Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was one of the most influential people of the twentieth century. Known as the father of psychoanalysis his ideas on psychology attracted many of the great minds of his time and have helped shape many of the ways we treat psychological disorders to this day. One of these great minds of his time was Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was a Swiss born psychiatrist and founder of the school of analytical psychology. Jung was considered Freud's heir apparent to the International Psychoanalytic Association until Jung started to disagree with some of Freud's basic theories which ended their seven year friendship. Even though some of Jung's theories are based on Freud's theories Jung's theories diverged into a totally separate field of thinking. One of the theories that they disagreed on was the unconscious. Freud believed that the unconscious played an important part in a persons psyche. Freud believed that the unconscious mind is part of the psyche unreachable by the ego. That only when the ego drops its guard does the repressed memories of the unconscious shows itself in the form of dreams and Freudian slips of the tongue. Freud believed that the unconscious memories people have where a result of childhood sexual thoughts, urges, or abuse. Freud also believed in phylogenetic endowment which is when a person can use inherited experiences but only as a last result when personal experiences were not enough. Where as Jung believed that there are two types of unconsciousness; personal unconsciousness and collective unconsciousness. Of the two consiousness Jung put more emphasis on the collective unconsciousness. The personal unconscious holds the memories that have been forgotten because they were irrelevant or unpleasant. Jung declared that the most important aspects of the unconscious comes from experiences that people get from ancestors and pass from one generation to the next generation. Jung believed these inherent unconscious drives are the reasons why we have so many myths, dreams, thoughts, emotions, and actions. Jung believed that people are not aware of the subject matter except during a dream state where as Freud believed that dreams are retrospections that deal with past events from our childhood usually involving a repressed sexual experiences or sexual urges.

Anna O. was not actually a patient of Freud's but a patient of Freud's associate Josef Breur who wrote to Freud about her case. Freud believed that Anna O's hysteria was a result of childhood sexual trauma, sexual urges, thoughts, or seduction. Freud would suggest that the manifestation of Anna O's symptoms where a result of sexual abuse or sexual thoughts of her father (the Elektra complex) which caused anxiety which she then tried to repress as a defensive mechanism which in turn displayed itself as physical symptoms. Freud would use free association, dream interpretation, and hypnosis to help Anna O come to terms with her