Freud

• Sigmund Freud

  Founder of psychoanalysis, Austrian neurologist (1856-1939)
• Sigmund Freud's lifespan

  1856-1939
• Sigmund Freud spent most of his life in Vienna, where the family moved in 1860
• Freud's major psychoanalytic works

  • The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
  • The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901)
  • Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
  • Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905)
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
  • Civilisation and its Discontents (1931)
• Unconscious mind


  A reservoir of thoughts, memories, and emotions that lie outside the awareness of the conscious mind
• Personality


  • Made up of three key elements: the id, the ego, and the superego
  • The ego is the conscious state
  • The id is the unconscious
  • The superego is the moral or ethical framework that regulates how the ego operates
• Life and death instincts

  Life instincts include sexual procreation, survival and pleasure<|>Death instincts include aggression, self-harm, and destruction
• Psychosexual development

  1. Oral stage (birth to 1 year)

  2. Anal stage (1-3 years)

  3. Phallic stage (3-6 years)

  4. Latent stage (6 years to puberty)

  5. Genital stage (puberty onwards)
• Defense mechanisms


  Unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety
• Freud believed that anxiety was produced by conflicts between drives from the id, and the constraints of reality or the superego
• When the ego is not capable of resolving the conflict, defense mechanisms would be used
• Freud was criticized for his views of women, femininity, and female sexuality
• Penis envy


  A phenomenon that women experienced upon witnessing a naked male body, because they felt they themselves must be "castrated men" and wished for their own penis
• Horney argued that men experience "womb envy" and are left with feelings of inferiority because they are unable to bear children
• Conscious vs unconscious experience


  Only about one-tenth of our mind is conscious, the rest is unconscious
• Repression


  The process by which unacceptable urges and desires are kept in our unconscious
• Freudian slip


  Speech errors that are actually reflections of unconscious desires accidentally slipping out
• Id


  Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
• Ego


  The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
• Superego


  The part of personality that presents internalized ideals, provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspiration
• The job of the ego is to balance the aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of the id with the moral control of the superego
• Freud believed that feelings of anxiety result from the ego's inability to mediate the conflict between the id and superego
• Defense mechanisms are unconscious protective behaviors that work to reduce anxiety
• Freud's psychosexual theory proposes that personality develops through a series of stages focused on different erogenous zones
• Successful resolution of the psychosexual stages leads to a healthy adult personality, while fixation can lead to unhealthy traits
• Freud's contributions to psychology

  • Development of talk therapy as an approach to treating mental health problems
  • Recognizing that childhood experiences impact adulthood
• Freud presented the first comprehensive theory of personality and recognized that much of our mental life takes place outside of our conscious awareness