Psychoanalytic Perspective : Freud

Sigmund Freud

Was born the eldest of eight children
● Remained very close to his mother; his mother’s favorite child (Feist & Feist, 2018)
○ Four bedrooms for eight children; Freud had his own
○ Mother removed the family piano at Freud’s request

Was precocious, academically gifted, became a physician
● Became private practice psychotherapist
● Used hypnosis
● Most patients were middle- or upper-class women in Vienna
● Created his theory from his clinical
and personal experience

Free Association

Client says whatever comes to mind, no matter what

Freud: Key Ideas

We are social animals
▫ Inherently paradoxical
▪ Two motives: sex and aggression
▪ A lot of the mind is unconscious
▪ Dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious”
▪ Early family experiences explain everything
▫ Stage theory

Structures of the Mind

Unconscious, preconscious, and conscious represent different levels of awareness in the mind
▪ There are also three structures of personality: id, ego, and superego
▪ Id (Das Es): Unconscious, irrational, animalistic, hedonistic (Brull, 1975)
▪ Ego (Das Ich): Partly conscious, rational, regulatory
▪ Superego (Das Über-Ich): Partly conscious, moralistic, self-evaluative

Defense mechanisms

Largely unconscious distortions of thoughts or perceptions that act to reduce anxiety

Repression

Unconscious exclusion of anxiety-provoking
thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Projection

The attribution of one’s own unacceptable
urges or qualities to others

Sublimation

Unacceptable and/or sexual urges are rechanneled into productive and creative activities

The Five Psychosexual Stages

● Oral stage
● Anal stage
● Phallic stage
○ Oedipus complex: Arc of child’s identification with their same-sex parent
■ Castration anxiety
■ Penis envy
● Latency stage
● Genital stage

Criticisms of Freud

There have always been criticisms
▫ Overemphasizes sex and aggression
▫ Sexist
▫ Lacks empirical support
▫ Freud’s therapy has low efficacy