An intellectual biography refers to offering insights into Sigmund Freud's life, his creative and intellectual work, the relations between his works, life and science. The paper also discusses the significance of the work and life of Sigmund Freud. This project, therefore, involves conducting comprehensive research on Freud's life and the significant contributions to philosophy and a critique of his contributions in regards to science (Izenberg, 2019) .
The relevance of the study
The study of Sigmund Freud's biography is critical in understanding the current advancements in different psychological and behavioral treatments and pedagogies in the 20 th century and beyond. One of Sigmund Freud's contributions to psychology is psychoanalysis theory. Psychoanalysis is a psychopathology and treatment theory for mental challenges. About a half a century ago, the psychopathology paradigm had a huge influence on the practice and teaching of psychiatry. Today, more advanced and better theories emerged as an improvement in psychoanalysis, however, psychoanalysis has been marginalized and is not being forceful as it initially was in the clinical and academic space ( Eagle, 2019 ). One, therefore, wonders whether the psychoanalysis paradigm is still relevant in practice and psychiatric science.
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In the complex environment for the practice and theory of psychoanalysis, there are many comments, either by trying to connect the gap with science or by defining the field as residing outside of science. As such, some psychologists have given their support to the revised theories like the attachment theory that have good support of scientific evidence. Some analysts believe that Sigmund Freud's school of thought regarding the unconscious mind is highly compatible with the advanced modernized neuroscience ( Freud, 1959 ). Other schools of thought have moved in the opposite direction, presenting the argument that it is enough to provide a coherent interpretation of psychological phenomena.
Therefore, examining the intellectual biography of Sigmund Freud is essential for bringing to light some of these theories fronted by the scholar and illuminating their relevance in the modern scientific stage in the 20 th century.
Sigmund Freud Claims
In his famous works " The Future of an Illusion ” Sigmund Freud made a declaration that religion is an obsessional neurosis. Freud’s work provoked lots of controversy and criticism. However, his works remains relevant for those interested in understanding the relations between psychology, religion, and philosophy. Freud justifies in details about the claim that religion is the ultimate wish fulfillment. He starts by highlighting civilization problems and how human beings' instincts are naturally anti-social and destructive. Since a person's innate wishes are derogatory, humans have to create a belief system for himself to help him fulfill his wishes in a manner that prohibits him from acting on them (Oppenheim, 2018). Freud, therefore, refers to religion as an illusion that was born from humans need to make his helpless situations tolerable and to build up from memories of his childhood and the human race childhood. Religion, according to Freud, is a soft landing than a man resorts to when suffering cannot be explained, and death is looming. Therefore, gods come in to control death, nature, and woe to give comfort to man when he has no explanation of the pain.
While Freud was upfront regarding atheism and had the belief that religion is created by humans and it is something that people have the power to overcome. Freud in his claim was aware of how powerful religion influenced identity. He also agreed that his Jew heritage and antisemitism that he regularly encountered significantly shaped his identity. In some of Freud's well-known literary works, he fronted the suggestion that this was just an 'illusion,' some type of neurosis, and an effort by individuals and groups to take control over the outside world ( Pals, 2006 ). In Freud's book published back in 1933, "New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis," some of the greatest quotes about religion included the fact that religion is some form of illusion and it borrows its powers from the ability to perfectly fit in with humans instinctual wishful thinking and impulses.
Freud Background and Contribution
Sigmund Freud was an Australian neurologist in the period 1856-1939. Freud was the psychoanalysis founder, a movement that was synonymous with the theory that the unconscious motives control most of the behaviors. Sigmund Freud grew an interest in hypnotism and how it could help terminally ill persons. He later dropped hypnotism and picked up dream analysis and free association in developing what we refer to today as 'the talking cure.' It is the talking cure that grew to be the center of psychoanalysis ( Freud & Bonaparte, 1954 ). Freud also developed an interest in hysteria, which is today referred to as the conversion syndrome.
In his lifetime, Freud became influential in two related but very different ways. Freud came up with a theory regarding the behavior of humans and the human mind simultaneously, and a clinical method for helping unhappy people, like the neurotic.
Maybe the most important and influential contribution by Freud to the modern world is his thinking and creation of the unconscious. In the 19 th C, positivism was the most populous trend in the Western world, claiming that people could gather knowledge about their world and themselves, and exercise rational control over the two. However, according to Freud, these claims were delusional. Freud claimed that humans are not fully aware of the things they think about, and most of the time, take actions for reasons that do not have anything to do with their conscious thoughts. Freud's unconscious school of thought was indeed was a new school of thinking in that he suggested that awareness in human beings existed in several unique layers and numerous human thoughts were happening 'below the surface.' He referred to these thoughts ad 'royal road to the unconscious' as a perfect illustration humans’ unconscious life. In his works “ The Interpretation of Dreams ,” Freud developed two arguments that there is unconscious, and he also came up with the method for accessing this unconscious.
Another critical area of interest in Sigmund Freud's life is his views on religion. Most of the time, the scholars compare his views to those of Carl Jung, maybe because they interacted a lot, or they had diverse views, or their views both contributed to the religious perceptions in the modern world today. Freud thought that God was just an illusion based on a human's infantile desire to have a supreme and powerful father figure ( Wulff, 1991 ). Freud also believed that religion was important because it was a useful approach to retraining from violent impulses. Freud, from his story, says that his parents were Jew, and as such, he naturally became Jew. This is an indication of his being well conversed with the Bible and the Bible stories.
Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud, almost a decade after he passed on, is arguably still the most popular name in the world of psychoanalysis. Freud is assumed to be the founding father of the new and advanced psychology. His ideas and theories on the associations existing between the conscious and subconscious mind, the soul and body, and the environment or things that surrounds us, are still as common and widely known today just like they were initially when Freud first introduced them at the beginning of 20 th century. Years have passed, and many customizations and developments have been done around these Freudian theories, and one wonders whether they are still relevant and their meaning in the scientific world. It would be interesting to understand whether the psychoanalysis foundations established by Freud are always the ones that the modern psychotherapy needs to be built off of, or whether these ideas does not have the nuance that the contemporary mental health care and analysis requires.
Freud Psychoanalysis Theories Outdated
The first thing one needs to understand is that psychoanalysis as a psychology field is all about showing deeper insights into a person’s psyche. This is very different from how people view modern methods and psychotherapy and psychoanalysis usage. Particularly for the professional working in this field daily and have an engagement in the process of itself. The concept of ego/id/superego and the study of dream is just very simple ideas and approaches that will not accomplish much in solving the issues that the modern and advanced mental health care have been developed to address.
The majority of the techniques, methods, and conclusions by Sigmund Freud have been out to question. It has been to the point where some of these theories get perceived as damaging and dangerous to some population segments. A perfect example of Freud's doubted and dangerous views are those concerning women and homosexuality.
As a personal opinion, a major problem with Freud is that while his concepts seem to be appealing and an intrigue to common sense, but there is no or very sparse scientific evidence to support them. Since the very first presentation of Freud's ideas, modern psychology has not done much to give evidence to many of these claims over the many years. For example, there is scientific proof supporting Freud's idea that boys lust for their mothers and do not love their fathers. There is also no scientific proof for the idea of the id, ego, and superego and their respective control of a person's psyche. Even though these terminologies are still widely used today, there is scientific evidence for their claims. Freud was also not right about the differentiation of psychology of gender. The notion of 'penis envy' is today viewed as being tragic and laughable.
Freud is Partially Relevant
There is no doubt Freud has been the founding father of psychology. There is no contention that Freud's contribution to the subject cannot be contested, specifically about theories surrounding the unconscious and conscious human mind. Freud gave the modern man the foundation over which to build psychology and to understand human behavior.
There is no doubt that Freud's contribution was immense to the field of understanding human behaviour, religion and science in general. His theories penetrated deeper into the western cultures and they are still being studied in literature. This evident as admitted by Freud's critic and a psychologist Kihlstrom that "More than Lenin or Hitler, more than Einstein or Crick, better than Presidents Kennedy or Roosevelt, more than Picass or Stravinsky,” Freud's influence and contributions to the new world and the modern and advanced culture has been long-lasting and profound.
However, it has been noted that with time, Freud's theories have significantly fallen apart with the academics. In other words, psychologists completing some vital work would not be interested in using Freud's work as a credible source. In 1996, the journal named "Psychological Science" concluded that there is almost nothing to be said, therapeutically or scientifically, to the benefit of the whole Freudian system or any of its component dogmas.
But let's not be quick to judge or make conclusions; how does this mean that Freud is still relevant in today's scientific world? It is important to contend that Freud was correct when he asserted that humans are not the masters of their minds. He demonstrated that the human thoughts, experiences, and actions are not driven exclusively by our conscious mind, but by the outside forces of our conscious control and awareness. We are controlled by the consciousness that we could, in the end, understand through the therapeutic process he named psychoanalysis. Today, only a handful of scientists and analysts could argue against Freud's unconscious mind concept, and his claim for the primary role of the unconscious mind in the human actions is still relevant to psychology today as it was in the beginning.
Freud also presented his argument for the concept that the human brain can be compartmentalized. He argued that the brain workings could be broken down into several different parts. This was definitely a primitive school of thought since Freud mostly talked of the id, ego, and superego. These ideas are believed to have outgrown with time, and as mentioned above, they are no longer acceptable. However, the thinking surrounding compartmentalization has been very critical in influencing different thinkers like Marvin Minsky, a cognitive scientist who talks about society's mind.
Freud's contributions in regards to defense mechanisms still hold some water in today's scientific meanings and use. It is agreeable that scholars today, including psychologists, still use regular defenses like repression, denial, rationalization, projection, and intellectualization. Freud's ideas regarding catharsis and transference are also still useful today. Even though his views on dream interpretation no longer make much sense, some of humanity's dreams are generally driven by their conscious and subconscious minds.
It is unfortunate that Freud's contributions to psychology are more of an attitude than any true therapeutic technique. Even though this is not a bad thing, the Freud's contributions application in real interventions is reduced. It is a good thing that Freud established the foundation for modern mental health care, useful for both physicians and patients.
Sigmund Freud and Religion
While Sigmund Freud is famously known for his psychoanalysis theory and ideas, he also had a strong interest in matters religious. Freud inherited his religious background from his parents, but as he became an adult, he transformed into an atheist. However, his Jewish upbringing and background played a huge role in the development of his ideas. Sigmund Freud was born in Freiburg, Moravia, a town heavily predominated by the Roman Catholic. Freud's parents were Jewish. In his entire life, Freud was interested in understanding spirituality and religion, and he wrote numerous books about religion, including 'Moses and Monotheism' (1930) and 'Totem and Taboo' (1913). Freud believed that religion was an expression of underlying psychological distress and neurosis. At different times in his literary works, he suggested that religion was an effort to control the Oedipal complex (which is to the contrary to the Electra complex), a method through which people provide structure to social groups, fulfilling their wishes, an infantile delusion, and an attempt to control the outside world.
In his book titled " The Future of an Illusion, " Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, made a declaration that religion is an obsessional neurosis. This work provoked lots of controversy and criticism, and it remains relevant for those interested in understanding the relations between psychology, religion, and philosophy. Freud justifies in details about the claim that religion is the ultimate wish fulfillment (Wollheim, 1981). He starts by highlighting civilization problems and how human beings' instincts are naturally anti-social and destructive. Since a person's innate wishes are derogatory, humans had to create a belief system for himself to help him fulfill those wishes in a manner that prohibited him from acting on them. Freud, therefore, refers to religion as an illusion that was born from humans need to make his helpless situations tolerable and to build up from memories of his childhood and the human race childhood. Religion, according to Freud, is a soft landing than a man resorts to when suffering cannot be explained, and death is looming (Freud, 1961). Therefore, gods come in to control death, nature, and suffering to give comfort to man when he has no explanation of the pain.
During this period, there were common narratives and alternative thoughts about religion, for example Carl Jung kind of reasoning about religion. Carl Jung was a psychotherapist and a psychiatrist who came up with analytical psychology. Carl Jung's view on religion was different from that of Freud. Carl's views were more of sympathetic and supportive of religion. In his works "Psychology and Religion" Jung explains that God's existence cannot be answered by psychology. Like Freud, Jung believed that people believed in their gods as a result of their thought process, but he had a strong feeling that religion cannot be outlawed or discouraged. Jung's school of thought was that people obtain their identity from artifacts and people, including religion. He believed that people gain a sense of unity with their world, and they will have to express it in symbolic and real terms, religious terms. He put more emphasis on individualism, a process of having a sudden and profound understanding of self. Jung believed that individualism is at the core of religion ( Mitchell & Margaret, 1995 ). Therefore, according to the philosopher, for a person to live a fulfilling life, they must have a connection to this important and necessary spiritual experience to reduce the doubts and insecurities in their minds. Through religion, an individual has the ability to unconscious to become conscious after death. Jung supported the tolerance for religion and spiritual awakening.
Sigmund Freud believe in becoming unconscious in regards to desires and self. In terms of religion, Freud believes in two primary schools of thought that leads to monotheism. Wishful thinking refers to when a person believes in something because they want to and not because they have evidence to show for it. Secondly, Freud endorses a point that people had a subconscious or a hidden desire for a supreme and fatherly figure. Since human beings easily get lonely and depressed, they are interested in putting their faith to be bigger than man, and this case its God. God helps humans to reconcile their depression, even though the concept of God may be false, at least according to Freud's perception. Freud's claim that religion is an illusion implies that religion cannot be disproven or proven (Freud, 1961) . However, an illusion can also characterize likelihood or improbability. In Freud's school of thought, religion is improbable and cannot be disproven fully. Jung, on the other hand, believes that religion is probable.
In ‘Psychology and Religion’ many thinkers believed that religion is a good thing, and it benefits society, and as a result, it must be supported to remain forever. Freud, on the other hand, in ‘The Future of an Illusion’ becomes completely negative and opposes religion, referring to it as a collective neurosis behavior. He had a strong wish that religion be done away with. Scholars and other psychologists like Jung, on the other hand, expresses that religion is a human to show of collective unconscious in his works ( Jones, 2019 ). They believed that religion was a way of helping the process of individualism, exploring oneself, and finding a way to accept who we are as human beings. Jung came up with the concept of archetypes. They are generally the mental facilities that create images of some things. He had the thought that humans are born in God's 'archetype', imagery that all human beings are predisposed to. In an effort to justify his belief in archetype, Jung refers to the fact that even though there are hundreds and thousands of religions in existence, all of them share a common primary idea, the supreme being, called God. Overall, Jung believed in God. In his words, he says “I don't believe, I understand that God exists" ( Zilboorg, 1962 ). Freud, on the other hand believed there is no God, ludicrous and ridiculous. Jung broke down the psyche to Freud in a new approach, saying that humans have a feminine and masculine side of the psyche. Freud, on his side, believed in the ego, id, and superego.
Despite the differences in Jung and Freud's thoughts about religion and psychology in their works, C arl Jugs psychology and Religion and the future of an illusion, respectively, they also had some similarities in thought (Izenberg, 2019). They all had the belief in the unconscious and the critical role it played in human behavior and in justifying the dreams that people pursue daily. They also believed that religion is not negative but positive for society. However, according to Freud, religion is just only important until some specific point, where human evolves from his primal, basic societies. Both scholars based their frameworks of religion on the concept that humans have separate parts of their psyche. They also agree that religion has been useful in helping people solve certain problems. Overall, Jung and Freud had very divergent views on religion. They both accept the importance of religion, but Jung was sympathetic to religion.
References
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