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One of the tenets of early Freudian thought is that the development of sexuality is primarily shaped by instinctual desires and infantile memories. As a child’s sexuality develops, these infantile memories and instincts become incompatible in regards to reality. These memories and instincts at one point brought at degree of pleasure, as maturation takes course, they no longer affect a sense of pleasure, but rather unpleasure. This shift in how these memories and instincts affect pleasure and unpleasure is the fundamental basis for Freud’s concept of repression. These incompatible instincts and desires cannot simply be forgotten, as they were never available to a pre-consciences mode of thinking. The psyche then begins to exert a force know as repression to push these memories back into the unconscious. …show more content…
Mechanical excitations in early childhood such as being rocked or railway travel are sources of early childhood sexual pleasure. This pleasure from mechanical excitation such as riding a train becomes incompatible with what one learns about sexuality during puberty and adulthood. Thus, the childhood memory of sexual pleasure from riding the train is repressed and mechanical excitation becomes unpleasureable. Freud states that ideas become repressed through the workings of what he calls the primary and secondary psychical process. The primary process is characterized by ideas and instinctual desires freely affecting to solely pleasurable memories. The secondary process looks to reality and checks their compatibility before creating these affections. Repression can be used as a force to mediate the contradictions posed by the two psychical energies. This mediation by the secondary process is a highly taxing on the psyche, and it can only successfully affect a desire if it can inhibit all unpleasure coming with
The oral stage takes place from birth until age 1, which involves the infant’s mouth as the focus of gratification derived from the pleasure of oral exploration of his or her environment and receiving primary nourishment from one’s mother’s breast. In addition to this, the anal phase takes place from age 1 until age 3, which involves the infant’s more erotic zone changing from the mouth to the anus. Finally, the phallic stage takes place from age 3 until age 6, which involves the child’s genitalia becoming his or her primary aphrodisiacal zone. It is in this third infantile development stage that children become aware of their bodies and the bodies of others. They gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring each other and their genitals, and so learn the physical and sexual differences between genders. These stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss and mistreatment. To keep all of this conflict buried in one’s unconscious, Freud argued that one develops defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among
Sigmund Freud’s theories on the construction of the mind are simple, but fundamentally changed the field of psychology. He proposed, among other things, that the human mind is composed of three parts: the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The preconscious consists of information, such as a telephone number, that is “accessible to consciousness without emotional resistance” (Schellenberg 21). In Freud’s estimation, the unconscious is the most important area of the mind. The information stored within it has “very strong resistances” to becoming conscious (Freud 32). Residing in the unconscious is the id, which “contains everything…that is present at birth… – above all, therefore, the instincts which originate from somatic organization” (14). From birth, all action is instinctual, from the id. The id recognizes and entertains no desires but its own and is impatient to have its needs met. This phase lasts until a part of the id changes “under the influence of the real external world” (14). This changed portion b...
The psychoanalytic theory says that our childhood experiences and unconscious desires influence behavior (Sigelman & Rider, 2009; pg.36). Our personalities have memories, beliefs, urges, drives, and instincts that we are not always aware of, and make up the unconscious. The major driving force behind Freud’s instinctual theory is the concept of Libido. Libido is a natural energy source that fuels the mechanisms of the mind. When this libidinal energy is stuck or fixated at various stages of psychosexual development, conflicts can occur that have lifelong effects.
Numerous advances led to Sigmund Freud’s inspirational Stages of Psychosexual Development, and it was Freud that introduced a clear theory explaining the process by which infants develop into adults. The transition from the Oral, Anal and Phallic stages begins to help us understand some of the processes that might lead to understanding attachment issues. Freud argued that humans are born “polymorphously perverse,” the idea that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. While relief from stress observed in a child might be interpreted as simply the absence of emotional pain, on a deeper level, re-attachment and physical closeness to a caregiver after prolonged separation should result in a pleasurable experience. Setting aside for the moment the sexual aspects of Freud’s theory, the basis of his premise remains one of the human connection that is gained through some form of physical contact, be it obtained from others or themselves. (Stevenson, 2001)
Through case study, the psychodynamic approach was developed by Sigmund Freud. Freud visited Charcot’s, a laboratory in Paris investigating people suffering from hysteria. There, Freud began patient case studies (Crain, p. 254). Freud developed 5 stages of human development known as the Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital stages. The Oral stage is from the ages of birth to 18 months. This stage engages in oral activities such as sucking. Next the Anal stage begins around age 18 months to 3 years of age. Freud suggests that during the Anal stage a child focuses on the pleasure of purging from the rectal area. The Phallic stages, none as the masturbation stage, when a child get’s pleasure from focusing on his genital areas usually happens during ages 3 years to 6 years of age. After the Phallic stage come the Latency stages. Latency is when children at the ages of 6 to 12 years old work to develop cognitive and interpersonal skills suppressing sexual interests but those 12 years and older fall into the Genital stages. During the Genital stage those suppressed sexual interests re-occur and the need to find gratification dependent on finding a partner (Craig & Dunn, p 12)
Freud believed that human nature is basically deterministic, and largely dependent on the unconscious mind. Irrational forces and unconscious motivations drive the human mind to a unique conduct and performance. Freud believed the choices we make are determined by biological and instinctual drives. The purposes of instincts are for survival and aggression. In the field of psychiatry, Freud founded his type of psychoanalytic therapy on curing mental illnesses. The basis for Freud’s work on treating mental patients was on an illness called hysteria. One popular case that Freud began the majority of his work on was the Anna O. case. She suffered many symptoms from repressed ideas that were outwardly from no physical cause. Repression is a way of excluding unconscious desires, wishes, or unpleasant memories into the conscious mind by holding them in the unconscious mind. “According to Freud, repressed ideas often retained their power and were later expressed without the patient's awareness of them. Through ps...
“Repression is essential to civilization, the conversion of animal instinct to civil behaviour, but such repression creates what might be called a second self, a stranger within” (Rivkin & Ryan 2004:389). Freud argued that most of our life experiences, such as our beliefs, impulses and feelings are not consciously accessible. Most of what drives us, Freud explains, is rooted deeply in our unconscious. “The ‘unconscious,’ …is a repository of repressed desires, feelings, memories, and instinctual drives, many of which, according to Freud, have to do with sexuality and violence.” (Rivkin & Ryan 2004: 389).
Freud emphasized that early childhood experiences are important to the development of the adult personality, proposing that childhood development took place over five stages; oral, anal. Phallic, latent and genital. The phallic stage is the most important stage which contains the Oedipus complex. This is where the child (age 4 - 6 yrs) posses the opposite sex parent and wants rid of the same sex parent. Freud argued that if the conflict is not resolved in childhood then it could cau...
One of Freud’s major research accomplishments was his findings on infant sexuality also known as the Psychosexual Stages. The first stage is the oral stage which is 0-1 years of age. This is the stage where sensual/sexual life begins, in the form of sucking the thumb, biting, and breast suck...
Once I have expounded Freud’s arguments in full, I will juxtapose his conviction with that of my own. Lastly, I will conclude this essay by encapsulating the perspectives and sentiments that have been presented. First, when speaking on the topic of the primordial human urges that are vexed by society, Freud chiefly focused on the instinct of Eros (libido/sexual love). According to Freud, “Reality shows us that civilization is not content with the ties we have so far allowed it. It aims at binding the members of the community together in a libidinal way… it summons up aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale so as to strengthen the communal bond by relations of friendship.
From a Freudian perspective, human development is based on psychosexual theory (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). It was Freud’s perspective that there are three components of personality (the id, ego, and superego) that become integrated into his five stage theoretical model. The id was the biological or drive component that is innate from birth. The sole purpose of the Id is satiate an individual’s internal drives (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). The ego is the conscious portion of our personality that mediates between our id and superego. Throughout development the ego reflects the child’s emerging ability to...
According to Freud, sexual drive, along with aggression, is the central factor in determining the personalities of human beings and the main driving force that gives reason to, and influences what we do and who we become. He asserts that if each psycho- sexual–oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital – stage is not resolved, fixation at that particular stage, and thereafter personality and behavioural problems might occur in latter life. More importantly, infantile sexuality, which encompasses the first three stages, is said to play an imperative role in the shaping the personalities of adults. Freud believes that while boys and girls would progress similarly during the earlier oral and anal stages, it is at the phallic stage where complications in undergoing a two-fold change in sexual object and leading sexual organ might make it more difficult for girls to progress through this stage, if at all. His work experiences dealing with neurotic women has also led him to proclaim that, “Now will you have escaped worrying over this problem – those of you of are men; to those of you who are women this will not apply – you are yourselves the problem”.[1]
Psychoanalytic criticism originated in the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who pioneered the technique of psychoanalysis. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained, and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly and indirectly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind. Through his multiple case studies, Freud managed to find convincing evidence that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over which we have very limited control (Guerin 127). One of Freud’s most important contributions to the study of the psyche is his theory of repression: the unconscious mind is a repository of repressed desires, feelings, memories, wishes and instinctual drives; many of which have to do with sexuality and violence. These unconscious wishes, according to Freud, can find expression in dreams because dreams distort the unconscious material and make it appear different from itself and more acceptable to consciousness. They may also appear in other disguised forms, like in language (sometimes called the Freudian slips), in creative art and in neurotic behavior. One of the unconscious desires Freud believed that all human beings supposedly suppress is the childhood desire to displace the parent of the same sex and to take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex. This so-called “Oedipus Complex,” which all children experience as a rite of passage to adult gender identity, lies at the core of Freud’s sexual theory (Murfin 114-5).
Their knowledge in the unconscious system is repressed and unavailable to consciousness without overcoming resistance (e.g., defense mechanisms). Thereby, the repression does not allow unconscious knowledge to be completely aware; rather, it is construed by means of concealing and compromise, but only interpretable through its derivatives dream and parapraxes that overcome resistance by means of disguise and compromise. Within the preconscious system, the contents could be accessible, although only a small portion at any given moment. Unconscious thought is characterized by primary process thinking that lacks negation or logical connections and favors the over-inclusions and 'just-as' relationships evident in condensed dream images and displacements. Freud asserted that primary process of thinking was phylogenetically, and continues to be ontogenetically, prior to secondary process or logical thought, acquired later in childhood and familiar to us in our waking life (1900, 1915a).
Freud believed that humans develop through stages based on particular erogenous zones. Freud theorized that to gain a healthy personality as an adult, a person would have to successfully complete a certain sequence of five stages. Within the five stages of Freud’s psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed there would be major consequences if any stage was not completed successfully. The stages, in order, were the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. In general, Freud believed that an unsuccessful completion of any stage would make a person become fixated on that particular stage. The outcome would lead the person to either over indulge or under indulge the failed stage during adulthood. Freud truly believed that the outcomes of the psychosexual stages played a major part in the development of the human personality. Eventually, these outcomes would become different driving forces in every human being’s personality. The driving forces would determine how a person would interact with the world around them. The results from Freud’s theory about the stages of psychosexual development led Freud to create the concept of the human psyche; Freud’s biggest contribution to