Enda and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Four, Part One.

     The Rise and Fall of Sigmund Freud. Part One




   Whatever happened to Sigmund Freud? In 1954, the well known American psychologist Calvin S. Hall published a book called ' A Primer of Freudian Psychology'. Freud, Hall claimed created what he called "a dynamic human psychology.". This psychology, Hall said, studied the changes and transformations of energy within the human personality...
     "This was Freud's greatest achievement," Hall wrote, "and is one of the greatest achievements in modern history. It is certainly the crucial event in the history of psychology." Yet what was supposed to be true in mid-1950's America seems to be no longer believed in 2017. To-day Freud is rarely mentioned and his theories are mostly ignored.
    Hall didn't stand alone in his enthusiasm for Freud. Writers like the U.S. sociologist Philip Rieff. Marthe  Robert in France and the famous literary scholar and novelist Lionel Trilling praised Freud as a great truth seeker. Few people do this today. So what happened? Well, times change and people change with it.
    Born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1856 and back then what was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Freud became a medical student and then a doctor of medicine. He visited France and Germany and studied psychology in France. Soon he developed his theories of psychology using what was called "the talking cure".
    Upper middle class men and many women with mental problems came to Freud's office in Vienna to talk to him and pour out their inner struggles. They sat on a famous couch in his study. Freud listened to them and then suggested ways to cure their neuroses. Freud didn't just propose cures. He also expounded theories about why men and women had mental problems. The human mind, he claimed had three main systems.
    First off, there was the id, which should rid the mind of tension. The id was the home of dreams, desires and mental illnesses. Then comes the ego, which should control the id. The ego if healthy, keeps everything going normally in the mental arena. Third, comes the super ego, which has the power to punish the person or approve of a person's actions. Along with these three components, Freud claimed to have discovered other parts of the mind. There was the pleasure principle, instincts and many other driving forces. For Freud, the id must be reined in, and the ego should take control.
     "Where id was," went one of the Freudians's most famous slogans, "let ego be." This was how a person became mentally healthy. Yet Freud was not just a doctor and a theorist of the mind. He was also an author who poured out his ideas in many books. Works of his like "The Future of An Illusion'., "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life', and 'Three Essays on Sexuality'  became well-known. A gifted stylist, Freud wrote in an attractive style. These books and a growing circle of devotees made Freud famous - at least with some people.