Freud and Modern Psychology: The Emotional Basis of Human Behavior

244 Pages·1984·4.528 MB·English

by  Helen Block Lewis (auth.)

FREUD
AND
MODERN
PSYCHOLOGY
VOLUME 2: THE EMOTIONAL BASIS
OF HUMAN BEHA VIOR
EMOTIONS, PERSONALITY, AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Series Editors
Carroll E. Izard, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware
and
Jerome L. Singer, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
HUMAN EMOTIONS
Carroll E. Izard
THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF TIME
Bernard S. Gorman and Alden E. Wessman
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Scientific Investigation into the
Flow of Human Experience
Kenneth S. Pope and Jerome L. Singer, eds.
THE POWER OF HUMAN IMAGINATION: New Methods
in Psychotherapy
Jerome L. Singer and Kenneth S. Pope, eds.
EMOTIONS IN PERSONALITY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Carroll E. Izard, ed.
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 1: The Emotional
Basis of Mental Illness
Helen Block Lewis
FREUD AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY, Volume 2: The Emotional
Basis of Human Behavior
Helen Block Lewis
GUIDED AFFECTIVE IMAGERY WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS
Hanscarl Leuner, Gunther Horn, and Edda Klessmann
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual ship
ment. For further information please contact the publisher.
FREUD
AND
MODERN
PSYCHOLOGY
VOLUME 2: THE EMOTIONAL BASIS
OF HUMAN BEHA VIOR
HELEN BLOCK LEWIS
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
PLENUM PRESS' NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lewis, Helen B.
Freud and modern psychology.
(Emotions, personality, and psychotherapy)
Includes bibliographies and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. The emotional basis of mental illness-v. 2. The emotional basis of
human behavior.
1. Psychology, Pathological. 2. Emotions. 3. Interpersonal relations. 4. Freud, Sigmund,
1856-1939.5. Psychoanalysis. I. Title. II. Series.
RC454.L48 6]6.89/00]/9 80-20937
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-4534-3 e-ISBN -13: 978-1-4684-4532-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4684-4532-9
©1983 Plenum Press, New York
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1983
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical. photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
Freud's discovery of an emotional basis for mental illness led him to
pursue the emotional basis of human behavior in general. This pursuit
led him to undertake observational studies of dreams (1900), everyday
mistakes (1901), sexuality (1905b), character formation (1908, 1931),
jokes (1905a), and the origin of guilt (1913). Volume 2 of Freud and
Modern Psychology examines the texts of each of these major writings in
general psychology, continuing to explore the contradiction between
Freud's observations about the power of emotions and his narrow the
oretical formulations about human behavior. Volume 2 also reviews the
remarkable power of the uniquely moral emotions of shame and guilt
not only to create psychiatric symptoms, as discussed in Volume 1, but
to infiltrate our nightly dreams, create everyday parapraxes, influence
the development of sexuality, specify the emotional release in jokes,
shape personality, and "create" human culture.
As we saw in Volume 1, we shall see again in Volume 2 that Freud's
theoretical difficulties arose from the absence of a viable theory of
human nature as cultural, that is, social by biological origin. In a the
oretical framework based on the cultural nature of human nature, the
emotions and the social cohesion are reciprocally related to each other.
The emotions are the means of the social cohesion which, in turn, is the
means by which the emotions, including shame and guilt, are formed in
infancy. Volume 2 also shows clearly how (still) prevailing androcentric
attitudes influenced Freud's neglect of the infant-caretaker affectional
system in his theorizing, as contrasted to his observations.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the Behavioral
Science Publications Fund of Yale University in the preparation of the
manuscript of Volume 2. Carroll Izard has again been a very helpful
v
vi PREFACE
editor. Frances DeGrenier has my gratitude for her patience and skill
with the word processor. As always, my husband, Naphtali Lewis, has
been an unfailing source of support.
Contents
Chapter 1. THE INTERPRET AT ION OF DREAMS: The Problem
of Emotions in Dreaming 1
Chapter 2. THE DISCOVERY OF THE REMS: The Problem of
Freud's Theory 24
Chapter 3. REMS STUDIES: The Problem of Tracing
Emotions in Dream Content 44
Chapter 4. THREE ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF SEXUALITY:
The Problem of Sex as Instinct 67
Chapter 5. ANATOMY IS DESTINY: The Problem of Freud's
Sexism 94
Chapter 6. MISTAKES AND JOKES: "Primary Process": The
Problem of the Relation between Cognition and
Affect 118
Chapter 7. PSYCHOANAL YTIC CHARACTEROLOGY: The
Problem of Cognitive Styles 141
Chapter 8. TOTEM AND TABOO: The Problem of the Origins
of Guilt and Civilization 171
Chapter 9. PSYCHOANAL YSIS IN CROSS-CULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE: The Problem of Human Nature 190
VII
viii CONTENTS
207
EPILOGUE
217
BIBLIOGRAPHY
229
INDEX
1
CHAPTER
The Interpretation of Dreams
The Problem of Emotions in Dreaming
Freud's main point about dreams was expressed in the title of his book:
Dreams can be interpreted in a way that makes emotional sense even
though they may appear to be meaningless and to be about trivial
events. Nowhere in Freud's work, however, is the contradiction be
tween his insights about the power of emotions and his theoretical ne
glect of them clearer than in his work on dreams. As Richard Jones
(1974) points out, there are, for example, really two distinct books in
Freud's The interpretation of Dreams (1900). One book, in six chapters, is
about the interpretation of dreams into their emotional content. The last
chapter (Chapter 7) of The interpretation of Dreams is another book on the
theory of dreams, in which emotions are hardly mentioned.
The discrepancy between Freud's clinical insights and his theory
has also become apparent as a result of the almost accidental discovery,
in 1953, of the hitherto unknown rapid eye movement state (REMS) in
which dreaming takes place (Aserinsky & Kleitman, 1953). The phys
iologists' discovery that dreaming occurs roughly four times a night
regardless of a person's emotional state was a blow to the specifics of
Freud's theory of dream instigation. It was also, however, a roundabout
confirmation of his clinical insight that dreaming, mental illness, and
emotional life are somehow closely connected. The biochemical triggers
that have been implicated in the functioning of the REMS are the very
same substances implicated in the biochemistry of mental illness:
1
2 CHAPTER 1
serotonin, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, to name a few of the promi
nent substances. The new biology and psychology of dreaming during
the REMS is one of the most important scientific discoveries of the
twentieth century because it allows new hope that knowledge of the
REMS will somehow unravel the connection between emotional states
and mental illness.
Eye movements during sleep and dreams had been observed as
early as 1867 by a psychiatrist named Griesinger (cited by Snyder, 1967).
Although these and similar observations were reported several times by
different observers over the next decades, they were never systemat
ically pursued. But in 1953, because of Freud's intervening work, the
finding that eye movements occur during regularly recurring intervals of
natural sleep and that they signal dreaming, was the start of an enor
mously productive era of dream research, thus illustrating once again
the zigzag course of the history of ideas.
Freud always regarded The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) as his most
important book. In the preface of the third edition of it, he wrote that
"insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." Although
interest in Freud's interpretation of dreaming was slow in developing
only 351 copies of the book were sold during the first 6 years after
publication-its impact when it finally gained attention was enormous.
For example, the "stream of consciousness" (a phrase actually coined by
William James) entered the modern novel. Mann, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka,
Faulkner, and Dreiser are a few of the twentieth-century novelists
whose art was deepened by Freud's insight into dreams. In his tribute to
Freud, Mann (cited by Puner, 1978) put it this way: "A blithe scepticism
has come into the world, a mistrust which unmasks all the schemes and
subterfuges of our own souls." Dreiser, similarly, spoke of the "light
that he has thrown on the human mind ... at once colossal and
beautiful!"
One example will illustrate the relation between the Freudian study
of dreams and the study of the modern psychological novel. Some years
ago my colleagues and I obtained the hypnagogic reveries and dreams of
people who had seen an emotionally charged film before going to sleep
(Bertini, Lewis, & Witkin, 1964). One film in the series shows a mother
monkey trying to revive her dead baby and then beginning to eat it. In
the course of reverie (right before the sounds of snoring were recorded
on the tape), one subject's horror thoughts about the cannibal mother
and her dead baby changed into thoughts and images of a frog-a
"blue-green frog with dark gray spots" in a surrounding scene that was
quite idyllic: "stones at the bottom of a clear blue poo!," "a blue water
fall," and "a pattern of leaves and then it disappears." In his discussion