Sigmund Freud - Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis
Freud Looks to "Moral Courage" to Assist in Mental Disturbances
Feb 4, 2009
In Case Histories, Sigmund Freud discusses one of the subjects of his psychotherapy, Miss Lucy R. According to Lucy’s particular case history, she had suffered from depression and chronic hysterical symptoms as a result of psychiatric trauma that she had been subjected to (being rebuffed by her male employer who Lucy was in love with).
The Cause of Madness
In order to understand Freud’s treatment of Lucy’s hysteria, it is important to understand that for Freud one of the root causes of such mental disturbances is that the subject must have an idea that is “intentionally repressed from consciousness” (Case Histories, 116). That is, in Lucy’s case, the probable cause of her depression and hysteria was an unpleasant idea presented to her consciousness (ego), and because the idea was incompatible with the ego, “the latter decides on the repudiation of the incompatible idea” (Case Histories, 123). Thus, Lucy’s unpleasant idea was repressed into her unconsciousness even though the memory of it still existed.
In Freud’s discussion of Lucy’s psychotherapy, he makes an interesting comment about the subject’s desire to actually eliminate the unwanted idea that caused the underlying trauma:
The splitting of consciousness in these cases of acquired hysteria is accordingly a deliberate and intentional one. Often an act of volition; the actual outcome is something different from what the subject intended. What he wanted was to do away with an idea, as though it had never appeared, but all he succeeds in doing is to isolate it psychically (Case Histories, 123; emphasis added).
Thus, by repressing the unwanted idea, the subject is unable to control or eliminate the traumatic idea in her unconscious state, which may eventually resurface to damage her mental and physical well-being.
Moral Support
Besides treating the traumatized subject by psychotherapy, Freud makes an observation concerning the moral courage of his subjects in dealing with psychiatric trauma in their lives. According to Freud, one faculty that human beings possess to ward off depression, anxiety or hysteria is simply to muster a requisite amount of “moral courage” to squelch the “incompatible idea” before it is repressed into the unconscious state (Case Histories, 123). Conversely, for those subjects who fail to garner the moral courage to fend off the unwanted thought--and allow it to take root in the unconscious realm--Freud describes these subjects as “moral cowards” (Case Histories, 123).
It is submitted that Freud is being intellectually dishonest with his methodology of psychotherapy by suggesting that morality is a self-help preventative measure. Earlier, Freud espoused the idea that what all of us want is the will power, the authority, to actually control our unwanted thoughts by simply extinguishing them at the time the idea enters our consciousness. Unfortunately, as Freud seems to admit, the human species has no direct control over the kind of thoughts that enter our consciousness, much less deleting them from our thought process (Case Histories, 123).
If the basis of Freudian psychotherapy is the idea of curing or alleviating repressed memories that damage our mental and physical well-being, then it makes little sense to assert that some subjects may have the moral authority (by an act of volition) to somehow eliminate the thought from entering the psyche. In short, if morality is a system of addressing good and evil choices, then Freud’s theory for treating repressed memories is not consistent with the idea that we are able to make voluntary moral choices to control an unwanted idea in our stream of consciousness. If men truly have the capability of healing themselves by exercising moral authority over unwanted thoughts, then there would be little need for psychotherapy as a method of treating mentally ill patients.
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