Editing Sigmund Freud (section)

==Ideas==

===Early work===
Freud began his study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1873.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Strutzmann |first=Helmut |title=Freud at 150: 21st Century Essays on a Man of Genius |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7657-0547-1 |editor-last=Joseph P. Merlino |location=Plymouth |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |page=33 |chapter=An overview of Freud's life |editor-last2=Marilyn S. Jacobs |editor-last3=Judy Ann Kaplan |editor-last4=K. Lynne Moritz |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZqNPvtl_GhcC&pg=PA33}}</ref> He took almost nine years to finish due to his interest in neurophysiological research, specifically the investigation of the sexual anatomy of eels and the physiology of the fish nervous system, and because of his interest in studying philosophy with [[Franz Brentano]]. He entered private practice in neurology for financial reasons, receiving his M.D. in 1881 at the age of 25.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The History of Psychiatry |url=https://www.scribd.com/document/62292238/History-of-Psychiatry |access-date=6 February 2011}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> Amongst his principal concerns in the 1880s was the anatomy of the brain, specifically the [[medulla oblongata]]. He intervened in the important debates about [[aphasia]] with his monograph of 1891, ''Zur Auffassung der Aphasien'', in which he coined the term [[agnosia]] and counselled against a too locationist view of the explanation of neurological deficits. Like his contemporary [[Eugen Bleuler]], he emphasized brain function rather than brain structure.

Freud was also an early researcher in the field of [[cerebral palsy]], which was then known as "cerebral paralysis". He published several medical papers on the topic and showed that the disease existed long before other researchers of the period began to study it. He suggested that [[William John Little]], the man who first identified cerebral palsy, was wrong about lack of oxygen during birth being a cause. Instead, he suggested that complications in birth were a symptom.

The origin of Freud's early work with psychoanalysis can be linked to [[Josef Breuer]]. Freud credited Breuer with opening the way to the discovery of the psychoanalytical method by his treatment of [[Anna O.]], which is the first case study in Freud and Breuer's ''[[Studies on Hysteria]]'' (1895). In November 1880, Breuer was called in to treat a highly intelligent 21-year-old woman ([[Bertha Pappenheim]]) for a persistent cough and hallucinations that he diagnosed as hysterical. He found that while nursing her dying father, she had developed some transitory symptoms, including visual disorders and paralysis and contractures of the limbs, which he also diagnosed as hysterical. Breuer began to see his patient almost every day as the symptoms increased and became more persistent and observed that she entered states of ''absence''. He found that when, with his encouragement, she told fantasy stories in her evening states of ''absence'' her condition improved, and most of her symptoms had disappeared by April 1881. Following the death of her father that month her condition deteriorated. Breuer recorded that some of the symptoms eventually remitted spontaneously and that full recovery was achieved by inducing her to recall events that had precipitated the occurrence of a specific symptom.<ref>Hirschmuller, Albrecht. ''The Life and Work of Josef Breuer.'' New York: New York University Press, 1989, pp. 101–16, 276–307.</ref> In the years immediately following Breuer's treatment, Anna O. spent three short periods in sanatoria with the diagnosis "hysteria" with "somatic symptoms",<ref>Hirschmuller, Albrecht. ''The Life and Work of Josef Breuer''. New York: New York University Press, 1989, p. 115.</ref> and some authors have challenged Breuer's published account of a cure.<ref>[[Henri Ellenberger|Ellenberger, H. F.]], [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696(197207)8:3%3C267::AID-JHBS2300080302%3E3.0.CO;2-C "The Story of 'Anna O.': A Critical Review with New Data"], ''Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences'', vol. 8, issue 3, July 1972, pp. 267-279.</ref><ref>[[Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen|Borch-Jacobsen]], Mikkel. ''Remembering Anna O.: A Century of Mystification.'' London: Routledge, 1996.</ref><ref>Macmillan, Malcolm. ''Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 3–24.</ref> Richard Skues rejects these authors' claims that Anna O. was not cured, which he sees as coming from both Freud's admirers and detractors, both of whom Skues shows "have unfairly maligned the truthfulness and integrity of Josef Breuer".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Miller |first=Gavin |date=2009 |title=Book Review: Richard A. Skues, Sigmund Freud and the History of Anna O.: Reopening a Closed Case |journal=History of Psychiatry |volume=20 |issue=4 |pages=509–10 |doi=10.1177/0957154X090200040205 |s2cid=162260138}} Skues, Richard A. ''Sigmund Freud and the History of Anna O.: Reopening a Closed Case.'' Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.</ref>

===Seduction theory===
{{main|Freud's seduction theory}}
In the early 1890s, Freud used a form of treatment based on the one that Breuer had described to him, modified by what he called his "pressure technique" and his newly developed analytic technique of interpretation and reconstruction. According to Freud's later accounts of this period, as a result of his use of this procedure, most of his patients in the mid-1890s reported early [[childhood sexual abuse]]. He believed these accounts, which he used as the basis for his [[Freud's seduction theory|seduction theory]], but then he came to believe that some of them were fantasies. He explained these at first as having the function of "fending off" memories of infantile masturbation, but in later years he wrote that they represented Oedipal fantasies, stemming from innate [[Drive theory|drives]] that are sexual and destructive in nature.<ref>Freud, ''Standard Edition'', vol. 7, 1906, p. 274; ''S.E. 14'', 1914, p. 18; '' S.E. 20'', 1925, p. 34; ''S.E. 22'', 1933, p. 120; Schimek, J. G. (1987), "Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review". ''Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association'', xxxv: 937–65; {{Cite journal |last=Esterson |first=Allen |year=1998 |title=Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths |url=http://human-nature.com/esterson |url-status=live |journal=History of the Human Sciences |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=1–21 |doi=10.1177/095269519801100101 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081103235211/http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/ |archive-date=3 November 2008 |s2cid=170827479}}</ref>

Another version of events focuses on Freud's proposing that unconscious memories of infantile sexual abuse were at the root of the psychoneuroses in letters to Fliess in October 1895, before he reported that he had actually discovered such abuse among his patients.<ref>Masson (ed.), 1985, pp. 141, 144. Esterson, Allen (1998), "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's seduction theory: a new fable based on old myths". ''History of the Human Sciences'', 11 (1), {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20080828102024/http://www.esterson.org/Masson_and_Freuds_seduction_theory.htm pp. 1–21]}}</ref> In the first half of 1896, Freud published three papers, which led to his [[Freud's seduction theory|seduction theory]], stating that he had uncovered, in all of his current patients, deeply repressed memories of sexual abuse in early childhood.<ref>Freud, ''Standard Edition 3'', (1896a), (1896b), (1896c); Israëls, Han & Schatzman, Morton (1993), [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0957154X9300401302?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.4 "The seduction theory"]. ''History of Psychiatry'', iv: 23–59; Esterson, Allen (1998).</ref><ref>Schatzman, Morton. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13318134-600-freud-who-seduced-whom/#:~:text=The%20seduction%20theory%20involved%20further,father%2C%20in%20his%201933%20version. "Freud: who seduced whom?"]. ''New Scientist'', 21 March 1992.</ref> In these papers, Freud recorded that his patients were not consciously aware of these memories, and must therefore be present as ''unconscious memories'' if they were to result in hysterical symptoms or obsessional neurosis. The patients were subjected to considerable pressure to "reproduce" infantile sexual abuse "scenes" that Freud was convinced had been repressed into the unconscious.<ref>Freud, Sigmund (1896c). The Aetiology of Hysteria. ''Standard Edition'', Vol. 3, p. 204; Schimek, J. G. (1987). "Fact and Fantasy in the Seduction Theory: A Historical Review". ''Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association'', xxxv: 937–65; Toews, J. E. (1991). "Historicizing Psychoanalysis: Freud in His Time and for Our Time", ''Journal of Modern History'', vol. 63 (pp. 504–45), p. 510, n. 12; McNally, R. J. ''Remembering Trauma'', Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 159–69.</ref> Patients were generally unconvinced that their experiences of Freud's clinical procedures indicated actual sexual abuse. He reported that even after a supposed "reproduction" of sexual scenes the patients assured him emphatically of their disbelief.<ref>Freud, ''Standard Edition 3'', 1896c, pp. 204, 211; Schimek, J. G. (1987); Esterson, Allen (1998); Eissler, 2001, pp. 114–15; McNally, R. J. (2003).</ref>

As well as his pressure technique, Freud's clinical procedures involved analytic inference and the symbolic interpretation of symptoms to trace back to memories of infantile sexual abuse.<ref>Freud, ''Standard Edition 3'', 1896c, pp. 191–93; Cioffi, Frank. (1998 [1973]). Was Freud a Liar? ''Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience.'' Chicago: Open Court, pp. 199–204; Schimek, J. G. (1987); Esterson, Allen (1998); McNally, (2003), pp, 159–69.</ref> His claim of one hundred percent confirmation of his theory only served to reinforce previously expressed reservations from his colleagues about the validity of findings obtained through his suggestive techniques.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Borch-Jacobsen |first=Mikkel |year=1996 |title=Neurotica: Freud and the Seduction Theory. ''October'', vol. 76, Spring 1996, MIT, pp. 15–43; Hergenhahn, B.R. (1997), ''An Introduction to the History of Psychology'', Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, pp. 484–485; Esterson, Allen (2002). The myth of Freud's ostracism by the medical community in 1896–1905: Jeffrey Masson's Assault on Truth |url=http://www.esterson.org/Myth_of_Freuds_ostracism.htm |url-status=usurped |journal=History of Psychology |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=115–34 |doi=10.1037/1093-4510.5.2.115 |pmid=12096757 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828101945/http://www.esterson.org/Myth_of_Freuds_ostracism.htm |archive-date=28 August 2008}}</ref> Freud subsequently showed inconsistency as to whether his seduction theory was still compatible with his later findings.<ref name="thepsychologist">Andrews, B., and Brewin, C. [http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-13/edition-12/what-did-freud-get-right-0 ''What did Freud get right?'', The psychologist, December 2000, page 606] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150409174924/http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-13/edition-12/what-did-freud-get-right-0 |date=9 April 2015 }}</ref> In an addendum to ''The Aetiology of Hysteria'' he stated: "All this is true [the sexual abuse of children], but it must be remembered that at the time I wrote it I had not yet freed myself from my overvaluation of reality and my low valuation of phantasy".<ref>Freud, S. 1924/1961, p. 204 ''The aetiology of hysteria''. In J. Strachey (ed. and trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 3, pp. 189–224). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1896, addendum originally published 1924)</ref> Some years later Freud explicitly rejected the claim of his colleague Ferenczi that his patients' reports of sexual molestation were actual memories instead of fantasies, and he tried to dissuade Ferenczi from making his views public.<ref name=thepsychologist/> Karin Ahbel-Rappe concludes that "Freud marked out and started down a trail of investigation into the nature of the experience of infantile incest and its impact on the human psyche, and then abandoned this direction for the most part."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ahbel-Rappe |first=K |year=2006 |title='I no longer believe': did Freud abandon the seduction theory? |journal=Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=171–99 |doi=10.1177/00030651060540010101 |pmid=16602351 |s2cid=25379440}}</ref>

===Cocaine===
As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of [[cocaine]] as a stimulant as well as [[analgesic]]. He believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems, and in his 1884 paper "On Coca" he extolled its virtues. Between 1883 and 1887 he wrote several articles recommending medical applications, including its use as an [[antidepressant]]. He narrowly missed out on obtaining [[scientific priority]] for discovering its [[anaesthesia|anesthetic]] properties of which he was aware but had mentioned only in passing.<ref>Jones, Ernest. ''Sigmund Freud: Life and Work'', vol. 1. London: Hogarth Press, 1953, pp. 94–96.</ref> ([[Karl Koller (ophthalmologist)|Karl Koller]], a colleague of Freud's in Vienna, received that distinction in 1884 after reporting to a medical society the ways cocaine could be used in delicate eye surgery.) Freud also recommended cocaine as a cure for [[morphine]] addiction.<ref>Byck, Robert. ''Cocaine Papers by Sigmund Freud''. Edited with an Introduction by Robert Byck. New York, Stonehill, 1974.</ref> He had introduced cocaine to his friend [[Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow]], who had become addicted to morphine taken to relieve years of excruciating nerve pain resulting from an infection acquired after injuring himself while performing an autopsy. His claim that Fleischl-Marxow was cured of his addiction was premature, though he never acknowledged that he had been at fault. Fleischl-Marxow developed an acute case of [[Cocaine intoxication|"cocaine psychosis"]], and soon returned to using morphine, dying a few years later still suffering from intolerable pain.<ref>[http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/borc01_.html Borch-Jacobsen (2001)] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012005618/http://lrb.co.uk/v22/n08/borc01_.html |date=12 October 2007 }} Review of Israëls, Han. ''Der Fall Freud: Die Geburt der Psychoanalyse aus der Lüge.'' Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1999.</ref>

The application as an anaesthetic turned out to be one of the few safe uses of cocaine, and as reports of addiction and overdose began to filter in from many places in the world, Freud's medical reputation became somewhat tarnished.<ref>Thornton, Elizabeth. ''Freud and Cocaine: The Freudian Fallacy.'' London: Blond and Briggs, 1983, pp. 45–46.</ref> After the "Cocaine Episode"<ref>Jones, E., 1953, pp. 86–108.</ref> Freud ceased to publicly recommend the use of the drug, but continued to take it himself occasionally for depression, [[migraine]] and nasal inflammation during the early 1890s, before discontinuing its use in 1896.<ref>Masson, Jeffrey M. (ed.) ''The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904.'' Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 49, 106, 126–27, 132, 201.</ref>

===Unconscious===
{{Main|Unconscious mind}}
The concept of the unconscious, which Freud regarded as already well known amongst poets, was important to his theories and ideas; he also believed that it was his responsibility to ensure that it received scientific recognition in the field of psychology.<ref name="WollheimChap" />

Freud states explicitly that his concept of the unconscious as he first formulated it was based on the theory of repression. In his formulations of the concept of repression in his 1915 paper 'Repression' ([[#The Standard Edition|''Standard Edition'']] XIV) Freud introduces the distinction in the unconscious between primary repression linked to the universal taboo on incest ('innately present originally') and repression ('after expulsion') that was a product of an individual's life history ('acquired in the course of the ego's development') in which something that was at one point conscious is rejected or eliminated from consciousness.<ref name="WollheimChap">Wollheim, Richard (1971). ''Freud''. London, Fontana Press, pp. 157–76</ref>

In his account of the development and modification of his theory of unconscious mental processes he sets out in his 1915 paper 'The Unconscious' ([[#The Standard Edition|''Standard Edition'']] XIV), Freud identifies the three perspectives he employs: the dynamic, the economic and the topographical.

The dynamic perspective concerns firstly the constitution of the unconscious by repression and secondly the process of "censorship" which maintains unwanted, anxiety-inducing thoughts as such. Here Freud is drawing on observations from his earliest clinical work in the treatment of hysteria.

In the economic perspective the focus is on the trajectories of the repressed contents ("the vicissitudes of sexual impulses") as they undergo complex transformations in the process of both symptom formation and normal unconscious thought such as dreams and slips of the tongue. These were topics Freud explored in detail in ''[[The Interpretation of Dreams]]'' and ''[[The Psychopathology of Everyday Life]]''.

Whereas both these former perspectives focus on the unconscious as it is about to enter consciousness, the topographical perspective represents a shift in which the systemic properties of the unconscious, its characteristic processes, and modes of operation such as [[Condensation (psychology)|Condensation]] and [[Displacement (psychology)|Displacement]], are placed in the foreground.

This "first topography" presents a model of psychic structure comprising three systems:
* The System Ucs – the unconscious: "primary process" mentation governed by the [[Pleasure principle (psychology)|pleasure principle]] characterised by "exemption from mutual contradiction,{{nbsp}}... mobility of cathexes, timelessness, and replacement of external by psychical reality." ('The Unconscious' (1915) [[#The Standard Edition|''Standard Edition'']] XIV).
* The System Pcs – the preconscious in which the unconscious thing-presentations of the primary process are bound by the secondary processes of language (word presentations), a prerequisite for their becoming available to consciousness.
* The System Cns – conscious thought governed by the reality principle.

In his later work, notably in ''[[The Ego and the Id]]'' (1923), a second topography is introduced comprising [[id, ego and super-ego]], which is superimposed on the first without replacing it.<ref>Mannoni, Octave, ''Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious'', London: Verso 2015 [1971], pp. 137–140.</ref> In this later formulation of the concept of the unconscious the [[Id, ego and super-ego#Id|id]]<ref name=id>{{cite book |first1=Jean |last1=Laplanche |first2=Jean-Bertrand |last2=Pontalis |author-link1=Jean Laplanche |author-link2=Jean-Bertrand Pontalis |chapter=Id |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&q=%22Id+%3D+D.\+Es%22&pg=PT363 |title=The Language of Psychoanalysis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ |publisher=[[Routledge]] |location=[[Abingdon-on-Thames]] |year=2018 |orig-year=1973 |isbn=978-0-429-92124-7}}</ref> comprises a reservoir of instincts or [[Drive theory|drives]], a portion of them being hereditary or innate, a portion repressed or acquired. As such, from the economic perspective, the id is the prime source of psychical energy and from the dynamic perspective it conflicts with the [[Id, ego and super-ego#Ego|ego]]<ref name=ego>Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT243 Ego]".</ref> and the [[Id, ego and super-ego#Superego|super-ego]]<ref name=superego>Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT780 Super-Ego]".</ref> which, genetically speaking, are diversifications of the id.

===Dreams===
{{Main|The Interpretation of Dreams}}In Freud's theory dreams are instigated by the daily occurrences and thoughts of everyday life. In what Freud called the "dream-work", these "secondary process" thoughts ("word presentations"), governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought ("thing presentations") governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. Because of the disturbing nature of the latter and other repressed thoughts and desires which may have become linked to them, the dream-work operates a censorship function, disguising by distortion, displacement, and condensation the repressed thoughts to preserve sleep.<ref>Mannoni, Octave, ''Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious'', London: Verso 2015 [1971], pp. 55–58.</ref>

In the clinical setting, Freud encouraged free association to the dream's manifest content, as recounted in the dream narrative, to facilitate interpretative work on its latent content – the repressed thoughts and fantasies – and also on the underlying mechanisms and structures operative in the dream-work. As Freud developed his theoretical work on dreams he went beyond his theory of dreams as wish-fulfillments to arrive at an emphasis on dreams as "nothing other than a particular form of thinking.{{nbsp}}... It is the dream-work that creates that form, and it alone is the essence of dreaming".<ref>Freud, Sigmund ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1976 [1900]) Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, p. 650.</ref>

===Psychosexual development===
{{Main|Psychosexual development}}
Freud's theory of psychosexual development proposes that following on from the initial [[polymorphous perversity]] of infantile sexuality, the sexual "drives" pass through the distinct developmental phases of the [[oral stage|oral]], the [[anal stage|anal]], and the [[phallic stage|phallic]]. Though these phases then give way to a [[latency stage]] of reduced sexual interest and activity (from the age of five to puberty, approximately), they leave a "perverse" and bisexual residue which persists during the formation of [[genital stage|adult genital sexuality]]. Freud argued that [[neurosis]] and [[perversion]] could be explained in terms of fixation or regression to these phases whereas adult character and cultural creativity could achieve a [[Sublimation (psychology)|sublimation]] of their perverse residue.<ref>Mannoni 2015 [1971], pp. 93–97.</ref>

After Freud's later development of the theory of the [[Oedipus complex]] this normative developmental trajectory becomes formulated in terms of the child's renunciation of incestuous desires under the fantasised threat of (or fantasised fact of, in the case of the girl) [[castration complex|castration]].<ref>Gay 2006, pp. 515–18</ref> The "dissolution" of the Oedipus complex is then achieved when the child's rivalrous identification with the parental figure is transformed into the pacifying identifications of the [[Ego ideal]] which assume both similarity and difference and acknowledge the separateness and autonomy of the other.<ref>Cavell, Marcia ''The Psychoanalytic Mind'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1996, p. 225.</ref>

Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material arguing that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.<ref>{{cite book|last=Paul|first=Robert A.|title=The Cambridge Companion to Freud|year=1991|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-37779-9|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J4UNrJlLGjoC&pg=PA274|editor=James Neu |page=274|chapter=Freud's anthropology}}</ref>

===Id, ego, and super-ego===
{{Main|Id, ego and super-ego}}
[[File:Structural-Iceberg.svg|thumb|The [[iceberg]] metaphor is often used to explain the psyche's parts in relation to one another.]]

Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. Freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', and fully elaborated upon it in ''[[The Ego and the Id]]'' (1923), in which he developed it as an alternative to his previous topographic schema (i.e., conscious, unconscious and preconscious). The id is the unconscious portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.<ref name=Hothersall290>Hothersall, D. 2004. "History of Psychology", 4th ed., Mcgraw-Hill: NY p. 290</ref> Freud acknowledged that his use of the term ''Id'' (''das Es'', "the It") derives from the writings of [[Georg Groddeck]].<ref name=id/><ref>Freud, S. ''The Ego and the Id'', ''Standard Edition 19'', pp. 7, 23.</ref>

The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche.<ref name=superego/> The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical [[hedonism]] of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego;<ref name=ego/> it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, it may employ [[defence mechanism]]s including [[denial]], repression, undoing, rationalization, and [[displacement (psychology)|displacement]]. This concept is usually represented by the "Iceberg Model".<ref>{{cite web|last=Heffner|first=Christopher|title=Freud's Structural and Topographical Models of Personality|url=http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html|website=Psychology 101|access-date=5 September 2011|url-status=live|archive-url=http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/20110913161450/http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html|archive-date=13 September 2011}}</ref> This model represents the roles the id, ego, and super-ego play in relation to conscious and unconscious thought.

Freud compared the relationship between the ego and the id to that between a charioteer and his horses: the horses provide the energy and drive, while the charioteer provides direction.<ref name=Hothersall290/>

===Life and death drives===
{{Main|Libido|Death drive|Repetition compulsion}}
Freud believed that the human psyche is subject to two conflicting drives: the life drive or [[libido]] and the [[death drive]]. The life drive was also termed "Eros" and the death drive "Thanatos", although Freud did not use the latter term; "Thanatos" was introduced in this context by [[Paul Federn]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Ernest |author-link=Ernest Jones |title=The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Volume 3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0nwIAQAAIAAJ |year=1957 |orig-year=1953 |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |location=New York City |page=273 |quote=It is a little odd that Freud himself never, except in conversation, used for the death instinct the term ''Thanatos'', one which has become so popular since. At first, he used the terms "death instinct" and "destructive instinct" indiscriminately, alternating between them, but in his discussion with Einstein about war, he made the distinction that the former is directed against the self and the latter, derived from it, is directed outward. Stekel had in 1909 used the word Thanatos to signify a death wish, but it was Federn who introduced it in the present context.}}</ref><ref>Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&dq=Thanatos+%22Greek+term+(=Death)%22&pg=PT800 Thanatos]".</ref> Freud hypothesized that libido is a form of mental energy with which processes, structures, and object-representations are invested.<ref>Rycroft, Charles. ''A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis''. London: Penguin Books, 1995, p. 95.</ref>

In ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'' (1920), Freud inferred the existence of a death drive. Its premise was a regulatory principle that has been described as "the principle of psychic inertia", "the Nirvana principle",<ref>Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT493 Nirvana Principle"].</ref> and "the conservatism of instinct". Its background was Freud's earlier ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'', where he had defined the principle governing the mental apparatus as its tendency to divest itself of quantity or to reduce tension to zero. Freud had been obliged to abandon that definition, since it proved adequate only to the most rudimentary kinds of mental functioning, and replaced the idea that the apparatus tends toward a level of zero tension with the idea that it tends toward a minimum level of tension.<ref name=Wollheim>Wollheim, Richard. ''Freud''. London, Fontana Press, pp. 184–86.</ref>

Freud in effect readopted the original definition in ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle'', this time applying it to a different principle. He asserted that on certain occasions the mind acts as though it could eliminate tension, or in effect to reduce itself to a state of extinction; his key evidence for this was the existence of the [[repetition compulsion|compulsion to repeat]]. Examples of such repetition included the dream life of traumatic neurotics and children's play. In the phenomenon of repetition, Freud saw a psychic trend to work over earlier impressions, to master them and derive pleasure from them, a trend that was before the pleasure principle but not opposed to it. In addition to that trend, there was also a principle at work that was opposed to, and thus "beyond" the pleasure principle. If repetition is a necessary element in the binding of energy or adaptation, when carried to inordinate lengths it becomes a means of abandoning adaptations and reinstating earlier or less evolved psychic positions. By combining this idea with the hypothesis that all repetition is a form of discharge, Freud concluded that the compulsion to repeat is an effort to restore a state that is both historically primitive and marked by the total draining of energy: death.<ref name=Wollheim/> This has been described by some scholars as "metaphysical biology".<ref>{{cite book |last=Schuster |first=Aaron |title=The Trouble with Pleasure. Deleuze and Psychoanalysis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rWiLCwAAQBAJ |year=2016 |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |location=[[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] |isbn=978-0-262-52859-7 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=rWiLCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA32 32]}}</ref>

===Melancholia===

In his 1917 essay "Mourning and Melancholia", Freud distinguished mourning, painful but an inevitable part of life, and "melancholia", his term for the pathological refusal of a mourner to "[[decathexis|decathect]]" from the lost one. Freud claimed that, in normal mourning, the ego was responsible for narcissistically detaching the libido from the lost one as a means of self-preservation, but that in "melancholia", prior ambivalence towards the lost one prevents this from occurring. Suicide, Freud hypothesized, could result in extreme cases, when unconscious feelings of conflict became directed against the mourner's own ego.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Perelberg|first1=Rosine Jozef|title=Freud: A Modern Reader|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-0-470-71373-0|page=168|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4v7fxQifjxAC&pg=PA168|language=en|date=15 September 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Howarth|first1=Glennys|last2=Leaman|first2=Oliver|title=Encyclopedia of Death and Dying|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-91378-5|page=304|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pMi2AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT304|language=en|date=16 December 2003}}</ref>

===Femininity and female sexuality===
Freud's account of femininity is grounded in his theory of psychic development as it traces the uneven transition from the earliest stages of infantile and childhood sexuality, characterised by [[polymorphous perversity]] and a [[bisexuality|bisexual]] disposition, through to the fantasy scenarios and rivalrous identifications of the [[Oedipus complex]] and on to the greater or lesser extent these are modified in adult sexuality. There are different trajectories for the boy and the girl which arise as effects of the [[castration complex]]. Anatomical difference, the possession of a penis, induces castration anxiety for the boy whereas the girl experiences a sense of deprivation. In the boy's case the castration complex concludes the Oedipal phase whereas for the girl it precipitates it.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Russell |last1=Grigg |first2=Dominique |last2=Hecq |first3=Craig |last3=Smith |title =Feminine Sexuality: The Early Psychoanalytic Controversies| publisher =Rebus Press | date =1999 | location = London| pages = 7–17| isbn =1-900877-13-9}}</ref>

The constraint of the erotic feelings and fantasies of the girl and her turning away from the mother to the father is an uneven and precarious process entailing "waves of repression". The normal outcome was, according to Freud, the [[vagina]] becoming "the new leading zone" of sexual sensitivity, displacing the previously dominant [[clitoris]], the phallic properties of which made it indistinguishable in the child's early sexual life from the penis. This leaves a legacy of [[penis envy]] and emotional ambivalence for the girl which was "intimately related to the essence of femininity" and leads to "the greater proneness of women to [[neurosis]] and especially [[hysteria]]."<ref>Appignanesi, Lisa & Forrester, John. ''Freud's Women''. London: Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 403–414 citing ''Three Essay on Sexuality'' (1908), ''SE'' VII</ref> In his last paper on the topic Freud likewise concludes that "the development of femininity remains exposed to disturbance by the residual phenomena of the early masculine period... Some portion of what we men call the 'enigma of women' may perhaps be derived from this expression of bisexuality in women's lives."<ref name="Femininity 1933, SE XXII">Femininity (1933), ''SE'' XXII</ref>

Initiating what became the first debate within psychoanalysis on femininity, [[Karen Horney]] of the [[Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute]] set out to challenge Freud's account of femininity. Rejecting Freud's theories of the feminine castration complex and penis envy, Horney argued for a primary femininity and penis envy as a defensive formation rather than arising from the fact, or "injury", of biological asymmetry as Freud held. Horney had the influential support of [[Melanie Klein]] and [[Ernest Jones]] who coined the term "[[phallogocentrism|phallocentrism]]" in his critique of Freud's position.<ref>Appignanesi, Lisa & Forrester, John. ''Freud's Women''. London: Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 430–37</ref>

In defending Freud against this critique, feminist scholar [[Jacqueline Rose]] has argued that it presupposes a more normative account of female sexual development than that given by Freud. She finds that Freud moved from a description of the little girl stuck with her 'inferiority' or 'injury' in the face of the anatomy of the little boy to an account in his later work which explicitly describes the process of becoming 'feminine' as an 'injury' or 'catastrophe' for the complexity of her earlier psychic and sexual life.<ref>Rose, J. ''Sexuality in the Field of Vision'', London: Verso 1986 pp. 91–93</ref>

Throughout his deliberations on what he described as the "dark continent" of female sexuality and the "riddle" of femininity, Freud was careful to emphasise the "average validity" and provisional nature of his findings.<ref name="Femininity 1933, SE XXII"/> He did, however, in response to his critics, maintain a steadfast objection "to all of you ... to the extent that you do not distinguish more clearly between what is psychic and what is biological..."<ref>Appignanesi, Lisa & Forrester, John. ''Freud's Women''. London: Penguin Books, 1992, p.431 citing Freud's letter to Carl Müller-Braunschweig of 21 July 1935.</ref>

===Religion===
{{Main|Sigmund Freud's views on religion}}

Freud regarded the [[Monotheism|monotheistic]] God as an illusion based upon the infantile emotional need for a powerful, supernatural [[pater familias]]. He maintained that religion – once necessary to restrain man's violent nature in the early stages of civilization – in modern times, can be set aside in favor of [[reason]] and science.<ref>Jones, James W., [https://books.google.com/books?id=c0CBs5KeujoC 'Foreword'] in Charles Spezzano and Gerald J. Gargiulo (eds), [https://books.google.com/books?id=c0CBs5KeujoC ''Soul on the Couch: Spirituality, Religion and Morality in Contemporary Psychoanalysis''] (Hillsdale, 2003), p. xi. {{cite journal|last=Kepnes|first=Steven D.|title=Bridging the gap between understanding and explanation approaches to the study of religion|journal=Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion|date=Dec 1986|volume=25|issue=4|pages=504–12|doi=10.2307/1385914 |jstor=1385914}}</ref> "Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices" (1907) notes the likeness between faith (religious belief) and [[Neurosis|neurotic]] obsession.<ref>Gay 1995, p. 435.</ref> ''[[Totem and Taboo]]'' (1913) proposes that society and religion begin with the [[patricide]] and eating of the powerful paternal figure, who then becomes a revered collective memory.<ref>{{cite book|last=Chapman|first=Christopher N.|title=Freud, Religion and Anxiety|year=2007|location=Morrisville, NC |isbn=978-1-4357-0571-5|pages=30–31|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c0CBs5KeujoC&pg=PA30}} Freud, Sigmund ''Totem and Taboo'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1950) pp. x, 142, {{ISBN|978-0-393-00143-3}}</ref> In ''[[The Future of an Illusion]]'' (1927) Freud argues that the function of religious belief is psychological consolation. He argues that the belief in a supernatural protector serves as a buffer against man's "fear of nature", just as the belief in an afterlife serves as a buffer against man's fear of death. The core idea of the work is that religious belief can be explained through its function in society, not through its relation to the truth. In ''[[Civilization and Its Discontents]]'' (1930), he considers the "oceanic feeling" of wholeness, limitlessness, and eternity (brought to his attention by his friend [[Romain Rolland]]), as a possible source for religious feelings. He notes that he has no experience of this feeling himself, and suggests that it is a regression into the state of consciousness that precedes the ego's differentiation of itself from the world of objects and others.<ref>Rubin, Jeffrey B., [https://books.google.com/books?id=c0CBs5KeujoC&pg=PA79 'Psychoanalysis is self-centred'] in Charles Spezzano and Gerald J. Gargiulo (eds), [https://books.google.com/books?id=c0CBs5KeujoC ''Soul on the Couch: Spirituality, Religion and Morality in Contemporary Psychoanalysis''] (Hillsdale, 2003), p. 79. Freud, Sigmund, ''Civilization and its Discontents'' (New York: Norton 1962), pp. 11–12 {{ISBN|978-0-393-09623-1}} {{cite book|last=Fuller|first=Andrew R.|title=Psychology and religion: classical theorists and contemporary developments|year=2008|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers|location=Lanham, Md.|isbn=978-0-7425-6022-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eYUWamPaO-IC&pg=PA33|edition=4th|page=33}}</ref> ''[[Moses and Monotheism]]'' (1937) proposes that [[Moses]] was the tribal pater familias, killed by the Jews, who psychologically coped with the patricide with a [[reaction formation]] conducive to their establishing monotheistic Judaism;<ref name="HR">{{cite journal |author-last=Stratton |author-first=Kimberly B. |date=August 2017 |title=Narrating Violence, Narrating Self: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature |editor1-last=Copp |editor1-first=Paul |editor2-last=Wedemeyer |editor2-first=Christian K. |editor2-link=Christian K. Wedemeyer |journal=[[History of Religions (journal)|History of Religions]] |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] for the [[University of Chicago Divinity School]] |volume=57 |issue=1 |pages=68–92 |doi=10.1086/692318 |doi-access= |issn=0018-2710 |jstor=26548153 |s2cid=148787965 |lccn=64001081 |oclc=299661763}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Costello|first=Stephen|title=Hermeneutics and the psychoanalysis of religion|year=2010|publisher=Peter Lang|location=Bern|isbn=978-3-0343-0124-4|pages=72–77|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZabEx-Vyw-0C}}</ref> analogously, he described the Roman Catholic rite of [[Eucharist|Holy Communion]] as cultural evidence of the killing and devouring of the sacred father.<ref name=Chaney62/><ref>{{cite book|last=Assoun|first=Paul-Laurent |translator-last=Collier |translator-first=Richard L. |title=Freud and Nietzsche|year=2002|publisher=Continuum|location=London|isbn=978-0-8264-6316-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y39rOOHV44UC|page=166}} {{cite journal|last=Friedman|first=R.Z.|title=Freud's religion: Oedipus and Moses|journal=Religious Studies|date=May 1998|volume=34|issue=2|page=145|doi=10.1017/S0034412598004296|s2cid=170245489 }} {{cite book|first=Mikkel |last=Borch-Jacobsen |translator-first=Catherine |translator-last=Porter|title=The Freudian subject|year=1989|publisher=Macmillan|location=Basingstoke|isbn=978-0-333-48986-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GjqsAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA271|page=271 n. 42}} Freud, Sigmund, ''Moses and Monotheism'' (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). Freud, Sigmund, ''An Autobiographical Study'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1952) pp. 130–31 {{ISBN|0-393-00146-6}}</ref>

Moreover, he perceived religion, with its suppression of violence, as mediator of the societal and personal, the public and the private, conflicts between Eros and [[Death drive|Thanatos]], the forces of life and death.<ref>Juergensmeyer 2004, [https://books.google.com/books?id=lpb1mbaHjGQC&pg=PA171 p. 171]; Juergensmeyer 2009, [https://books.google.com/books?id=W9lXRS43iXIC&pg=PA895 p. 895]; Marlan, Leeming and Madden 2008, [https://books.google.com/books?id=g0QQtlJSyOEC&pg=PA439 p. 439]; Fuller 1994, [https://books.google.com/books?id=HNTcr6E83YIC&pg=PA42 pp. 42, 67]; Palmer 1997, [https://books.google.com/books?id=yxQdqP_OPt8C&pg=PA35 pp. 35–36]</ref> Later works indicate Freud's pessimism about the future of civilization, which he noted in the 1931 edition of ''Civilization and its Discontents''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Perry|first=Marvin|title=Western Civilization A Brief History|year=2010|publisher=Wadsworth Pub Co|location=Boston|isbn=978-0-495-90115-0|page=405|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jR534a1fK-IC&pg=PA405}} {{cite book|last=Acquaviva|first=Gary J.|title=Values, Violence, and Our Future|year=2000|publisher=Rodopi|location=Amsterdam [u.a.]|isbn=978-90-420-0559-4|page=26|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qAtNAPteVk0C&pg=PA26|edition=2.}} {{cite book|last=Lehrer|first=Ronald|title=Nietzsche's Presence in Freud's Life and Thought: on the Origins of a Psychology of Dynamic Unconscious Mental Functioning|year=1995|publisher=State Univ. of New York Press|location=Albany|isbn=978-0-7914-2145-1|pages=180–81|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dQkznZX1_5oC&pg=PA180}} Freud, Sigmund, ''Civilization and its Discontents'' (New York: Norton 1962), pp. 92 and editor's footnote {{ISBN|978-0-393-09623-1}}) {{cite book|last=Hergenhahn|first=B.R.|title=An Introduction to the History of Psychology|year=2009|publisher=Wadsworth Cengage Learning|location=Australia|isbn=978-0-495-50621-8|pages=536–37|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iZwXnfYAo3oC&pg=PA536|edition=6th}} {{cite book|last=Anderson|first=James William|title=Sigmund Freud and his impact on the modern world|year=2001|publisher=Analytical Press|location=Hillsdale, NJ; London|isbn=978-0-88163-342-9|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RTfJV3fWXWUC&pg=PA29|author2=Anderson, James William |editor=Jerome A. Winer|page=29|chapter=Sigmund Freud's life and work: an unofficial guide to the Freud exhibit}} But cf., {{cite book|last=Drassinower|first=Abraham|title=Freud's theory of culture: Eros, loss and politics|year=2003|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|location=Lanham (Md.)|isbn=978-0-7425-2262-6|pages=11–15|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=evDNqzuM0uAC&pg=PA12}}</ref> Humphrey Skelton described Freud's [[worldview]] as one of "[[stoicism|stoical]] [[humanism]]".<ref name="HH">{{cite web|url=https://heritage.humanists.uk/sigmund-freud/|title=Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)|work=Humanist Heritage|publisher=[[Humanists UK]]|accessdate=29 March 2022}}</ref> The Humanist Heritage project summed his contributions to understanding of religion by saying:

{{blockquote|Freud's ideas on the origins of the religious impulse, and the comforting illusion religion provided, were a significant contribution to a tradition of [[secular humanism|scientific humanist thought]], in which research and reason were the means of uncovering truth. They also served to highlight the powerful resonance of childhood influences on adult lives, not least in the realm of religion.<ref name="HH"/>}}

In a footnote of his 1909 ''Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy'', Freud theorized that the universal fear of castration was provoked in the uncircumcised when they perceived circumcision and that this was "the deepest unconscious root of [[antisemitism]]".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VWL4ja2BbnEC&q=Sigmund+Freud+circumcision+anti+semitism&pg=PA67|title=Anti-semitism: A History and Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Hatred|author=Avner Falk|isbn=978-0-313-35384-0|year=2008|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic }}</ref>