The present article is a response to Armando Simón's article: "Goodbye Sigmund Freud: The Case for Exorcising the Ghost of Freud from the Field of Psychology." I acknowledge Freud's shortcomings, ...suggest why Freud's ideas continue to be promulgated despite these shortcomings, and argue that Freud cannot realistically be expunged from psychology. While acknowledging that Simón makes some valid points and criticisms, I offer that the present means of framing the situation better explains the issue and also is more productive/realistic in addressing this matter within a contemporary psychology milieu.
Modern society has introduced many new relationships and family forms and the pluralisation of sexual lifestyles in the hundred years since Freud. This book provides a systematic account of the ...current state of theory, developing a gender-wide model of human sexuality and outlining the implications of this for psychotherapy practice. The author argues that the development of human sexuality follows no innate biological programs, but takes place in an interpersonal relationship, often established in the early parent-child relationship. Whereas the current psychoanalytic discourse emanates from a rather rigid division of gender relations emphasizing the differences between men and women, the author develops a gender-wide model of human sexuality in which the 'masculine' and 'feminine' are integrated and contribute to the full diversity of gender identities and sexual varieties. She points to structural similarities of hetero-and homosexuality and perversion and calls for a general human sexuality that is based less on differences between men and women than with each other.
The now available unabridged correspondence between Freud and Abraham leads to a re-evaluation of the significance of Abraham's work. The author proposes the thesis that clinical observations by Karl ...Abraham of the ambivalence of object relations and the destructive-sadistic aspects of orality have an important influence on the advancement of psychoanalytical theory. The phantasy problem of the Wolf Man and the question of the pathogenic relevance of early actual, or merely imagined traumata led Freud to doubt the validity of his theory. He attempted repeatedly to solve this problem using libido theory, but failed because of his problematic conception of oral erotics. The pathogenic effect of presymbolic traumatizations cannot be demonstrated scientifically because of the still underdeveloped brain in the early stage of the child's development. Consequently, the important empirical evidence of a scientific neurosis theory could not be provided. A revision of the theory of the instincts thus became necessary. With Abraham's clinical contributions and other pathologic evidence, Freud was, with some reservation, forced to modify his idea of oral erotics by ascribing to it a status of a merely constructed and fictive phase of oral organization. A solution was eventually facilitated via recognition of non-erotic aggression and destruction, thereby opening libido theory to fundamental revisions. Driven by the desire to develop a scientific theory, Freud initially had, in his first theory of the instincts, assumed a strongly causal-deterministic view on Psychic Function. His third revision of theory of the instincts, Beyond the Pleasure Principle including the death instinct hypothesis, considered the hermeneutic aspect of psychoanalytic theory, which had previously existed only implicitly in his theory. Further development of the death instinct hypothesis by Melanie Klein and her successors abandoned quantitative-economic and causal-deterministic principles, and instead focused on the practical utility of the psychoanalytic theory.
Sigmund Freud: The Basics is an easy-to-read introduction to the life and ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and a key figure in the history of psychology.
Janet Sayers provides an ...accessible overview of Freud’s early life and work, beginning with his childhood. Her book includes the stories of his most famous patients: Dora, Little Hans, the Rat Man, Judge Schreber, and the Wolf Man. It also discusses Freud’s key ideas such as psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex, and psychoanalytic treatment. Sayers then covers Freud’s later work, with a description of his observations about depression, trauma and the death instinct, as well as his 1923 theory of the id, ego, and superego. The book includes a glossary of key terms and concludes with examples of how psychoanalysis has been applied to the study of art, literature, film, anthropology, religion, sociology, gender politics, and racism.
Sigmund Freud: The Basics offers an essential introduction for students from all backgrounds seeking to understand Freud’s ideas and for general readers with an interest in psychology. For those already familiar with Freudian ideas, it offers a helpful guide to their interdisciplinary applications and context not least today.
Sigmund Freud: The Basics is an easy-to-read introduction to the life and ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and a key figure in the history of psychology.
Janet Sayers provides an accessible overview of Freud’s early life and work, beginning with his childhood. Her book includes the stories of his most famous patients: Dora, Little Hans, the Rat Man, Judge Schreber, and the Wolf Man. It also discusses Freud’s key ideas such as psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex, and psychoanalytic treatment. Sayers then covers Freud’s later work, with a description of his observations about depression, trauma and the death instinct, as well as his 1923 theory of the id, ego, and superego. The book includes a glossary of key terms and concludes with examples of how psychoanalysis has been applied to the study of art, literature, film, anthropology, religion, sociology, gender politics, and racism.
Sigmund Freud: The Basics offers an essential introduction for students from all backgrounds seeking to understand Freud’s ideas and for general readers with an interest in psychology. For those already familiar with Freudian ideas, it offers a helpful guide to their interdisciplinary applications and context not least today.
Freud's Three Essays on Sexual Theory (1905a) are still today highly significant because of their novel way of considering the human sexual dimension. The author intends to show that a close reading ...of the Essays, combined with the reintroduction of the seduction theory by Jean Laplanche, provides a specific and foundational sexual theory for psychoanalysis.
Through an examination of Freud's Lecture 33, "Femininity" (1933), and "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917), the author proposes a reading of Freud's description of the girl becoming a woman. Female ...development is retold as a melancholic narrative-one in which the girl's entrance into the positive Oedipus is founded on unconscious grievance and unmourned loss of the early relationship with her mother. Castration and penis envy are reconceived as melancholic markers-the manifest content of the subjectivity of refusal, loss, and imagined repair of the early maternal relationship. Lena Dunham's HBO television series Girls is analyzed as an illustration of these theoretical understandings.
This book provides a powerfully argued and beautifully constructed account of the early development of the child in the family context from a psychoanalytic perspective. It draws on the theoretical ...trajectory from Sigmund Freud to Melanie Klein and Wilfried Bion.
The author reconsiders Freud's "The Sexual Aberrations," the first of his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), in light of contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Are the concepts of sexual ...aberration and norm still viable? The author argues that they are necessary but insufficient elements in current theory. He then presents a competing model in which sexuality can be reduced to a more elemental level of disturbance and wish, where it is an expression of a nonsexual wish-for example, to possess or control the object to eliminate separateness. The author presents clinical material to demonstrate this alternative model.
This study applies analytical psychobiography, particularly Freud's psychoanalytic apporoach, to the study of the psychosexual development of Roald Dahl (1916-1990), a renowned children's author, ...gentleman spy, connoisseur, and philanthropist of his time. Data sources for the analysis included primary and secondary sources, and only publically available and published materials on his life. Alexander's (
1988
,
1990
) psychobiographical guidelines for saliency were used to identify and extract significant biographical themes and units for analysis. The evidence suggests Dahl to present with aggressive, indulgent and neurotic personality traits. He also used sublimation as coping mechanism to express his anxiety and emotional pain through sport and writing. In conclusion, Dahl's psychosexual development generally conformed to the developmental trajectory and stages identified by Freud.
