Freud: Psychoanalysis

Levels of Mental Life

• Freud's greatest contribution is his exploration of the unconscious.

• People are primarily motivated by drives of which they have little or no awareness.

• Mental life is divided into the unconscious and the conscious.

• The unconscious is further divided into the unconscious proper and the preconscious.

• These levels designate both a process and a hypothetical location.

Unconscious

• Contains drives, urges, or instincts beyond our awareness that motivate our actions.

• We may be conscious of overt behaviors but not the mental processes behind them.

• The unconscious is proven indirectly through:

  • Dreams

  • Slips of the tongue

  • Repression (forgetting)

• Dreams are a rich source of unconscious material.

• Childhood experiences can appear in adult dreams without conscious recollection.

• Unconscious processes enter consciousness after being disguised to avoid censorship.

• Freud used the analogy of a guardian or censor blocking passage between the unconscious and preconscious.

• Unconscious images must be disguised to slip past the primary censor, then elude a final censor.

• Memories entering the conscious mind are no longer recognizable; they appear as nonthreatening experiences.

• Images often have strong sexual or aggressive motifs, as childhood behaviors are frequently punished or suppressed.

• Punishment and suppression create anxiety, leading to repression.

• Repression forces unwanted experiences into the unconscious to avoid pain.

• A portion of our unconscious originates from ancestors' experiences passed down through generations, called phylogenetic endowment.

• Freud's phylogenetic endowment is similar to Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

• Jung emphasized the collective unconscious more than Freud.

• Freud used inherited dispositions as a last resort when individual experiences were inadequate.

• Phylogenetic endowment explains concepts like the Oedipus complex and castration anxiety.

• Unconscious drives may appear in consciousness after transformations, such as expressing erotic or hostile urges through teasing or joking.

• The original drive is disguised and hidden from the conscious minds involved.

• The unconscious mind of one person can communicate with the unconscious of another without awareness.

• The unconscious is not inactive; forces constantly strive to become conscious.

• Unconscious ideas motivate people.

• Hostility toward a father may appear as ostentatious affection.

• The disguise often takes an opposite, overblown form from the original feelings (reaction formation).

Preconscious

• Contains elements not conscious but can become conscious readily or with difficulty.

• Contents come from:

  • Conscious perception: Ideas pass into the preconscious when attention shifts.

  • The unconscious: Ideas slip past the censor in disguised form.

• Some images never become conscious due to anxiety; they are repressed by the final censor.

• Other images from the unconscious gain admission to consciousness through disguise via dreams, slips of the tongue, or defense mechanisms.

Conscious

• Mental elements in awareness at a given time.

• The only level of mental life directly available to us.

• Ideas reach consciousness from:

  • A perceptual conscious system turned toward the outer world, perceiving external stimuli.

  • Within the mental structure, including nonthreatening ideas from the preconscious and disguised images from the unconscious.

• Images from the unconscious escape into the preconscious by cloaking themselves as harmless elements.

• Upon reaching the conscious system, images are distorted and camouflaged, often as defensive behaviors or dream elements.

• Analogy: Unconscious is a large entrance hall with diverse people striving to escape to a smaller reception room (preconscious).

• A watchful guard (primary censor) prevents undesirables from escaping or throws out those who slipped in.

• The screen (final censor) guards the important guest (eye of consciousness), preventing many preconscious elements from reaching consciousness.

Provinces of the Mind

• Freud introduced a three-part structural model in the 1920s to explain mental images by function.

• The model includes the id, ego, and superego.

• These provinces are hypothetical constructs that interact with the levels of mental life.

• The ego has conscious, preconscious, and unconscious components.

• The superego is both preconscious and unconscious.

• The id is completely unconscious.

The Id

• At the core of personality, completely unconscious.

• The id has no contact with reality but strives to reduce tension by satisfying basic desires.

• It operates via the pleasure principle.

• A newborn infant embodies the id, seeking gratification without regard for possibility (ego) or propriety (superego).

• The id is not altered by time or experience; childhood wish impulses remain unchanged.

• The id is unrealistic, pleasure-seeking, illogical, and can entertain incompatible ideas.

• It has no morality; it is amoral, not immoral.

• The id seeks pleasure without regard for what is proper or just.

• The id is primitive, chaotic, inaccessible to consciousness, unchangeable, amoral, illogical, unorganized, and filled with energy.

• It operates through the primary process and depends on the development of a secondary process (ego) to connect with the external world.

The Ego

• The ego is the only region of the mind in contact with reality.

• It grows out of the id during infancy and communicates with the external world.

• It is governed by the reality principle, substituting it for the id's pleasure principle.

• The ego is the decision-making or executive branch of personality.

• It can make decisions on conscious, preconscious, and unconscious levels.

• The ego considers the demands of the id, superego, and the external world.

• It tries to reconcile the irrational claims of the id and superego with realistic demands.

• The ego becomes anxious when surrounded by divergent and hostile forces, using defense mechanisms to protect itself.

• The ego differentiates from the id when infants distinguish themselves from the outer world.

• The ego develops strategies for handling the id's demands.

• Analogy: The ego is like a person on horseback (the id), checking and inhibiting the horse's greater strength.

• The ego has no strength of its own but borrows energy from the id.

• Children learn to seek pleasure and avoid pain, which are ego functions before the superego develops.

• The superego originates around age 5 or 6 through identification with parents.

The Superego

• Represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality.

• Guided by moralistic and idealistic principles.

• It grows out of the ego but has no contact with the outside world, making its demands for perfection unrealistic.

• The superego has two subsystems: the conscience and the ego-ideal.

• The conscience results from punishments for improper behavior (what we should not do).

• The ego-ideal develops from rewards for proper behavior (what we should do).

• A primitive conscience forms when a child conforms to parental standards to avoid loss of love.

• Ideals are internalized through identification with parents during the Oedipal phase.

• A well-developed superego controls sexual and aggressive impulses through repression.

• It watches over the ego, judging actions and intentions.

• Guilt results when the ego acts contrary to the superego's moral standards (conscience).

• Feelings of inferiority arise when the ego cannot meet the superego's standards of perfection (ego-ideal).

• The superego is not concerned with the ego's happiness.

• It strives blindly toward perfection, ignoring the ego's difficulties.

• The superego is ignorant of and unconcerned with the practicability of its requirements.

• The divisions among regions of the mind are not sharp.

• The development of the three divisions varies in individuals.

• For some, the superego does not grow after childhood; for others, it dominates personality.

• In a healthy individual, the id and superego are integrated into a smoothly functioning ego.

Dynamics of Personality

• Levels of mental life and provinces of the mind refer to the structure of personality.

• Personalities are also dynamic, with motivational principles driving actions.

• People are motivated to seek pleasure and reduce tension and anxiety.

• This motivation comes from psychical and physical energy from basic drives.

Drives

• Drives (Trieb) are internal stimuli that operate as a constant motivational force.

• Drives cannot be avoided through flight, unlike external stimuli.

• Drives are grouped under sex (Eros) and aggression (Thanatos).

• Drives originate in the id but come under the control of the ego.

• Each drive has psychic energy: libido for the sex drive, but the aggressive drive remains nameless.

• Every basic drive has an impetus, source, aim, and object.

  • Impetus: The amount of force exerted.

  • Source: The region of the body in a state of excitation or tension.

  • Aim: To seek pleasure by removing excitation or reducing tension.

  • Object: The person or thing that satisfies the aim.

Sex

• The aim of the sexual drive is pleasure, not limited to genital satisfaction.

• The entire body is invested with libido.

• The mouth and anus are erogenous zones.

• The ultimate aim (reduction of sexual tension) cannot be changed, but the path can vary.

• It can be active or passive, temporarily or permanently inhibited.

• Much behavior motivated by Eros is difficult to recognize as sexual.

• All pleasurable activities are traceable to the sexual drive.

• The sexual object or person can be transformed or displaced.

• Libido can be withdrawn and reinvested, including in the self.

• Sex can take forms including narcissism, love, sadism, and masochism

• Infants are self-centered, with libido invested in their ego (primary narcissism).

• As the ego develops, children become interested in others, transforming narcissistic libido into object libido.

• During puberty, adolescents may redirect libido back to the ego (secondary narcissism).

• Love develops when people invest libido in others.

• Children's first sexual interest is the caregiver, usually the mother.

• Overt sexual love for family members is repressed (aim-inhibited love).

• Aim-inhibited: The original aim of reducing sexual tension is inhibited or repressed.

• Love and narcissism are interrelated; love often includes narcissistic tendencies.

• Sadism and masochism are intertwined drives.

  • Sadism: The need for sexual pleasure by inflicting pain or humiliation.

  • Masochism: Experiencing sexual pleasure from suffering pain and humiliation.

Aggression

• Freud elevated aggression to the level of the sexual drive after experiences during World War I and the death of his daughter.

• The aim of the destructive drive is to return the organism to an inorganic state.

• The final aim of the aggressive drive is self-destruction.

• Aggression is flexible and takes forms such as teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humiliation, and humor.

• The aggressive tendency is present in everyone and explains wars and atrocities.

• Commandments such as "Love thy neighbor as thyself" are necessary to inhibit the drive to inflict injury.

• These precepts are reaction formations, repressing hostile impulses and expressing the opposite tendency.

• Life and death impulses constantly struggle against each other.

• The reality principle prevents a direct fulfillment of sex or aggression, creating anxiety.

Anxiety

• Anxiety is a felt, affective, unpleasant state with physical sensations that warn of impending danger.

• Only the ego can produce or feel anxiety.

• The id, superego, and external world each are involved in one of three kinds of anxiety: neurotic, moral, and realistic.

  • Neurotic anxiety: Apprehension about an unknown danger originating from id impulses.

  • Moral anxiety: Conflict between the ego and the superego due to conflict of realistic needs and moral dictates.

  • Realistic anxiety: An unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger, closely related to fear.

• These anxieties often exist in combination.

• Anxiety serves as an ego-preserving mechanism, signaling danger.

• Anxiety is self-regulating because it precipitates repression, reducing pain.

Defense Mechanisms

• Developed initially by Freud with later refinements by his daughter Anna.

• Defense mechanisms are normal but lead to compulsive, repetitive behavior when carried to an extreme.

• They expend psychic energy, leaving less for id impulses.

• They serve to avoid dealing directly with sexual and aggressive impulses and defend against anxiety.

• Include repression, reaction formation, displacement, fixation, regression, projection, introjection, and sublimation.

Repression

• The most basic defense mechanism, involved in each of the others.

• The ego protects itself by forcing threatening feelings into the unconscious.

• The repression is often perpetuated for a lifetime.

• Societies cannot permit a complete expression of sex and aggression.

• When children have hostile or behaviours punished, they learn to be anxious.

• Repressed impulses may remain unchanged or force their way into consciousness.

• Repressed drives may be disguised as physical symptoms, dreams, slips of the tongue, or other defense mechanisms.

Reaction Formation

• A repressed impulse becomes conscious by adopting a disguise opposite its original form.

• Reactive behavior can be identified by its exaggerated and obsessive character.

Displacement

• People redirect unacceptable urges onto a variety of people or objects.

• The original impulse is disguised or concealed.

Fixation

• The ego may resort to remaining at the present, more comfortable psychological stage if stressful.

• Technically, fixation is the permanent attachment of the libido onto an earlier, more primitive stage of development.

Regression

• Libido reverts back to an earlier stage during times of stress.

Projection

• The ego reduces anxiety by attributing unwanted impulses to an external object, usually another person.

• Paranoia is an extreme type of projection.

• Includes delusions of jealousy.

Introjection

• People incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego.

• Reduces anxiety associated with feelings of inadequacy.

Sublimation

• The repression of the genital aim of Eros by substituting a cultural or social aim.

• Expressed in creative cultural accomplishments.

Summary

• All defense mechanisms protect the ego against anxiety.

• They are universal and normally beneficial.

Stages of Development

• Freud's developmental theory focuses on early childhood despite limited experiences.

• The first 4 or 5 years (infantile stage) are crucial for personality formation.

• This is followed by a 6- or 7-year period of latency.

• At puberty, there's a sexual renaissance (genital stage).

Infantile Period

• Infants possess a sexual life and go through pregenital sexual development during the first 4 or 5 years.

• Childhood sexuality differs from adult sexuality in that it is not capable of reproduction and is exclusively autoerotic.

• Sexual impulses can be satisfied through organs other than the genitals.

• Freud divided the infantile stage into the oral, anal, and phallic phases.

Oral Stage

• The mouth is the first organ to provide pleasure.

• Infants gain pleasure through sucking.

• The sexual aim is to incorporate or receive the nipple.

• Infants feel no ambivalence; their needs are usually satisfied with minimal anxiety.