James Baquet

    Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), like Albert Einstein (whom he met briefly, and with whom he corresponded) is one of those rare figures who has become a household name, despite the fact that few really understand his thought. With Marx and Einstein he has been called one of the “architects of the modern age,” people whose ideas have shaped the time we live in. But whereas Marx’s ideas were social and economic, and Einstein’s scientific, Freud explored the interior of the human mind.

    His work is not without controversy. Many find that his foundational ideas — such as his emphasis on sex, and his stance that many psychological differences are pathological — are overly pessimistic. Nevertheless, his pioneering use of psychoanalysis (the so-called “talking cure,” in which the patient dialogues with the therapist), the technique of free association to explore the patient’s condition, and the use of dreams as indicators of a patient’s mental state, laid the groundwork for the sophisticated understanding of psychology that pervades the modern world.

    He was born in what is now the Czech Republic, but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied medicine and began his practice in Vienna, where he stayed until displaced by the rise of the Nazis. He moved to London in 1938, where he died a year later.

    Freud’s work is too complex to be explained fully here. Rather, let us look at two key ideas that have entered the common vocabulary.

    The first is “the unconscious.” Freud lent scientific credibility to the romantic idea that there is a part of our mind not normally accessible to us, which has an unperceived effect on our behavior. This is where repressed memories are stored.

    The other is the division of the psyche into three parts: the id, which corresponds more or less to instinctual urges; the super-ego, something like the moral “conscience”; and the ego, the conscious self that mediates between the other two.

    Freud had many more theories. Agree with him or not, no conversation on human psychology can go very far without considering his thoughts.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. spreads throughout

    2. without hope, expecting bad results

    3. position, belief

    4. person known to ordinary people

    5. pushed out of one’s home

    6. negotiates between two or more sides

    7. ill, mentally disturbed

    8. mind

    9. argument, disagreement

    10. coming from natural impulses