Reading Logs for Freud
Chapter 1, p. 13: Freud, the man who spent his life investigating the kind of intimate secrets which people strive to conceal from themselves as well as from others, was extremely reluctant to reveal his own.
My reaction: Freud’s hard work on revealing the secrets of unconscious could be inspired by his strive to protect himself from future invasions in his inner world using the tools he designed himself.
Chapter 1, p. 14: Breuer’s remark about ‘excessive generalization’ is also well-founded. Freud was a bold and original thinker; but the nature and length of the psychoanalytic procedure, which he invented, meant that he based his conclusions about human nature on a very small sample of the human race.
My reaction: Although it should have been obvious for a thinker of Freud’s caliber was that the conclusions about the nature of human inner world cannot be applied to all the mankind because all the observations were collected on a very specific sample: wealthy, educated members of Western civilization. No wonder some of the axioms of psychoanalysis do not work in everyday life.
Chapter 2, p. 24: For Freud, sex was especially suitable as a linchpin around which psychoanalytic theory could circle and coalesce.
My reaction: Speaking with contemporary words, preoccupation with the topic of sexuality could also be a good decision in terms of popularization of psychoanalysis as at that time bringing the topic of sexuality was something absolutely unexpected and intriguing.
Chapter 2, p. 27: Concentration upon the patient’s inner world of phantasy has sometimes caused psychoanalysts to neglect not only sexual seduction, but also other real events and circumstances that influence people’s lives.
My reaction: It often happens in science world when a researcher has a confidence in his views so strong it sometimes prevents him or her to look at things fairly.
Chapter 3, p. 30: Although Freud continued to be aware of trauma as a cause of disturbance; he pictured the infant’s development as an internal process only tenuously connected with interaction with the mother or other caretakers.
My reaction: Knowing about Freud’s meticulous approach to details, it is a little bit weird to observe such a transparent neglect of environmental influences of non-human nature.
Chapter 4, p. 44: Creative innovators are not always the best judges of their own works. Freud’s theory of dreams, although still influential, has not stood the test of time unmodified, as Freud believed it would.
My reaction: Although, this theory and many other ideas, presented by Freud, altered the way of thinking about psychological phenomenon of many people for generations further, no matter how completed or thought-out they were.
Chapter 4, p. 49: In other words, symbols are treated by Freud as predominantly serving the function of concealment, or of making the anatomical aspects of sexuality more acceptable.
My reaction: Some aspects of Freud’s theory seem to be obviously weak and …
