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How Freud Changed What People Thought About the Mind

May 10, 2014

FAITH LAPIDUS: This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.

BOB DOUGHTY: And I'm Bob Doughty. The work and theories of Sigmund Freud continue to influence many areas of modern culture.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Today, we explore Freud's influence on the treatment of mental disorders through psychotherapy.

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BOB DOUGHTY: Sigmund Freud was born May sixth, eighteen fifty-six, in Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. He lived most of his life in Vienna, Austria. Early in his adulthood, Freud studied medicine. By the end of the nineteenth century, he was developing some exciting new ideas about the human mind. But his first scientific publications dealt with sea animals, including the sexuality of eels.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Freud was one of the first scientists to make serious research of the mind. The mind is the collection of activities based in the brain that involve how we act, think, feel and reason.

He used long talks with patients and the study of dreams to search for the causes of mental and emotional problems. He also tried hypnosis. He wanted to see if putting patients into a sleep-like condition would help ease troubled minds. In most cases he found the effects only temporary.

Freud worked hard, although what he did might sound easy. His method involved sitting with his patients and listening to them talk. He had them talk about whatever they were thinking. All ideas, thoughts and anything that entered their mind had to be expressed. There could be no holding back because of fear or guilt.

BOB DOUGHTY: Freud believed that all the painful memories of childhood lay buried in the unconscious self. He said this part of the mind contains wishes, desires and experiences too frightening to recognize.

He thought that if these memories could somehow be brought into the conscious mind, the patient would again feel the pain. But this time, the person would experience the memories as an adult. The patient would feel them, be able to examine them and, if successful, finally understand them.

Using this method, Freud reasoned, the pain and emotional pressure of the past would be greatly weakened. They would lose their power over the person's physical health. Soon the patient would get better.

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FAITH LAPIDUS: Sigmund Freud proposed that the mind was divided into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. Under this theory, the superego acts as a restraint. It is governed by the values we learn from our parents and society. The job of the superego is to help keep the id under control.

The id is completely unconscious. It provides the energy for feelings that demand the immediate satisfaction of needs and desires.

The ego provides the immediate reaction to the events of reality. The ego is the first line of defense between the self and the outside world. It tries to balance the two extremes of the id and the superego.

BOB DOUGHTY: Many of Freud's theories about how the mind works also had strong sexual connections. These ideas included what he saw as the repressed feelings of sons toward their mothers and daughters toward their fathers.

If nothing else, Freud's ideas were revolutionary. Some people rejected them. Others came to accept them. But no one disputes his great influence on the science of mental health.

Professor James Gray at American University in Washington, D.C. says three of Freud's major ideas are still part of modern thinking about the mind.

One is the idea of the unconscious mind. Another is that we do not necessarily know what drives us to do the things we do. And the third is that we are formed more than we think in the first five years, but not necessarily the way Freud thought.

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