Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the psychologist behind the famous "Oedipus complex," was what we
would call an interesting character. He hypothesized that males secretly want to have sex with their mothers and kill their fathers (like Oedipus from the myths of Ancient Greece). He created the idea of the three-part psyche: the id (instincts), ego (reality), and superego (morality). Freud also attempted to delve into the ideas of the subconscious and unconscious mind. While his ideas were somewhat wacky, his personal life was just as bizarre. Here are some weird facts you may not have known about Freud.
- He was addicted to tobacco and eventually smoked more than 20 cigars a day. Despite undergoing more than 30 cancer surgeries, he never quit smoking. What a rational guy.
- When he heard about a little-known drug (what we now call cocaine), he tried it and liked its effects. So he then proceeded to distribute it to his friends and patients, some of which developed cocaine addictions and suffered from overdoses.
- Freud was an atheist but was born into a Jewish family. His books were burned by the Nazis in the 1930s, and although he left the country and ultimately died before WWII, four of his sisters died in Nazi concentration camps.
Sources:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-sigmund-freud
4 comments:
In commenting on Sigmund Freud and his psychological discovery of the "Oedipus Complex," it is only reasonable to mention Carl Jung, his immediate contemporary in the field of psychological theory. Jung countered Freud's remarks that children desire their mothers and have aggression towards their fathers. He proposed the Electra Complex, a theory in which the mind of a daughter desires her father and has aggression towards her mother. Because of Jung's proposal and ultimate development of the Electra Complex, also derived from Greek mythology, the Oedipus Complex refers to only a son's desire for his mother and aggression towards his father. So the story goes, Electra was the daughter of the king of Mycenae. In an attempt to avenge her father's death, she murdered her mother, comparable to Oedipus's story, the story from which Freud's theory is derived.
Its interesting that you bring up Freud and some of his shortcomings, such as his various drug addictions, because while he is well known as the father of modern psychology, most of his theories have been disproven over the years. The Oedipus Complex has been one of those theories. Many of Freud's studies were very unscientific and used inductive reasoning (making a generalization from a specific) instead of deductive reasoning (making a specification from a generalization), which is much more accurate. Freud came up with the Oedipus Complex from studying only one little boy called "Little Hans", who he was originally treating for a horse phobia. It is one if his most extreme examples of using inductive reasoning to draw radicle conclusions from isolated events. Even his more general theories were constructed from a relatively isolated pool of subjects, considering that the large majority of his clients were upper class, middle aged women from Vienna. But, it would also be wrong to completely dismiss some of his findings, because he was one of the first to discover the concept of the unconscious mind, which cleared the path for the psychology that we know today.
Both Lainey's and Elise's comments reveal how inaccurate the so-called "Oedipus Complex" is. I first heard of this disgusting "psychological principle" in my freshmen year. Naturally, my first instinct was to not buy it-- common sense tells us that boys do not desire to marry and sleep with their mothers. I figured that Sigmund Freud had to be crazy and was subsequently shocked to discover how widely believed this principle is. When I continued to hear the Oedipus Complex discussed every single year in english class, I began to lose all hope in humanity: if the Complex was true, then I was the only sane boy on the planet. If the Complex was false, then I mourned that such pseudoscience of a crazy psychologist could be so widespread. Having now read these posts, I have discovered that the case is the latter: Sigmund Freud was indeed crazy and humanity has bought his irrational theories. As depressing as this is, I'm still happy to now know that their is absolutely no truth behind the Oedipus Complex.
This comment is Bennett's^
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