Psychoanalysis: The Beginnings

Freud was not the first person to have concept of the unconscious. They go back into historical time:

Gottfried Liebnitz(German)

Monads or monadology (or petite perceptions) & Clearly conscious and Unconscious

clearly conscious and Unconscious

(when it’s easy to pick apart the parts of things)

clearly unconscious( when it’s hard to pick apart the parts)

Monads or monadology (or petite perceptions)

refer to the small perceptions that make up the whole perceptions. Anything we perceive don’t perceive as a whole automatically. Things have pieces that our brains automatically put together to perceive a whole. These perceptions can be put on a continuum(conscious and Unconscious)

Johann Friedrich Herbart

Divided the mind into the conscious and unconscious area.

Viewed the metal life as a competition between ideas competing for access to consciousness

• Ideas fighting their way from unconscious to the conscious

Herman Helmholtz

He believed that the construction of the experienced world from the atoms of sensation requires the existence of unconscious inferences. Other words “when our bodies take in information from the outside (particles because small cells bring back information to our bodies), he believed to make sense of it, we require an unconscious.

academic psychology

defines psychology is the science of the mind and the science of consciousness (leaves out unconsciousness)

• Freud’s ideas are outside this definition of psychology. Therefore, many people rejected his ideas and opposed the unconscious. Freud obtained a medical degree not psychology degree 

Franz Bretano

wrote about the “The Infallibility of Inner Perception” he rejected the idea of an unconscious by saying that inter-perception is physiological and doesn’t require an unconscious

William James

believed that behavior and experience may be determined by factors by which we are unaware, but we don’t need an unconscious. It’s a simple brain process (physiology) and we are just brains and bodies

• Behaviorist rejected both the conscious and the unconscious.

when looking at counseling specifically, how did Freud differ from mainstream psychology ?

psychology by implementing therapeutic success, not experimental test

what are the historical factors that led to Freud’s theory?

• the late 1800s in Victorian Europe

• Industrialization and Urbanization

Industrialization and Urbanization combined

• If you are on a farm with 18 kids (you can grow the food to eat and feed the kids, and they can help out) they are an asset

• When you move the city, children are not an asset. Children were to young to work in factories safely. The city had small apartments, children can’t work so you can’t have a bunch of kids.

how did the factors of childbirth lead to Frued’s theory

Childbirth was dangerous for women

• you are limited to the amount of children that you have in the city(may be poor)

• The men who loved their wives did not want them to have a bunch of children

Frued’s family dynamics that lead to psychoanalysis

• frued’s mother

• Jewish heritage

• Pogrom

• the complex’s

frued’s mother

was his father’s 3rd wife(other wives died). Had two sons that were older than Freud’s mother. Some argued that Freud’s mother was attractive.

• through this he came up with the idea of attraction of sons to mother

Freud’s Jewish Heritage

This led to discrimination and humiliated by Christians. He told himself that he would get revenge by being great

pogrom

people would get angry and go to a Jewish area and go and beat people up.

the oedipus complex

the feelings of attractiveness to the other people(this term is form boys)

electra complex

the feelings of attractiveness to guys(applies to girls)

Frued Mentors

Josef Brewer and Wihelm Filess

Josef Brewer

• had the golden touch for treating women with hysteria(women were to feminine or soft spoken)

• He was a neurologist- stated that the vagus nerve controls breathing and the semicular canals in the ear affect the equilibrium

Josef Brewers most famous patient is

Anna O.

• pretty sure he treated her with freud

anna o

During her late teens both parents became ill. By the time they passed away, she was considered an old maid and lost the life she couldn’t have(couldn’t get married).

• lead to the hydraulic method and rumination

hydraulic method

if you don’t have healthly release of stress the pot boils over. We release tension by talking and remembering painful memories. Leads to the symptoms going away(used in therapy today with precautions

• lead to catharsis

rumination

The idea of talking about things over and over to an extreme. Anna O. Left therapy earlier because she felt like the therapy was not doing any good. What helped her was getting into the suffragette movement

Wilhelm fliess

he had respectful degree and certifications, but he had some weird ideas lead to important impact

• Numerical cycle(based on 28-day menstrual cycle) and men had a 23 day cycle. These cycles begin at birth. Conclusion? Since these cycles start at birth, events early in life may have a lasting effect. Things early in life matter