Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories- Freud: Psychoanalysis © The McGraw−Hill^29
Companies, 2009
timate friend and a hated enemy. I have always been able to provide myself afresh
with both” (Freud, 1900/1953, p. 483). Until he was well past 50, all these relation-
ships were with men. Interestingly, Freud, the man who seemed to be constantly
thinking of sex, had a very infrequent sex life himself. After Anna, his youngest child
was born in 1895, Freud, not yet 40 years old, had no sexual intercourse for several
years. Much of his sparse sexual life stemmed from his belief that use of a condom,
coitus interruptus, as well as masturbation were unhealthy sexual practices. Because
Freud wanted no more children after Anna was born, sexual abstinence was his only
alternative (Breger, 2000; Freud, 1985).
In addition to balancing his emotional life between an intimate friend and a
hated enemy, Freud possessed an outstanding talent as a writer, a gift that helped him
become a leading contributor to 20th-century thought. He was a master of the Ger-
man tongue and knew several other languages. Although he never won the coveted
Nobel prize for science, he was awarded the Goethe prize for literature in 1930.
Freud also possessed intense intellectual curiosity; unusual moral courage
(demonstrated by his daily self-analysis); extremely ambivalent feelings toward his
father and other father figures; a tendency to hold grudges disproportionate to the al-
leged offense; a burning ambition, especially during his earlier years; strong feelings
of isolation even while surrounded by many followers; and an intense and somewhat
irrational dislike of America and Americans, an attitude that became more intense
after his trip to the United States in 1909.
Why did Freud have such a disdain for Americans? Perhaps the most impor-
tant reason is that he rightly believed Americans would trivialize psychoanalysis by
trying to make it popular. In addition, he had several experiences during his trip to
the United States that were foreign to a proper bourgeois Viennese gentleman. Even
before he embarked on the George Washington,he saw his name misspelled as
“Freund” on the passenger list (Ferris, 1997). A number of other events—some of which
seem almost humorous—made Freud’s visit more unpleasant than it might have
been. First, Freud experienced chronic indigestion and diarrhea throughout his visit,
probably because the drinking water did not agree with him. In addition, he found it
both peculiar and problematic that American cities did not provide public restrooms
on street corners, and with his chronic indigestion he was frequently in search of a
public lavatory. Also, several Americans addressed him as Doc or Sigmund while
challenging him to defend his theories, and one person tried—unsuccessfully, of
course—to prevent him from smoking a cigar in a nonsmoking area. Moreover, when
Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung went to a private camp in western Massachusetts, they
were greeted by a barrage of flags of Imperial Germany, despite the fact that none of
them was German and each had reasons to dislike Germany. Also at camp, Freud,
along with the others, sat on the ground while the host grilled steaks over charcoal,
a custom Freud deemed to be both savage and uncouth (Roazen, 1993).
Levels of Mental Life
Freud’s greatest contribution to personality theory is his exploration of the uncon-
scious and his insistence that people are motivated primarily by drives of which they
have little or no awareness. To Freud, mental life is divided into two levels, the un-
consciousand the conscious.The unconscious, in turn, has two different levels, the
Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 23