Psychoanalysis In Fin-De-De-Siécle Vienna Analysis

Improved Essays
New Interpretations of the Mind: Psychoanalysis in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
According to Carl E. Schorske, the liberal values of reason and law did not stem the re-emergence of racial prejudice and national hatred in turn-of-the-century Vienna.” The growing prominence of new social groups based along religious, ideological, and ethnic divisions eroded classical liberal values and challenged its political authority. This evolved into a psychological defeat for its adherents. Birthed in this deteriorating environment of fin-de-siècle Vienna, Sigmund Freud’s project of psychoanalysis, created new means to make sense of the crisis of liberal polity and generational change in Vienna.
In the nineteenth century, man was thought of as a rational being,
…show more content…
Civilisation began when the young men of a tribe banded to murder the father figure, the tribal leader who had appropriated all the women for his own sexual use. In the same vein, Freud appropriated the Oedipus myth to bring out its sexual dimensions, and used it to explain how sexual impulses drive our neuroses. In the Interpretation of Dreams, Freud uses his Revolutionary Dream as an example of the Oedipus complex – where a child sees his father as a rival – in the context of Vienna’s political paralysis. In August 1898, multiple political incidents weighed heavily on Freud’s mind. On the day of his dream, Freud had been waiting on a train platform when he saw the Austrian Prime Minister, Count Franz Thun enter a luxury compartment without a ticket. Schorske suggests that this triggered Freud’s resentment of the aristocracy, which then merged with his previous political experiences in his dream, where he imagined himself back at a university gathering and angrily refuting a deprecating remark on German nationalism made by a Thun-like …show more content…
Freud’s father had previously sought to impress upon young Freud that liberalism had improved the prospects of Jews. Subsequently, Freud was disgusted to discover that his father had once remained passive in the face of abuse by an anti-Semitic ruffian. Hence, Schorske suggests that that Freud’s victory over his father was really a personal fulfilment of the generational uprising amongst his intellectual peers against patriarchal traditions. While they sought to dismantle and reject their father’s liberal creeds, Freud wished to accomplish what his father had failed to adequately defend. Moreover, Freud proposed that childhood experiences were fundamental to the person’s self. By linking the individual experience to society, Freud suggests that societal constructs originated from a primal conflict, and the past continues to manifest as crises. Hence, we may extrapolate that the liberals’ discontent with their inherited traditions stemmed from the “death-wish against parents [that] dates back to earliest childhood”. Overall, Freud suggests that his personal Oedipal victory over his father could be seen as a victory over politics; in his dream, psychology overcomes

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture contains a wide assortment of men and ideas that had a profound impact on the modern intellect and culture of Vienna. Schorske’s work is the culmination of a twenty-five-year study, and within the first seventy-two pages, he introduces the rich and complex culture of the Austrian capital at the turn of the last century. A simplified version of his thesis is the rise of Viennese version of modernism along with the birth of the free-thinking man. He explores this new modernism through the short-lived Austrian liberalism and explores the importance of the creation of the Ringstrasse. Through the complexity of his writings and his utilization of metaphors, he develops a compelling case regarding the birth of the psychological man amidst political disruption.…

    • 839 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Adolf Hitler, leader of the fascist Nazi party, seized power in Germany during early 1933. Almost immediately after, they began scapegoating Jewish people, blaming them for the problems Germany faced after World War I. On April 1st of the same year, a national boycott of Jewish owned businesses was announced. In the weeks that followed, legislations were passed forcing Jews out of civil services. This was part of Hitler’s larger plan to exterminate all Jewish people from Germany and German-controlled territories.…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Brave New World In this perfect society, where one is stripped away of what makes you an individual, you are programmed at birth to act and think a certain way, and be who the state tells you to be. In A Brave New World there is a complete detachment and absence of the family, and ultimately everything is handled by the State and its 10 World Controllers. In this world, there are no longer individual countries, and the planet is united and turned into the one World State.…

    • 761 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this paper I will describe and contrast two of the major theories in psychology, the Psychoanalytical Theory and the Cognitive Theory. I personally believe that an integration between them would best suit my future approach to counseling. Therefore I will present the main theoretical concepts and psychotherapeutic techniques, and their differences and similarities in order to understand to what extent they can be integrated. Sigmund Freud, the founder and major exponent of Psychoanalytical Theory firmly believed that that experiences in childhood play a crucial part in development and personality, influencing adult functioning. He expressed that a person is driven by urges that emanate from the unconscious, leading them to repeat patterns…

    • 1347 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology and psychotherapy, was a Jewish Austrian medical doctor who lived from 1856-1939. Because of the invasion during First World War, he leaves Austria and spends his last years of life in London. Freud begins his career as a research neurologist. Over the time, he gradually moves into the practice of psychiatry. Funder (2016) states that Freud’s greatest contribution to psychotherapy was ‘’the talking cure’’…

    • 2318 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Anti Semitism Holocaust

    • 3146 Words
    • 13 Pages

    This essay endeavours to explore and argue that the Nazi policy of the Holocaust, the extermination of 6 million Jews, was a rational policy due to the fact that those who took part were mentally capable. It is clear when you explore the motives behind the movement and the policy towards the Jews before the so called “final solution” that a passionate hatred existed. Unlike what the question suggests and what is suggested in discussion and some literature around the regime, the actions were not carried out as a result of blind submission. Whilst some may have done this out of fear, it has been suggested that the majority followed suit out of traditional views of anti-Semitism. Views of anti-Semitism have been around for decades in Europe and…

    • 3146 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Freud and gothic literatures are like cousins, both respond to the problems of selfhood and identity, sexuality and pleasure, fear and anxiety, in the nineteenth and twentieth century.” Freud argued that humans are not unified wholes, but internally ruptured and alienated from nature and himself (Martin 41). “The goal of the Freudian analyst, like that of Victor Frankenstein, is to re-member the dismembered parts of our fragmented selves, to cure us by making us whole. To do so he must achieve a delicate balance of scientific objectivity and sympathetic identification, remaining detached from the patient, even as he tries to understand his (or usually her) mind. (Martin 41)…

    • 587 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the Victorian era, Individuals such as victorian gentleman had been known to set high standard moral conduct values of philosophy which dealt with their society. different issues such as social-class segregation and white supremacy had upheld reformations throughout history which had reshaped their thinking about religion and many aspects of human life. Furthermore, This era of hypocrisy had believed that every problem could be psychologically repressed, including our primary “primitiveness”. This denial of character had made people to reconsider about their identity and pushed curiosity to an extent to connect with nature and make an impact to their society and culture through the rise of repression. Sigmund Freud’s work…

    • 448 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Hitler Antisemite Analysis

    • 2472 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Those who are interested in history, and especially those who study it closely, find themselves familiar with a number of historical “villains”; these villains have left their mark on the world and ruefully earned a place in history as such. Among these many figures, few are mentioned with antisemitism being their ultimate malevolency. Even fewer are endurably mentioned when just “evil” is mentioned, or even “antisemitism”. I would argue that perhaps only one figure holds the title of being the penultimate historical villain and antisemite: Adolf Hitler. Although this is certainly true, I would like to offer a critique of the “authenticity” of Hitler’s particular antisemitic perspective.…

    • 2472 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1984 Webquest Analysis

    • 1315 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Honors Sophomore English Summer Assignment: Webquest Responses 1984 Webquest: 1. How are Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union reflected in 1984? Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union are reflected in 1984 by Big Brother and the Party.…

    • 1315 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freud focuses on how freedom diminishes from individuals when looking at the civilization. This relates to the movie Night and Fog that we watched in class because it showed how the freedom was stripped away from individuals as they were captured and sent to concentration camps. Freud believed that the world was dark and that the future was not going to be well off. Freud’s belief of what the future held turned out as he thought in this case shown by Night and Fog. Freud tends to question human nature and how culture will take over life when it comes to self-destruction and aggression.…

    • 226 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freud’s theory was based on the retrospective accounts of his patients’ childhood. He got these retrospective accounts through two distinctive and extensive processes, over a long period of time. One method was known as transference: the analyst, usually Freud, and his patients would develop a parent-child relationship (Ethan R. Plaut, 2001). The patient would be the child and Freud, the parent. The analyst would usually have an enormous impact on the patient, which Freud used to access the patient’s unconscious.…

    • 926 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He argues that the main factor in the development of history is human need for unity and well-organized community. He points out that from basic needs of human, which include food, water, shelter and clothes comes a greatest of all: the need for close interaction between people. Since the beginnings of every civilization people realized that living together in a close relations is very beneficial. Even though Freud argues men are very aggressive, they tend to overcome this inclination and try working together to attain happiness. The need for individual interest is lost as members of the community discover that one will not be able to survive alone without the help of others.…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Abstract on “The Bodily Unconscious in Freud’s Three Essays ” The article, “The Bodily Unconscious in Freud’s Three Essays,” acts as a continuance on Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The author, John Russon, defends Freud’s theory, expands, and gives his own criticisms. The article is broken down into four sections pertaining to The Body as a Prototype for the Real, The Family as a Category of Experience, The Unconscious Desire of the Other, and Objectivity and Method. Throughout the piece Russon makes a great point to link the unconscious to phenomenology.…

    • 814 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Freud’s theory of development vs. Bronfenbrenner’s theory of development What Is Freud’s Theory? Sigmund Freud, known for his development of the psychoanalytical theory of childhood development. In Freud’s theory there five stages that are called psychosexual stages.…

    • 1370 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays