Sigmund Freud
Pre-reading
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis, was an Austrian physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist, and one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 20th century.
Working together with his older Viennese colleague and mentor Joseph Breuer, who introduced him to the case study of a patient known as Anna O., Freud with Breuer published the work Studies on Hysteria in 1895. However, Breuer did not share Freud’s view on sexuality as a cause for hysteria. While the friendship and collaboration soon ended, Freud continued his work in the development of talk therapy as a treatment for mental illness.
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud’s personal favorite, formalized much of his psychoanalytic theory. Some of his major works include Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), and The Future of an Illusion (1927). His work and theories helped shape our views of childhood, personality, dreams, sexuality and therapy. Other major thinkers have contributed work that grew out of Freud’s legacy, while others developed new theories out of opposition to his ideas.
In a 2002 review of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud was ranked at number three.
Civilization and Its Discontents, written in 1929,is considered one of Freud’s most important and widely read works. In this book, Sigmund Freud enumerates the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary conflict stems from the individual’s quest for instinctual freedom and civilization’s contrary demand for conformity and instinctual repression. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that instills perpetual feelings of discontent in its citizens.
The following passage is an excerpt from ChapterⅡof Civilization and Its Discontents.
Prompts for Your Reading
1.How does Freud define “happiness”?