In science, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist noted for his 1895 "scientific psychology" the view that mental processes operate owing to the movement of particles in the mind governed by chemical thermodynamics. This is also known as known as psychodynamics, energy psychology, Freud's psychical energy model, dynamic psychology, among others.

Overview
Freud never fully published his thermodynamic interpretation of psychology, but only integrated aspects of his theory throughout his various articles and booklets.

Some of Freud's thermodynamic ideas are said to show through in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

His best known work that presents his theory is the 1923 The Ego and the Id, wherein he presents the argument that the psyche is an energy that exists in different states at any point in time.

Helmholtz school

See main: Helmholtz school; Psychodynamics

The origin of Freud's mental dynamic theories came from his interactions at medical school. Freud started medical school in 1873 at the University of Vienna. His first-year adviser was German physiologist Ernst Brücke, director of the director of the Physiology Laboratory at the University, close friend and previous medical school lab partner to none other than German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz one of main founders of thermodynamics and one of the three-main formulators of the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy). Over the next six years, initially concentrating on biology, Freud did research under Brücke.

In 1874, being influenced by the thermodynamic theories of Helmholtz, Brücke published Lectures on Physiology, which supposed that all living organisms are energy-systems governed by the first law of thermodynamics, which states, in effect, that the total amount of energy in any given physical system is always constant, that energy quanta can be changed but not annihilated, and consequently that when energy is moved from one part of the system it must reappear in another part. Freud, in turn, viewed these movements of energy to occur within the different levels of the consciousness. [2]

In sum, in his Lectures on Physiology, Brücke set forth the radical view that the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply. This was the starting point for Freud's dynamic psychology of the mind and its relation to the unconscious. [1] In other words, Freud, who had great admiration and respect for Brücke, quickly adopted this new 'dynamic physiology' with enthusiasm. From there it was but a short conceptual step - but one which Freud was the first to take, and on which his claim to fame is largely grounded - to the view that there is such a thing as psychic energy, that the human personality is also an energy-system, and that it is the function of psychology to investigate the modifications, transmissions, and conversions of 'psychic energy' within the personality which shape and determine it. This latter conception is the very cornerstone of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. [2]

Although a number of psychologists, in the late 19th century, professed views on the correlation between the first law of thermodynamics (energy conservation) and the energy associated with mental thoughts, Freud did the most to translate this linkage into a workable framework of logic, namely by supposing that innate drives that didn't immediately find action were "repressed" in the subconscious, an energy that found exit in other ways.

Excerpt from the manuscript of Freud's 1895 "Project for Scientific Psychology", the highlighted section reads: ‘the intention [of this project] is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science’, the science referred to here being biology and physics. [7]

Project for a scientific psychology
The initiation of Freud’s ambitions plans to develop a hard science version of psychology based on thermodynamics and mechanical theory, was first laid out in his “Project for Scientific Psychology”, began in the spring of 1895, but never finished and published post humorously in 1950, in volume one of his twenty-four volume collected works. [6] In this Scientific Psychology, Freud gave his opinion that: [4]

“In the future psychologists will exercise a direct influence, by means of particular chemical substances, on the amounts of energy and their distribution in the mental apparatus.”


It is said that in this is paper Freud gave his first outline of his views on ‘bound energy’ and ‘unbound energy’ (or free energy) in the states of consciousness; terms which had only recently been introduced in Hermann Helmholtz’ 1882 paper “The Thermodynamics of Chemical Processes”, one the founding papers of chemical thermodynamics.

The influence of Helmholtz on Freud are said to be seen clearly in Freud’s theory of ‘bound’ and ‘unbound’ psychical energy, which is an extrapolation of Helmholtz’s interpretation of “bound energy” (TS) and “free energy” (F). [3] It is said that Austrian philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem’s 1895 The Function of Judgment greatly inspired Freud’s “Project for a Scientific Psychology. [5]

References
1. (a) Hall, Calvin, S. (1954). A Primer in Freudian Psychology. Meridian Book.
(b) Bowlby, John (1999). Attachment and Loss: Vol I, 2nd Ed.. Basic Books, 13-23.
(c) Freud’s Psycho Dynamic Theory (1873-1923) – Institute of Human Thermodynamics.
2. Sigmund Freud – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
3. Lechte, John. (1994). Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: from Structuralism to Postmodernity (pg. 21). Routledge.
4. Heller, Sharon. (2005). Freud A to Z (Section: Project for Scientific Psychology, pg. 183). Wiley.
5. Geerardyn, Filip and Van de Vivjer, Gertrudis. (2002). The Pre-Psychoanalytic Writings of Sigmund Freud (pg. 12). Karnac Books.
6. Freud, Sigmund. (1895). “A Project for Scientific Psychology” (cited by 1505), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 1950; Vol. 1: 283-397. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
7. Project for a Scientific Psychology (excerpt) – LOC.gov.

Further reading
● Saul, Leon J. (1958). “Freud’s Death Instinct and the Second Law of Thermodynamics” (abstract), The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39: 323-25.
● Butz, Michael R. (1997). Chaos and Complexity (Fred and Jung, pgs. 54-58). CRC Press.
● Chaarraud, Nathalie. (2002). “The Topology of ‘a Project for a Scientific Psychology”; in The Pre-Psychoanalytic Writings of Sigmund Freud (pgs. 165-), by Geerardyn, Filip and Van de Vivjer, Gertrudis. Karnac Books.
● Duncan, Brent. (2009). “Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory”, Gakushuu.org.

External links
● Sigmund Freud – Wikipedia.