Freud Theory Of Mental Illness

Mental illness is a disease that cannot be fully cured but controlled to some degree. There are multiple types of mental illnesses, ranging from mood disorders to schizophrenia. A mental illness is when there is an abnormality in the brain. An example would be when a person is diagnosed with depression; there is a lack of serotonin in the brain. Medications can balance the levels of serotonin, and either cure the depression or decrease the symptoms of depression. Mental illness is fairly common; 1 in 4 people are diagnosed with mental illness. Today there are multiple ways to diagnose a person with a mental illness. Doctors mostly use therapy and quizzes to diagnose someone with a mental illness. I am going to use the Freud theory to diagnose

Freud believed that to diagnose someone, you had to get into their unconscious mind. To do this you had to analyze their childhood and their dreams. He believed that while going through childhood to adulthood, you went through five specific phases; Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital stages. If a key element in one of these stages was taken away early or abused, a person would get stuck on one with these stages and develop a fixation. Freud would diagnose dreams by trying to find their underlying meaning in each dream, which somehow was always sexual. These approaches had made many psychologists question Freud’s theories and experiments because they were so open and broad. One of his other theories was that people had an Id, Ego, and Superego. He believes that the id is what drives people to do things that they want to do. The Ego balances the Id and the Superego, otherwise known as the mediator. The Superego is the morals behind every action that someone does. This theory was not as rejected from psychologists, but Freud still had no proof to back up his

The show is still currently running, and it is only on its fifth episode at the moment but we know a lot about Dandy. Dandy is a young adult in his mid-twenties but has the mentality of a sadistic ten year old. He throws child-like fits when he can’t have what he wants, he has a play room with children’s toys, and performs poorly put together puppet shows. Dandy lives in a huge mansion with his mother and their live-in maid. He was raised by the maids his mother hired, so he has no connection to her besides the title of ‘mother’, and she buys him whatever he wants. Dandy has never had a father figure in his life, he was raised by women. Dandy has never been punished for anything he has done so he now doesn’t fully know the difference from right and wrong. Dandy shows signs of having a phallic fixation. Throughout the show we begin to see that Dandy starts to become obsessed with himself. He wants to be the best there ever was, and wants to look the best as possible. He never had a father figure in his life so he is now experiencing the symptoms of what was lacking in his phallic stage. He never had a male role model so he was never able to see what the cultural aspect of what men were supposed to be in the 1950’s. During the phallic stage is when you realize your gender. Because there was never a male role model in the house, he never saw how to