Freud - The Key Ideas

242 Pages·2010·1.376 MB·English

by  Ruth Snowden

Freud – The Key Ideas
With thanks to Richard Chapman, the illustrator of
this book.
Freud – The Key
Ideas
Ruth Snowden
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First published in UK 2006 by Hodder Education, part of Hachette
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This edition published 2010.
Previously published as Teach Yourself Freud.
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Copyright © 2006, 2010 Ruth Snowden
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Contents
Meet the author viii
Only got a minute? x
Only got fi ve minutes? xii
Only got ten minutes? xvi
Introduction xxii
1 Freud’s life and career 1
Freud’s early life 1
Vienna and the society in which Freud lived 4
A brief outline of Freud’s career 5
Freud’s private life and personality 10
2 Freud’s early work 17
Freud’s medical training 17
Scientifi c research 19
Hysteria and hypnosis 20
Nineteenth-century scientifi c and moral thinking 25
Freud’s fi rst ideas about the unconscious 29
3 The beginnings of psychoanalysis 36
The crucial decade 36
The repression of sexual ideas 37
The seduction theory 38
The pressure tech nique 40
The free-association technique 41
Transference 42
Freud’s self-analysis 44
The analysis of Dora 47
4 The interpretation of dreams 52
Why dreams are important in psychoanalysis 52
Dreams as wish fulfi lment 55
Dream mechanisms 58
Methods of dream interpretation 63
Freudian symbols 65
Origins of dreams 67
v
Contents
5 Exploring the unconscious 70
The divisions of the mind 70
The theory of the unconscious 72
The pleasure principle and the reality principle 75
Parapraxis, the famous Freudian slip 78
Jokes and the unconscious 84
6 Sexual theories 88
Freud attacks current thinking 88
Sexual deviations 91
Infantile sexuality 96
The struggles of puberty 99
7 Going back to childhood 106
Psychosexual development 106
Infantile amnesia 108
The oral stage 111
The anal stage 112
The phallic stage 115
The Oedipus complex 116
The latency stage 120
The genital stage 121
8 Seeking an adult identity 124
Freud’s new model of the mind 124
The id 126
The ego 127
The super-ego 128
Anxiety 131
Defence mechanisms 132
Narcissism 139
Mourning and melancholia 140
Instincts 141
Eros and Thanatos 142
Character 144
9 Freud and society 147
Civilization 147
Religion 149
Thoughts about war 155
Art and literature 157
10 Psychoanalysis 163
The process of psychoanalysis 163
vi
Some of Freud’s own cases 165
Early beginnings of the psychoanalytic movement 169
Rifts in the psychoanalytic movement 171
Some famous followers of Freud 175
Psychoanalysis today 180
Glossary 186
Taking it further 192
Timeline of important events in Freud’s life 192
Places to visit 194
A list of Freud’s most important works 195
Further reading 195
Useful websites 199
Index 200

vii
Contents
Meet the author
Welcome to Freud – The Key Ideas !
I fi rst became interested in both Freud and his follower Jung (who
eventually broke away from Freud) while I was still at school. What
really drew me to their work was their shared interest in dreams and
the unconscious, and it was this aspect that led me to a decision
to study psychology at degree level. As it turned out however, my
BSc degree in Psychology at the University of Birmingham was very
fi rmly based on the scientifi c method and behavioural psychology,
and so I was disappointed to fi nd that Freud and Jung ’ s work was
not considered worthy of much study. After university I went into
teaching for a few years. This proved to be very useful groundwork
in preparing me to be a writer, because I had to learn how to explain
ideas in ways which most people could grasp easily. My early
interest in dreams was somewhat on the back burner at this stage,
but I was always interested to listen to children ’ s accounts of their
nocturnal journeys.
A necessary career break came while my own three children were
small, but it was during this period that I turned once again to
my own inner world and bega n to record my dreams in a dream
diary. I also became fascinated by my children ’ s accounts of their
own dreams and the way their very individual psyches gradually
unfolded. This was the beginning of something big, although I was
yet to realize it at the time. Eventually my early interests really
came to the fore again and I set up a complementary therapy
practice, which offered personal development amongst other things.
One of the main approaches I used for this was dream-work and
in 1998 I was commissioned to write my fi rst book, Working With
Dreams . This was published by How To Books, under the name of
Ruth Berry. Two years later, in 2000, Hodder published two more
books of mine: Freud: a Beginner ’ s Guide and Jung: a Beginner ’ s Guide .
By the time these were followed by the fi rst editions of
viii
Teach Yourself Freud and T each Yourself Jung I had remarried and now
write as Ruth Snowden.
I now work full-time as a writer and my main interests lie in the
spiritual and the psychological, especially in the interactions
between the natural world, human culture and the psyche. Freud
and Jung were both deeply fascinated by the same kinds of things
and you can read accounts in their work of their studies of ancient
history, myth, dreams, synchronicities, the paranormal and world
religions. As well as writing for adults, I also write poetry and
children ’ s fi ction, where I enjoy weaving myths into new stories.
Nowadays, a century after his time, people often make fun of some
of Freud ’ s more way-out ideas. But I feel that this is unfair. It is easy
to forget that Freud was one of the greatest thinkers of his day and
his ground-breaking work has totally changed our way of looking at
ourselves and our relationships with others.
Ruth Snowden, 2010

ix
Meet the author