Some Americans knew already of Freud's preliminary groundbreaking works, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899, 1900) and the bestselling Dora [also known as "Fragmented Analysis of a Case of Hysteria"] (1900). However, what was perhaps most intriguing about Freud's theories, to Americans, was the idea that happiness was within the grasp of the individual.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of modern-day psychoanalysis, in Vienna, in the early years of the 20th century. Freud developed the theory of the unconscious, including the theory of the id-ego-superego triad that governs, from within, human behavior.

Further, as Freud argued in Civilization and it

Freud, and Freudianism, added words and phrases like "Freudian slip; "Oedipus Complex"; "transference"; "displacement"; "dream analysis"; "the unconscious"; "neurosis"; "repression"; "emotional states"; "id, ego, and superego", permanently to the American vocabulary. In American academia, it became popular, and at various times fashionable, to take "Freudian approaches" to various types of scholarly analysis, e.g., literary; anthropological; sociological; linguistic, etc. Freudianism in America also popularized, and legitimized for the first time, the concept of therapy, since it was, in the heyday of Freud, both fashionable and a sign of status to be "analyzed", or to be "undergoing analysis." Within American medical schools, psychiatric residents increasingly took specialties, or at least additional training, in psychoanalysis, then [until about the mid to late 1960's] (Hale) to be the very latest of therapeutic techniques.

on a walk with Ferenczi earlier in the day, . . . were a great success. His

. . . in German and following no written text, [and] extemporaneously planned

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of Freud's influence on American popular culture is a sub-genre of American cinema called "Film noir." Alfred Hitchcock's well-known 1945 film "Spellbound", for example, clearly a compelling representation of unconscious processes, guilt, anxiety, repression, etc., is a good example of the film noir genre and its Freudian elements. The popularity of American film noir in the post-World War II "Cold War" period, moreover, says something about the psychological preoccupations of America and Americans during that time, m much like post World War I modernism reveals much about the psychological states of artists, writers, composers, and everyday individuals following World War I.

Just as modernist art, literature, music, and other forms of expression reflected the American psyche after World War I, genres like film noir reflected the American psyche after World War II - an edgy, anxious, suspicious, wary, and sometimes depressed one. Classic film noir first arose in the late 1930's, when both Freud and psychoanalysis itself were well-established and were becoming popularly legitimized in America. Film noir was like Freud on celluloid, so to speak, visually reflecting anxiety, depression, and suspicion, brought on by Cold War fears; "Cold War" themes of isolation and mistrust, and the ever-present "chill" in the national atmosphere brought on by "Cold War" preoccupations.

This, then, was very likely, the relatively low-key start of what would grow into Freud's enormous influence on America, Americans, and the American psyche: in literature; art; film; popular culture, and many other areas, including psychoanalysis itself.

Film noir also often features unusual or troubling lighting effects (e.g., similar to the inside of a Freudian nightmare), like dim or opaque (cloudy) lighting; intrusive shadows, blocked or interrupted light (such as when fragments of light beam through Venetian blinds), veiled lighting (e.g., a cloud of cigarette smoke, a fogged window, mist, or steam, to create a cloudy, dreamy, nightmarish, or otherwise surreal effect Other physical elements of Film noir include broken glass (e.g.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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