Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

– Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, born in the nineteenth century. He has made incredible contributions not only to the field of psychology and therapy, but to the world at large. In the twenty-first century, the general view of Freud is very negative. While Freud may have gotten a number of things wrong, he got a lot of things right, which I do not believe he gets enough credit for. Whether it’s his focus on childhood trauma or the unconsciousness, Freud’s legacy on psychology is worth taking a closer look at.

To be honest, Freud had a lot of incorrect ideas. He focused very heavily on sexuality. Freud is known infamously for the Oedipus complex. He also came up with the concepts of the id, ego, and superego. These particular ideas have been rightfully criticized and not taken seriously by many in the modern psychological community. That being said, I am sure for anyone who is literate in the field of Psychology, or has taken Psych 101, these concepts will be familiar to the reader. I would like to spend some time on the positive impacts that he has had on psychology and how many of his insights have become ingrained in how we think about dreams, trauma, and the unconscious in the modern world.

Freud spent a lot of his career developing his theory around psychosexual development. He came up with five stages that make up this development. They are quite a stretch to believe even with ample charity. That being said, he correctly gives a lot of weight to childhood development and how one’s early childhood can have a large impact on the rest of a person’s life. Given that it has been over one hundred years since Freud first started his work, we have the benefit of a century of testing to know that he was absolutely spot on. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is a better and more fleshed out theory on the impact of early childhood development, but Freud helped nudge the field of psychology in the right direction. When many at the time in turn-of-the-century Vienna were not convinced of the importance of family dynamics or early childhood on adults later in life.

For the sake of context, we now know that adverse childhood experiences can negatively affect socialization, emotional stability, and health. Even if these experiences happen very early, they can still be correlated with damaged health processes years later. As expected, positive childhood experiences are correlated with better physical, mental, and emotional health, among other benefits. The idea of children being a Tabula rasa was present in his work, and while children being a completely blank slate has been seen to be nonsense, there are a lot of aspects of human beings which are malleable.

Freud’s idea of the id, ego, and superego can be a lot to stomach, especially given how rooted this concept is in early twentieth century thought. As before, the lesson here is not how Freud was correct in his specifics, but rather in how he was correct to look in this direction. Our psyche, or mind, is very complex. We know that our flesh and spirit clash every day and that we have many different influences happening to our mind. By trying to nail down scientific terms Freud may have missed a lot of relevant nuisance, but he correctly helped people to realize that our inner thoughts and desires are complicated and important. Our psyche is not something that can be simplified or easily understood. Because Freud came from a Jewish family and was not a follower of Christ, he did add a lot from his own personal life and experience living in the capital of a multicultural empire. Whereas someone with the Holy Spirit would be better at examining and defining the machinations of the mind in less secular terms.

In Freud’s work we can see that he had a lot of insight on the unconscious mind. As mentioned above, the mind is quite complicated and hard for mere mortals to understand, yet it can get even more complicated still. The unconscious mind is still a concept that modern psychology cannot explain, let alone a century ago. However, Freud knew that it had significance in decision making and that ‘behind the scenes’ one’s subconscious was up to a lot. To try and research the unconscious, Freud would try and learn from people’s dreams. Here in his experiments he did not encounter much success, and he had a lot of unique and dated opinions on what caused female hysteria. As with the psyche, Freud was looking in the right direction. Later Carl Jung would go on to greatly expand the meaning present within dreams. Though, it is still largely unknown to the current day how or why humans dream and what the significance is.

What all of Freud’s work led to was the field of psychoanalysis. During his time this meant a lot of assumptions and projections were casted on to his patients. There were also a lot of inept interpretations given to the patients’ dreams. A century later, what first started as Freud’s psychoanalysis has transformed to become talk therapy and psychiatry. There is a definite through line that started with Freud’s practice in Vienna. Mental problems and trauma before Freud were reasons to be thrown in a mental asylum, whereas after Freud they became issues that could be worked through and scientifically explained. Say what you will about Freud as a person and as a researcher, but he certainly cared about his patients and his craft. He devoted his whole life and career to psychology.

It is impossible to study the history of psychology without Sigmund Freud’s name coming up. Whether this was due to him being a genius or being in the right place at the right time, I will let the reader decide that for themselves. Regardless, he was very influential. I would even go as far as saying that the modern field of psychology as we know it would not be here if it was not for Freud. There was a lot of wisdom that Freud was able to get the world to start looking at.

Think of Freud’s work like a giant rock with only a few specks of gold visible on the surface. This hypothetical rock is mostly useless and of no value, but there are some nuggets and small slivers of gold inside of it. Thanks to Freud, there were many truths that were able to form the basis of psychology, i.e. early childhood development, the psyche, and the unconscious/dreams. It took the work of his contemporaries, as well as later ‘miners’ to refine the rock and get out all of the gold.

Fields like physics, geology, mathematics, and chemistry are all very hard sciences. While describing God’s creation in human terms can be difficult, once a truth is discovered it is not up for debate anymore, typically. Psychology on the other hand, and especially the subfields of talk therapy and psychiatry are soft sciences. They are still very important, and God has given us very complicated brains and thoughts to work with and learn from. However, psychological theories and discoveries are a lot harder to measure, test, and quantify. While I typically hate the mantra of saying that people ‘did the best they could with the knowledge they had’, I think this could be applied to Freud. Whatever his faults, he did get the ball rolling for modern psychology.

“The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.” – Sigmund Freud

Freud had a study called the Unconscious Mind which went from 1900 to 1905. In this work of his, Freud develops a concept known to us now as the iceberg theory. This theory states that a person’s psyche can be split up into the conscious, preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious includes thoughts and perceptions. Preconscious can be thought of as a “mental waiting room” and includes memories. The unconscious, or subconscious includes motives, fears, and instincts. He also claimed that the unconscious was most influenced by past experiences and that is where their emotional impact was stored.

In the current year, YouTube video essayists seem to make the most use of the iceberg theory. Given that neuropsychology still holds a lot of unknowns, Freud’s theory is a good one to cling to as researchers are slowly trying to chart the brain and the mind.

Freud’s psychoanalytic practice was also quite commendable. It is from him that we have the stereotype of the psychologist sitting while a patient is lying down on a bed. All the while with the patient being asked questions about their parents. Talk therapy has evolved and changed in the past century, but the core basics are the same as what Freud founded. Freud was popular with his patients and helped many of them. One of his famous traits was that he would never tell his patients what to do to solve their issues. He would always ask questions so that the patients would come to a conclusion themselves. This is known to be an effective strategy for internalized change. People coming to their own conclusions often works better than being commanded what to do, Freud knew this.

Sigmund Freud’s legacy is a complicated one. For every idea he got right, he got one or two wrong. Nevertheless his profound impact on psychology should be learned and respected. He was not a perfect person, but nobody is. I hope that by reading about the better things Freud accomplished, the reader can begin to understand that historic figures are complicated, and that they cannot be broken down into black and white. Freud is no exception, and I for one appreciate his impact on history, the good and the bad.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV)

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. – Matthew 10:28 (KJV)