Social Theory by William Outhwaite

Author:William Outhwaite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile

6

DISCOVERING THE UNCONSCIOUS

Sigmund Freud would probably have been the first to admit that his ventures into what we normally think of as social theory are not the strongest elements of his work. What is more important, however, is the fact that his analysis of the psyche has fundamentally shaped our understanding of humanity and hence of culture and society. This chapter will outline Freud’s work in this area and trace its implications through to the present.

The term ‘unconscious’ and the idea of mental processes of which we are not aware had been knocking around from the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was towards the end of the century that Freud began to develop what one of his mentor and collaborator Joseph Breuer’s patients called a ‘talking cure’. The patient, Bertha Pappenheim, to whom Breuer and Freud gave the pseudonym Anna O. when they wrote up the treatment in 1895, was suffering from headaches, disturbed vision, episodes of paralysis, an inability to speak her native language and other disorders which we would now call psychosomatic. Under hypnosis, Breuer encouraged her to revisit painful episodes in her life and her description of them seemed to relieve the symptoms. She was able, for example, to trace back her inability to drink water to her disgust at seeing a dog drinking out of a water glass, and remembering this episode enabled her to drink again. Was she putting some of this on because she was attracted to Breuer and appreciated his attention? Freud thought so, and this relationship of transference between patient and analyst became an important part of his understanding of his own practice. (The sexual politics of psychoanalysis is certainly dubious, as the feminist critics discussed later have pointed out.)

Whatever the truth about this early case, psychoanalysis was launched as a treatment and a theory, and in 1900 Freud published a major work on dreams, which he later called the ‘royal route’ to the discovery of the unconscious activities of the mind. He had earlier written to his collaborator Wilhelm Fliess:

Do you suppose that some day a marble tablet will be placed on the house, inscribed with these words:

In This House, on July 24th, 1895

the Secret of Dreams was Revealed

to Dr. Sigm. Freud.

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