Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud's Ideas: A Critical Overview

  • Even though Freud's ideas were flawed, he was not inherently awful. He was a loving husband and father.

Sexism in Freud's Theories

  • Freud excessively discussed sex in an inappropriate manner.
  • His theories were sexist, with detailed explanations of male development but minimal attention to female development.
  • He did not treat boys and girls equally in his explanations.

Scientific Rigor and Lasting Impact

  • Freud's ideas, while interesting, were likely inaccurate.
  • His theories have not achieved scientific rigor over a century later.
  • Despite criticisms, Freud's ideas have been called a "beautiful theory" by many, acknowledging his acute observations of human behavior.

Freud's Comprehensive Approach

  • Freud was a keen observer of humans, recognizing their complexity.
  • He developed a complex and colorful explanation of human behavior.
  • Freud's psychoanalytic approach is one of the most complete sets of ideas ever presented.
  • While not a theory in the modern scientific sense, Freud's ideas are interconnected and comprehensive.

Scope of Freud's Ideas

  • Freud addressed various aspects of human activity:
    • Development through infancy
    • Effects of parenting (good and bad)
    • How memory works
    • Roots of sexuality
    • Meaning of dreams
    • Causes of war
    • Thought processes of disturbed individuals
  • He pioneered psychological therapy, moving beyond the medical model.
  • Freud tackled everything related to being human, offering the most complete explanation ever presented.

Freud's Boldness and Influence

  • Other early psychologists focused on reaction time studies, while Freud presented a large, interconnected explanation.
  • His expansive explanation of humans was impressive, considering he built upon philosophical ideas.
  • Freud's ideas changed how Western culture viewed itself.
  • After Darwin's evolutionary challenge, Freud's assertion that individuals are mysterious to themselves was more readily accepted.
  • Western civilization embraced Freud's ideas, integrating his language into culture.
  • Freudian concepts, like dream interpretation, are now commonplace, even without direct attribution.

Importance of Studying Freud

  • Understanding Freud is essential for psychology students due to his cultural impact.
  • His ideas sparked reactions and challenged others in the field to develop better explanations.
  • Current ideas still react to Freud's work from over a century ago.
  • Memory and sexuality research were influenced by the need to question Freud's assertions.
  • Even though largely wrong, Freud inspired the field to investigate and discover better truths.
  • The field stands on Freud's shoulders; he inspired progress and a deeper understanding of human behavior.
  • Few figures in psychology have had Freud's impact.

Mental Energy: Libido and Thanatos

  • Freud believed in mental or psychic energy that drives the mind and motivates behavior.
  • This energy stems from two drives:
    • One toward life
    • The other toward death
  • Freud agreed with the doctrine of opposites: good/evil, light/dark, life/death. He emphasized that understanding one requires experiencing the other.
  • These two sources drive all human actions.

Life Drive: Libido

  • The drive towards life is called libido.
  • Libido is not just a sex drive but a broader life drive.
  • It motivates actions that promote life: creation, protection, enjoyment, creativity, productivity, growth.
  • Taking a class is motivated by libido, aiming for growth and improvement.

Death Drive: Thanatos

  • The death drive, Thanatos (Greek for "death"), reflects Freud's love for conflict.
  • Thanatos drives destructive activity, like wars, without rational basis.
  • Freud, living through antisemitism, World War I, and the rise of Nazis, saw ample evidence of destructive tendencies.
  • Thanatos was a later addition to Freud's theories, supplementing the earlier focus on libido.
  • Thanatos pushes humans towards aggression, destruction, and entropy.
  • Freud argued that understanding life requires understanding death, and growth requires understanding destruction.

Role of Libido and Thanatos

  • All choices and impulses stem from libido or Thanatos.
  • Freud believed in a limited amount of mental energy.
  • Using energy in one area limits its availability elsewhere, reflecting the conservation of energy.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

  • Freud introduced the psychosexual stages of development, an early form of developmental psychology.
  • Development is the story of how libido is invested, redirected, and reinvested in different body areas, corresponding to different psychological areas.
  • At birth, individuals are primarily id and libido, with Thanatos becoming more prominent later.
  • Libido invests in specific body parts, prompting psychological development.
  • Stages are named after the physical location of libido investment:
    • Oral stage
    • Anal stage
    • Phallic stage
    • Genital stage
  • Libido determines where growth occurs at each stage.
  • Freud was an early stage-based theorist, suggesting that humans develop in defined stages marked by age.
  • Each stage involves working on specific tasks or skills until development occurs, followed by a shift to the next stage.
  • This perspective likened development to a metamorphosis, such as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

Aspects of Each Stage

  • Each stage has three aspects:
    • Physical focus: Where libido is located.
    • Psychological theme: What psychological development is happening.
    • Parenting: How caregivers handle the conflict and development.
  • Freud focused on conflict at each stage, which must be resolved by the child.
  • Parental environment either promotes successful navigation or creates challenges, leading to fixation.
  • Fixation occurs when mental energy gets stuck at a stage, outside of awareness.
  • Stuck energy reduces available resources, leading to failure and problems.
  • Therapy aims to uncover fixations in the unconscious mind.
  • Freud used an army analogy: soldiers represent mental energy, and battles for towns represent developmental stages.

Army Analogy

  • The number of soldiers left behind after a battle reflects its difficulty.
  • Easy battles require fewer soldiers, while tough battles require more.
  • Leaving more soldiers behind reduces the army size, limiting further conquest.
  • Tough battles at a stage lead to fixation, reducing available libido for future development.
  • Problems arise unconsciously, requiring therapy to understand the root cause.

Five Psychosexual Stages

  • There are five stages of psychosexual development, including a latency period with less development.
  • Understanding these stages can reveal the roots of adult problems.

The Oral Stage

  • The first stage, the oral stage, begins at birth.
  • Newborns have limited skills but can scream and suck.
  • Libido focuses on the mouth, lips, and tongue because babies manipulate these well.
  • Babies explore the world primarily with their mouths.
  • The psychological theme is dependency.
  • Infants depend heavily on caregivers for survival.
  • Their job is to rely on others to have everything done for them.

Parental Role in the Oral Stage

  • Infants have needs (food, warmth, rest) but cannot fulfill them alone.
  • They signal needs by crying, which acts as an alarm.
  • Fixations occur when parents are too extreme in meeting the child's needs.
  • Freud emphasized that balance promotes psychological health.
  • Extremes in parenting lead to fixations.

Extremes in the Oral Stage

  • One extreme is rushing to stop crying as fast as possible by meeting every need immediately.
  • This sends the message that the child gets everything they want by simply sounding an alarm.
  • If parents consistently do this during the first 18 months, children may develop into spoiled brats.
  • Such parenting leads to an oral fixation and over-dependence on others.
  • Individuals with this fixation may always want others to do everything for them and become upset if needs aren't met quickly.
  • Freud believed this pattern would persist throughout life without therapy.

Alternative Oral Fixation

  • Another extreme is a pattern of neglect: letting children cry and trying to figure things out independently.
  • One extreme is parent rushing to baby to take care of all the needs to get the baby to stop crying sending mixed messages.
  • In the 1970s and 1980s, FERBER method advised parents to allow children to cry for a prescribed amount of time. Despite its initial support, the method turned out to be ineffective.

Impact of Neglect Policy

  • Neglecting policy communicates that children are alone and must handle issues.
  • Such methods were not possible since the baby could not do anything for themselves.
  • Kids recognize where a caregiver is not taking care of the infant the way they should.
  • Freud thought about fixations that might take place.

Duality of Outcomes

  • New message that baby is on their own to take care of whatever challenge it may face with no one to help them.
  • It is independence issue that Freud believes stem from oral fixations on both sides.
  • Regardless, the fixation may cause problems for the individual as they grow. The child may develop an independence issue, since their caregivers have neglected their requirements early on.

Manifestation of Fixations

  • Even though fixations may occur, Fred would indicate that behaviors are usually coordinated with whatever actions their parents took.
  • This means to imply if parent provided great support, it is likely that the child will be overly dependent on their parents.
  • With these things being considered, one must remember the opposite may or may not happen.
  • But it could always be considered that the parent might do the opposite and allow fixations to take place in the opposite direction.

Analysis and Mitigation

  • Additionally, there is the notion that the parent may believe that they are helping their child, but in reality they are not. They are actually doing harm to the child by making them have issues as they grow older with reliance and damaged social aspects. The negative impact is that they are setting the children up to fail.

  • Also, an analyst will ask questions about childhood and development. Classic thing is that analysts will ask about the mother and relationships.

  • In Freud's eyes, physical manifestation might expose the degree to which a patient would react to such feelings and behaviors. Are the hands and mouth around each other? Are you smoking more, or eating or taking medicine that you may be addicted to?

  • If a smoker, what is your relation with your mother, and how did the mom treat the kid?

Overcoming Fixations

  • Freud eventually started to train people on psychotherapy and found through experience that the first person to do any good analysis is to do such thing on oneself.
  • Because he was aware of his smoking habits, Freud would do a self-analysis, hoping to liberate some mental block so he would be more successful.
  • These patterns were done by the way the mother treated the sons, which eventually Freud was able to think about and analyze his own life.

Neglect and Its Effects

  • Additionally the other side of the spectrum if a newborn is crying at 3AM. Parents may attempt to not do anything about it, and have the child not know what action to have taken.

  • For instance there was parenting method that occurred in the 1980s. They asked parents to let children cry for prescribed amount of time. In order to recognize a sign for the baby going back to bed.

  • Baby cannot communicate or provide for themselves, which means Freud will usually view the interaction with the family as a serious interaction especially if all the baby can do is stand and cry to be neglected. This is still a dependence issue in essence.

  • Most likely during extreme instances of one with their child, he or she might start something or begin a journey that will follow them forever. All the way to extreme cases with a therapist.

Conclusion

  • Furthermore in conclusion, Fred would suggest that as babies develop, having that extra support may just need to get attention and provide the baby with the proper balance of taking care of each other and preventing a fixation.
  • Such fixation may prevent one to have the ability to reduce the libido and also bring the dependent to such levels that would bring the person back to health.

The Anal Stage

  • The Anal stage commences, after passing the Oral stage, which brings up to 18months and upwards as the baby develops more each day.
  • Once passing oral, and you enter the anal stage. One must consider what goes on during the period.
  • During this time, toddlers work on potty training.
  • Potty training symbolizes body control, teaching them when they can go to the bathroom and not go at the wrong time.

Body Control and Anal Stage Focus

  • Additionally the focus might revolve around the anal stage, since libido may be implemented.
  • Additionally, the goal is to see whether the child can attempt to control themselves. Is there a degree of bodily functions? Control of behavior or emotions or the toddler learning to control it all. The mechanism of training may begin now. What is the relationship for the parents to be present in the potty training process?
  • Moreover there are instances when someone hates dealing with the stool that comes. No one likes the feeling or even having to deal with even their own stool. However there are some things that one must consider when he or she might have a child to grow and nurture. But that choice especially during this time is up to one person, to be or not to be parents.

Parental Habits during this Stage

  • Since one parent might not want to deal With The Stool they will want to catch the kit prior to actually going to the bathroom. However they will create an extreme environment for the kid in those instances.
  • Fred also will suggest that demanding such things as checking with the doctor demand extreme control during such times with actions that allow fixation on the analytic stage.
  • With fixations, that allows OCD behavior (obsessive compulsive disorder) to occur. But OCD mostly comes from parents.
  • OCD can be a very cruel process and will strike great fear as parents don't understand what action cause the condition to perpetuate. Those instances can be the most difficult to prepare oneself in order to go to therapy. Parents usually can fail at such process.

Neglect Policy during the Anal Stage

  • Additionally with such instances and with parents who don't want to do it they'll attempt to ignore the kid and not due any reasonable potty training. Where the kid is not put in diapers way too long. Because that may create certain bad images for families. And it's rare for such thing for parents to not pay attention or have the toddler do their potty on their own.
  • Neglect may allow people to raise their kids the right way. But those moments do not come without a good conversation between families, there is no book or guideline on proper parenting. Fred usually likes to observe. Such events and have many potential actions that he can take at the top of his head. However Fred is always more considerate compared to many other therapists.
  • With friends who didn't allow parents from my area to care for their six months or a half year old in the state of California. I was able to just sit back as a Freudian and observed how the analyst viewed the interaction going on with the people.
  • In the end the result could give the family an inclination of neglect and no structure. In Freud's estimation, this person has bad to very little control. Because those people are less likely to get attention.

Prediction of Bad Habitation on Kids

  • Therefore the observer has said that that will play out over time with the way the kid handles space or even the mess a kid might be known about doing. Fred may imply that the kid will have poor controlling capabilities. Especially if he has been bad over time.
  • Both extremes are bad to Fred who is also right, which leads people to agree with his notions. Those moments give way to the prediction of one not being able to get into the way one would like to.
  • However parents in most instances want to make sure their kid is always at a balanced setting. In order to get the toddler without having the toddler have extreme fixations. Now if Fixations exist the goal is to know if it may have certain issues where the toddler may or may not react properly or too much or too little. All reactions have a strong result that has potential to be negative.
  • As time continues there is that thought that as an army it should be noted that parents might have had bad habits with the kids that has resulted with either parent leaving a part of their libidinal army along the way. Since those actions will indicate such fixation.
  • Hopefully parents are not creating the impression or negative outcome because libido tends to make all the difference. You will move forward to have better habits if you have not had fixations on you.

The Phallic Stage

  • It occurs around the ages of three. At the phallic stage, boys and girls are completely different according to Freud.
  • They might realize boys have a penis and girls do not for instance. However the focus may be in the penis for such instances. Because of such sexism not everyone may have the notion to begin within.
  • Boys usually noticed the existence of a penis at age three. Moreover they may also not realize the girls don't have such things. Because this is usually at the front of the mind.
  • Freud might be correct to suggest that the kid at such age may not have a penis, and may be asking themselves why not here. Such thought process is a story that has the process take a good bit to understand. One point Fred may attempt to get to such things might influence such people to have better actions as years continue to progress.
  • The observation might revolve around, how that those might identify to each parents of the same sets. This may bring back how we might address what the psychological theme might represent in those instances.

First Love

  • That being mentioned, the thought is around that from age 3. Boys will tend to have their first true love. Because there is that true connection between him and the parents. To the point that having love between those two will be a high level of desire, because it may revolve around having sex between the two which may in fact create the notion that it is their first impulse. The goal is to have the kid identify the actual intention for the parents.

  • The main example from the lecture about this stage abruptly ends.