Did Sigmund Freud Despair of Psychoanalysis?

 

 

 

Richard E. Simmons III, founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership, reasoned that he had. Freud had believed that physical pleasure would create the happiness that he had sought:

·     Freud believed that people are not happy because they are not free to pursue outwardly what they desire to do inwardly. He also contended these moral social conventions caused people to feel guilty when they are violated, which leads to further unhappiness.

According to Simmons, it seems that psychoanalysis and its attempt to relieve the sufferers from the pangs of their conscience had failed:

·       Over time, Freud recognized that physical pleasure was temporary and fleeting, and therefore unhappiness was unavoidable. His view of life was dark, ominous and full of despair. In a letter to his fiancé he admitted over a fourteen month period that he had experienced only three or four days of happiness. Nicholi says that Freud constantly experienced “feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, a negative interpretation of life with frequent thoughts of death, and a pessimistic view of the future.” The only thing he found that consistently lifted his spirits was a new drug called cocaine. At the end of his life he asked this question; “What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?” https://richardesimmons3.com/sigmund-freud-c-s-lewis-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

Others have also noted that Freud had become disenchanted with psychoanalysis:

·       Dr. O. Hobart Mowrer, a former president of the American Psychological Association, concludes, “I have become progressively disenchanted with results of psychotherapy and with the underlying theory itself…I am convinced that, in general, psychotherapy doesn’t do patients very much good. Before he died, Freud himself admitted that the therapeutic effectiveness of psychotherapy is poor, and that it was mainly a research tool. (Martin L. Gross, The Psychological Society; 32)

Have modern psychotherapies improved upon Freud’s theory or methods? Perhaps in a minor way. They have tried to bridge the gap between the therapist and the patient. Instead of sitting behind the supine couched client, the therapist now faces them, giving a nod to the fact that a caring relationship is essential.

Simmons contrasts Freud’s antagonism towards religion with that of a fellow atheist:

·       For the first thirty-one years of his life, C.S. Lewis was also an atheist, and Nicholi says that during those years, Lewis shared Freud’s despair. After becoming a Christian, he openly shared that his pessimism and gloom were clearly a result of his godless worldview. He had concluded that the universe was a “menacing and unfriendly place.” He saw no hope in the future.

·       However, everything changed when he became a Christian. His somber view of life was transformed into joy and a real sense of freedom. He said that once he had become a Christian he “began to know what life really is and what would have been lost by missing it.”