What if Freud Was Right?
92 years ago, there lived a man with a lot of weird theories about sex and human relationships. His ideas created a whole new field of psychological enquiry and revolutionized psychology
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F57b655de-11ae-40e8-beb6-301c44a1285a_1280x1920.jpeg)
When you think about Sigmund Freud, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Psychoanalysis, dreams, sex?
Such was the breadth of Freud’s work that he is known to many people for different reasons. One of his prominent achievements is his pioneering work on psychoanalysis, establishing him as the father of psychoanalysis. Although a lot of his important works and theories have undergone revision since his death in 1939, some of his theories still remain as controversial as they were when he proposed them in the early 20th century. Some of Freud’s most controversial theories are his theories on sex.
For Freud, a lot of our underlying psychological processes can be explained by our sexual development, our unconscious sexual desires, and our sexual instincts. Although controversial, he considered his work about sex to be one of his most important. For him, it was sex, sex, sex
If you asked Freud some questions, this is what the conversation would be like.
Q: Hey, Mr. Freud, why does a girl tend to have a closer relationship with her father — at some point in her development — than her mother?
Ans: Because she despises her mother for bringing her into the world as a woman, and therefore giving her sexual organs (the clitoris) that are inferior to the penis.
Q: Hey Mr. Freud, why do we dream?
Ans: Our dreams represent our unconscious desires, thoughts, and fulfillments, and most of them are about sex and your repressed sexual desires (For more on what Freud thought about dreams, see here).
Q: Hey Mr Freud, how do you explain a deja vu?
Ans: A deja vu is caused by an unconscious memory or a repressed sexual desire that comes to the surface in a distorted form.
Although a lot of Freud’s work was predicated on sex, I am inclined to focus on his theories that address the relationship a kid develops with his/her parents and how this relationship is both defined and shaped by sexual dynamics. For male children, Freud defined this relationship in terms of the Oedipus complex. The male child becomes hostile to the parent of the opposite sex — his father and sees him as a competitor for his mother’s attention and love. At one point, the little boy fears that his father will castrate him because of his sexual attraction to his mother, leading him to repress the sexual attraction he has towards his mother and a healthy resolution of the Oedipus complex.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Purple Messenger to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.