Freud Explains means that, in Sigmund Freud's method, there is a methodical way of interpreting that has sex, desire and the unconscious as its background. In this article by Ana Alves, you will understand what is Freud Explains and why this expression is used as a popular saying.

"Freud explains": Why do we use this saying?

Freud explains means that acts considered to be "by chance" have as their background sex, desire, drives, childhood, and the unconscious.

A expression "Freud explains". It has always intrigued me. We usually use it as a response to psychological, profound, or even philosophical events, but also to exemplify or respond to behavioral, mental, psychological, and common sense issues.

This phrase brought me here, at the beginning of this journey, in order to seek not only the understanding of this popular saying, but also to give theoretical and scientific basis to my life purpose: through listening, welcoming, and affection, to understand and relieve pain, in order to promote a present and a future with plenitude to the individual.

After all, who was Sigmund Freud?

Sigmund Freud was born in what is now Austria, in 1939, the son of Jews, and graduated in Medicine, specializing in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna.

In the midst of his specialization in psychiatry, when faced with several patients suffering from neuroses, he began to question conventional medical treatment, and to observe new forms of treatment.

The French Jean-Martin Charcot with his studies and hypnosis jobs in patients with symptoms of neuroses, caught the attention of the young Freud, who went to Paris to do an internship with him.

From this stage on, Charcot's technique, studies and results began to influence Freud's way of treating his patients, which made him start to use and study hypnotic suggestion in his patients.

Freud Explains: Through hypnotic suggestion

A hypnotic suggestion The doctor induces a change in the patient's state of consciousness, and through suggestion, the doctor's command, it is possible for the symptom to appear or disappear. However, this technique is not applicable to all patients.

Change the state of consciousness He saw that this technique was still immature, and when he met a respected physician Josef Breuer, he perfected the technique, now called cathartic method .

Freud, Breuer and the explanations by the cathartic method

The cathartic method releases the emotions of the event from which the trauma originated, through the patient's speech, where the doctor asks the patient to describe his dreams, his hallucinations, his fantasies, his fears, thus bringing the unconscious, the hidden memories, to the surface.

In a first step, it uses the hypnosis to awaken the patient's speech, but Freud observes that normal conversation, without hypnosis, leads the patient to the same deep state of searching for the contents, and so the free association that we talk so much about in psychoanalysis arises.

Freud's Free Association Method

At free association It is the patient who brings the contents to the therapy session, without any repressions, restrictions, and much less judgment on the part of the clinic.

It is up to the therapist:

• listen,
• analyze,
• interpret,
• investigate.

These actions seek to relate explicit content with the unconscious contents Thus, in 1896, Sigmund Freud coined the term Psychoanalysis, a practical and theoretical study of the human psyche in order to understand the mechanisms of its functioning.

What does Freud Explains mean?

At the beginning of Psychoanalysis, we can answer "what does Freud Explain" from the division proposed by Freud when organizing the human psychic apparatus into three instances.

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In his works it is called the First Topic (Freud's first phase), being:

• Conscious Reason, attention, our reasoning, ideas, thoughts, feelings, in short, what we speak and what we do. The superficial and lower level of the psychic apparatus.
• Pre-Conscious : These are the dreams, ideas, thoughts that can become conscious if we pay attention to them. It lies between the conscious and the unconscious. The plane of the sea, for example, if a wind blows one way, it will appear more from the conscious, if it blows the other way, more from the unconscious.
• Unconscious This is the major part of the human psychic apparatus: our desires, fantasies that have been repressed, repressed, and that we are not aware of at all.

This first topic proved efficient until Freud realized that the whole focus of his work became to understand why something that was so distressing was thrown into the unconscious in a place where not even the patient was aware that he had this resistance .

Freud explains the psychic instances

Thus is born the Second Topic (late phase of Freud's work), the same used today, being:

• ID : The largest and deepest part of the psychic apparatus, which has all the psychic energy, libidinal desire, ruled by the pure pleasure of desire satisfaction. It is only present in the unconscious.
• EGO The ego balances the ID and the superego, that is, it liberates, moderates, represses the primitive desires of the ID. It defines and shapes our psyche, ponders the impulse of the ID, but also represses it, discharging tension.
• SUPEREGO The superego is the moral regulator, stemming from social, family, and cultural demands.

The ego becomes Freud's main object of study: to investigate, understand, and relate the primitive impulses of the ID repressed by the ego, the cause of human neuroses.

Sexuality and desire: what does Freud explain?

Freud classifies it into phases as follows:

• Oral Phase - until the first year of life, weaning.
• Anal Phase - from 2 to 4 years old, the defralde.
• Phallic Phase - From 4 to 6 years old: The discovery of the opposite sex, the Oedipus Complex.
• Latency Phase - From 6 to 11 years old: the discovery of the body
• Genital Phase - From 11 years on, puberty. The discovery of pleasure in sex.

Thus is born Freud's Theory of Sexuality It was extremely questioned and discredited, due to the moral, religious, and customary standards of the time.

Sexuality is Psychoanalysis' key to understanding the psyche and behavior of the individual. But it is not a sexuality based on the genital organs, for purposes of sex or reproduction, but a sexuality of drives a driving force coming from inside the body that seeks a state of satisfaction.

What does Freud Explains mean, anyway?

Freud explains means to seek an understanding for current actions that may have basis:

• in childhood,
• in our stages of psychosexual development,
• in the episodes conscious and/or unconscious repressed ,
• in unfulfilled or overfulfilled drives,
• in the understanding of our present self,
• in our traumas and repressed desires.

Therefore, when we use the expression Freud Explains, what it means Freud Explains can be:

• investigate your childhood,
• the episodes experienced in the oral, anal, phallic phases, etc,
• your relations with your parents, your mother,
• bring out this drive.

This current behavior, your way of being, acting and thinking, is based on your childhood. Freud began to explain followed by various scholars and researchers, and we psychoanalysts will help people understand.

This contribution about what Freud Explains means, what is Freud Explains as a popular saying and in psychoanalysis was written exclusively for the site Psychoanalysis Clínica by Ana Alves ([email protected]om), BA in Social Communication, post-graduate in Marketing Management, and Psychoanalyst in Training.

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