Beverley Clack - Freud on the Couch: A Critical Introduction to the Father of Psychoanalysis

About the Author

Beverley Clack is Professor in Philosophy of Religion at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She is the author of Sex and Death: A Reappraisal of Human Mortality.

Freud on the Couch

A Critical Introduction to the Father of Psychoanalysis

Beverley Clack

ONE WORLD

A Oneworld Book

Published by Oneworld Publications 2013

Copyright Beverley Clack 2013

The right of Beverley Clack to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78074-262-5

eISBN 978-1-78074-263-2

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Contents

Sigmund Freuds ideas are familiar even if we have never read anything he has written. Most of us will have heard of the ego, the id, and the superego. When speaking of the actions and attitudes of others, we may use these terms for the conscious self, the unconscious that affects behaviour, and the internalized voice of societal norms. When someone makes a slip of the tongue and reveals what they really feel or think, we may well accuse them of making a Freudian slip. If someone is overly concerned with order and keeping things tidy we may call them anal. And if we suspect that one of our friends is ill at ease with their sexuality, we may find ourselves describing them as repressed. These commonplaces go directly back to the work of Freud, drawing on key categories that shape his theory for understanding human behaviour: psychoanalysis.

Yet despite the way in which his language informs everyday conversation, few of us are likely to have read his books and fewer still will have read all of them. Most of us come to be aware of his ideas through popular culture. This might be in classic thrillers like Alfred Hitchcocks Marnie (1964), a film that uses psychoanalytic categories to trace a young womans fear of sex to childhood abuse. Or in an altogether lighter vein, we might be introduced to Freud through the films of Woody Allen. Allen makes frequent, comic references in his films to the theories and practices of psychoanalysis. The best example of this is probably Annie Hall (1977), in which Allen explores the onoff relationship between comedian Alvy Singer and nightclub singer Annie. Much of the humour is drawn from relating Freuds ideas to the lives of these characters. At one point, Alvy describes Annie as polymorphously perverse, applying Freuds description of the childs ability to find pleasure in any part of the body: if I stroke your teeth or your kneecaps, you get excited. Later, Alvy describes how he would have killed himself but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and if you kill yourself they make you pay for the sessions you miss. As this form of psychotherapy can involve meeting with an analyst five times a week, you get some sense of how expensive this would be!

Freuds image is immediately recognizable: a man in late middle age, grey-haired, bearded, with a steely gaze, self-possessed, wearing a heavy woollen three-piece suit, holding a cigar. Such is his fame that a range of tasteful (and sometimes tacky) memorabilia reflects this image, while at the same time enshrining our idea of who he is. There are numerous Freud dolls, all wearing neat and sombre suits, all bearded, all replicating that penetrating look. My favourite is a cuddly Freud that plays the Barbra Streisand song, The Way We Were. This is an apt choice of tune for Freud; the line whats too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget mirrors Freuds claim that the mind forces painful feelings and experiences from consciousness. Freud has even been turned into a plastic action figure, his special power apparently lying in the cigar that he holds.

Freud is such a well-known figure, his image so iconic, that writing an introduction to his ideas is somewhat difficult. We may well think that we know what Freud has to say, whether or not weve actually read his books. Even if we have read them, our impression of what he says may have been gleaned from one or two of his major works: we might have read The Three Essays on Sexuality, The Future of an Illusion, or The Interpretation of Dreams. The problem with reading Freud in this way is that it can lead us to think of Freud as someone who is reducible to a few key ideas.

At the start of this book it is worth putting aside any preexisting ideas about Freud so that a rather different, rather more complicated Freud can emerge. This Freud, I shall argue, has the power to speak to us, our world, and our concerns. To discover this Freud, we must consider some of his less familiar claims as well as those ideas that we may well have already encountered.

Freud wrote extensively: his books and articles fill some twenty-three volumes. Yet rediscovering Freud involves more than simply considering a greater number of these texts. It also involves paying attention to Freuds method as he goes about his endeavour to understand what it is to be human. This is a project that is not just about theoretical understanding but is also concerned with establishing methods for ameliorating the suffering that arises from human experience.

Freud is first and foremost a medical practitioner, who sought to cure those suffering from various forms of mental illness. His theories emerge from his practice. Moreover, these theories emerge at and are shaped by a particular point in history. At the end of the nineteenth century, psychology and the investigation of the brain are in their infancy. As such, he has no option but to attempt tentatively to create a vocabulary for the phenomena he is encountering.

This attempt to describe the processes behind mental illness is in itself a considerable undertaking. But this is not all that Freud does. He also relates his investigations of mental illness to a more general account of mental processes. Neither of these activities is easy; what makes reading Freud exciting are the places where we encounter the Freud who is not certain about his conclusions, who wishes to play with ideas and see where they lead him. It is this Freud that we will encounter here; the Freud who makes it his business to grapple with the pleasures and pains of human existence. As a result, this Freud continues to have much to offer his twenty-first century readers.

Heres an example. Freud is often portrayed as overly concerned with sex and, as we shall see, he has much to say about that subject. But he is also concerned with death. One of his most controversial suggestions is that just as humans are shaped by the sex-drive that leads to the creation of new things, to growth and expansion, so there is a death-drive that draws them towards destructive cycles of repetition, disintegration, and eventually the welcome simplicity of not-being. While Freud is fascinated by this possibility and keen to explore it, he is also critical of it, unsure as to its merit and whether it is possible to give good evidence for such a notion:

It may be asked whether and how far I am convinced of the truth of the hypotheses that have been set out in this paper. My answer would be that I am not convinced myself and that I do not seek to persuade other people to believe in them. Or, more precisely, that I do not know how far I believe in them (Freud, 1920: 59).