Sigmund Freud

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Sigmund Freud
Michael Hoerger
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Legacy

• Talk therapy and psychiatry
• Unconscious processing
• Among most famous scientists
• Popularity of psychology
• Often criticized, often copied,often
  misunderstood

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Biography

• Sigismund Schlomo Freud (1856-1939)
• Austria, low income family
• Oldest and favorite of 9 children
• A scientist foremost
• 150 books
• Own biggest critic
• Death Cancer, physician-assisted overdose

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Historical Context

• Victorian era, extremely conservative
• Sex is for procreation, not fun
• No talking about sex or feelings
• Improper to say leg
• Bathing machines
• War is everywhere

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The Unconscious

• Definition Thoughts, feelings, motives, and
  behaviors we are not presently aware of
• Behavior often caused by unconscious motives
• First person to write extensively
• Hot topic in social psychology today

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Mistakes

• Freudian slips or slips of the tongue
• E.g. calling your wife by your mistress name
• Errors in memory or speech due to the unconscious
  mind
• Intrusion errors due to recent activation
• Forget what is not active or important

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Psychosexual Development

• Sex physical pleasure, very broad!
• Physical pleasure as the basis for social and
  cognitive pleasure, and identity

Correlates of Physical Pleasure Correlates of Physical Pleasure Correlates of Physical Pleasure Correlates of Physical Pleasure
Social Pleasure Close Friends Depression/ Anxiety Shame/ Embarrass
r .5 r .4 r -.2 r -.2
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Psychosexual Development

• Oral stage nursing, basic sense of identity and
  pleasure
• Anal stage potty training, putting others first,
  choosing between pleasures
• Phallic stage affection from opposite sex,
  identify with same sex parent
• Latency stage
• Genital stage

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More Sex

• Penis envy?
• Childhood sexual abuse?
• Sexual deviancy
• Pedophilia, fetishes, oral sex, etc.
• Society frowned on it he said it was common
• Pleasure derived from source other than opposite
  sexs genitals

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Humor

• Best jokes
• Aggressive or sexual in nature
• Absurdities, comparisons, saying the opposite
• Risky, bold, flirts with boundaries
• Bad jokes
• Go too far
• Dont go far enough
• Wrong audience
• Puns

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Psychiatry

• Rx cocaine
• Friends cocaine morphine death
• Long-term side effects reported
• Freud reverses opinion, warns of chemical cures

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Talk Therapy

• Psychoanalysis
• Insight Discover problems clients are not aware
  of, help them to make sense of them
• Focus on the therapeutic relationship
• All types of talk therapywork equally well

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Defense Mechanisms

• Psychological processes that defend against
  anxiety
• Examples
• Withdrawal, denial, regression
• Intellectualization, reaction formation,
  sexualization
• Developmental course
• More defenses, higher defenses

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Dreams

• Royal road to the unconscious
• Freud was right deepest unconscious wishes and
  fears
• But also
• Recent information
• Also thoughts were already aware of
• Foretelling the future?

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Take Home Message

• He made the field of psychology
• Hindsight bias
• Overwhelming positive impact on society,
  outweighs minor errors

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• Michael Hoerger
• To cite this lecture
• Hoerger, M. (2007, January 29). Sigmund Freud.
  Presented at a PSY 220 lecture at Central
  Michigan University.