Freud and his discontents: An aetiology of psychoanalysis

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Freud is not so well considered today. Critiques started early with Melanie Klein declaring an earlier date for infant trauma than Freud’s Oedipal theory did. Of late, work by Daniel Stern, John Bowlby, Margaret Mahler and Lawrence Kohlberg, all offer different accounts. Such research moved psychology beyond the Oedipal framework. Freud also left confusion over the feminine, of which he likened it to an obfuscated, Dark Continent. Moreover, Freud left us with identity confusion related to two mothers and two fathers, broadly recorded and also encoded in his last book, ‘Moses and Monotheism’. Some of his sexual theories can be traced to Albert Moll, one of a number involved in such studies at the time. Nevertheless, a number of Freudians meeting at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in his own home on Wednesdays to discuss Freudian notions had some such as, C.G. Jung and Alfred Adler, leaving as ‘discontents’ and forging separate psychological disciplines. Paradoxically they supported Freud’s idea that psychoanalysis / psychology should become an international affair as their ideas also spread. Therefore, Freud, arguably, remains as a father of modern psychology and is still worthy of further thought.