Freud's impact
Everywhere I look this week I see vestiges of Freud's theories of psychoanalysis. I'm realizing that no matter how much the facts behind his ideas are debunked, the influence on our culture is truly permanent. Even young children are so familiar with the image of the adult lying on the couch, with the psychoanalyst taking notes. A few weeks ago I watched a Veggie Tales video with my niece, and there was an entire "Silly Song with Larry" called "I Love My Lips" where Larry the cucumber lies on his psychologist's couch and sings about how attached he is to his lips, and how he stays awake at night worrying that he might lose them. He goes through all the traumatic lip-related events of his childhood. When he mentions his dad, his psychologist wakes up and says, "your father? Tell me more!" It's really hilarious--and wouldn't be nearly so funny if we didn't already understand the situation. I'm also a big Woody Allen fan and, thinking back on my favorite movies, realize that even those that don't have a Freudian psychologist as a character are very much based on Freudian ideas--repression, projection, childhood trauma, etc.
It's so easy to belittle Freud's ideas now that we have a better understanding of both the nature and nurture aspects of the mind, though it seems that his largest ideas--i.e., childhood experience can have a dramatic effect on adult personality and actions, defense mechanisms such as repression, etc.--are still a major part of psychology. Perhaps his most important impact is on the way we think of ourselves. We are such complex beings, made up of a multitude of experiences and learned behaviors, and one can spend a lifetime just getting to know oneself.
I tend to relate everything historical to the development of music at the time (that's what comes from so many years of studying music history!). I find it interesting that Freud's work corresponds with the "Second Viennese School" of composition. Led by Arnold Schoenberg, many German and Austrian composers just after the turn of the century were experimenting with doing away with tonality and all other traditionally appealing characteristics of classical music. Though there are some true masterpieces from these composers, the movement created a school of composers who wrote music that was incredibly unappealing to the average listener, and the further it went, the more audiences became alienated from classical music and turned to other genres. However, the amazing diversity of "classical" music today (and the return to the audience) would have never happened if these "crazy" folks hadn't spent their careers going against the grain and creating much of what now seems to be singularly ugly music. It's like a catastrophic split had to occur before composers could find the middle ground. It's no coincidence that these composers were greatly influenced by the work of Freud and were interested in delving into the darkest parts of the mind/soul. Freud was similarly extreme in his new ideas, and in his extremism came up with some ideas that have basically been debunked (comparable to the truly ugly/purely mathematical works of music from the time), but without Freud or someone like him, it's unlikely that all the many moderns schools of psychology would have flourished. Without extremists on all sides, there isn't really a middle ground.
It's so easy to belittle Freud's ideas now that we have a better understanding of both the nature and nurture aspects of the mind, though it seems that his largest ideas--i.e., childhood experience can have a dramatic effect on adult personality and actions, defense mechanisms such as repression, etc.--are still a major part of psychology. Perhaps his most important impact is on the way we think of ourselves. We are such complex beings, made up of a multitude of experiences and learned behaviors, and one can spend a lifetime just getting to know oneself.
I tend to relate everything historical to the development of music at the time (that's what comes from so many years of studying music history!). I find it interesting that Freud's work corresponds with the "Second Viennese School" of composition. Led by Arnold Schoenberg, many German and Austrian composers just after the turn of the century were experimenting with doing away with tonality and all other traditionally appealing characteristics of classical music. Though there are some true masterpieces from these composers, the movement created a school of composers who wrote music that was incredibly unappealing to the average listener, and the further it went, the more audiences became alienated from classical music and turned to other genres. However, the amazing diversity of "classical" music today (and the return to the audience) would have never happened if these "crazy" folks hadn't spent their careers going against the grain and creating much of what now seems to be singularly ugly music. It's like a catastrophic split had to occur before composers could find the middle ground. It's no coincidence that these composers were greatly influenced by the work of Freud and were interested in delving into the darkest parts of the mind/soul. Freud was similarly extreme in his new ideas, and in his extremism came up with some ideas that have basically been debunked (comparable to the truly ugly/purely mathematical works of music from the time), but without Freud or someone like him, it's unlikely that all the many moderns schools of psychology would have flourished. Without extremists on all sides, there isn't really a middle ground.