As early as the 199s, when he was studying hysteria with Professor Bleuel, Freud had initially discovered the relationship between hysteria and sex.
in his autobiography, Freud once said, "Bleuel paid little attention to sexual factors, and at most regarded it as general emotional excitement." By the time Freud and Bleuel co-authored The Study of Hysteria, Bleuel still insisted on his viewpoint of neglecting factors, which caused the book to fail to touch on the etiology of the pathological process. However, Freud himself has put forward his own ideas, saying that he should focus his research on sexual problems.
Freud said in his autobiography: "Through the rapid accumulation of my own experience, I know that behind the phenomenon of neuropathy, it is not just any kind of emotional excitement, but usually caused by early sexual experience or recent sexual conflicts. My research on neurotic patients is not biased, so my conclusion is by no means my intention, nor does it include any personal expectation. " "Under the influence of my novel discovery, I took an extremely important step, transcending the field of hysteria, and began to explore the sexual life of so-called' neurasthenia patients' who often come to see a doctor during outpatient hours. I made this attempt at a great cost, sacrificing the reputation of the doctor, but it brought me a firm belief even after 3 years. ""As a result, I began to have a tendency to think that neurosis is a sexual dysfunction almost without exception ... It is a very pleasant thing for my medical conscience to come to such a conclusion. I hope my job makes up for the medical defects. "In The Story of the Girl Dura, Freud said more clearly:" The symptoms of hysteria are just the patient's sexual activities ..... I have found time and time again that sex is the key to the problem of mental illness. People who despise this key must never open that door. "
It can be seen that Freud's theory of sex, although it still has its shortcomings and mistakes, has enabled Freud to find the main clues that go deep into his heart, thus directly opening the way for accelerating the establishment of the subconscious theory.
Because of discovering the important role of sexual factors in neurotic diseases, Freud found the center of gravity in the process of establishing subconscious theory. From then on, when he studied dreams to improve his subconscious theory, he further clarified the meaning of sexual factors. Freud found that in dreams, children's sexual motivation and recent sexual experiences are often expressed. Dreams, like hysteria, are a means for subconscious fantasy to achieve self-satisfaction.
We illustrate this problem with an example provided by The Interpretation of Dreams. This is Freud himself dreaming of his childhood. Freud wrote:
I haven't had a really anxious dream for decades. But I still remember a dream I had when I was seven or eight years old. It took me more than 3 years to analyze this dream today.
This dream is still vivid. I saw my beloved mother in my dream. Her appearance seems to have a particularly peaceful and sleepy expression. Two or three people with bird mouths carried her indoors and put her on the bed. I woke up, crying and screaming, which interrupted my parents' sleep. I saw those people who are wearing strange clothes, are surprisingly tall and have bird mouths from the illustrations in the Bible compiled by Filison. I imagine that they must be eagle-headed gods coming out of the reliefs of ancient Egyptian tombs. After the analysis, a boy with bad temper is drawn. He is the janitor's child. When we were young, we used to play together on the grass in front of the house. His name is Philip, and I seem to hear rude terms about sexual intercourse from this boy. Those educated people use the Latin word "copulation" to describe it. In this dream, I obviously choose the eagle head to represent sexual intercourse (in German, the slang for "sex" is called vogeln, which is derived from vogel, that is, "bird". Here Freud used vogel to mean "eagle". I must have guessed the meaning of "sex" implied by the word "Vogel" from the face of the young teacher who taught me. The way my mother looked in her dream came from the impression that my grandfather was in a coma and wheezing a few days before his death. The interpretation of "recalibration" of this dream is that my mother is dying, and the relief of the grave just matches this. I was full of anxiety when I woke up, and I didn't stop making trouble until I woke up my parents. I remember when I saw my mother's face hole, my heart suddenly calmed down ... This anxiety can be traced back to the vague but obvious meaning of "sex" revealed by the visual content in my dream.
Freud had already seen the secret of the subconscious and found a shortcut to the kingdom of the subconscious through years of theoretical research and medical practice. This is the analysis of morbid psychology or abnormal psychology (dream analysis is actually an important branch of abnormal psychology analysis). The subconscious mind is often the concentrated product of past experiences and the sediment of young children's primitive psychology. It is buried deep in the heart and blocked by the consciousness. Therefore, in normal psychological life, they are difficult to show, and even if they do, they are fragmentary, unsystematic and atypical. However, in hysteria, the subconscious has got the most typical and concentrated performance. Abnormal psychology is like an upside-down psychological world, which makes the whole psychological structure of people change from bottom to top. In other words, the subconscious mind, which was originally suppressed at the bottom, was vented, while the original consciousness, which played a controlling role, was disturbed or completely failed, thus reversing the order. Only in this way does it provide the best opportunity to observe the subconscious.
In 195, after Freud finished Psychoanalysis of Daily Life and The Story of the Girl Dura, he concentrated on the study of sexual psychology. This is the most critical step in the construction project of Freud's psychoanalysis theory system building. We will realize that the centralized completion of sexology theory marks a major victory for Freud in theory. Freud concentrated his research on the theory of sex on three theses of sexology.
Three Treatises on Sexology consists of three articles-Sexual Perversion, Infantile Sexual Desire and Changes in Adolescence. These three articles discuss the pathology of sexual abnormality, the process of the development of mind, the theory of sexual motivation and various manifestations of sexual motivation in human behavior, clarify the important influence of sexual psychology in human psychological activities and its activity law, and demonstrate the decisive role of sexual motivation in the formation of subconscious mind.
Therefore, Three Treatises on Sexology and The Interpretation of Dreams have become Freud's famous works, and they are indeed one of Freud's most important works. If we want to understand Freud's personality, his theory and his attitude towards scientific research, we can't help but have a deep understanding of Freud's Three Theories on Sexuality and its functions.