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John F Kihlstrom, Personality, Chapter 8

But Is It True?

This question can’t be answered without considering the various levels at which psychoanalytic theory is presented. At its most general level of explanation, in terms of the metapsychological propositions, psychoanalytic theory doesn’t look much different from other psychological theories of mind and behavior. So, at this level, psychoanalytic theory appears to be true — at least as true as any other psychological theory.

Of course, at this level psychoanalytic theory isn’t really distinguishable from other psychological theories. That’s why it’s important to unpack the general metapsychological propositions to identify those general, specific, and empirical propositions which are both increasingly amenable to testing by means of conventional scientific procedures and increasingly specific to Freudian psychoanalytic theory. So, to take the example above:

We can unpack the Dynamic point of view into the general proposition that the important motives for behavior are sexual and aggressive in nature.

At the specific level, the proposition is that children harbor erotic feelings toward the parent of the opposite sex, and hostile feelings toward the parent of the same sex.

And at the empirical level, the proposition is that young boys regard their fathers as rivals for their mothers’ affections.

And at the level of raw behavior, we can determine whether, as an empirical matter, it’s true that young boys are afraid of their father — a fact which is explained by the general, specific, and empirical propositions nested under the Dynamic point of view.

So, with this in mind, let’s consider just three examples.

The Oedipus Complex

Perhaps the most famous test of Freudian theory concerned the Oedipus complex. Here, the empirical observation is that little boys hate and fear their fathers, and the theoretical explanation is (not to put too fine a point on it) that they want to have sex with their mothers, and are afraid that their fathers will punish them with castration. So, the questions are:

Do little boys express negative affect toward their fathers?

If so, do they do this because of their sexual interest in their mothers?

The problem is that there’s an obvious confound: the little boy’s father is his mother’s lover, but he’s also the disciplinarian in the house. So, assuming that little boys do harbor feelings of fear toward their fathers, is this because they fear castration by a romantic rival or because they’re afraid of ordinary punishment?

Here the critical study is by an anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski, who in Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927) showed that, contrary to Freud’s claim, the Oedipus Complex was not universal. During and after World War I, Malinowski did a great deal of fieldwork in in the Trobriand Islands, an area of the South Pacific that we now know as Papua New Guinea. In the course of his work he discovered that Trobriand society was organized quite differently from Western society: in Trobriand culture, children are disciplined by their paternal uncles — that is, their father’s brother. So here was a perfect natural experiment, in which the roles of sexual rival (the father) and disciplinarian (the uncle) were separated.

So who does the little boy fear?The uncle, of course,not the father. To the extent that little boys are afraid of anyone, they’re afraid of the family disciplinarian. In Western culture, that’s the father. In Trobriand culture, that’s the paternal uncle. Sex has nothing to do with it..

The Theory of Infantile Sexuality

OK, so the Oedipus complex isn’t universal. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Freud was wrong about his own culture — that seriously repressed society of Victorian Europe (never mind that, by all accounts, Victoria herself had a vigorous and enjoyable sex life). So how does Freud do when he’s dealing with matters closer to home?

In the Three Essays on Infantile Sexuality (1902), where Freud first announces that what children repress is their fantasies of sexual involvement with their parents, rather than memories of actual sexual abuse and other traumas, Freud argued that much infant behavior was actually sexual in nature, and not just motivated by hunger, thirst, and elimination of waste. Freud argued that infants nursing at their mother’s breast displayed “orgasmic” behavior, such as rubbing the genitals or breast, pelvic thrusting and falling asleep afterwards (surprisingly, Freud didn’t claim that they also lit up a cigarette and turned on the sports news). And in support of these assertions, Freud referred to documentation in a recently published study of “pleasure-sucking” by infants, conducted by Lindner (1879-1880). Lindner’s article was published in Hungarian, which hardly any in his audience could read (and, frankly, neither could Freud). But a century later, Malcolm Macmillan arranged for an authoritative translation of Lindner’s paper — and found that Lindner actually reported very little “pleasure-sucking”.

Of the 500 infants he observed, Lindner reported pleasure-sucking (defined as sucking in the absence of feeding) in only 69, and he never described the behavior in sexual terms.

Only five of these 69 infants rubbed the genitals or breast in conjunction with pleasure-sucking, and only one or two of these five did so consistently.

While Lindner described four infants as “exultant” suckers, these infants did not fall asleep, or even relax, when they had finished sucking — and, in fact, he noted that the pleasure-sucking infants also engaged in the behavior after awakening, or after a bath.

So, fewer than 1% of the infants observed by Lindner engaged in anything like “orgasmic” motions during pleasure-sucking, and even this figure is open to criticism. Freud just made this up.

The Case of Dora

OK, so he got the data wrong. But his clinical cases are convincing, aren’t they? Not necessarily.

Let’s look at one of Freud’s most famous cases, that of Dora, which Freud published as a fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria in 1905. Freud described it as a not-very-interesting case, just a regular old psychoanalysis of a pretty common type off patient, and also a failure, because the patient didn’t complete treatment. But he thought that it was useful as an illustration of the concepts and methods of his emerging technique of dream analysis.

Dora, whose real name we now know was Ida Bauer, was 18 years old when she was referred to Freud by her father (who had been treated by Freud some years before). She presented a variety of hysterical symptoms, including aphonia (difficulty speaking), dysponea (difficulty breathing), coughing, and headaches, depression, and generally difficult behavior.

In their early meetings, Dora related to Freud that her father was being treated for tuberculosis, and while undergoing a “rest cure” in a sanitarium resort had developed a friendship with Herr K., and especially his wife, Frau K., who became a sort of nurse to Dora’s father. Dora kept herself busy by babysitting the K’s children, taking long walks, sometimes in the company of Herr K. At one point, Herr K. grabbed her and kissed her, and at another point apparently propositioned her. Dora reported all this to her father, but Herr K. denied everything and her father concluded that she had imagined the whole thing.

It turns out, of course, that Dora’s father was having an affair with Frau K., and it seems plausible that her father was trading her to Herr K. in return (this way, her father could sleep with the younger Frau K., and Herr K. could sleep with the even younger Dora, so everyone wins except Dora and her mother).

Freud’s analysis, however, focused on her dreams, including one in which her house was on fire. Her mother wanted to salvage her jewelry, but her father insisted that they evacuate immediately: “I refuse to let myself and my two children be burnt for the sake of your jewel-case”. The jewel-case is, of course, a fairly obvious symbol for Dora’s virginity. Dora is burning with desire, but she is concerned for her virtue (not to mention her virginity), which her father was all to willing to sacrifice.

Unlike her father, Freud acknowledged the facts as Dora related them, but believes that she should have been excited, in a positive way, by Herr K.’s kiss and his sexual interest in her, and that her family difficulties were not sufficient to explain her hysteria. Instead, her difficulties in breathing were a symbolic expression — via the defense of displacement — of the pressure she felt on her chest when Herr K. embraced her.

Instead, Freud concluded that Dora wasn’t simply repressing her sexual desire for Herr K.

In fact, he said, it was obvious that Dora had a repressed sexual desire for her own father.

And not only that, she had a repressed homosexual desire for Frau K as well.

When Freud announced his conclusions to Dora, on New Year’s Eve 1900, she promptly left treatment. Later on, however, Dora recontacted Freud. She told him that, following her termination of treatment, she had confronted her father and Herr and Frau K.; they acknowledged the affair, and all the machinations surrounding Dora and Herr K. At this point, her hysterical symptoms remitted.

So here’s a great instance where Freud’s theories got in the way. Instead of acknowledging the trauma of Herr K’s sexual assault, and also of her difficult living situation, being put in the middle of not one but two affairs (one attempted, one consummated), Freud imposed his theory of infantile sexuality, the Oedipus complex, and all the rest on Dora. It wasn’t enough that Dora’s father had attempted to pimp her out to Herr K. — no, she had to have an unresolved Oedipus complex as well.

It’s a thoroughly botched case, but one which reveals Freud’s actual method. The theory comes first, and all the facts are fixed around the theory. The problems of the real world don’t matter. All that’s important is what happens in fantasy.

Freud’s fantasy, that is.

Resuscitating Freud

Advocates for psychoanalytic theory have not failed to respond to critiques such as this one. In particular, some analysts have seized on evidence for unconscious mental processes as a reason to revalue Freudian theory in a more positive light.

The Dynamic and the Cognitive Unconscious

A wide variety of clinical and experimental studies, conducted in a wide variety of domains and with many different types of subjects, provide evidence for several different aspects of the psychological unconscious. For a sample, see the Lecture Supplement on “Consciousness”, and my article on “The Rediscovery of the Unconscious”, as well as other articles available on my website in a section devoted to “Consciousness and the Unconscious Mind”.

In the first place, there is ample evidence that certain mental processes, if not strictly automatic, operate unconsciously in the sense that we have no direct introspective awareness of them: they can be known only indirectly, by inference.

With respect to the cognitive contents on which these processes operate, there is also ample evidence for implicit memories and implicit percepts, which influence experience, thought, and action independently of, and even in the absence of, conscious perception or recollection.

There is also more tentative evidence for the involvement of implicit thoughts in problem-solving, and for implicit learning resulting in unconscious declarative and procedural knowledge.

There is also reason to think that motivational and emotional states, like cognitive states, can themselves affect experience, thought and action in the outside of conscious awareness.