Sigmund Freud's 'The Interpretation Of Dreams'

3. The Psychological Biography In the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century Freud carries on Rousseau’s legacy. Freud saw modern individuals as a compulsive biographers of their own life. In The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899, Freud portrays himself as a heroic man, who faces the facts of life in an entirely new way. This introspection, seen in Rousseau as well, was given unprecedented scientific legitimacy as Freud’s ideas took hold. To understand ourselves, Freud asserts, we need to tell a new kind of story. This story must be contextualized within the framework of the growing child in the family structure, and the individual in the society. Most importantly, this new story must be a tale entirely devoid of religious meaning. In Freud’s concept, family takes the place of God, because it is through the family that trans-generational history is translated to culture (Phillips). Freud invented psychoanalysis, first using the word in 1896 to describe his clinical practice. In it, the patient lays on a couch with the analyst sitting behind them. The patient is …show more content…
This signifies a radical departure from earlier psychological traditions. Leon Eisenberg, a leading expert in modern psychiatry and a professor at Harvard Medical School described this change as a shift from “a state of brainlessness to one of mindlessness (Angell, “The Illusions of Psychiatry”).” Before drug companies invented psychoactive drugs in the 1950s, psychiatry had very little interest in the physical workings of the brain. Instead, the profession viewed mental illness from a Freudian perspective, asserting that psychological problems stem from subconscious