Sigmund Freud

Freud

Sigmund Freud, physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis, is generally recognized as one of the most influential and authoritative thinkers of the twentieth century. Known for his pioneering theories in psychoanalysis. Freud’s is responsible for several theories still used today. The five most well know are, Stages of Development or Psychosexual Development, Theory of Dreams, Id, Ego, Superego, Defense Mechanisms and Anxieties.

He expressed and refined the concepts of the unconscious, of infantile sexuality, of repression, and proposed a tri-partite account of the mind's structure ( id, ego and super ego), all as part of a completely new theoretical and beneficial frame of point for the understanding of human psychological development and the treatment of abnormal mental conditions. Despite the multiple manifestations of psychoanalysis as it exists today, it can in almost all fundamental respects be traced directly back to Freud's original work (American Psychoanalytic Association, 1998). Further, ”Freud's original treatment of human actions, dreams, and indeed of cultural artifacts as always possessing understood symbolic importance has proven to be extraordinarily productive, and has had substantial implications for a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation in addition to psychology” (American Psychoanalytic Association, 1998). Nevertheless, Freud's most important and frequently re-iterated claim, that with psychoanalysis he had invented a new science of the mind, remains the subject of much critical dispute and controversy.

Many of Freud’s contributions can be found in crucially important issues. Freud didn't exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings and so on. Working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind (Edelson, 1986).

The largest part by far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there, such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.