"Every hour of every day…there are people who cannot forget a name, or make a slip of the tongue, or feel depressed; who cannot begin a love affair or end a marriage without wondering what the 'Freudian' notion may be."
- Alfred Kazin, 1947
Freud's impact on modern culture is shown by the degree to which modern psychology still relies on his fundamental theories. This is due to his fiercely persistent detractors as much as to his most devoted followers, ironically. The criticism brought upon Freud and his work draws even more attention to these disputed theories and inadvertently exercises an important process of human understanding: reflection.
A vast number of great thinkers and innovators provided the backdrop for Freud's analytical theory, although he didn't necessarily know or work with all of them. One of the most important things to take into account when understanding Freud's sphere of influence is to look at the climate in which Freud lived and worked. When Freud was four years old, Charles Darwin published his controversial and revolutionary Origin of Species, which proposed a view of humanity that was a 180-degree turn from prevailing evolutionary thought. The contemporary view of man was thus altered from one where man was viewed as being a different entity in the animal kingdom on the basis of the possession of an immortal soul to one where he was seen as being an actual part of the natural order, and the only thing separating him from non-human animals was a degree of structural complexity. This increased the plausibility and scientific credibility of the examination of man as an object suited for scientific investigation and inquiry, as well as one that portrayed humanity as something susceptible to unexplored incentive. Freud was fascinated with Darwin, and it's accurate to say that Darwins' work influenced the psychotherapist greatly, particularly noticeable in the meticulous scientific method with which Freud executed his studies.
"It almost looks like analysis were the third of those 'impossible' professions in which one can be quite unsure of unsatisfying results. The other two, much older-established, are the bringing up of children and the government of nations."
- Sigmund Freud, 1937
An even more important influence upon Freud and his work came from the field of physics, which, during the second half of the 1800's claimed enormous advances and discoveries that were largely initiated by the development of the principle of energy conservation by Helmholz. Also, monumental discoveries were made in the fields of thermodynamics, electromagneticism, and nuclear physics, which succeeded in completely transforming the modern world. Freud was doubly influenced by this particular branch, as he studied with Ernst Brücke who in 1874 published a book that postulated upon the theory that all organisms are essential energy-systems to which Helmholz' principles apply.
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