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Authors: Kathleen Krull
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The other men—all younger—competed for Freud’s approval and even his patronage—he referred patients to them at his discretion.
Emboldened, perhaps, by his new Wednesday evening support system, in 1905 he published what many consider his most controversial book, all about sex. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality contained his ideas about sexuality in infant behavior such as thumb-sucking, and in events like toilet-training. Freud worked on the Sexuality book at the same time as his Joke book, keeping the two manuscripts on tables next to each other.
In explaining children’s sexual impulses—still today considered a highly inflammatory subject—Freud was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin demonstrated that human beings did not simply appear on earth in their final form. They were the biological result of many millions of years of change or evolution. Earlier, people (even Freud) had assumed that children had no sexual feelings, and that sexuality simply appeared when a person hit puberty. Freud, however, substituted the idea of an evolving sexuality. He theorized that human sexuality (as well as other aspects of a mature person) had its beginnings in early childhood. From infancy, it grew and evolved. Infants were actually very interesting—Freud saw them as “polymorphously perverse,” meaning they got pleasure from any kind of stimulation.
Not everyone agreed—then or now. Some of his first followers parted company with Freud over the very idea of childhood sexuality. But this book was a springboard from which later researchers could refine or oppose his theories. The biggest fans called it a landmark work that freed the twentieth century once and for all from the straightlaced Victorian Age.
If he was looking for fame, he got it. His book on sexuality placed him smack in the limelight. But was he famous or infamous? Now Freud’s name was a something of a dirty joke to many respectable folks in Vienna, one not to be mentioned when ladies were present.
Over the next several years, the atmosphere on Wednesday nights, often testy, grew hostile. The members didn’t necessarily think alike. Alfred Adler had some important insights—he introduced the notion of “sibling rivalry” (the idea that brothers and sisters are competitive and jealous), the idea that birth order within a family has a significant effect on personality, and the “inferiority complex” (a feeling of unworthiness that he called a result of bad parenting). But he clashed with Freud in many areas—most notably in his assertion that it wasn’t the sex drive but aggression, the desire for power, that was the crucial factor in human development.
Adler up and left the society, taking nine men with him and promptly forming another group. Freud was dead set against the two groups sharing ideas, even though sharing ideas is a fundamental part of the scientific process.
Freud eventually broke—usually bitterly—with virtually all his supporters, for a host of reasons. He could be combative, or sometimes chillingly abrupt. “Dear Sir,” he might write to a colleague, “I no longer desire personal contact with you.” His rift, particularly brutal, with his former friend, mentor, and earliest collaborator, Josef Breuer, set up a pattern: When, as an old man, Breuer ran into Freud on a Vienna street and opened his arms to give him a warm greeting, Sigi pretended not to see him and walked on.
By 1906 the Wednesday group had seventeen argumentative members. For his fiftieth birthday they pitched in and gave him a medal engraved with Oedipus. Two years later the group moved beyond days of the week and renamed itself the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. With forty-three men attending, the first international pyschoanalytic conference was held in Salzburg, Austria. The conference highlight was Freud speaking for three hours about “The Rat Man.”
This case study was about a twenty-nine-year-old patient mortally afraid
Emboldened, perhaps, by his new Wednesday evening support system, in 1905 he published what many consider his most controversial book, all about sex. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality contained his ideas about sexuality in infant behavior such as thumb-sucking, and in events like toilet-training. Freud worked on the Sexuality book at the same time as his Joke book, keeping the two manuscripts on tables next to each other.
In explaining children’s sexual impulses—still today considered a highly inflammatory subject—Freud was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin demonstrated that human beings did not simply appear on earth in their final form. They were the biological result of many millions of years of change or evolution. Earlier, people (even Freud) had assumed that children had no sexual feelings, and that sexuality simply appeared when a person hit puberty. Freud, however, substituted the idea of an evolving sexuality. He theorized that human sexuality (as well as other aspects of a mature person) had its beginnings in early childhood. From infancy, it grew and evolved. Infants were actually very interesting—Freud saw them as “polymorphously perverse,” meaning they got pleasure from any kind of stimulation.
Not everyone agreed—then or now. Some of his first followers parted company with Freud over the very idea of childhood sexuality. But this book was a springboard from which later researchers could refine or oppose his theories. The biggest fans called it a landmark work that freed the twentieth century once and for all from the straightlaced Victorian Age.
If he was looking for fame, he got it. His book on sexuality placed him smack in the limelight. But was he famous or infamous? Now Freud’s name was a something of a dirty joke to many respectable folks in Vienna, one not to be mentioned when ladies were present.
Over the next several years, the atmosphere on Wednesday nights, often testy, grew hostile. The members didn’t necessarily think alike. Alfred Adler had some important insights—he introduced the notion of “sibling rivalry” (the idea that brothers and sisters are competitive and jealous), the idea that birth order within a family has a significant effect on personality, and the “inferiority complex” (a feeling of unworthiness that he called a result of bad parenting). But he clashed with Freud in many areas—most notably in his assertion that it wasn’t the sex drive but aggression, the desire for power, that was the crucial factor in human development.
Adler up and left the society, taking nine men with him and promptly forming another group. Freud was dead set against the two groups sharing ideas, even though sharing ideas is a fundamental part of the scientific process.
Freud eventually broke—usually bitterly—with virtually all his supporters, for a host of reasons. He could be combative, or sometimes chillingly abrupt. “Dear Sir,” he might write to a colleague, “I no longer desire personal contact with you.” His rift, particularly brutal, with his former friend, mentor, and earliest collaborator, Josef Breuer, set up a pattern: When, as an old man, Breuer ran into Freud on a Vienna street and opened his arms to give him a warm greeting, Sigi pretended not to see him and walked on.
By 1906 the Wednesday group had seventeen argumentative members. For his fiftieth birthday they pitched in and gave him a medal engraved with Oedipus. Two years later the group moved beyond days of the week and renamed itself the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. With forty-three men attending, the first international pyschoanalytic conference was held in Salzburg, Austria. The conference highlight was Freud speaking for three hours about “The Rat Man.”
This case study was about a twenty-nine-year-old patient mortally afraid
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