Have you ever seen those “tip of the iceberg” jokes? Here’s an example:
Well, apparently Freud liked the analogy, too, because he used it to
describe the different parts of the mind (which we discussion in our
last Humanities class).
The unconscious (above labeled subconscious) is the biggest driving force of how we act. Freud thought that, through “repression,” traumatic events could be locked away in the unconscious. Through psychoanalysis, Freud believed he could make those events become part of the “conscious” again. Freud created this model in the early 1910’s. Then in 1923 he came up with the model of the id, ego, and superego.
Freud, as we know, had a lot of followers. In 1902 they formed the famous “Psychological Wednesday Society,” which gathered on Wednesdays in Freud’s waiting room. In 1908, they renamed themselves the “Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.”
Sadly for Freud, as we talked about in class, plenty of skeptics have criticized the famous psychoanalyst. His theories are based on a small segment of the population (mainly middle-aged women in Vienna), and as for his theories about children—apparently he didn’t actually study many kids besides the 5-year-old boy Little Hans (who had a phobia of horses). Some people also think he showed bias in his findings, only extracting information that he could use to boost his theories.
Nonetheless, it would be hard to argue that Freud ISN’T famous and acknowledged across the world. Just as an example, the foreword to Hamlet that we read mentioned a theory that Hamlet’s hesitation in killing Claudius could be explained by Freud’s theories. So, though perhaps Freud doesn’t have irrefutable evidence to back up his ideas, it’s interesting to at least pause and take a look what he thought.
(McLeod, S. A. (2013). Sigmund Freud. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html)
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