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Crash Course: Psychology
Freud and Psychoanalysis
04:58 - 07:52
Hank provides some background on Sigmund Freud and his career. He discusses Freud's theory of psychoanalysis and explains why the theory was revolutionary.
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Video Transcript
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as the science of mental life, just as Freud was starting to flex his big brain.
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Sigmund Freud began his medical career at a Viennese hospital, but in 1886, he started
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his own practice, specializing in nervous disorders. During this time, Freud witnessed
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his colleague Josef Breuer treat a patient called Anna O with a new talking cure. Basically,
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he just let her talk about her symptoms. The more she talked and pulled up traumatic memories,
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the more her symptoms were reduced. It was a breakthrough, and it changed Freud forever.
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From then on, Freud encouraged his patients to talk freely about whatever came to mind,
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to free associate. This technique provided the basis for his career, and an entire branch
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of psychology.
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In 1900 he published his book The Interpretation of Dreams, where he introduced his theory
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of psychoanalysis. Now, you probably think of psychoanalysis as a treatment -- the whole
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patient on the couch scenario. And that's definitely part of it. But Freud's concept
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was actually a lot more complex than that, and it was revolutionary.
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A radical kernel of psychoanalysis was the theory that our personalities are shaped by
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unconscious motives. Basically Freud suggested that we're all profoundly affected by mental
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processes that we're not even aware of.
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Now that sounds almost obvious to us now, but part of the genius of Freud's theory was
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that in 1900, it wasn't obvious at all. The idea that our minds could be driven by something
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that our minds themselves didn't know about was hard to grasp. As hard as like, uhh, maybe
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organisms evolving by natural selection. It was abstract, invisible, and there was something
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about it that seemed irrational.
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But the other important part of Freud's theory was that the unconscious, literally the thing
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below consciousness, was still discoverable. Even though you weren't aware of it, you could
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come to understand it through a therapeutic technique that used dreams, projections and
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free association to root out repressed feelings and and gain self-insight.
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So what Freud was really saying was that mental disorders could be healed through talk therapy
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and self-discovery. And this was a really big breakthrough. Because prior to this, people
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with mental illnesses would be confined to sanatoriums and at best given menial labor
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to do and at worst, shackled to a bed frame.
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After The Interpretations of Dreams, Freud went on to publish over 20 more books and
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countless papers with an iconic cigar in hand all the while. He believed smoking helped
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him think, but it also helped him get jaw cancer. During the last sixteen years of his
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life, he underwent at least thirty painful operations while continuing to smoke.
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By the late 1930s, the Nazis had taken over Austria, and Freud and his Jewish family narrowly
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escaped to England. By September 1939, the pain in his cancerous jaw was too great and
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a doctor friend assisted him in suicide through morphine injection. He was eighty-three.
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Whether you love him or hate him - and make no mistake, plenty of people vehemently disagreed
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with him - there is no question that Freud's impact on psychology was monumental. While
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competing theories in the young field of psychology either fell away or evolved into something
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else, psychoanalysis remains an important concept and practice today.
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The next big shake-up rolled in during the first half of the 20th century when behaviorism
