Sigmund Freud Main Point Id, Ego, Superego Personality Development

What is at stake in all these attacks?...The real object of attack—for which Freud is only a stalking-horse—is the very idea that humans have unconscious motivation. A battle may be fought over Freud, but the war is over our culture’s image of the human soul. Are we to see humans as having depth—as complex psychological organisms who generate layers of meaning which lie beneath the surface of their own understanding? Or are we to take ourselves as transparent to ourselves?

Jonathan Lear, Open Minded

The principal Freudian concept on which everything turns holds that mental illness is a result of defense against anxiety.

Peter Madison

Psychodynamic PerspectiveIn one of his Introductory Lectures, Freud told the following story:

I was once a guest of a young married couple and heard the young woman laughingly describe her latest experience. The day after her return from her honeymoon she had gone shopping with her unmarried younger sister while her husband went to his business. Suddenly she noticed a gentleman on the other side of the street, and nudging her sister had cried: “Look, there goes Herr L.” She had forgotten that this gentleman had been her husband for some weeks. I shuddered as I heard the story, but I did not dare to draw the inference. The little incident only occurred to my mind some years later when the marriage had come to a most unhappy end.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Father of Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychodynamic Theory focuses on the inner person

Defined:Much of behavior is motivated by inner forces, memories, and conflicts of which a person has little awareness or control. They stem from one’s childhood

and influence behavior throughoutthe lifespan.

Unconscious forces act to determine both:

PersonalityPersonality BehaviorBehavior

Part of everyone’s personality.

We are unaware of it. Though it strongly influences our Though it strongly influences our

behavior.behavior.

Conscious

Preconscious

Unconscious

Genetic Dead End?Thanatos

LibidoDeath Drive

Sexual Instinct Life

Instinct

Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality Primitive desires of hunger, sex, and aggression Pleasure Principle

Satisfaction is the ultimate goal

Rational and reasonableReality Principle:

Instinctual energy (ID) is restrained in order to maintain the safety of theindividual and keep him/her within societies norms

Right and wrong

Develops at age 5 or 6

Learned from others

Moral Ideals and Conscience Guides us toward socially acceptable behavior through

the use of guilt and anxiety

The cost of advanced civilization is the sense of guilt. –Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Child in grocery store check-out lane: “To take the candy or not to take the candy, that is

the question!”

Key Features Consists of stages Focused on particular biological functions If children are unable to gratify themselves sufficiently

during a particular stage or receive too much of it:

▪ Fixation will occur

Oral: Anal: Phallic:

(Birth to 12-18 months) (12-18 m to 3 years) (3 to 5-6 years)

Latency: Genital:

(5-6 years to adolescence) (Adolescence to adulthood)

It is astonishing that the human race could have for so long clung to the belief that children were asexual beings. –Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures