Freud

• Freud was influenced by Charcot (hypnosis) and Breuer (talk therapy)
• Levels of Awareness

  • Conscious: Tip of iceberg, Current contents of mind that you are aware of at the time, Easily accessed all the time, Can quite easily reflect on contents
  • Preconscious: Not currently in awareness, Can be brought to mind with ease, Available for access when needed
  • Unconscious: Contents actively kept out of conscious awareness, Unacceptable impulses are "repressed", Can come to awareness when intoxicated, high, stressed, dreams, Psychoanalysis aims to delve into the unconscious
• Structure of Personality

  • The Id: Completely unconscious, Source of all cravings and libidinous impulses, Acts under the pleasure principle, Raw instinctual energy, Primary process (irrational) thinking
  • The Ego: Operates under reality principle, Negotiation between id and the outside world, Planning, thinking and organizing
  • The Superego: The moralist and idealistic, Acts in opposition to the id, Operates on "ideal principle", Accounts for social influence on behaviour
• Energy hypothesis

  • Born with a finite amount of intrapsychic energy (libido)
  • Conflict between the three structures: intra-psychic conflict
  • Source of anxiety and mental disturbances
• Personality Development

  Freud's psychosexual stages: Oral (0-18 months), Anal (18-36 months), Phallic (3-6 years), Latency (6 to puberty), Genital (puberty)
• Defence mechanisms

  • Healthy way of adapting to the world and protecting the ego
  • If over-used or inflexible, can be the source of mental illness
  • One of the most influential aspects of the theory
• Psychotherapy

  1. Root of mental health problems is unconscious material

  2. Locate fixations and conflicts

  3. Therapist is a blank slate for the client to project onto

  4. Social interactions minimised via set up of office

  5. Relaxation to minimise resistance

  6. Some techniques: Free association, Analysis of dreams, Hypnosis, Analysis of transference/countertransference
• Importance of Childhood

  • Key developmental stage
  • Physical and psychological outcomes
  • Necessary to work back to this point in therapy
  • Childhood trauma
  • Attachment styles (Bowlby)
  • Mentalisation (Fonagy, 2000)
• Subliminal messaging


  • The registration of sensory input without conscious awareness
  • Controversy began in 1957 when hidden messages such as “Eat Popcorn” were placed in films
  • Claim that popcorn sales increased 58% and there was a public outcry
• Experimental paradigms


  • Designed to examine whether our attention can be distracted
  • Implicit association test (IAT)
  • Stroop colour naming task
• Stroop colour naming task

  • Slower colour naming of words in the list indicates that the word itself is subconsciously distracting the person from naming the colour
  • People with eating disorders consistently slower to name the colour of food and body shape related words than regular controls (Ben-Tovim, et al., 1989; Lee & Sharfran, 2004)
• Important contributions of Freud

  • Childhood as important
  • Subliminal messaging
  • Defence mechanisms
  • Psychotherapeutic approaches continue to be used and researched