Our Feelings and Freud

I was recently joking around with one of my friends who knows that I’m a therapist intern. As we were exchanging wisecracks about I’ve-forgotten-what, he smiled and offered in jest a self-deprecating barb about one of his unique character traits: “Does that go back to my childhood?” In the moment, of course, I simply played along, but his comment lingered in my mind long after our verbal horseplay was over. It seems to me that my friend’s comment is suggestive of unfortunate thinking that has saturated psychology and our society since the days of Freud.

The myth suggests that all of one’s experiences and behaviors are shaped by internal forces within the individual’s mind, which is essentially isolated from the world and other people.

That’s a bit of a mouthful, and considering an example of the myth will be helpful. We need look no further than Freud himself, who thought that human development is a process of progression through psychosexual stages. A child who successfully completed all stages would mature into a competent and creative adult. However, failure to resolve the internal conflict at any one of these stages resulted in arrested development, and the adult will think and behave in problematic ways associated with infancy or early childhood. 

For instance, have you ever heard of the term “anal retentive”? We use this term today to refer to an individual who is obsessive, controlling, and meticulous. According to Freud, the anal-retentive personality resulted from a person’s failure to resolve the internal tension between the desire to expel bodily wastes and the competing pressure to control bodily functions. Thus, to adopt the words of my friend, anal retentiveness was commonly explained as a hiccup in healthy emotional and mental functioning that “goes back to his or her childhood”—as are many unfavorable personality characteristics today. 

Psychology owes a great debt to Freud and his descendants, but the myth of the isolated mind has exacted a high price from us.

Thinking about our thoughts and emotions as products of internal psychological forces alone frequently prevents us from

1) reflecting on our thoughts and feelings so that we can understand them more fully, and

2) sharing our feelings with others, especially those closest to us. 

For example, when we experience conflict or painful feelings, we may ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with me? Why do I do that? I wish I weren’t this way.” The emotional reality we experience is of our own making, or so the myth goes, and we alone are responsible for all of its perceived flaws and failures to function in ways that optimize our psychological and relational well-being. In response, we may bury our feelings under shame or blame others for our pain, unable to share our deepest feelings with those we love. Either way, the result is frequently the same: We remain in unbearable emotional isolation, too frightened to share our deepest feelings with others and too afraid to acknowledge them in ourselves, lest they overwhelm us. 

I believe that an alternative perspective on our mental and emotional lives is possible, and I will describe that perspective in a future post. For now, however, I invite you to reflect with me.

Do you agree that our culture still perpetuates the myth of the isolated mind? If so, how have you experienced the myth in your life and relationships?