Sigmund Freud created strong theories in science and medicine that are still studied today. Freud was a neurologist who proposed many distinctive theories in psychiatry, all based upon the method of psychoanalysis. Some of his key concepts include the ego/superego/id, free association, trauma/fantasy, dream interpretation, and jokes and the unconscious. “Freud remained a determinist throughout his life, believing that all vital phenomena, including psychological phenomena like thoughts, feelings and phantasies, are rigidly determined by the principle of cause and effect” (Storr, 1989, p. 2). Through the discussion of those central concepts, Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis becomes clear as to how he construed human character.
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...
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...een disproven or modified by psychologists today, however his impact will always remain strong. His thoughts on human behavior were deep and original, which makes his techniques for treating psychological illness innovating. His use of self-awareness for unconscious thoughts was an intelligent approach for his time. “The principles of treatment which Freud enunciated were quite unlike those followed by conventional physicians in the practice of medicine, and must have seemed revolutionary in the period before the First World War when they were formulated” (Storr, 1989, p. 95). The way in which modern psychotherapy and forms of psycho-analysis are conducted today, is based off of Freud’s procedure (Storr, 1989, p. 95).
Works Cited
"Psychoanalysis." Compton's by Britannica, v 6.0. 27 Jan. 2009.
Storr, A. (Ed.). (1989). Freud. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sigmund Freud is considered to be one of the most studied and respected historical figures in psychology. Freud has had a huge impact on the way we think today. He also is responsible for creation psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud is even known as the “father of psychoanalysis”. Through endless contentious theories such as, the Case of Anna O, the Unconscious Mind, the Psyche, and the most infamous of his theories, the Psychosexual stage, Freud has generated many fans and supporters. His works has earned him a place in the list of psychology legends today.
Sigmund Freud is known as the founding father of psychology. If it wasn’t for Freud and his work psychology probably wouldn’t be around today (Javel, 1999). Although Freud had many followers there were some who didn’t agree with his work and found his work to be very controversial. There were also many who criticized his work, one of his most controversial and criticized work was his psychosexual stages of development and his believes about the famous “Oedipus Complex.” Psychoanalysis is the first known modality used to treat individuals with psychological disorders. Freud’s work was a foundation for many whether they believed in his work or not. From his work other psychologist
Sigmund Freud believed that he “occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning point, it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being in depth-psychology” (Jones). Psychoanalysis is a theory or therapy to decode the puzzle of neurotic disorders like hysteria. During the therapy sessions, the patients would talk about their dreams. Freud would analyze not only the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers) of the dreams, but the disguise that caused the repressions of the idea. During our dreams, the decision making part of personality’s defenses are lowered allowing some of the repressed material to become more aware in a distorted form. He distinguished between
Freudian psychoanalysis distinguished three types of anxiety, - objective anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety. It is the ego's job to deal with anxiety (Hergenhahn, 2009). Freud's theories emphasize on sex as the main motive for human behavior, therefore a Freudian psychoanalysis therapist may attribute origin of the person’s anxiety to sex oriented issues such as sexual relationship, conflicts, and abuse, etc. The role of Freudian psychoanalysis therapist is to encourage patients to focus on affect and the expression of emotion and to explore their attempts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings. One technique of Freudian psychotherapy is free association which means that patients are encouraged to recall and talk about their
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Pribor in the Austrian Empire (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his education in the medical field, Freud decided to mix the career fields of medicine and philosophy to become a psychologist (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his research as a psychologist, he conceived the Structural Model Theory, which he discussed in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The theory states that the human psyche is divided into three main parts: the id, ego, and super-ego (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. pag). He concluded that the id was the desire for destruction, violence and sex; the ego was responsible for intellect and dealing with reality; and the super-ego was a person’s sense of right and wrong and moral standards (Hamilton, n. pag). Freud argued that a healthy individual will have developed the strongest ego to keep the id and super-ego in check (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. p...
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...
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, was the principle proponent of the psychoanalytic personality theory. Psychoanalytic personality theory is tells us that the majority of human behavior is motivated by the unconscious, a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings urges, drives, and instincts that the individual is unaware, and that only a small part of our psychological makeup is actually derived from the conscious experience. The problem is our unconscious mind disguises the meaning of the material it contains. As such, the psychoanalytic personality theory is ver...
Freud also was a medical doctor that specialized in the treatment of nervous disorder also known as neuroses. His main focus was that of psychoanalysis. He was also the first person to map out the entire subconscious geography of the human psych. Through his studies, he concluded that disordered thinking was the result of fears experienced in childhood. These disorders can range from hysteria, anxiety, depression, and obsession. Through his studies, he argued that neurotic behaviors had to be treated by bringing childhood experiences to the surface and confront them.
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 333.
During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, a psychologist named Sigmund Freud welcomed the new age with his socially unacceptable yet undoubtedly intriguing ideologies; one of many was his Psychoanalytic Theory of Dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the gateway into a person’s unconscious mind and repressed desires. He was also determined to prove his theory and the structure, mechanism, and symbolism behind it through a study of his patients’ as well as his own dreams. He contended that all dreams had meaning and were the representation of a person’s repressed wish. While the weaknesses of his theory allowed many people to deem it as merely wishful thinking, he was a brilliant man, and his theory on dreams also had many strengths. Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind enabled him to go down in history as the prominent creator of Psychoanalysis.
Freud graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Vienna, Austria. Soon after, he mapped the geography of the human psyche, and began working with severely disturbed patients. Through extremely intense self-analysis, Freud concurred that repressed desires were the source of emotional disturbances. He then developed psychoanalysis, a method of bringing these repressed desires to the conscious level. In order to evoke these hidden, unconscious desires, Freud used dream analysis and free association. He believed dreams were the royal road to the unconscious, and through the interpretation of its contents, repressed desires can be brought to surface. Free association was a therapeutic technique in which the patient would spontaneously verbalize thoughts in an atmosphere that was open and non-judgmental. It was Freud’s belief that the patient would begin to self-analyze, and ultimately ident...
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
Sigmund Freud is best known for his development and use of psychoanalysis. The theory of psychoanalysis focuses on the concept of how our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions play an active role in our daily lives. The id, ego, and superego are the three mental zones that encompass our psyche. Each zone has a specific function: The id functions on the pleasure principle; the ego on the protection of the individual; and the superego on protection of society. The degree of which each zone has been developed can be broken down and then analyzed. These three zones can be visualized by imagining a pie cut into three slices.
Sigmund Freud was one of the original pioneers in the field of Psychology. The work that he accomplished throughout his lifetime laid a foundation for many theorists after him. The theorists that worked in Psychology, after Freud, were able to form their own thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses about the human mind after learning from his work. Sigmund Freud’s major contribution in the field of Psychology was his theory about the human psyche; which he called the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego. This theory was based on the human personality and its formation. Many of Freud’s analysis strategies became common practice in the field of Psychology and are still used today. Sigmund Freud will always be one of the most influential figures in the
Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking and acting. Psychodynamic theories of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts (Myers & Dewall, pg# 572, 2015). These theories focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Psychodynamic theories are descended from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is his ideology of personality and the associated treatment techniques. Psychoanalysis attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. This theory also includes the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. He proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. Freud’s historically significant psychoanalytic theory became part of the human cultural legacy.