I Will Defend Sigmund Freud to My Last Breath

I remember the day I became a devotee of Sigmund Freud. In my final year of high school I was taking a course that was a basic introduction to anthropology, sociology, and psychology. During the psychology unit we studied Freud and the roots of psychiatric practices.

My teacher decided to run a small psychology experiment, where he would ask us a series of vague questions that would have us create certain visual scenarios in our head, such as “Picture your dream house. How big is it? Is there a fence? What is in the dining room?” I can distinctly remember the final two questions: “Behind your dream house is a body of water. How big is it? How do you decide to cross it?”

The teacher then went through all the questions and explained that Freud would come to certain conclusions about your personality based on your answers. For example, the size of your dream house was the size of your ambition, and the size of its fence symbolized how defensive you are. Then he got to the last two questions and explained that the size of the body of water represents your sexual appetite, and how wet you get while crossing it represents the degree to which you indulge in your sexuality.

My answer was: an ocean, and I crossed it with a helicopter.

God damn he diagnosed my vestal high school self perfectly. It was a sobering moment realizing that some random Austrian who’d been dead for eighty years knew me better than I did. In that moment, he won a lifetime fan.

Freud often gets pilloried for his methods lacking a strong scientific basis, but for me the value of his work delves beyond the realm of mere empiricism. I believe he was playing with forces that we are only just now beginning to comprehend, and for that reason, he has my undying support.