The first time I taught Freud was as a graduate student in the mid-1990s. At that time, most undergraduates were old enough to have grown up watching reruns of M*A*S*H*, a show that, once a season or so, gave its viewers a quick lesson in Freudian psychoanalysis. The relevant episodes were based around the psychiatrist Sidney Freedman, a recurring character who would be called in when one of the characters was having psychological difficulties. One would expect people in a war zone to have psychological problems, but Dr. Freedman was not interested in diagnosing characters with, say, post-traumatic stress disorder and writing them a prescription. The problems Dr. Freedman’s patients were going through were rarely what they appeared to be. The traumas of war only exacerbated their real problems, hidden beneath their symptoms. Dr. Freedman always looked for something deeper — something repressed, something ... unconscious.
And so the treatment would begin. The patient and doctor would sit and talk. Sure enough, the problem would slowly emerge, coming up from repressed memories pushed deep into the patient’s unconscious. The dramatic climax of the episode would come when the patient recalled a memory — often from childhood — that he had tried to forget. The recovery began at the moment that the memory ceased to be repressed. A bit too tidy, perhaps. And from a psychological perspective, a bit too simplistic — but, in today’s world, totally believable. And, from a psychoanalytic perspective, classic, for the stories presented a fundamental concept of Freudian psychoanalysis: that treatment consists first and foremost of making the unconscious conscious.
For the last two years, I have been teaching a core course called “Intellectual Heritage,” in which we spend about two weeks each semester on Freud. One of my goals is to get students to realize how his ideas have influenced our world. Freud viewed psychoanalysis as a way to make unconscious desires conscious and therefore able to be redirected; it is this aspect of Freud and psychoanalysis that I emphasize to my students.
While today’s undergraduates have not grown up watching M*A*S*H*, they have grown up in a society that has internalized many of Freud’s insights. I have noticed that when I explain his model of psychoanalytic therapy to my students, they not only understand it, but they assume it is valid. They think that Freud’s scheme is more or less an accurate view of our psychological makeup. In some ways they think that even spending time on the matter is somewhat odd because, well, isn’t it obvious?
Freud is, in this sense, a victim of his own success. Students who have never read Freud and think that they know nothing of Freudian theory already understand and accept one of Freud’s most fundamental insights. We routinely think of ourselves as having both a conscious and an unconscious mind, and of our unconscious desires as motivating our actions in ways that — consciously — we are not aware of. But that is not a self-evident view that has been around since the beginning of time. Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious at the beginning of the 20th century, and in doing so changed the way we think about what we are. The beliefs that we reveal our motives unintentionally, that things we did not mean to say reveal more about what we want than things we meant to say, that the best path to understanding our psychological difficulties is through our dreams — Freud was the first person to explore those ideas systematically.
But there is a curious disconnect between the Freudian way in which we understand ourselves now and what we think about when we think about Freud. My students are well aware of Freud’s theory that the key to healing is to make the unconscious conscious; but they do not know that this is a Freudian theory, and when I ask them what they know about Freud, they never bring up this fundamental insight. Instead, they tend to bring up an assortment of other theories. The “second topography” is the most common: the theory that our psyches can be divided into the ego, superego, and id. Other students may be aware of transference, or that Freud studied dreams. And many are aware of the Oedipus complex, a key concept for Freud but one that students know only in its starkest outlines.
Of course, students should not be expected to come into class with a thorough knowledge of Freud. After all, they are in college to learn about what they do not already know. But it seems strange to me that the main text professors choose for teaching undergraduates about Freud does not discuss his most important contributions to modern life.
Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) is a wonderful book. It is Freud’s most consistent and most convincing attempt to apply psychoanalytic theory to society as a whole. His argument that our very nature as human beings causes many of the problems facing the human race provides a sober counterpoint to the optimism of the Enlightenment. The book’s enigmatic final lines also make a great lead-in to discussions about the rise of totalitarianism and the coming of the Second World War. And the book has the undeniable virtue of being short. But “C and D” has not had the impact on our society that Freud’s earlier works have — yet it has managed to occupy an almost-unchallenged position as the Freud text to assign. Students who read one Freud text during their four years of college are far more likely to have read this one than any other. But this book does not say anything about Freud’s most influential ideas — especially his theory of the unconscious that students have already internalized — and does not help us explain Freud’s impact on today’s society. Neither do most of the other texts that professors tend to assign, such as Totem and Taboo (1912-13) and The Ego and the Id (1923).
That is why we are teaching the wrong Freud.
What might the “right” Freud be? There are several possibilities. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) is the fundamental Freudian text, but it is long and unwieldy — assigning it isn’t easy, especially for an undergraduate course. It should be required reading for courses devoted entirely to Freud, but a more general course needs something more economical. The obvious but generally overlooked choice is Freud’s own introduction to psychoanalysis: the Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916-17) that he gave during the First World War. While not short, these lectures are easy to read, and there is no need to assign all of them. The rudiments of Freud’s early theories are here: the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious, the importance of dreams and of sexuality — ideas people found shocking at the time but that today are essential to our self-understanding.
It is telling, in this context, that Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933) are not nearly as good an introductory text. Those wanting to find out more about the second topography and other later theories of Freud can find valuable information in these lectures, but they are not an easy read. One reason might be that, unlike the first set, the New Introductory Lectures were never actually given as lectures. It might also be that the later ideas Freud describes in the New Introductory Lectures are not as immediately understandable because we have not internalized them as we have his earlier theories.
Freud was a prolific writer, and for those professors adventurous enough to pick and choose from different texts, even to create their own readers, there is no shortage of material. An Autobiographical Study (1925) and Studies on Hysteria (1895) provide particularly useful accounts of the development of Freud’s early theories. But for me, the best complement to the Introductory Lectures is one of Freud’s case studies — either an entire study, time permitting, or else some carefully chosen excerpts. The case studies are where you see Freud’s theories at work. I prefer the 1909 Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis (also known as the “rat man” case) because of its focus on the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.
Those who wish to focus on Freud’s missteps and the authoritarian aspects of psychoanalysis will probably prefer the case of Dora (Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, 1905), although none of his case studies are short on heavy-handedness or outlandish claims. The outlandishness may make some professors uncomfortable, but I embrace it. It helps keep students’ interest and shows how human Freud himself was. It may even be the lack of ridiculous, outlandish claims that makes Civilization so popular, unlike Totem and Taboo, which reveals a particularly far-out Freud. It can be hard to get students to take Freud seriously when talking about penis envy or while recounting the primal history of a band of brothers killing and eating their father. But to skip over the outlandish in Freud is unfortunate: Some of his most influential insights and some of his largest missteps went hand in hand.
Advanced courses in intellectual history, philosophy, or psychology will have their own agendas, and professors will pick the Freud texts, if any, that will work best in those courses. But for an introduction to Freud, it is time to move away from his later works. Freud’s early theories have influenced students in ways that they are unaware of. Teaching those theories will allow students to become more aware — one might even say conscious — of why they understand themselves the way they do.
Noah Shusterman is a lecturer in Temple University’s intellectual-heritage program.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Volume 53, Issue 19, Page B11
