on Hysteria]]'' (1895). Co-authored with [[Josef Breuer]], this is generally seen as the birth of psychoanalysis.<ref name="Freud 1895" /> The work based on their partly joint treatment of [[Bertha Pappenheim]], referred to by the pseudonym "[[Anna O.]]" Bertha herself had dubbed the treatment ''[[talking cure]]''. Breuer, a distinguished physician, was astonished but remained unspecific; while Freud formulated his hypothesis that Anna's hystera seemed to be caused by distressing but unconscious experiences related to sexuality, basing his assumption on corresponding free associations made by the young women.<ref name="Freud 1895">Freud, Sigmund, and [[Josef Breuer]]. 1955 [1895]. ''[[Studies on Hysteria]]'', ''[[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|Standard Editions]]'' 2, edited by [[James Strachey|J. Strachey]]. London: [[Hogarth Press]].</ref> For example, she sometimes liked to jokingly rename her talking cure as ''[[chimney sweeping]]'', an association about the fairy tale through which part of a pregnant woman's house 'the [[Stork#Associations with fertility|stork' gives birth]] to the baby – or in [[Jacques Lacan|Lacan's]] words: "The more Anna provided [[Sign (semiotics)|signifers]], the more she chattered on, the better it went."<ref>Jacques Lacan, ''The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis'' (London 1994) p. 157</ref> See also [[Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious|''Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious'']] (1905). Around the same time, Freud had started to develop a [[Neurology|neurological]] hypothesis about mental phenomena such as memory, but soon abandoned this attempt and left it unpublished.<ref>Freud, Sigmund. 1966 [1895]. "[http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/freud%20fleiss%20letters/200711781-013.pdf Project for a Scientific Psychology]." Pp. 347–445 in ''[[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|Standard Editions]]'' 3, edited by [[James Strachey|J. Strachey]]. London: [[Hogarth Press]].</ref> Insights into neuronal-biochemical processes that store experiences in the brain – like engraving the proverbial [[tabula rasa]] with some code – belongs to the [[Physiology|physiological]] branch of science and lead in a different direction of research than the psychological question of what the differences between consciousness and unconsciousness are. After some thought about a suitable term, Freud called his new instrument and field of research ''psychoanalysis'', introduced in his essay “Inheritance and Etiology of Neuroses”, written and published in French in 1896.<ref>Freud, Sigmund. 1896. "[http://psychanalyse-paris.com/1275-L-Heredite-et-l-etiologie-des.html L'hérédité et l'étiologie des névroses]" [Heredity and the etiology of neuroses]. ''[[Revue neurologique]]'' 4(6):161–69. via Psychanalyste Paris.</ref><ref>[[Élisabeth Roudinesco|Roudinesco, Élisabeth]], and Michel Plon. 2011 [1997]. ''Dictionnaire de la psychanalyse''. Paris: [[Fayard]]. p. 1216.</ref> ====The abuse thesis==== In 1896, Freud also published his [[Freud's seduction theory|''seduction theory'']], in which he assumed as certain that he had uncovered repressed memories of incidents of sexual abuse in each of his previous patients. This type of [[Sexual arousal|sexual excitations]] of the child would therefore be the prerequisite for the later development of [[hysteria|hysterical]] and other kinds of neurotic symptoms.<ref name="Freud 1896">Freud, Sigmund. 1953 [1896]. "[[The Aetiology of Hysteria]]." Pp. 191–221 in ''[[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|The Standard Edition]]'' 3, edited by [[James Strachey|J. Strachey]]. London: [[Hogarth Press]]. [http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Hysteria.Notes.html Lay summary] via [[University of Washington]].</ref> Later the same year, Freud noticed a contradiction to his abuse thesis; he reports of patients who expressed their "emphatic disbelief" in this respect: that they "had no feeling of remembering the [[Infantile sexuality|infantile sexual]] scenes".<ref name="Freud 1896" />{{Rp|204}} In the course of his further research, Freud began to doubt his thesis that such abuse should be almost omnipresent in our society. Initially, he expressed his suspicion of having made a mistake in private to his friend and colleague [[Wilhelm Fliess]] in 1898; but it took another 8 years before he had clarified the obscure connections sufficiently to publicly revoke his thesis, stating the reasons.<ref name="Freud 1906">Freud, Sigmund. 1953 [1906]. "My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses." Pp. 269–79 in ''[[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|The Standard Edition]]'' 7, edited by [[James Strachey|J. Strachey]]. London: [[Hogarth Press]].</ref> (Freud's final position on the origin of neurosis in general is summarized in his late work ''[[Civilization and Its Discontents|The Discomfort in Culture]]''. According to this, the causes do not lie in general sexual abuse of children, but in the way in which each generation educates the next to adopt the rules of coexistence known as morality. See also ''[[The Future of an Illusion]]''.) ====The secrecy mechanism==== In the mid-1890s, he was still upholding his hypothesis of sexual abuse. In this context, he reported on fantasies of several patients, which on the one hand would point to memories of scenes of [[infantile masturbation]] stored in the unconscious, while the more conscious parts on the other hand would aim to make these morally forbidden acts of childish pleasure unrecognisable, to cover up them. The interesting point for Freud here was not so much the secretiveness itself (a well-known behaviour of [[Victorian era]]), but the following twofold realisation: That children – at that time considered as ''innocent'' little angels – initiate pleasurable actions of their own accord (have ‘drives’ at all, as later assigned to the ‘id’); and the presumably by aducation initiated emergence of a [[Psychopathology|psychopathological]] mechanism, whose ability consists in being able to hide impulses of this kind from one's own consciousness.<ref name="Freud 1906" /> Short after, he assumed that the same findings would have some evidence for a kind of [[oedipus complex|Oedipal]] desires. ====From blood disgrace to self-castration==== In the tragedy ''[[Oedipus]]'', to which Freud refers, there occurs no sexual exploitation of a child by its parents or other adults. Sophocles' poetic treatment of this ancient Greek myth is about [[Oedipus]]' own sexual desire addressed to his mother Jocasta – admittedly as an already genitally mature man and without knowing about the close blood relationship, including an not less unconscious patricide – which the woman reciprocates just as unsuspectingly. Freud interprets the passage where Oedipus – after realising his serious violation of the moral-totemic [[incest taboo]] – pokes out his eyes with the golden needle clasp of his wife's and mother's nightdress (while Jocasta commits suicide) as a manifestation of the same ‘cover-up’ mechanism that he began to uncover in the above-mentioned fantasies. In his eyes, psychoanalysis works in the opposite direction to this mechanism of preconscious self-delusion, by bringing the due to incest taboo have been repressed desires (the ‘id’) back into the realm of inner perception, own conscious thinking.<ref>Freud, Sigmund. 1959 [1925]. "[https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Autobiographical_Study.pdf An Autobiographical Study]." Pp. 7–74 in [[The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud|''Standard Edition'']] 20, edited by [[James Strachey|J. Strachey]]. London: [[Hogarth Press]]. – via [[University of Pennsylvania]].[http://www.mhweb.org/mpc_course/freud.pdf Transcribed version] via Michigan Mental Health Networker.</ref> This raised the question for Freud of the first origin of moral prohibitions. A field of research that led him deep into the evolutionary and cultural (prä)history of mankind (see Darwin's primal horde; its abolition through patricide and introduction of monogamy in [[Totem and Taboo]]) and which, according to his own information, he had to leave unfinished as an untested hypothesis due to the lack of [[Kasakela chimpanzee community|primate research]].<ref name="Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse" /><ref name="Sigmund Freud: Der Mann Moses und d" /> ====The meaning of dreams==== In 1899, Freud's work had progressed far enough that he was able to publish ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]''. This, for him, was the most important of his writings,<ref>Gay, Peter. 1988. ''Freud: A Life for Our Time''. New York: [[W. W. Norton & Company|W. W. Norton]]. pp. 3–4, 103.</ref><ref>Freud, Sigmund. 1913 [1899]. ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]''. [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]].</ref> as it formulated the realisation that every dream contains a symbolically disguised message that can be decoded with the help of the dreamer's [[Free association (psychology)|free associations]]. The purpose of every dream is, therefore, to inform the dreamer about his complex inner situation: in essence, a conflict arising from the demands of innate needs and externally imposed behavioural rules that prohibit their satisfaction. Freud called the former the ''primary process'', taking place predominantly in the unconscious, and the latter the ''secondary process'' of predominantly conscious, more or less coherent thoughts. [[File:Structural-Iceberg.svg|thumb|280px|The [[iceberg]] metaphor. It's often used to illustrate the spatial relationship between Freud's first model and the new concepts (id, ego, superego), synthesising both into the structural model. Disadvantage: an iceberg contains no libido: the purpose-cause (source) of all drive-energetic dynamics and economy of the living soul (biological organism as a whole).]] Freud summarised this view in his first model of the soul. Known as the ''[[Id, ego and superego#Advantages of the structural model|topological model]]'', it divides the organism into three areas or systems: The unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious. Sexual needs belong to the unconscious and are forced to remain there if the contents of the conscious mind ward them off. This is the case in societies that generally consider all extra- and premarital sexual activity (including homoeroticism, that of biblical [[Onan]] and incest) to be a ‘sin’, passing this value on to the next generation through concrete or threatened punishments. Moral education creates fears of punitive violence or the deprivation of love in the child's soul. They are stored neuronally in the preconscious and influence the consciousness in the sense of the imprinted rules of behaviour. (Freud's second model of the soul, [[Id, ego and superego|the three-instance or structural model]], introduces here a clearer distinction. ''Topology'' is no longer the decisive factor, but the specific ''function'' of each of the three instances. This new model did not replace the first one: it integrated it.) ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' includes the first comprehensive conceptualisation of [[Oedipus complex]]: The little boy admires his father because of the mental and physical advantages of the adult man and wants to become like him, but also comes into conflict with him over the women around, cause of the [[incest taboo|taboo of incest]]. This initiates – growing up from the id – anger that can escalate into a deadly urge for revenge against the father. Impulses that the little boy cannot act out (not least due to the child's deep dependence on his parents' love) and therefore are repressed into the unconscious. Symptomatically, this inner situation manifests itself as a feeling of inferiority, even a castration complex, genital phobia. The myth of Oedipus is about the attempt to liberate the 'amputated' potency of the id, but it fails because of the remaining unconscious motives. As the ego is overwhelmed by the punitive fear of the moral content of its ‘preconscious’ superego, it cuts off the instinctive desire for self-knowledge from itself (blinds itself). Attempts to find a female equivalent of the Oedipus complex have not yielded good results. According to Freud, girls, because of their anatomically different genitals, cannot identify with their father, nor develop a [[castration anxiety|castration phobia]] as sons do, so this syndrome seems to be reserved for the opposite sex.<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''On Sexuality'' (Penguin Freud Library 7) p. 342.</ref> Feminist psychoanalysts like [[:de:Christiane Olivier (Psychoanalytikerin)|Christiane Olivier]] debate whether the father of psychoanalysis might have been a victim of [[sexism]] in this case. To compensate for their supposed shortcoming, they postulate a ''Jocasta complex'' consisting of an [[incest]]uous desire of mothers for their infant sons;<ref>{{cite book |last1=Olivier |first1=Christiane |title=Jokastes Kinder: Die Psyche der Frau im Schatten der Mutter}}</ref> but other analysts criticise this naming (and attempt of generalisation), since Sophocles' [[Jocasta]] in particular does not exhibit this behaviour. (Instead, she gave her baby away to be killed, instigated by her husband and the oracle that a grown-up son would kill him.) The witch's special interest in [[Hansel and Gretel|little Hansel]] – while she merely abuses his sister as a kitchen slave – offers much better evidence here, although it's still unclear whether such ''Crunchy house syndrome'' can be as widespread in our form of society as the Oedipus itself. However, Christiane O. courageously confronted her own problems in her relationship with her son and husband. ====Critics of abuse thesis, Freud and psychoanalysis in general==== In the later part of the 20th century, several Freud researchers questioned the author's perception that his patients had informed him of childhood sexual abuse. Some of them argued that Freud had imposed his preconceived view on his patients, while others raised the suspicion of conscious forgery.<ref>Cioffi, F. 1998 [1973]. "Was Freud a Liar?" Pp. 199–204 in ''Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience''. [[Open Court Publishing Company|Open Court]].</ref><ref>Schimek, J. G. 1987. "Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review." ''[[Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association]]'' 35:937–65.</ref><ref>Esterson, Allen. 1998. "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: A new fable based on old myths (synopsis in Human Nature Review)." ''[[History of the Human Sciences]]'' 11(1):1–21. {{doi|10.1177/095269519801100101}}.</ref> These are two different arguments. The latter tries to prove that Freud deliberately lied in order to make the allegedly unfounded psychoanalysis appear as a legitimate science; the former assumes an unknowingly committed act (countertransference). Freud, aware of his retraction of the abuse thesis, replied at various places in his work in the same way to both types of argument: That natural science is a process based on [[trial and error]]. A slow but sure becoming, in which it is impossible to have precisely defined concepts from the outset, respectively phenomena that from now on have been clarified without any gaps and contradictions. "Indeed, even physics would have missed out on its entire development if it had been forced to wait until its concepts of matter, energy, gravity and others reached the desirable clarity and precision."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Freud |first1=Sigmund |title=Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 14. Selbstdarstellung |pages=84–85}}</ref> The psychologist [[Frank Sulloway]] points out in his book ''Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend'' that the theories and hypotheses of psychoanalysis are anchored in the findings of contemporary biology. He mentions the profound influence of [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory of evolution on Freud and quotes this sense from the writings of [[Ernst Haeckel|Haeckel]], [[Wilhelm Fliess]], [[Richard von Krafft-Ebing|Krafft-Ebing]] and [[Havelock Ellis]].<ref name="Borch-Jacobsen 2012" />{{Rp|30}} Psychoanalyse further was claimed as pseudoscience, cause it's central assumption of the three interlocking functions ([[Id, ego and superego|needs, consciousness, memory]]) shall [[unfalsifiable]].<ref name="Popper" /> Freud himself, who related the consciousness aspekt and the organic one of his "soul" model with the classical [[Mind–body problem|mind-body problem]], proposed to explain these "two end points of our knowledge" in the sense of Kant's [[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freud |first=Sigmund |title=Abriss der Psychoanalyse |others=Gesammelte Werke |edition=17 |location=Frankfurt am Main |publication-date=1972 |pages=63–138, here: 67–69 |language=De}}</ref><ref name="HP">{{Citation |author=[[Aikaterini Fotopoulou]] |title=The history and progress of neuropsychoanalysis |date=May 2012 |work=From the Couch to the Lab |pages=12–24 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/med/9780199600526.003.0002 |isbn=978-0-19-960052-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Schött |first1=Margerete |last2=Schmidt |first2=Anna-Christine |date=2021 |title=neuropsychoanalysis |url=https://dorsch.hogrefe.com/stichwort/neuropsychoanalyse |journal=Dorsch Lexikon der Psychologie |language=de}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Blass |first1=Rachel B. |last2=Carmeli |first2=Zvi |date=February 2007 |title=The case against neuropsychoanalysis. On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientific trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse |url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17244565 |journal=The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis |volume=88 |issue=Pt 1 |pages=19–40 |doi=10.1516/6nca-a4ma-mfq7-0jtj |issn=0020-7578 |pmid=17244565}}</ref>
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