BIOGRAPHY OF SIGMUND FREUD- ANXIETY, ENSTINCT, EGO DEFENSE MECHANISMS

                                                                                                                                                                

BIOGRAPHY OF SIGMUND FREUD

            Sigmund Freud was born either on march 6 or may 6,1856. In Freiberg. Moravia, which is now part of the ( rech Republic Scholars disagree on his birth data-the first data was but 8 months after the marriage of his parents) Freud was the first born child of Jacob and Amelie Nathanson Freud. Although his father had two grown sons. Bmaruel and philipp from a previous marriage Jacob and Amalie Freud had seven other children within 10 years. But Sigmund remained the favorite of his.

            Indulgent mother which may have partially contributed to his lifelong self confidence (E.Jones.1953). A scholarly serious- minded youth, Freud did not have a close friendship with any of his younger Siblings. He did however. Enjoy a warm indult gent  relationship with his neither. Leading him in later year to observe that  him in later year to observe that the nether son relation ship was the with his mother. Leading him in later years to observe that the mother son relationship was the most perfect the most free from aeubivalence of all human relationships (fread.1933/1964)

            Freud’s earliest play mates were his half-hephen. John and his helfhiece, pauling. John was about a year older and paeeling a little youerger then sigmend. One of freud is earliest memories was of him and john taking a bouquet of flowers away from paeeline and caeesing the young girl to run away in tears (vitz.1988).

            When Freud was three, the two Freud failies left Freiberg. Emanuel’s feirt to help zing and then the following years to viehna. The Aurtrias capital rehaihed sigmend Freid’s honce for hearly 80 years. Uentil 1938 when the Nazi invarion forced him to emiarate to London. Where he lived until his death on September 23.1939.

            When Freud was about a year a Significant impact on freed plycus development Sigmund was filled with hostility toward his Novinger brother and harbored an unconscious with for his death. When Julius died at 6 months of age. Freud was left with feelings of guilt at having caused his brother’s death. Only during later years was Freud able to understand not only that the death with for a sibling was common is young children but also that his wish did not actually cause his brother’s death. This discovery during middle age purged Freud of the guilt he had carried is to adulthood and by his own analysis. Contributed to his later psychic development (freud,1900/1953).

            Freud was drawn into medicine. Not so much out of love for medical practice treed two university of Vienna medical School is 1873, but when he graduated in 1881. He had no intention of practicing medicine. He preferred instead to do research in psyclulogy. To pursue his career, however. He was dependent on his father and friends for financial support After his graduation. He remained at the university’s psychological institute. Conducting research and doing some teaching.

            Freud might have continued his work indefinitely had it not been for two factors. First he believed that as a Jew, his opportunities for academic advancement would be limited. Second his father become less able to provide financial aid. Reluctantly Freud learned from his laboratory to the practice of medicine. He worked for 3 years in the general hospital of Vienna becoming familiar with the practice of medicine including psychiatry and nervous diseases (Freud 1925/1959)

            In 1885. He received a traveling grant from the university of Vienna and decided to study in Paris with famous French neurologist ream-martin Charcot. He spent 4 months with Charcot fro whom he learned the hypnotic technique for treating hysteria. A disorder typically characterized by paralysis or the improper functioning certain parts of the body. Through Hypnos’s Freud become convinced of a psychogenic and sexual origin of hysterical symptoms.

While still a medical student Freud developed a close professional association and  a personal friendship with Josef Breuer. A well-known Viennese physician 14 years older than Freud and a man of considerable  scientific regulation   (Ferris 1997) Breuer taught  Freud about catharsis the process of rerroving hysterical symptoms through “talking them out” while using catharsis. Freud gradually and laboriously discovered the free association technique. Which soon reolaced hypnosis’ as his principal therapeutic technique.      

            From as carly as adolescence Freud literally dreamed of making monumental discovery and achieving fame. On secure occasions during the 1880s and 1890s he be3lived he was on the verge of such a discovery. His first opportunity to gain recognition came in 1884-1885 and involved his work with cocaine and was led to problem the wonderful virues of that drug. Further trouble followed when he used cocaine in trealing a friend for morphine addiction and succeeded in causing his friend to become a cocaine addiet..

            His second opportunity for achieving some meature of fame came in 1886  after he returned from paris , where he had learned about male hysteria from charcot. He assumed that this knowledge would gain him respect and recognition  from the imperial society of phyricians of vieena, whom he mistakenly belived would be impressedby the young Dr. Freud’s knowledge of male hysteria was strictly a female disorder because the very word had the same origins as uterus and wasw the result of ‘wondering womb’ it is but one of many fuctions created by freud and his followers to mythologize psychoanalysis and to make a lonely hero of its founder.

            Disappointed in his  attempts to gain fame and afflicted with feelings of professional opposition due to his   defense of cocaine and his belief in the sexual origins of neuroses , Freud felt the need to join with a more respected colleague, he whom he had worked while still a medical student and with whon he enjoy a continuing personal and professional relationship, Breuer had discussed in detail with Rreud the case of ANNA O, a young woment Breuer had spent many hours treation for hysteria several year carlier because of his rebuff by the imperial society of physicians and desire to establish a reputation for himself, Freud urged Breur to collaborate with him in publishing an account of anna o and several others cases of hysteria. He  agreed to publish with  Freud studies on Hysteria. In this  book. Freud introduced the term “psychical analysis” and during the foiioeing year, he began calling his approach “psycho-analysis”.

            Freud’s letters to feeless constitute a firsthand account of the beginnings of psychoanalyses and reveal the embryonic stage of Freudian theory. Freus and flies had become friends in 1887, but their relationship became more intimate following Freud’s bread with Breuer.

            During the late 1890s , Freud suffered both professional isolation and personal crises. He had begun to analyze his own dreams, and after the death of his father in 1896.

The chief patient I am preoccupied with is myself,.. the analysis in fact what paralyses my psychic  strength.

A second personal crisis was his realization that he was how middle aged and had yer to achieve the fame he so passionately desired. However in 1897 he abandoned the seduction theory and once again had to postpone the discovery that would people him to greatness.

Freud :relived his oedipal conflicts with peculiar ferocity “ . but Herne Ellenberger described this period in Freud’s life as a time of “creative illness” a condition characterized by depression, neurosis, psychosomatic ailments and an intense preoccupation with some from of creative activity.

Although the interpretation of dreams did not create an instant international stir, it eventually gained for Freud the fame and recognition he had sought, in the 5year period following its publication. Freud now filled with renewed self-confidence. Wrote several important works that helped solidify the foundation of psycholysis.

In 1910. Freud and his followers founded the international psycho analytic association with care Jung of Zurich as president. Between 1902 and 1906 all 17 of Freud’s disciples had been Jewish nor and Freud was interested in giving psychoanalysis a more cosmopolitan flavor.

The year of world war a were difficult for Freud. He was cut off from communication with his faithful followers. After the war despite advancing year and pain suffered from 33 operation for cancer of the mouth.

What personal qualities did Freud possess? A more complete insight into his personality can be found in Clark, Ferris, gay, roazen and vitz. Above all. Freud was a sensitive passionate person. “my emotional life had always in sisted that I should have an intimate friend and  a hated enemy.

One quality that helped Freud become a leading contributor to 20^th century a master of the German tongue and knew sevexternal world. It is governed by the reality principle, which it tries to substitute for the pleasure principle of the id. The ego can make decisions on each of these three levels. When performing its cognitive and intellectual functions. The ego must make into consideration the incompaleble but equally unrealistic demands of the id and the superego.

The ego reacts in a predictable manner it becomes anxious it uses repression and other defense mechanisms to defend itself against this anxiety.

As children begin to experience parental rewards and punishments they learn wht to do to gain pleasure and avoid pain. This is an ego function in as much as very young children are still exclusively concerned with self. As they reach the age of 5 or 6 years they identify with their parents and begin to learn what they should and should not do. This is the origin of the super ego.

Anxiety:-

            The dynamics of personality  to a large extent governed by the necessity for gratifying one’s needs by means of transactions with objects in the external world. The surrounding environment provides the hungry organism with food. The thirsty one with water. In addition to its role as the source of supplies, the external world plays another part in shaping the destiny of personality the environment  contains regions of danger and insecurity: it can threaten well as satisfy. The environment has the power to produce pain and increase tension as well as to bring pleasure and reduce tension. It disturbs as well as comforts.

            The individual’s customary reaction to external threats of pain and destruction with which it is not prepared to cope is to become afraid. The threatened person is ordinarily a fearful person. Over whelmed by excessive stimulation that the ego is unable to bring under control, the ego becomes flooded with alsxiety.

            Freud recognized three of type of anxiety; reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety and moral anxiety, or feelings of guilt (1926b). The basic type is reality anxiety, or fear of real dangers in the external world; from the other two types are derived. Neurotic anxiety is the fear that the instincts will get out of control and cause the person to do something for which he or she will be punished. Neurotic anxiely is not so much a fear of the instincts themseues as it is a fear of the punishment likely to ensure from instinctual gratification. Neurotic anxiety has a basis is reality, because the world as represented by the parents and other authorities does punish the child for impurive actions. Moral ananxiety is fear of the conscience. People with were-developed superegos that do feel guilty when they do sanelring or even think of doing sonctlhing that is contrary to the moral code by which they have been raised. They are said to feel conscience stricke. Moral anxiety also has a realiltic basiss the person has been punished is the past for lating the moral code and may be puniched agsr.

            The function of anxiety is to warn the person of impending danger. It is a signal to the ego that unless appropriate measures are taken the danger may increase until the age is over thrown. Anxiety is a state of tension. It is a drive like hunger or sex, but instead of arising from internal lissve conditions, it is produced originally by external causes. When anxiety is aroured it motivates the person to do something. He or she may free from the threatening region. Inhibit the dangerous impulse, or obey the voice of conscience.

            Anxiety that cannot be dealt with by effective measure is said to be traumatic. If reduces the person to a state of infantile helplessness. In fact, the proto type of all later alsxiety is the birth trauma. The neonate is bombarded with stimuli from the world for which it is not prepared and to which it cannot adopt. The baby needs a sheltered environment unit its ego has had a chance to develop to the point where it can master strong stinwli from the environment. When the ego cannot cope with anxiety by rational metuods, it has to fall back upon unrealistic ones. These are the so-called defense mechanisas of the ego, which will be discussed in the following sections.

The development of personality:-

            Freud was probably the first psychological theorist to emphasize the developmental aspects of personality and in particular to stress the decisive role of the early years of infancy and childhoodis laying down the basic charcter structure of the person. Indeed, Freud felt the personality was pretly well formed by the end of the fifteen  year and that subsezuent growth consisted for the most part of elaborating this basic struclure. He arrived at this concusion on the basis of his experiences with patients undergoing psycho aralysis.

            Personality develops is response do four major sources of tension:

1)      Physiologist growth processes

2)      Frustration.

3)      Conflicts and

4)      Threats.

As a detect consequence of increases in cension amanating from these sources. The person is forced to learn new metnods of reducing teasion. This learning is what is meant by personality evelopment.

Identification and displacement are two metnods by which the individual learns ot resolve frustratiop, conflicts, and anxieties.

Identification:-

            This concept was introduced is an earlier section to help account for the formation of the ego and superego. In the context, identification may be defined as the method by which a person lakes over the features of another person and makes them a corporate part of his or her own personality. One learns to reduce tension by modeling one’sbehavior after that of someone else. Freud preferred the term identification to the more familiar a kind of superficial and transient copying behaviors, and he wanted a word that would Conway the idea of a more or less permanent acquisition to personality.

            The child identifies with its parents because they appear to be omnipotent, at least during the years of early childhood. As children growth older, they find other people to identity with whose accomplishments are more in line with their current mines.   

            It is not necessary for a person to identity with sincere else in every respect. One usually selects and incorporates just those features that he or the believes will help achive a desired goal.

            There is a good deal of trial and error in the identification process because one is usually not quite sure what is about another person that accounts for their success. The ultimate test is taken over: if it does not is discarded. One may identify with animals, imaginary characters, institution abstract ideas. One may identify with animals, imaginary characters, inscarded. One may identify with animals, imatinary characters, inetitions abstract ideas, and inchimate objects as well as with other human beings.

            Identification is also a methods by which one may regain an object that has been lost. By identifiying with a loved person who had died or from whom one has been separated, the an incorporated feature of one’s personality. Children who have been rejected by their parents tend to from strong identify with a person to avoid punishment. This kind of identification is the basis for the formation of the sccperego.

            The final personality represents an accumulation of neemerous identifications made at various of the person’s life, although the mother and father are probably the most important identification figures is any one’s life.

            Displacement:-

                                    When an original object-choice of an instint is rendered inaccessible by external or internal barriers, a new cathexsis is formed unless a strong repression occurs. If this new catnexis is also blocked. Another displacement takes, plase, and so on, until an object is found that yields some relicf for the pentup tension. This object is then cathected until it loses its power to reduce tension, at which time another search for an appropriate goal object is inrtituted. Through out the stries of  displacements that constitute. In such large measure. The development of personality, the source and aim of the instinct remain constant. It is only the object that varies.

            A substitute object is rarely if ever as satistying or tenrion reducing as the origihal object, and the more dissinlar the substitute object is from the original one. The less tension reduced. As a consequence of numerous displacement. The person is constantly seeking new and better ways of reducing tension. This accounts for the variability and diversity of behavior, as well as for human restlessness. On the other hard, the personality does become more or less stabilized with age due to the compromises that are made between the arging forces of the incticts and the restances of the ego and super ego.

            Freud pointed out that the development of ciwlization was made possible by the in hibition of primitive object- choices and the diversion of instinctual energy into socially acceptable and culturally creative channe is (1930). A displacement that produces a higher cultural achievement is called a sublimation.

            The direction taken by a diplacment is determined by two fuetors.

1)      The resemplance of the substitute object to the original one and

2)      The sanctions and prohibitions imposed by society. The factor of resemblance is actually the degree to which the two objects are identified is the mind of the person.

The ability to form substitute object-catheces is the more powerfull mechanism for the development of personality. The complex network of interests, preferences, values, attitudes, and attachments that characterize the personality of the adult human being is made possible by displacement. If psychic energy were not displacable and distributive there would be no development of personality. The person would be merely a mechanical person would be merely a mechanical robot driven to perform fixed pattern of behavior instinctually.

  

INSTINCT:-

            An instinct is defined as an in born psychological represention of an innersomatic source or excitatation. The psychological source or excitatation. The psychological representation is called a wish and the bodily exciation from which it stems is called a need. Thus , the state of junger may be described in psychological terms as a condition of hutritional deficit in the tissues of the body where as  plychologically it is represented as a with for food. The wish acts as a motive for behavaior. The hungry person seeks food. Inetincts are considered there for to be the propelling factors of personality.

            Freud used the german word trib to refer to drive or a stinweles within the person. This team is usually translated as instinct but it night more properly be called “drive” or “impulse”. An instinct then, is an internal drive or impulse that operales as a conlteam motivational force. As an internal stimuls it differns from external stimelin that it cannot be avoided through fight.

            According to freud (1933/1964). The many individual instincts can all be grouped uender two major acrives, the life inltinct. Generally called erosor sex. And the death instinct. Sometimes known as destruction or aggression. In stincts originate in the id. But they come under the control of the ego. Each instinct has its own ferom of plychic  energy. Freud used the word libido to refer to the force by which the life or sexual instinct works. But he never found a paraller neare for the plychic energy of the death instiact.

            Energy instinct is characterized by an impelus. A source. Can above and an object. An instinct’s impetus is the amount of force it exerts. Its source is the region of the body in a state of excitation or tension its aim is to seek pleasure by removing that exentation or reducing the tension; and its object is the person or thing that serues as the means through which the aim in salisfied.

Number and kinds of instincts:-

            Freud did not attempt to draw up a list of instincts because he felt that not enough was know about the bodily states upon which the instincts depend.

            The life inltincts serve the purpose of individual survival and racial propagalon. Hunger, thirst, and sex fall in this category the form of energy by which the life instincts perform their work is called libido.

            The life inctinct to which freud paid the greatert attention is that of sex, and in the early years of plychologists aencost everything the person did was attributed to this ubiquitous drive. Actually , the sex instinct is not one instienet but many that is, there are a n umber of separate bodily needs that give rise to erotic nishel . each of these wishes has its source in a different bodily region referred to collectively as erogenous zonel. An erogenous zone is a part of the skin or nucous membra nane that is extremely sensitive to irritation and that when manipulated in a ecertain way removes the irritation and produced pleasurable feelings. The lips and oral cauity constitute one such erogenous zone, the anal region another, and the sex organs a third, sucking produces oral pleasure, elimination aral pleasure, and massaging or rubbing genital pleasure. In childhood. The sexual instincts are relatively independent of one another, but when the person reaches puberty, they tend to fuse together and to serve joinely the thim of reproduction.

            The death instincts, or as, Freud sometimes called them, the destructive instincts. Perform their work much  less conspicuously than the life instincts, for this reseon little in know about them, other than that they inevitably accomplish their mussion. Every person does eventually die. A fact that caeesed Freud to formulate the famous dictum. “The goal of all life in death.” Freud assumed specifically that the person has a wish usually of course unconscious. To are. He not attempt to identify the somatie sources of the death instincts. Although one may wish to speculate that they reside in the catabolic, or breaking- down, processes of body. Nor did the assign a name to the energy by which the death instincts carry on their work.

            Freud’s assumption of a death with is based upon the constancy principle as formulated by Fechner. This principle asserts that all living processed tend to return to the stability of the inorganic world.

            The life and death instincts and their derivatives may fuse together neutralize each other or replace one another. Eating, for example, respresents a fusion of hunger and dertructivene and swallowing food, love, a derivative of the sex instinct, can neutralize hate, a derivative of the death inctinct or love can replace hate and hate love.

            Since the instincts contain all the energy by which the three systems of the personality perform their work, let us turn now to concider the ways in which the id , ego, super ego agin control over and utilize phychic energy.

            The Defense Mechanisms of  the ego :-

                        Under the pressure of excessive anxiety the ego is sometimes forced to take extreme measures to relieve the pressure. These measures are called defense machanisms. The principal defenses are repression. Projection reclction formation, fixation, and regression. All defense mechanisives have two characteristies in common:

1)      They deny falsify or distort reality and

2)      They operate unconsciously so that the person is not aware of aware of what is taking place.

Repression:-

            This is one of the earliest concepts of plychoanalysis. Before Freud arrived at his final formuation of personality theory in terms of the id, ego, super ego, he  divided the mend into three regious: consciousness, preconsciousness and unconsciousness. The preconscious consisted of plycuological matrial that become conscious when the need arose. Material in the urco  nsccous, however, was regarded by Freud as being relativety inaccessible conscious awareness: it was said to be in a state of repression.

            When Freud revised his theory of personality, the concept of repression was retained as one of the defense mechanisms of the ego. Repression is said to occur when an object. Choice that arouses undue alarm is forced out of consciousness by an anticatlsexis.

            Repression may force there way through the opposing anticathexes or they may find expression in the form of a displacement. If the displacement is to be reccesful is preventing the reqwakening of anxiety , it must be disguised in some suitable lymbolic form. A son who has repressed his hostile feelings forward his father may express these hostile feelings againse other symbols of authorily.

Projection:-           Reality anxiety is usually easier for the ego to deal with than either neurotic or moral anxiety,can be attributed to the external world rather than to the individual is own primitive impulses or to the threats of conscience. The person is likely to achieve greater relief for the anxious condition. This mechanism by which neurotic or moral anxiety is converted into an objective fear is called projection. This conversion is easily made because the original source of both neurotic cenal noral anxiety is fear of punishment from an external agent. In projection. One simply says “she hetes me’ instead of etc..  plojection offen serves a dudal perpose. If reduces anxiety by sublituting a lesser danger for a greater one and it enables the profecting person to express his or her impueses under the guise of defending one against one’s enemies.

Reaction Formation:-

            This defensive measure involves the replacement in consciousness of an anxiety-producing impulse or feeling by its opposite. For example, hate is replaced by love. The original impulse still exists but is glossed over or marked by one that aloes not cause anxiety.

            The question often arises as to how a reaction formation may be distinguished from a gencine expression of an impulse or feeling. For inetance, how can reactive love be differentiated from true love. Usually, a reaction for mation is marked by extravagant showiness-the person profets too such-and by compulsiveness. Extreme forms of behavior of any kid usually donete a reaction formation. Sometimes the reaction formation seececds its satisfying the orpginal impulse that in being de fended against. As when a mother smochrs her child with affection and attention.

Fixation and Regression:-

            In the course of normal development, as we shall see in the next, section, the personality passes in rough a series of rather well-defined stages until it reaches maturity. Each new step that in taken, however. Entails a certain amount of frurtration and anxiety. If these become too great, normal growth may be temporarily or permanently helted. In other words. The person may becomefixated on one of the early stages of development beceuse taking the next step is fraught with anxiety. The overly dependent child exemplifies definse by fixation, onxiety prevents it from learning how to become independent.

            A closely related type of defense is that of regression. In this case a, person who encounters traumatic experienees retreats to an erlier stage of development. For example a child who is frightened by the first day at school may indulge in infantile behavior. Such as weeping, sucking the thumb,hanging onto the teacher, or hiding is a corner. A young married woman who has or a man who has lost his job may seek comfort in dreenk. The path of regress on in usually determined by the earlier fixations of the person. That is people fixations of the person. That is people tend to regress to a stage upon which they have been preuiduslly ficated if they were overby dependent as children, they will be likely to become overly dependant agin when their anxiety in creases to an underable level.         

            Fixation and regreseion  are or dinarily relative conditions. A person rarely fixates or regress completely. Rather the personality teends to include infantitilh conduct when the warted. Fixations and regression are responsible for the unevenness in personality development.

Stages of Development:-

            The child passes through a series of dynamically differentiated stages during the first five year of life following which for a period of five or six years – the perid of latency-the dynamics become more or less stabilized. With the advent of adolescence the dynamics erupt agin and then gradually settle alown as the adolesceint moves into adulthood for Freud the first few years of life decisive for the formation of personality.

            Each stage of development during the first five years is defined in hearms of the modes of reaction of a pasticular zone of the body during the first stage, which lasts for about a year, the mounth is the principal region of dynamic activity. The oral stage is followed by the development of cathexes and anticathexes around the eliminative function and is called the anal stage. This lasts during the second year and is succeedeal by the phallic stage , in which the sex organs become the leading erogenous zones. These stages-the into a prolonged latency period, the so called quit years, dynamically speaking. During thin period the impulses tend to be held in a state of repression. The dynamic resurgence of adolescence reactivates the pregenetal impulses. If these are successfully displaced and sublimated by the ego . the person passes into the final stage of maturity the genital stage.