Freud's Writings Research Articles

Three constructions of transference in Freud, 1895-1915.

Three distinct constructions of transference which have related though differentiable histories can be identified in Freud's writings. The postulation of discrete metapsychological, clinical, and universal constructions was completed by 1915, although many significant revisions within those constructions were made thereafter. Most significant is the distinction drawn between the clinical and universal constructions which (while both are founded on the metapsychological construction) facilitates recognition of cultural critical uses of transference as distinct from the clinical transference phenomena and as applicable far beyond the confines of psychopathology.

The evolution of the concept of character in Freud's writings.

The evolution of the concept of character in Freud's writings.

On the several sources of Freud's conservatism: Some comments on the work of Horowitz and Marcuse

A wealth of commentary has focussed upon the life and work of Sigmund Freud; yet, among his critics and sympathizers alike, the task of assessing Freud's place in intellectual history has always been most difficult?and rather stubbornly re? mains so, even from our present vantage point?in the area of his sociological writings. In part, at least, this problem seems to stem from a rather curious, even paradoxical feature of Freud's work itself: the fact that he frequently found it nec? essary to base his theories of human behavior upon a still deeper "vision" of the past (and ultimately of the evolution of the species) that was itself a theory of so? cial origins. Certainly this sometimes hidden reliance on social theory (however foreign in form by current standards) is best known in terms of Freud's Totem and Taboo study of 1912-1913: his grand but, one almost feels obliged to say, flawed hypothesis about the origin of the family, kinship, and religion. Somewhat less appreciated, however, is the fact that a good many of Freud's other core ideas, including a number of his key clinical concepts?those that, by definition, deal with individual psychodynamics?were also heavily dependent upon this same theory of the origin of society. The theory of the oedipus complex, for example?both Freud's argument about its onset and dissolution?is a prominent illustration of this as are, with varying degrees of emphasis, his views on superego development, the constitution of the ego, the disposition towards neurosis (including particular forms such as obsessional illness), sublimation, repression, and many other psychoanalytic concepts. Almost from the beginning then (and clearly from the year 1912 onwards), psy? choanalysis has been wedded to a kind of' 'depth sociology' ' of its own which has made it doubly difficult to evaluate Freud's writings on culture and society, either in their own right or as an often concealed scaffolding for his psychological work. One result of this, we would suggest, is that the attitude of many social scientists towards Freud has been both uncertain and, in quite the strictest sense, ambiva? lent?in fact, powerfully ambivalent. On the one hand, the social science commu? nity has shown a truly extraordinary fascination with Freud's theory of culture, even its most chided and controversial aspects. In the last two decades, for exam? ple, writers as diverse as John Whiting, the late Margaret Mead, Robin Fox,

Veterans and aggression: an empirical test of two rival theoretical models.

This article investigates two rival theories for explaining aggression in humans — the model which claims that exposure to aggression increases aggression in humans, versus that which maintains that exposure to aggression drains aggression in humans. The findings appear to support the first model, suggesting that exposure to aggression increases aggression levels in humans. Over the past three decades, a number of researchers have attempted to discover whether exposure to aggression increases or decreases aggression in human beings. Their research was prompted by a long standing dispute concerning these two models as explanations for aggres sion in humans. The first model, which claims that exposure to aggression increases it in the subject is built on the premise that most behaviour, including aggression, is learned. This perspective can be traced back to John Locke who, in 1690, postulated that the human mind was a 'white paper' at birth, waiting to absorb the environment around it (Harris, 1968). Many of the researchers who have argued for the first model have been part of the movement which refutes the long held belief that man is born with an aggressive nature and that this aggression drains when he is exposed to aggressive situations (Berkowitz, 1962). Freud's writings have been the main basis for the second model, which maintains that ex posure to aggression drains it in humans. Freud felt that man is instinctively aggressive by nature, and that certain types of social encounters allow him to displace or drain this aggres sion. This phenomenon has been described as the catharsis hypothesis (Buss, 1961; Berkowitz, 1962). An essentially identical 'ergic tension' model has been developed by Cattell ( 1965). Several theorists suggest that this drainage model of aggression can be applied to large groups of people, as well as to whole societies (Berkowitz, 1962; Ritzer, Kammeyer, and Yet man, 1979). The basic theory is that both large groups and entire societies can drain aggres sion, just as individuals theoretically do, if exposed to aggressive social situations.

"Developmental lag" in the evolution of technique for psychoanalysis of neurotic conflict.

The practice of psychoanalysis of neurotic conflict has not--to the extent that might be expected--evolved a consistent use in technique of available knowledge of the ego's mechanisms of defense. This is primarily related to a general resistance that can usefully be regarded as a "developmental lag." The evidence for this, particularly in Freud's writings, is reviewed as are the observations of others who have made note of this phenomenon. Some of the reasons that have contributed to this resistance among analysts are discussed.

Metaphors and isomorphisms: analogical reasoning in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

The mind uses analogies in order to understand the unknown. The utilization of these is explored in Freud's writings and in science in general. Analogies can be metaphorical (figurative) or isomorphic (literal); the latter are used in the induction of scientific hypotheses. The distinction between these two forms of comparing can be ambiguous. The inappropriate transformation of metaphors into isomorphisms in the construction of theory leads to illegitimate inferences. This paper comments on the use of this type of vitiated logic in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, particularly with reference to Freud's comparison of protozoan biology with human psychology.

Collage as Jokework: Freud's Theories of Wit as the Foundation for the Collages of Max Ernst

The debt of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst to Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious lies not in the 'Freudian' symbolism it contains, but rather in the verbal devices-such as puns, double entendres and allusions-it describes. Ernst translated these verbal devices into ways of organizing visual material. He collaged bits and pieces of preexisting images, engravingsfrom once-popular magazines and books, into new and often powerful visual sentences. The form or the relationship between these elements gave the finished collage or painting, painted according to the collage method, its impact. Often wordplays in the titles of works interacted with the plays in the imagery. Ernst also took from Freud's writings his methods of self-analysis, such as the cultivation of spontaneous responses. as methods of locating subjects that would have a significance both personal and modern. It is hardly a new thought that a Surrealist artist was influenced by the psychological studies of Freud and others. Usually that influence has been described in terms of strange dream-like images, which are seen as symbolic representations of emotional states. Indeed, this is often psychology's main legacy to Surrealist art. But for artists such as Max Ernst (1891-1976), the debt to psychological study is on a more fundamental level, for psychology was able to provide not only a subject but a method of structuring it. An awareness of the rich possibilities of psychological study is evidenced in Max Ernst's earliest post-World War I collages as well as in his later works. His knowledge and use of psychology are not haphazard. From 1910 to 1914 Ernst had been a college student at the University of Bonn, where he studied psychology among other subjects (1). He even worked in a mental hospital. Because Bonn was an intellectually active city at the time, Ernst learned not only the more conventional psychological theories of the day, but also Freud's theories and writings through a friend, Karl Otten, who had been a student of Freud's in Vienna. When Ernst reentered the art world, on completion of his military service, he did not return to the Expressionist group, several of whose key members had been killed in the war. Instead, he developed with Hans Arp and Johannnes Theodor Baargeld the Dada movement in Cologne, and began to explore the possibilities of collage as an expressive medium. He cut apart and combined fragments of engravings from popular 19th- century books, photographs, and even his own drawings. Ernst's Dada collages and paintings and then his Surrealist works were interpretations of the inner life in a modern and irreverent medium replacing the freely painted and more traditional emotional expressions of his college years. In these later works Ernst concerned himself with their almost-literary significance rather than their formal beauty. Penrose observed that the artist's comment, 'ce tableau en trois couleurs elementaires', written under the title on the face of the painting 'Oedipus Rex', was an indication of Ernst's lack of concern with the refinements of colour demanded of con- ventional works of art (2). Ernst's choices of visual symbols and the way in which they were combined were of central significance to his work. Ironically, this meant that form was of greater importance than subject. The form in question here is what Freud refers to in Jokes and Their Relation to the

Impertinent Questions: Irigaray, Sade, Lacan

Luce Irigaray's Speculum (Minuit, 1974) reproduces various texts representative of Western thought and, by simply curving the reproductive mirror, exposes the phallocentric assumptions underlying the entire tradition. The first third of the book is a detailed reflection on Freud-loving, but with a tender resentment that the Father of Psychoanalysis never adequately exposed his desire for his hysterics/daughters. Irigaray resents Freudian theory's refusal to engage the otherness of female sexuality. In Freud's writings woman is either a lesser, castrated man, or woman is mother, necessary ground for phallic reproduction. Irigaray's delineation of Freud's phallocentric exclusion of the real female who is more than a mere complement to the phallic male recalls a moment in Freud's delineation of infantile sexuality. Freud named the last stage of infantile sexuality the phallic phase. In the phallic phase, the partial drives are subordinated to a central genital organization, but only one kind of genital organ comes into account-the male.' Fascinated by children's sexual theories,2 Freud finds that children in the phallic phase hypothesize the anus as phallic receptacle, and attempt to think the familiar anus as the legendary maternal womb. At the same time the real female genitals never seem to be discovered (Freud, op. cit., p. 175, italics mine). As Irigaray reads Freud, Freudian theory appears to be arrested in the phallic phase. The Freud Irigaray reads and resents is Jacques Lacan's version of Freud. Nevertheless, Speculum never mentions the name Jacques Lacan. However the mark of Lacan's influence3 can be seen in a less expected place than the reading of Freud; it appears in Irigaray's reading of (Un a priori paradoxal, Speculum, pp. 253-267). Irigaray bears down on the Critique of Practical Reason, where she finds an interest in pain and suffering as gratifying signs of one's obedience to the Law. Shall we in this way place with [mettrons-nous la avec Sade]? (p. 265), she asks. Kant avec Sade (Kant with Sade) is the title of an article by Lacan on the Critique of Practical Reason which demonstrates the same sort of perversities in as Irigaray finds.

The Annual of Psychoanalysis

There are some 20 essays in this collection authored by professionals on the current diffusion of Freudian metapsychology into other fields of study—history, philosophy, physics and mathematics, the humanities, religion, and sociology. Stephen Toulmin's<i>Psychoanalysis, Physics, and the Mind-body Problem</i>is discussed by Paul Ricoeur and by Don Swanson. This tripartite essay has the tight and lucid thought of the scholar. Throughout, the reader is caught up in the vigor of the rereading of Freud's writings that is in progress in Western Europe now that three quarters of a century has elapsed since Freud's ostracism by European scholars and medical colleagues. A panoramic view of the growth of the metapsychology in America during the past 75 years is presented by John Demos in his<i>Oedipus in America: Historical Perspectives on the</i><i>Reception of Psychoanalysis in the United States</i>. The psychohistory of America during the last two centuries is outlined in

Marriage and the Family in Freud's Writings

Marriage and the Family in Freud's Writings

Review of Sigmund Freud's writings: A comprehensive bibliography.

Review of Sigmund Freud's writings: A comprehensive bibliography.

Reply: Strict Meaning and Reductive Hermeneutics

Professor Shirley's interesting paper on and Reductive Hermeneutics is a complex one for its length. In the brief space allotted him, he discusses alternative semantic theories; he contrasts dreams and language; he probes the nature of intentionality; and he examines the relationship of daydreams those we dream while asleep. While I cannot hope cover all these topics, I would like respond what I take be the central point of his paper. He argues that there can be no such thing as reductive hermeneutics in the sense in which Ricoeur (explicitly) and Freud (implicitly) use that term because any hermeneutic must help us find the strict or unique of a text, and reductive hermeneutics simply cannot do this. For one thing, he says, both Freud and Ricoeur mistakenly think that dreams have meanings in the strict or unique sense in which the of is is snow is white and in which dog means dog. What they really need, he suggests, is a different, an extended sense of according which meanings are inferred from their signs as causes from their effects or diseases from their He suggests that Freud and Ricoeur confused these senses of meaning, that is, that they thought they were using meaning in its strict sense when they were actually employing it in its extended sense. The examples Shirley gives of in its extended sense are excellent, if surprising ones, for we can find them in the works of Freud and Ricoeur. To take only one of many examples available us, Freud writes in chapter two of The Interpretation of Dreams (ID, p. 133) of establishing the of a dream by treating the dream itself as a symptom, and he suggests that one should apply to dreams the method of interpretation that had been worked out for symptoms. The meanings of dreams are for Freud traced (ID, p. xv), they are unravelled (ID, p. 132), they are discovered (ID, p. 140) and, of course, they are analyzed. (ID, p. 140) All of these activities are more like the way we reach Shirley's extended meanings than the way we arrive at the strict of, say, is white. Ricoeur addresses this problem on pages 49-53 of Freud and Philosophy (FP) as he distinguishes the meanings sought by formal logic

Thanatos--a reevaluation.

Freud's most controversial tenet is the death instinct. Although it appears full blown in 1920, it was doubtless nurtured for years in his mind. In its indissoluble relation to the repetition compulsion and Nirvana principle, Thanatos is the bedrock of much of Freud's later philosophy. This paper is an examination of the motivations for the idea, an exegesis of Freud's writings on the subject, and a review of critical opinion.

Mythology of evil in Judaism

The specific problem of evil?human evil, "those evils which everyone causes to himself by his own actions," to use Maimonides' description of psychological evil?has long been of concern to both theologian and psychologist. Long before Freud, the rabbis understood that man's psychic drives were largely responsible for the evil he commits. Of course, the rabbis did not achieve Freud's systematic and scientific level of research and observation; neither did they possess his knowledge of neurology and medicine. Yet they did share with him a mythology of evil that, as I shall demonstrate, is not only comparable in providing a functional myth for understanding evil or sin, but also serves as a theoretical basis for the rabbinic resolution of the problem of sin. Although many of Freud's clinical techniques have now been surpassed by contemporary psychiatry, his philosophy is still very much a part of our intellectual life. The works of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown serve as adequate examples of the metaphysical Freud. It is within the context of this Freud who taught us an appreciation for primitive and instinctual forces in our life that we can come to appreciate the rabbinic formulation of the Yezer as the personification within man's soul identified with Satan and responsible for the commission of evil deeds. In talmudic theology, sin originates in man's soul. There is a factor or element of his personality responsible for generating an inclination to do evil. The rabbis referred to this aspect of man's psyche as Yezer ha-ra or sometimes in the abbreviated form of "Yezer"; usually translated as "evil inclination." However, rabbinic statements indicate that often the adjective "evil" was merely attached as part of a technical phrase.1 Thus Yezer ha-ra can be construed, without too much argument, as analogous to Freud's concept of the id as a source of instinctual energy. Like the id, which releases instinctual energy or libido, the Yezer ha-ra releases a powerful stream of energy.2 This interesting but facile analogy between the rabbinic concepts and psychoanalytic thinking is merely a superficial similitude. The true correlation lies in the mythic power of the Yezer and the mythological foundations of Freud's psychoanalysis. Through Freud's writings on religion, one becomes aware of his deep appreciation for the "numinosity" of man's unconscious. As Christine Downing spoke of it: "Yet he, himself, in order to suggest the numinous power of

Tribute To John Frosch

Freud's writings on early female sexuality are reviewed in order to demonstrate which of his central assumptions are supported and which have been corrected by the direct observation of young children. The study of the emergence of core gender identity in little girls is a key to the modification of Freud's statements on the onset of and crucial factors in the development of femininity. Cognitive functions, learning experiences, and language are believed to be more important than Freud stressed, and penis envy and feelings of inferiority are relegated to a less universal and less necessary place in the onset of femininity. The role of the father is given different emphasis. Direct observation clarifies many aspects of masturbation or early genital self-stimulation in the young female: its onset; its feminine rather than masculine character; its early vicissitudes; its importance relative to other behavior; the impact of the discovery of anatomical difference; one special way it is affected by parental attitude; and how it contrasts with comparable behavior in the young male. Observation refutes Freud's often quoted statement that masturbation is further removed from the nature of women than of men.

Overview: the impact of new advances in sex research on psychoanalytic theory.

This overview describes five concepts of sexuality that run through Freud's writings—bisexuality, infantile sexuality and the Oedipus complex, libido theory, the primacy of the penis, and conflict—and tests each against recent advances in sex research.

Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Libido Theory.

This slender volume initiates the Hampstead Clinic Psychoanalytic Library, appropriately celebrating Miss Anna Freud's 75th birthday. This promising scholarly series is, to begin with, an attempt to define psychoanalytic concepts in terms of their origins in Freud's writings. Based on six years of effort by a large team of analytic collaborators under the leadership of Humberto Nagera (and backed up by a distinguished panel of senior consultants), this important lexicographic work will appear in four volumes: the book under review thus constitutes but a fraction of the whole. The reviewer's task is inevitably too difficult when it involves focusing on such a fragment; in this case, the editor has provided no assistance through describing the overall schema of his project. It is only from the publisher's dust jacket that one learns about the three volumes that will complete this set and their titles; this clue is, however,

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism

Freud Writes to his Friend

A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1926. Edited by Hilda C. Abraham and Ernst L. Freud. Translated by Bernard Marsh and Hilda C. Abraham. (The International Psycho-Analytical Library, No. 68.) Pp. xvii + 406. (London: The Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1965.) 63s. net.

Advances in Psychoanalysis.

The overall feeling, after having read this volume, is disappointment that the authors did not enlarge on the many excellent clinical examples. Because of this, the wide range of essays becomes somewhat an oversimplifiedvade mecumfor those interested in analytic parameters. Will there be no end to substitutive terms? It seems that every group dedicated to psychoanalytic work chronically seeks out synonyms that are then made separate from their origins; for example, abused equals masochistic; paucity of inner experience equals denial; alienation equals isolation; holistic equals unity; and so forth. Kelman's hazy introduction traces the defection of Horney from the ranks of orthodox psychoanalysis. No one would dispute the fresh orientations and correlations that Jones suggested that psychoanalysis would need as time passed, but the insistence that Freud's writings demonstrate pessimistic, materialistic, constitutional and sex centered philosophy is a scotoma of major proportions. He further implements Horney's concepts