RESEARCH INTO THE MIND

Southland Times, Issue 23932, 26 September 1939, Page 2

RESEARCH INTO THE MIND

PROFESSOR FREUD’S CAREER WORK DONE IN FIELD OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS Professor Sigmund Freud, the originator of psycho-analysis, whose death has been announced, was born at Freiberg, Moravia, in May 1856, the son of a tradesman. He studied medicine at Vienna. Then for a time he was a hospital surgeon. Later he taught at Vienna University and in 1886 went to Paris as a pupil of Charcot. Returning to Vienna, he was appointed lecturer oil neurology and in 1920 professor of that subject. He was one of the thinkers who have revolutionized whole systems of research. His probings into the dark and inscrutable realm of the sub-conscious have brought strange and in some cases terrifying things to light, revealing us as the unconscious tools of hidden or suppressed appetites, wishes and instincts. His theory sprang from the fact that when patients were hypnotised they often remembered things they could not recall in their ordinary state. Told of these, they usually showed considerable emotion which seemed to have a salutary effect on nerve cases. Professor Freud held that nervous trouble was due to inadequate emotional response at the time of certain unpleasant experiences and called the inducing of this belated response the “cathartic” or cleansing method and the response itself “abreaction.” INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS Later he developed a special technique, dropping hypnosis for his psycho-analytic method under which the patient in ordinary conversation and by the interpretation of his dreams revealed what was wrong with him. After studying thousands of dreams he came to the conclusion that a dream is the symbolic expression of some hidden wish which would not be admitted by the conscious personality and which usually dates from childhood. He devised a system of interpreting dreams from which, he claimed, he could learn what was in the dreamer’s unconscious mind, which is full of forgotten facts and repressed wishes. These nevertheless exercise an influence of his habits and behaviour. Imaginary ailments, he said, were indications of something in the unconscious mind, and when the mentality was abnormal it might lose the sense of reality altogether. In the course of a child’s development there were many places where the emotional life might go astray. Heredity or environment might lead to the “fixation” of an emotional attitude, accompanied by a “complex” of ideas. The individual might then be unable to face certain situations in later life. Professor Freud held that there were two types of dreams—those due to a past conscious experience and the other a fabrication probably due to thought-transference between individuals. Professor Freud’s method of treating mental diseases by psycho-analysis was strongly opposed by the bulk of the medical profession on the ground that it is calculated to make people morbid, and by others who dislike the idea of everything,in life being traced to crude sexual instincts. His system was much exploited and mishandled by charlatans in the height of the craze for it, which, however, waned after a time. Freud was of the opinion that psycho-analysis should be practised by laymen rather than doctors, as the latter had too many other things to study and could not give it the necessary attention. He believed in children being analysed. On the subject of dreams having a basis in sex motives he declared that many of his followers had been guilty of gross exaggerations. MANY TRANSLATIONS Professor Freud made a great reputation for himself by his writings in which he gradually developed his psycho-analytic system. This long series of books was translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Russia and Magyar. Among his most important works are “Studies on Hysteria” (1895), “On Dreams,” “Psychopathology of Everyday Life," “Three Papers on the Sex Theory,” “The Mind and its Relation to the Subconscious,” “On Psy-cho-analysis,” “An Introduction to Psycho-analysis,” “The Ego and the ‘lt’,” “Topical Thoughts on War and Dea,th” and “Psycho- analytic Studies on Literature and Art.” His studies yielded interesting results in relation, to other subjects and in the possibilities of their adaptation to branches of knowledge such as mythology and the history cf religion, civilization and literature. His chief works in this connection were “Totem and Taboo,” “A Childhood Memory: Leonardo da Vinci,” “Beyond the Pleasure-Prin-ciple” and “Mass Psychology and the Ego-Analysis.” Freud also edited the “Year-Book of Psycho-analysis,” the “Imago” and the “International Journal of Psycho-analysis.” To mark his seventieth birthday he was given the freedom of the city of Vienna. In August 1930, . Frankfurt awarded him the Goethe Prize. He left Vienna soon after the German absorption of Austria and spent the remainder of his life in London. At the age of 70 he published a book, “The Future of an Illusion,” in which he declared that religious creeds were the result of human illusion. Every educator or doctor aimed at liberating a child from : ts neurotic tendencies and it was incumbent on the educator of mankind to free man from fixed religious ideas and illusions. He added that there was no need to regret the impending loss of religion. Mankind’s chief aims should be humanitarianism and the limitation of human suffering. Professor Freud’s daughter Anna devoted herself to adapting psychoanalysis to the treatment of neurotic children.