Seventy-five after, Freud remains relevant
Sigmund Freud died 75 years ago on September 23, but his legacy, even if hotly contested in the modern age, remains lively as ever. Such has been the impact of his psycho-analytical philosophy that the term ‘Freudian' has attained commonplace significance, though it tends to get used in the wrong ways and in misplaced contexts. It is said that new scientific discoveries on the functioning of the mind have junked many of the Austrian psycho-analyst's theories. That may be so — and even this remains a subject of debate — but there is no running away from his core achievement of making people look within and seek to understand what had hitherto been dealt with superficially. He was not a dream merchant, but he found ways to analyse dreams; he was not an authority on child behaviour, but he developed techniques that threw light on the complex child-parent relationship. In his time at least, these issues were not even considered worthy of study. The ‘unconscious', the ‘sub-conscious', the ‘ego', and the ‘super ego' — these terms went above the heads of even the thinking few of Freud's generation. The ‘Oedipus complex', the ‘death wishes' and the ‘self-denials', became subjects of intense deliberation. It is to his credit that the terms have not just gained fresh relevance over the decades since his death but have also been embellished with new material. It would not be wrong to say that Freud kick-started a trend in understanding human functioning. His ideas on psychoanalysis are still staple material for any self-respecting professional in the field. The subjects he dealt with existed before him; except that no one before had thought it necessary to delve into them and weave an entirely new philosophy around them. That no one before him had analysed these ‘alien' issues in the manner he did made him a pioneer, but along the way he was helped by the fact that he was an extremely gifted writer who reached out to the people through his publications. Further, he used material from authors like William Shakespeare and Fyodor Dostoevsky to illustrate his theories. His mass appeal was to multiply in later years after he was gone, through Alfred Hitchcock's psycho-analytical thrillers. Suddenly, audiences across the world came to realise that lust, violence and love were driven by deeply felt desires not easily spotted by the lay eye.
We live in an era of complexities — not just related to technological advances but also to human conduct. Infantile sexual obsession, growing suicidal tendencies, terror-driven individuals, chasm within families that should otherwise have been closely knit — they are only some of the challenges that modern society faces. Freud's behavioural science helps experts tackle them more competently. His observation that “the conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of sub-conscious from which it rises”, is timeless.