A Critique on Freudian Psychosexual Enlightenment of the Child
Chapter One
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
This work is intended to be a proper itinerary into Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in order to study his views, analyze them and finally to make a proper criticism of these views. I also intend to sift out the positive aspect of his theory and at the same time place it side by side with the place of sex in our present day society. Lastly I intend at the end of this study to present a dignified position of sex in the present day society.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT IS PSYCHOANALYSIS?
INTRODUCTION
Sigmund Freud has a historical significance as it regards psychoanalysis. He is the father of psychoanalysis from whose theory all other psychoanalysts developed their own theories. Psychoanalysis as a concept has been appreciated with diversified views. Some have appreciated it to have a positive value to man while some see it as unrealistic and an alien theory of personality. An instance of the negative views on psychoanalysis is seen in the words of an earlier teacher that “Every thing you do is determined by forces inside you of which you are totally unaware.”1 That is to say that man is a mask unto himself. This kind of approach makes psychoanalytic ideas seem esoteric and alien, with the claims made by psychoanalytic theorists being arrogant and ominous.
FOUR MAJOR MYTHS ABOUT PSYCHOANALYSIS
Four major myths about psychoanalysis have arisen as a result of the misleading notions, which psychoanalysts have contributed greatly to. The first is that psychoanalysis is largely the work of one man. For the first five decades in the history of psychoanalytic thought (up till the death of Freud in 1939), it would have been tenable to argue that psychoanalysis was largely the invention of Freud’s singular genius.
Secondly, contemporary psychoanalysis, in both Theory and Clinical Practice, is virtually the same as it was in Freud’s day. Psychoanalysis is sometimes presented as if it were fundamentally unchanged since Freud’s time. This is as a result of some analyst striving to maintain their loyalty to tradition.
Thirdly, psychoanalysis has gone out of fashion. This myth is based on partial truth. Orthodox, classical Freudian psychoanalysis is going out of fashion. This is because orthodox psychoanalysis is not of our time; its methods and its understanding were fashioned almost a hundred years ago. As the world around psychoanalysis has changed, the psychoanalysis itself has changed. The fourth myth is that psychoanalysis is an Esoteric Cult requiring both conversion and year of study. Most of the post-Freudian texts are written in a style that encourages a view of psychoanalysis as an esoteric, impenetrable world unto itself, its self proclaimed riches accessible to only selected few. The language is thick, dense with jargon and complex argumentation.
Irrespective of all these negative notions, psychoanalysis has existed with tremendous positive values to the world at large. As Nietzsche rightly asserts that “One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure one’s own is the last to be dug up,”2 there exists a need to help man discover his hidden self. Psychoanalysis becomes not only necessary but also imperative since it will help man to discover himself in the unconscious, which he couldn’t do in his conscious state. Psychoanalytic concepts have the capacity to enrich rather than to deplete, to empower rather than diminish, to deepen experience rather than to haunt it. It is with this ideal in mind that Freud delved into his psychoanalytical theory, hoping that his disciples and clients or analysands will find his views stimulating, challenging and fundamentally therapeutic.
CHAPTER THREE
FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
INTRODUCTION
Sigmund Freud’s view on psychoanalysis was not unconnected with the influences he got from his earlier intellectual heroes – ranging from Brucke to Charcot. The conclusions he made about the importance of sexuality by a multitude of small details noted in his patients were also instrumental to his psychoanalytic view. He attended one of the evening receptions of Charcot in 1886 when he heard ‘the great teacher’ arguing that a disturbed young woman owed her nervous problems to her husband’s inadequate sexual performances:
For Charcot suddenly broke out with great animation: ‘Mais dans des cas pareils c’est toujours la chose genitale, toujours, toujours’ [But in cases like this it’s always the genital thing – always, always, always]: and he crossed his arms over his stomach, hugging himself and jumping up and down on his toes several times in his own characteristically lively way”1
Freud once recalled how Breuer had once hinted that nervous disorders always involve secrets d’alcove – secrets of bedchamber. Freud also recalled a statement made by the physician Chrobak, who remarked that “the only hope of curing one patient lay in prescribing regular doses of normal penis: Penis normalis dosim repetatur! 2
The crucial role Freud assigned to sexuality enabled him to claim that all his speculations rested on a firm ‘organic foundation’. This point is brought home in a comment Freud made in 1908 in a letter about Jung’s chief, Bleuler:
I am rather annoyed with Bleuler, Freud wrote, ‘for his willingness to accept a psychology without sexuality, which leaves everything hanging on the mid-air. In the sexual processes we have the indispensable ‘organic foundation’ without which a medical man can only feel ill at ease in the life of the psyche3
Throughout the rest of his intellectual development, Freud remained a biological fundamentalist in that his commitment to the concept of sexual energy and pathogenic centrality of sexuality never wavered. This very fact is apparent in his disagreement with the notion that sexuality might sometimes be a factor, for he was rarely attracted by piecemeal solutions. Indeed one of the characteristics of his intellectual style was “the longing to be able to open all secrets with a single key”.
CHAPTER FOUR
CRITICAL EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF SIGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTICAL VIEWS
Freud saw himself as the discoverer of a previously unknown world (the unconscious). He had to make his way through complex expanses of psychic territory to expose the crucial unconscious infantile wishes and fears that deeply fascinated and excited him. What Freud wanted to find out were the secrets, not the more ordinary levels of mental life within which the secrets were concealed.1
No other psychological theory has been subjected to such searching and often such bitter criticism, as has psychoanalysis. From every side and on every conceivable score, Freud and his theory has been attacked, reviled, ridiculed and slandered.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
Man and the happenings in his life have been and remains an enigma to the human mind. The human mind however, can only conceptualize man to some extent and never wholly. It is consequent upon this that Sigmund Freud concerned with the exploration of the depth of the personality of man rose up with his psychoanalytic theory. He piled up many theories as we have seen in the third chapter of this work in order to elucidate the happenings in the life of man.
However, Freud never found it easy in his venture. He arrived at many aberrations in his theory. His authoritative nature served as an impediment to his reaching the climax. For instance, his seduction theory did not yield any positive result because he did not allow his patients to pour out their minds; rather he presumed what should be rather than what is. That not withstanding, Freud did well by turning his attention to the unconscious aspect of the human mind, which he lavishly tried to explain in his dream theories and in his theory of the Id.
Freud’s theory on the other hand has a general defect of an over centralization of sex. As Richard Webster had it that Freud tried to open every problem with a single key (sex). The sacredness he attached to his theory of libido or instinct made many of his disciples like Jung, Adler and Stekel to break away from him. As Fritz Wittles wrote:
Freud watches his theory of libido jealously, and will not tolerate the smallest deviation from it, and fences it round with a palisade.11
Freud thought that sex was everything and gave a very little place to environmental and societal influences on the child. His theory laid more emphasis on heredity. He forgot that no matter what man is made of, he is still a being whose existence is realized in relation to others. Moreover, the importance he attached to the early stages of man’s life as was reflected in his stages of childhood development is a credit to him. The importance and the delicacy of the early days of an infant cannot be over emphasized. It is important to note that Freud’s state of mind was not unconnected with the environment he grew up in. Freud having grown up in an atheistic environment has no place for God in his life, and that created a lacuna in his psychoanalytic theory.
Finally, Freud should be accredited for turning the attention of man towards the inner constitutions of the personality. This step he made attracted the attention of many psychologists who have taken up the task of developing his theories and correcting the defects in it. The psychoanalytic theory if not for any other thing has made man aware of the fact that he is made up of complicated systems which when they are well managed and developed will make him turn into a fully mature person.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- BROWN, J.A.C., Freud and The Post-Freudians. Britain: Penguin Books, 1959.
- Calvin, S. H& Gardner, L., Theories of Personality, U.S.A: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1970.
- EUSTACE, C., Love Without Fear, London: Arrow Books Ltd, 1976.
- FREUD, S., A General Introduction To psychoanalysis. New York: Washington Square Press Inc., 1964.The Standard edition of the complete Psychological works, J. Strachey (ed). London: Hogarth Press Inc., 1953.
- Inhibitions, Symptoms and anxiety, In Standard edition, Vol. 20. London: Hogarth Press, 1959.