On Dreams

Freud was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Austria in 1856. Freud attended the University of Vienna and became a Doctor of Medicine. He is considered the founder of psychoanalysis, though his career was not always successful. Before he wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud had many failed ventures. He dissected hundreds of eels to locate their reproductive organs but was never successful. He also promoted cocaine as a medicinal drug. When Freud became interested in psychotherapy, his trajectory shifted. He profoundly influenced culture and science. An atheist with radical ideas, the psychologist left Vienna in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. Freud’s books were targeted by the Nazi Party, and Freud became increasingly worried about the safety of himself and his family.

The psychologist’s journey with psychoanalysis began in 1885 when he visited a Parisian hypnotist who inspired him to look beyond neurological resources to assist patients. In 1886, Freud set up a private practice in Vienna where he dabbled with hypnosis and other treatments. During this time, he discovered that asking his patients to talk about their dreams led to strong results. Freud’s own anxious behavioral symptoms preoccupied his work, and he referred to himself as his “chief patient.” His discoveries and philosophies are outlined in The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud treated women who had been diagnosed with “hysteria,” as well as WWI veterans. He determined that there are unconscious thoughts that drive behavior, especially in patients who have experienced trauma.

Freud argued that all people were driven by the pleasure principle, which centered on physical and emotional rewards. The pleasure principle could lead people toward reckless actions and problematic behaviors. Anxious behavioral symptoms were, in Freud’s thought, the result of an unhealthy relationship with the pleasure principle, either through obsession with pleasure or the repression of it. He suggested that a human’s personality had three components: the id (driven by the pleasure principle), the superego (regulator of the id), and the ego (accommodates between both). He also theorized three phases of childhood: the oral phase, the anal phase, and the phallic phase. Children in the oral phase navigate the world through ingestion and eating. Children in the anal phase, also known as potty training, learn about and test the limits of authority. Children in the phallic phase, up to the age of six, begin to direct sexual impulses toward their parents. The Oedipus complex describes a scenario in which all humans are in love with one parent and hate the other.

Freud’s work left a lasting impression on psychology, literature, philosophy, and the arts. Freud is responsible for hypothesizing about the existence of a libido and introduced ideas like id, ego, superego, the Oedipus complex, free association, talk therapy, and repression to the world. Freud found inspiration in the works of philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The psychologist’s work has received a vast amount of criticism for its ideas about women and gay men as well as its inability to be rigorously tested. Freud also believed that an individual’s personality was influenced by ancient biology. Although much of Freud’s work has been discredited, it has permeated culture and informed contemporary psychology.