Freud

   , FREUDIAN, FREUDIAN SLIP

   Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was born at Freiberg, in Moravia. He studied medicine in Vienna and Paris and then, in 1884, studied under Josepf Breuer, a Viennese physician who introduced him to the cathartic method of treating hysteria, which focused on allowing patients to confront the root element of their abiding fears. It became the essential starting point of psychoanalysis. The two men explored matters affecting psychotherapy, but then Freud developed the importance of "free association" as a method of treatment. His books became the gospel of psychotherapy. Freud, who was Jewish, was condemned by the Nazis. Hefled in 1938 to London, where he lived the remaining year of his life. He died an honored and respected man.

   Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1909, met with extreme hostility. With the passage of time, his views became increasingly accepted.

   Freudian theories emphasized the importance of the subconscious, infantile sexuality, and the development of sexuality at the onset of neuroses. His interpretation of dreams are a basic technique of psychoanalysis (the word -psychoanalysis was coined by Freud). Psychoanalysis today is widely accepted as a treatment for the mentally ill or the disturbed person. Freud's influence has led to wider expressions of the human condition in modern art, poetry, and literature, especially those relating to dreams and their apparent connection with repressed desires, thus linking the arts and the sciences.

   Freud postulated the existence of three internal forces that govern a person's psychic life: (1) the id, the instinctual force of life—unconscious, uncontrollable, and isolated; (2) the ego, the executive force that has contact with the real world; (3) the super-ego, the governing force, or moral conscience, that seeks to control and direct the ego into socially acceptable patterns of behavior.

   Freudian theory, Freudianism, is now a major system of psychoanalysis, and its adherents are known as Freudians. However, Freudian as an adjective has been adopted by common English in ways that are unencumbered by the complexities of Freud's theories. "Freudian" is frequently applied to any motive that seems inaccessible—or at least is not obvious—to that person's conscious mind. The word especially gains currency when the motive is understood to be veiled by sexual repression. Freud provided numerous examples of slips of the tongue that hint at what he called the secondary process of mental functioning. These "Freudian slips" are technically known as parapraxis, and include slips of the pen as well. They are manifestations of the subconscious use of a word or expression similar to that which we intend to use when our mind is half-thinking of something else. It reveals a repressed subconscious thought or desire. A pregnant woman who says she's to see her stockbroker to check on her stork instead of her stock has slipped in the wrong word, one that was in her subconscious. It is just as much a Freudian slip to murmur an old flame's name while embracing your spouse.