Ryder Holmes Wilson HUM 144 / Harjes 12/14/12 Freud, Explorer of the Unconscious Though today Freud is often

mocked for his outlandish views, his concepts and methodologies have been paramount to the development of modern psychology. He developed and expounded his theory of the unconscious to which we owe so much of our personality as well as his techniques, claiming that [t]he division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis...1 He probed the unconscious of his patients with various techniques, including memory and dream analysis, talk therapy, and hypnosis. A reading of his Wolf Man case study quickly reveals the kind of approach he took towards treating a patient, as well as the archetypal frustration of repression that he diagnoses both Wolf Man and the rest of humanity with; Freud analyzed the dreams and memories of Wolf Man to reveal the Oedipus complex deep-seated in the suffering patient's psyche, an unconscious repression of his desire to have sexual relations with his parents. He countered critics of his psycho-analysis by arguing that dreams and memories reveal the repression of an individual regardless of their actual accuracy. Freud often preferred approaching treatment of patients by analyzing their childhood, especially their childhood dreams, which was a burgeoning phenomena in the world of psychology. He wrote, [The analysis of children's neuroses] can afford us, roughly speaking, as much help towards a proper understanding of the neuroses of adults as do children's dreams in respect to the dreams of adults.2 In the case of Sergei Pankeieff, a Russian aristocrat famously Freud famously referred to as Wolf Man, this was the only feasible approach, who remained for a long time unassailably entrenched behind an attitude of obliging apathy.3 Freud argued what is most important in treating a patient is evaluating, ...the resistance which is met with in the course of the work... To understand this, one has to have a primer on his notion of repression, what he called the corner-stone of our understanding of the neuroses.4 He defined it as such: ...the essence of repression lies simply in turning something

away, and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious. 5 In order to repress a thought or instinct, a persistent expenditure of force is necessary, which causes a state of displeasure, or a neurosis.6 But some 'nearly repressed' thoughts and feelings can be brought to light by a psycho-analyst: If... derivatives [of a repression] have become sufficiently far removed from the repressed representatives, whether owing to the adoption of distortions or by reason of the number of intermediate links inserted, they have free access to the conscious.7 To commence treatment, a psychoanalyst will continually require the patient to produce such derivatives of the repressed [that]... can pass the censorship of the conscious. One productive avenue for the psycho-analyst is dreams, since the mobility of repression... finds expression in the psychical characteristics of the state of sleep, which alone renders possible the formation of dreams.8 Another approach is through analysis of a screen memory, which represents in the memory impressions and thoughts of a later date whose content is connected with its own by symbolic or similar links...9 That is, a person 'screens' memories for the relevance they have to logical and emotional factors in the present, which, if analyzed carefully, can reveal a repression. Let us observe Wolf Man as a case study of Freud's techniques, who analyzed both Sergei's childhood dreams and memories to unearth his repression. Freud particularly analyzed one dream Sergei had when he was around four: he is lying in bed, the window suddenly opens and he beholds six or seven white wolves with oversized bushy tails, sitting in a Christmas tree and 'rivet[ing] their whole attention' on Sergei.10 Freud found a number of associations from the dream, such as an unmistakable allusion to the castration complex through the compensations of the size of the wolves' tails,11 and from the notion that it was a Christmas tree that represents desires (and other details), Freud concluded Sergei's greatest wish was sexual satisfaction which he was at that time longing to obtain from his father.12 Freud summarized the result of his interpretation of Sergei's dream and memories: His fear of his father was the strongest motive for his falling ill...13 Why? Because ...the dream relates to an occurrence that really took place and was not merely imagined.14 The occurrence Freud refers to,

...was the picture of copulation between [Sergei's] parents...15 Thus, Freud argued that Sergei's neurosis arrived because of an early childhood memory of a sexual encounter between his parents which was expressed via dream, but otherwise could not reach the consciousness because it was being repressed, causing his neurosis. Freud clarified in a footnote: At the age of one and a half the child receives an impression to which he is unable to react adequately; he is only able to understand it and to be moved by it when the impression is revived in him at the age of four; and only twenty years later, during the analysis, is he able to grasp with his conscious mental processes what was then going on in him.16 This was the repression of a malformed Oedipus complex, where Sergei all at once identified with his mother, feared his father, and feared the castration necessary for sexual relations with his father. Though this interpretation is bizarre by modern standards, it must be conceded that Sergei was cured of his illness. Still, Freud considered three counterarguments which he summarized as, [W]hether a child at the tender age of one and a half could be in a position to take in the perceptions of such a complicated process and to preserve them so accurately in his unconscious; secondly, whether it is possible at the age of four for a deferred revision of the impressions so received to penetrate the understanding; and finally, whether any procedure could succeed in bringing into consciousness coherently and convincingly the details of a scene of this kind which had been experienced and understood in such circumstances.17 To the third point, which is the argument that a psycho-analyst cannot possibly conjure up such an interpretation accurately, he merely argued that he has done so, that it was decidedly possible.18 To the other points, he said they are based on a low estimate of the importance of early infantile impressions and an unwillingness to ascribe such enduring effects to them. He also considered a more in depth response that ...scenes from early infancy... are not reproductions of real occurrences... but instead are ...products of the imagination...19 Yet, he claimed, these are all sorts of facts that speak in favour of this view [of psycho-analysis]. For even if these mental images of Wolf Man were 'fake', [t]he analysis would have to run precisely the same course as one which had a naif faith in the truth of the phantasies. But the psycho-analyst should treat them as real, for to not would be technically inadmissible, because if the patient is given a premature sense

of their unimportance, by being informed, for instance, that it will only be a question of phantasies... his co-operation will never be secured... In short, since memories are screened for their importance to the present day, some aspects of the memories will always, in some sense, be fantastical; but this makes no difference to the use of the mental construction for the purposes of treatment, since it is the repression of the patient that must be dealt with, which can be revealed through memories, dreams, or invented ideas and mental images of the patient alike. Though Freud defended himself well, modern psychologists generally agree he put too much importance into sexual energy. In the case of Wolf Man (and some of his other case studies), some might say he got lucky and found a patient that was a perfect exemplar of his theory. He did not cure many of his patients with similar techniques. However, he must be forgiven for overshooting the significance, for he was one of the first to even attempt to ascribe any importance to sexual energy, as well as one of the first psychologists to really try and cure his patients. While every picture and video of him reveals a bitter scowl on his face, I believe he truly cared about his patients and his contributions to psychology ought to be greatly admired. His belief in the power of the unconscious, especially dreams, what he called at one point a substitute for the thought-processes,20 has influenced modern culture to an enormous degree. It is a wonder, however, that he never explored the avenue of lucid dreaming in non-hypnotic states, what seems to me to be the pinnacle of wish fulfillment. Perhaps some psycho-analysts will continue Frued's legacy through thorough interpretation of lucid dreams.

Citations and Bibliography Freud, Sigmund. A Freud Reader. Edited and compiled by Peter Gay. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989. Harjes, Kirsten. HUM 144: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud. Class notes. UC Davis, Fall 2012. 1: The Ego and the Id, page 630 2: From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (Wolf Man), 401 3: Wolf Man, 403 4: An Autobiographical Study, 18 5: Repression, 569 6: Repression, 572 7: Repression, 571 8: Repression, 572 9: Screen Memories, 123 10: Wolf Man, 404 11: Wolf Man, 406 12: Wolf Man, 409 13: Wolf Man, 407 14: Wolf Man, 408 15: Wolf Man, 410 16: Wolf Man, 415 17: Wolf Man, 411 18: Wolf Man, 417 19: Wolf Man, 418 20: On Dreams, 147