FREUD - INFLUENCES

FREUD
THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Influences

"The light that he has thrown on the human mind!"
Theodore Dreisser (novelist)

THE MASTER
Freud liked to be seen as one who influences, not one who is influenced. I am a "Columbus of the mind", "a conquistador", one of those "who disturbed the sleep of the world". "I have had to hack every step of my own way through a tangled jungle alone", he boasted, contrasting his efforts on that occasion with those of Einstein. During his lifetime, Freud attracted a circle of admirers from whom he demanded total devotion. His official biographer, Jones, compares him to "the Pope of a new sect". Questioning of his "authority" or the primacy of the "sexual theory" resulted in a fall from grace. Two of his former protégé, Adler and Jung, formed alternative schools of psychoanalysis.

JUNG AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
Jung was at one time a protégé of Freud who questioned the supremacy of the "sexual theory" and broke from Freud. The result was an alternative school of psychology with a broader view of libido and its influence on human behaviour. Jung saw libido as a general creative life energy capable of being invested in different directions, into religion for instance. For Freud, the unconscious was the dark depths of the psyche, full of repressed infantile material. For Jung, it was full of mysterious life-giving forces. It was our connection with the well springs of life.

Jung saw the unconscious as having two parts - a personal layer and a collective unconscious, an inherited layer common to all mankind and composed of archetypes. The collective unconscious was the source of our ability to symbolize universal human situations. The archetypes that were its contents provided the mechanism for creating the myth, the art, the religious systems that address human issues like having parents, finding partners, and death. Jung explored the unconscious and its archetypes through a process of self hypnosis, recording the resultant fantasies in word and paintings.

CONTINUING INFLUENCE
While much of Freudian thought has been rejected or modified, his influence on modern thought was and is profound. Thomas Mann admitted that his novel, "Death in Venice" was created under the immediate influence of Freud. Novelists like Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and Lawrence intersected with Freudian themes even while rejecting his explanation of the creative impulse. "Stream of consciousness" as a literary technique finds its origins in Freud. Freud's influence on literature was acknowledged, if not valued, by the satirical magazine "Punch" in the following limerick:

But I, were I a despot, quite benevolent of course,
Armed with the last development of high explosive force,
I'd build a bigger "Bertha"
And discharge it in the void
Crammed with the novelists who brood on Messrs Jung and Freud.

It is difficult to envisage the development of existentialism or structuralism without Freud. Recently, Jaques Lacan's combination of Freud's thought with structural linguistics has resulted in a Neo-Freudian revival in France.