Freud on Psycho-Analysis

Research Paper # 109362

Psychology > Freud

An examination into Sigmund Freud's introductory lectures on psycho-analysis.

3,346 words () | 1 source | MLA | 2006 Canada

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Freud contended that neurotics are no different than normal individuals and how his observations of neurotics led him to draw the conclusion that there exists a mental connection between neuroses, symptoms, and anxiety, which all played a profound role in the causation of a neurosis. In order to understand his position, this paper investigates how a neurosis is formed in the psychical mind, what role anxiety plays, and how the symptoms of neuroses cause sufferers to lead an isolated and neurotic life.

From the Paper:

"Freud also produces another example to further maintain that sufferers of a neurosis hold a neurotic attitude towards life. In this case the traumatic experience occurred during the adult life of a patient. The example surrounds the experiences of a young woman and her husband where he had succumbed to a condition of impotency on the night of their wedding. The husband, ashamed of his inability to perform sexually soon separated from the wife. During the next few months following the separation, the wife performed a series of rituals, such as mimicking her husband on the night of their wedding by running from one room to the other. The ritual concluded when she placed a red strain on the tablecloth in one of the rooms and then called the maid over to bare witness. This red stain in the wife's perspective represented the successful consummation of the marriage. Freud contends that the obsessional behaviour was the result of a fixation to the traumatic event. The purpose of the stain was to prove to the maid as well as herself that her husband was a strong and virile man, and though he had left her, deserved the undying devotion and faithfulness that she bestowed upon him. "