Usha Tummala-Narra, PhD
Freud’s model of the mind and its significance for modern life
As I have been thinking about the relevance of Sigmund Freud’s model of the human mind to contemporary times, one of the things that stands out for me was Freud’s own study of culture, history, archeology, and anthropology of ancient Western civilizations from which he derived some of his understanding of the individual as in conflict with larger society and culture (Civilization and its Discontents, 1930). His aim was to establish a discipline of psychoanalysis that was based on modernist and positivistic ideals. At the same time, Freud’s development of psychoanalysis as theory and technique was never divorced from cultural experience and political realities. Freud’s ideas developed in a pre-WWII and WWII European context where he and his family faced persecution in the latter part of his life.
In considering certain components of Freud’s model of the mind, such as his psychosexual theory, it can certainly be argued that his ideas are gender and culturally biased. At the same time, there is a ubiquitous quality to Freud’s ideas, such that those of us who identify with cultural contexts that are far different in some important ways from that of Freud and European and North American contexts, are still compelled by his ideas of human nature. Freud’s ideas extended to a wide audience of intellectuals, even as far as Calcutta, India, the home of the first Indian psychoanalyst, Girindrashekhar Bose. By 1914, Bose had developed his psychoanalytic ideas almost independently of Freud, and published a book entitled Concept of Repression in 1921. A correspondence between Bose and Freud began in 1921 and lasted 16 years (1921-1937); their letters indicate Freud’s ambivalence about addressing the cultural specifics of Bose’s ideas, particularly in light of Freud’s identifications with European intellectual traditions and Bose’s identifications with Indian cultural ideology and spirituality (Akhtar and Tummala-Narra, 2005). While post-independence India experienced a decline in psychoanalysis, largely because of poverty, war, and partition, Freud’s and Bose’s ideas resurfaced in the past 25 years within a diaspora of psychoanalysts of Indian origin which spans India, England, United States, Canada, and Australia.
In my own professional work, I have wondered at times what it may mean for an Indian American woman to be so interested in the theories of the mind developed by a Viennese psychiatrist in the early 20th century. What I have found is that clinically, his ideas allow for a better understanding of long standing complicated human struggles and character issues. His notions of the symbolic, evident in his dream theory, challenge us to consider the workings of the unconscious mind. Freud challenged us to examine traditional conceptualizations of culture and religion, and to consider a world that is not free from human suffering. He did not see the individual’s past or a society’s past as something that can be eradicated or outgrown, but instead an integral part of his/her existence. These were revolutionary ideas.
Freud examined questions around the relationship between society and the individual, and wondered what may happen if matters of culture fail to explain the individual’s conflicts related to sexuality and aggression. To Freud, religion was an “illusion,” an attempt to cope with fear and longings. While he dismissed the potential for positive and adaptive aspects of religious faith, it is interesting to speculate how his theory may be applicable to present day political and religious tensions within and across nations, particularly with the rise of fundamentalism across different political and religious contexts.
The study of the unconscious has extended into the study of social phenomenology, including racism, sexism, homophobia. Contemporary issues such as immigration, globalization of world economies, and the role of the internet can be understood from Freud’s view of society as impinging on the individual, as these changes offer, paradoxically, new material possibilities for individuals in the face of emotional disconnection and loss. Increasing pluralism in our society is reflected in the diversification of psychoanalysis itself, and the varied extensions of Freud’s theories of the human mind in the work of object relations, self-psychological, and relational psychoanalysts. I believe that these developments speak to both necessary reformulation of Freud’s ideas in the practice of psychoanalytic work, and the potential for broadened applicability of Freud’s model of the mind in the future. This sentiment can be heard in Freud’s statement, in his paper on Family Romances (1908), “Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations.”