Admin Published On May 29, 2021 | Updated on Aug 10, 2023 Essay

Students pursuing psychology dedicate a significant amount of time to studying Sigmund Freud's theories. But for people who are not familiar with psychology, psychoanalysis is a new term. This blog is for them to understand the basics of psychoanalysis.

So, let's start learning about Sigmund Freud, his ideas on human behaviour and personality (some of which may seem a little strange), and his role in creating and popularising talk therapy.

What is Psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is a form of therapy that helps clients release pent-up or repressed emotions and memories and bring poignancy or healing. To put it in another way, psychoanalysis aims to convey what happens at the unconscious or subconscious level to enlightenment.

This purpose is achieved by interacting with another person’s lifequestions, important matters, and by delving into the complications that lie underneath the mind’s surface.

Freud's Main Theories

Psychosexual Development & The Oedipus Complex

Psychosexual development was one of Freud's most well-known theories. Freud proposed that as children, we pass through various stages focused on erogenous zones. According to Freud, successful completion of these stages led to the creation of a healthy personality. However, dependency at any point prevents completion, resulting in the development of an unstable and fixated personality as an adult. While aspects of this theory are still used in contemporary psychoanalytical therapy, a more modern approach has gradually replaced it.

Oral Stage (Birth to 18 Months): The child's attention is drawn to oral pleasures such as sucking. Difficulties at this age may lead to an adult oral personality centred on smoking, consuming alcohol, chewing nails, and becoming pessimistic, ignorant, and overly reliant on others.
Anal Stage (18 months to 3 Years): The focus of enjoyment is on eliminating and preserving stool and learning to regulate that due to social standards. Fixation at this point may result in perfectionism, a desire to regulate, or messiness and disorganization.
Phallic Stage (Ages 3 to 6 Years): The child's desire moves to the genitals during the phallic Stage. Freud claimed that during this Stage, boys develop an implicit sexual desire for their mothers and fear that their fathers would punish them by mutilation. Following Sophocles' tragedy, this is known as the Oedipus Complex. A fixation at this point can result in uncertainty about sexual identity or sexual deviance.
Latency Stage (Ages 6 to puberty): At this Stage, sexual desires are suppressed mainly.
Genital Stage (Puberty Onwards): The individual's attention shifts to people of the opposite sex in the final Stage.

Id, Ego, Superego & Defences

Freud later suggested that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego, in his later work. In the 1920 essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud explored this model and expanded in "The Ego and the Id." (1923).

The Id:The id, according to Freud, is an unconscious, impulsive, and demanding part of the psyche that helps us meet our basic needs as children. This part of the mind works on what Sigmund Freud called the pleasure theory, which is all about having our every need and desire fulfilled without regard for fact. The id aspires for instant gratification.
The Ego: The reality theory is the foundation of the Ego. It recognizes that the Id can't always get what it needs, leading to problems in the future. As a result, the Ego serves as the Id's gatekeeper, allowing it to get what it desires on occasion. However, make sure that the entire truth of the situation is always taken into consideration.
The Super-Ego: According to Freud, by the age of five, we developa new aspect of the psyche called the Super-Ego. This is the spiritual component of the mind, which believes that we should always do the right thing no matter what the situation. This part is often referred to as our conscience.

Defence Mechanisms

According to Freud, these three sections of the mind are constantly at odds since each has a different primary objective. When a person's Ego senses that the conflict is too much for him or her to handle, it may activate one or more defensive mechanisms to defend the individual.

The defence mechanisms consist of:

Repression: Disturbing or threatening thoughts are pushed out of one's consciousness by the Ego.
Denial: The Ego obstructs perception of disturbing or overwhelming experiences, causing the person to fail to accept or believe what is going on.
Projection: The Ego tries to alleviate anxiety by blaming another person for the individual's undesirable thoughts, emotions, and motivations.
Displacement: The individual satisfies an impulse by acting socially unacceptable manner on a substitute object or person.
Regression: To cope with stress, the person goes backwards in development as a defensive mechanism.
Sublimation: This defensive mechanism, like displacement, includes fulfilling an instinct by acting on a replacement in a socially acceptable manner.

The Unconscious

The unconscious was fundamental to Freud's understanding of the mind. He claimed that most of what we feel daily occurs in the unconscious mind and is not visible. He used this idea to show thateven though a person does not recall anything painful that happened to them, it is stored in the unconscious. However, these memories remain present in the unconscious, and they can resurface in consciousness under some conditions, causing difficulties for us even when we are unconscious.

According to Freud, our conscious mind accounts for only a small part of our personalities since we are only aware of the iceberg's tip of what is going on in our heads. The preconscious or subconscious mind, according to Freud, is the third dimension of our psyche. While we are not fully aware of what is always in this part of the mind, we can retrieve information and memories from it when prompted. This is one of Sigmund Freud's most significant contributions, and it is still widely used in psychotherapy today.

If you enjoyed this piece and would like to read more about other famous psychologists throughout history, please contact us to inquire about our other psychology essays.

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