Freud's Theories on Personality Development

Freud's Theories on Personality Development Freud’s’ psychodynamic approach attempts to explain what drives or

motivates personality development. He suggested that an individual is

driven to satisfy biological urges and theses motives cause us to

interact with the environment, so that early experiences play an

important role.

Freud identified three different parts of the mind, which are based on

our level of awareness; conscious, preconscious, and subconscious

mind.

The conscious mind is where we are currently in focus of attention at

the moment. The preconscious consists of things which we are aware,

but we are not paying our full attention. These thoughts can easily be

brought into the conscious mind if chosen to do so. It is possible to

control our awareness to a certain extent. The subconscious level

consists of content that is out of direct reach of the conscious mind.

The subconscious thinks and acts independently. One of Freud's key

findings was that much behaviour is driven directly from the

subconscious mind. This has the alarming consequence that we are

largely unable to control our behaviour.

Freud also went on to describe the human personality as being

structured into three parts, the Id, Ego and Superego. He explained

that an individual’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviours are the result

of the interaction of the id, the superego, and the ego. This creates

conflict which in turn creates anxiety, which leads to Defence

Mechanisms.

The Id contains our primitive drives and works largely on the pleasure

principle, where its two main goa...

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...s theory is that it is based on recollection

of an individual’s childhood. This is not likely to be reliable given

the known accuracy of memory over long periods of time, not to mention

the influences of emotional factors on memory. Another limitation of

this theory is that it cannot be scientifically tested to see if it is

true or false. Therefore it cannot be proved that this theory is

valid. Freud’s account of personality allowed him to place

interpretations of personality and behaviour that could not be

disproved. For example he would argue that a person behaved in a

certain way because of something that happened in their childhood. If

the person agreed then this showed Freud to be right. If the person

disagreed, Freud could argue that this shows that the patient was

showing signs of repressing certain experiences.