Depression Through A Freudian Lens

By: Shiven Jain

Illustration: Seher Chawla

Defense mechanisms, the id, suppression, and several other terms that have now become part of colloquial conversations and pop-culture lingo emerged as a consequence of Sigmund Freud’s theories. However, Freud’s contribution to understanding clinical depression, albeit controversial and largely unsubstantiated, extends far beyond the vocabulary he has gifted an entire generation of millennials.

To unpack Freud’s understanding of depression, it is essential to grasp the core principles of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is based on the argument that the unconscious mind — a part of our mind that is largely inaccessible to us — is, as an article by Kendra Cherry, PhD, explains it, “a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that exist outside of our conscious awareness.” The article goes on to state that “the unconscious contains contents that are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.”

The psychoanalytic theory asserts that our unconscious mind has three interacting agents in its “psychic apparatus”: the id, ego, and superego. The id represents our primal, instinctual desires and operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification. Meanwhile, the ego acts as the rational mediator between the id’s impulses and the external world, striving to balance desires with societal norms and reality. Finally, the superego serves as our internal moral compass, embodying societal and parental values, often leading to feelings of guilt or shame when violated.

Throughout his career, Freud proposed several factors that contributed to depression; factors that were based on his psychosexual theory as well as his own beliefs and values. However, his explanations for both these theories were closely associated with the aforementioned principles of psychoanalysis.

The Oedipus/Electra Complex and Phallic Fixation

Freud’s psychosexual theory was broken down into five stages of human development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Freud asserted that the Oedipus or Electra complexes formed during the phallic stage. This stage is described by Saul McLeod, PhD, as follows:

“In this stage, children become increasingly aware of their bodies, exhibiting a heightened interest in their own genitals and those of the opposite sex. Additionally, their understanding of anatomical sex differences begins to form, sparking a complex mixture of emotions – erotic attraction, rivalry, jealousy, resentment, and fear – collectively termed the Oedipus complex in boys and the Electra complex in girls.”

The Oedipus Complex suggests that between the ages of 3 and 6, boys develop a sexual attachment towards their mothers and subsequent hostility towards their fathers. This is essentially because they envy the parent of the same sex. However, these feelings are largely repressed, as boys are afraid of punishment from their fathers — a dominant figure who has control over their mother; their source of sexual attraction. This punishment is also linked to the castration anxiety that boys feel during this stage. His former collaborator, Carl Jung, also proposed the Electra complex, which establishes the same argument with context to the female sex — sexual attraction to their fathers and concomitant resentment towards their mothers.

One may wonder how any of this links with depression. Freud argued that psychosexual fixation in the phallic stage, caused due to unresolved issues during this period, leads to adult personalities that are “overly vain, exhibitionistic, and sexually aggressive.” However, psychosexual fixation isn’t just limited to these three effects. For example, unresolved Oedipal issues — which may have caused a man to feel a prolonged sense of rivalry towards his father — will lead to him encountering feelings of guilt, ineptness, and low self-esteem; symptoms frequently characterized as depressive ones.

Freud also introduced the idea of introjective depression, caused by a harsh superego. The same can be explained as follows:

“Introjective depression occurs when a person feels that they have failed to meet their own standards or the standards of important others and that therefore they are failures. Introjective depression arises from a harsh, unrelenting, highly critical superego that creates feelings of worthlessness, guilt, and a sense of having failed. A person with introjective depression experiences intense fears of losing approval, recognition, and love from a desired object.”

Therefore, to summarize the argument, a harsh superego that has emerged due to unresolved Oedipal conflicts can lead to self-criticism and self-blame, contributing to depressive symptoms.

Mourning vs. Melancholia

Freud, and his collaborator Karl Abraham, who worked with him to understand manic-depressive illnesses, also theorized that there is a significant difference between mourning and melancholia. He describes mourning “as a response to an actual loss of a love object, such as a person, or even an ideal. On the other hand, in melancholia, the patient cannot consciously grasp what he or she has lost, or else knows what it is, but not what it is about the object that they have lost.”

Abraham suggested that a melancholic patient (in this case, “melancholic” describes a person who is experiencing melancholia as posited by Freud and Abraham) is likely to have been fixated at the oral stage of their psychosexual development, which emphasizes oral eroticism later on in life. Additionally, he also stated that depression may occur due to repeated feelings of disappointment with regard to love in their childhood. Also, pre-Oedipal feelings of love towards the parent of the opposite sex that are resolved by the ego may be another contributing factor. However, while these arguments sound appealing largely owing to how absurd they are, the causal links between these fixations and depression are largely based on theory and feebly backed by any proof at all.

Transference and Treatment

Freudian theory suggests that treatment for depression should “alleviate symptoms but also protect against other attacks by getting rid of the patient’s regressive libidinal urges.” However, a challenge in this process is that it is impossible to make a patient produce their pre-Oedipal fantasies. Transference, as Freudians posit, is also a possible consequence, where the patient will redirect their feelings and emotions, unconsciously, toward their therapist as if the therapist were a significant person from their past.

Freudian theory aims to overcome oral fixation by unpacking unconscious infant experiences that have caused the fixation. Transference, despite being a consequence, is also used as a therapeutic technique here, and therapists may use it to get to the root of the fixation — whether it be phallic or oral.

Other techniques, such as dream analysis (in Freudian theory, depression may manifest in dreams through symbolic representations of repressed conflicts and unresolved emotions from past experiences), free association — asking the patient to share their thoughts without a guiding question — may also be used by psychoanalysts to unpack and alleviate the symptoms of depression. However, much of this again is backed purely by theory and is difficult to justifiably carry out in practice. Additionally, Freud’s techniques completely overlook the use of medication — without which an understanding of clinical depression in the 21st century is largely unsubstantiated.

The concluding argument redirects to the opening of this article; Freud’s ideas may be interesting — even tempting to believe, largely due to their absurd nature — but there’s a reason why they're restricted to the confines of everyday lingo and pop psychology. Even though his theories regarding dream analysis, defense mechanisms, and the unconscious mind have laid the foundation for 21st-century research, most modern-day psychologists continue to remain staunchly critical of the psychosexual stages proposed by him, as well as his general take on child development. The reason is simple: his theories are almost impossible to prove owing to the inaccessible nature of the unconscious mind, and while we may have borrowed and adapted some of his practices, it’s essential to remember that most of his ideas are best left to our collective vocabularies alone.

Bibliography:

Citations: Cherry, Kendra. “The Unconscious Mind, Preconscious Mind and Conscious Mind.” Verywell Mind, 27 Feb. 2023, www.verywellmind.com/the-conscious-and-unconscious-mind-2795946#:~:text=The%20 unconscious%20 mind%20is%20a,pain%2C%20anxiety%2C%20or%20conflict. Id, Ego and Superego - Wikipedia. 7 Sept. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego Armstrong, Sheila. “What Can Psychoanalysis Tell Us About Depression?” Student Psychology Journal, vol. 1, Dec. 2010, pp. 115–16. Santos-Longhurst, Adrienne. “What Is the Oedipus Complex?” Healthline, 23 Jan. 2019, www.healthline.com/health/oedipus-complex#electra-complex Lautieri, Amanda. “Psychology of Depression- Psychodynamic Theories.” MentalHelp.net, 11 Apr. 2023, www.mentalhelp.net/depression/psychology-psychodynamic-theories/#:~:text=Introjective%20 depression%20 arises%20from%20a,love%20from%20a%20 desired%20object. . “What Can Psychoanalysis Tell Us About Depression?” Student Psychology Journal, vol. 1, Dec. 2010, pp. 115–16. Is Freudian Psychology Still Relevant? | BetterHelp. www.betterhelp.com/advice/psychologists/is-freudian-psychology-still-relevant/#.