Sigmund Freud: Psychodynamic Perspective

901 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Methods of psychoanalytic theory

When people think of psychology they most likely think of a shrink or a psychiatrist. You visualize someone laying on a couch and telling a man or a woman with a note pad, their innermost thoughts and secrets, in order to find out what is wrong with them, or if there is anything that can be done to fix whatever problem they may be having. One of the most well known psychologist of all time is Sigmund Freud. Freud is famous for his non scientific approach called psychoanalysis or the psychodynamic approach. He believed that humans have an unconscious state of mind, where a part of the brain contains thoughts, memories, and desires that are not really even known by the person them self. He based this knowledge off of what his patients had told him during their therapy.

One of Freud’s most important ideas was that the humans have more that one personality. Freud “saw the psyche structured into three parts . . . the id, ego and superego, all developing at different stages in our lives” (McLeod, “Psychodynamic Approach”). The id consists of all inherited - biological - components of personality. This includes the sex - life - instinct and the aggression - death - instinct. Id is the unconscious and impulsive part of the mind it responds to your instincts. At the beginning of life you only have id, and you don’t develop superego and ego until you grow old enough to understand right from wrong. The article Id, Ego and Superego states, “The id demands immediate satisfaction and when this happens we experience pleasure, when it is denied we experience ‘unpleasure’ or pain” (McLeod). This is known as the pleasure principle, the idea that every want should be satisfied no matter what the consequences may be.

The superego uses all the mora...

... middle of paper ...

...irected to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self pleasure during the phallic stage” (McLeod).

Works Cited

Huffman, Karen. Psychology in Action. 10th Ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2012. 2. eBook. .

McLeod, Saul. "Id, Ego and Superego." SimplyPsychology. (2008): n. page. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. .

McLeod, Saul. "Psychodynamic Approach." Simply Psychology. (2007): n. page. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. .

McLeod, Saul. "Psychosexual Stages." SimplyPsychology. (2008): n. page. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. .

"Sigmund Freud." personality-development.org. (2010): n. page. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. .

Show More
Related

  • Sigmund Freud's Psychosocial Theories

    348 Words  | 1 Pages

    Sigmund Freud first theorized the psychosexual theory after studying a patients mental health. The theory states that a human develops from underlying unconscious motives in order to achieve sensual satisfaction.

    Read More

  • Comparing Freud And Jung's Personality Theories

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    Primarily, one of the dominant and fundamental theoretical variances concerning Freud and Jung’s personality theories was that relating to their opposing notions regarding the unconscious human mind. Firstly, Freud understood that the centre of ones inhibited beliefs and distressing recollections was found in the unconscious mind. Freud stated that the human mind focuses on three constructs: namely the id, the ego and the super ego. He claimed that the id shaped ones unconscious energy. Freud said that it is not limited by ethics and morals, but as an alternative simply aims to fulfil ones desires. The id strives to keep with the “pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately.” (Boere) The next unconscious

    Read More

  • Aldous Huxley’s Warning to America

    2295 Words  | 5 Pages

    "Id, Ego, Superego, and the Unconscious in Psychology 101 at AllPsychOnline." Psychology Classroom at AllPsych Online. 21 Mar. 2004. Web. 22 Feb. 2011. .

    Read More

  • Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development Applied to "Finding Nemo"

    1749 Words  | 4 Pages

    Personality is broad and intense subjects that people either understand or do not get it at all. Many people that study psychology also study different people and their own personal views on that person’s analysis. The views range from the founder or real first known one to study this subject Freud, to people that took his views and went in a different direction. Some of the more relevant psychologist is Skinner and Rotter who have taken personal psychology to greater depths and studies. All the people that study the personality of psychology have taken one another’s views and either agreed with them and added to it, or didn’t agree at all and made changes to make their own analysis, and everything between. As for Sigmund Freud he is the one who started it all with his studies of psychoanalysis. Most people think his view are absolutely out of line and incorrect, but after studying him more in depth, you will find that he was not that crazy as you might have thought. For example, in this paper you will come to find that personality and Freud’s views on it aren’t really that off point.

    Read More

  • William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

    1124 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Pribor in the Austrian Empire (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his education in the medical field, Freud decided to mix the career fields of medicine and philosophy to become a psychologist (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his research as a psychologist, he conceived the Structural Model Theory, which he discussed in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The theory states that the human psyche is divided into three main parts: the id, ego, and super-ego (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. pag). He concluded that the id was the desire for destruction, violence and sex; the ego was responsible for intellect and dealing with reality; and the super-ego was a person’s sense of right and wrong and moral standards (Hamilton, n. pag). Freud argued that a healthy individual will have developed the strongest ego to keep the id and super-ego in check (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. p...

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoanalysis

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sigmund Freud believed that he “occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning point, it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being in depth-psychology” (Jones). Psychoanalysis is a theory or therapy to decode the puzzle of neurotic disorders like hysteria. During the therapy sessions, the patients would talk about their dreams. Freud would analyze not only the manifest content (what the dreamer remembers) of the dreams, but the disguise that caused the repressions of the idea. During our dreams, the decision making part of personality’s defenses are lowered allowing some of the repressed material to become more aware in a distorted form. He distinguished between

    Read More

  • Freud and Hansel and Gretel

    1624 Words  | 4 Pages

    Freud, S., & Strachey, J. (19621960). The Ego and the Super-ego. The ego and the id (pp. 19-20). New York: Norton.

    Read More

  • Psychodynamic Theory

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    In addition to Freud’s stages of development his best-known concepts are those of the id, ego, and superego (Crain, p. 268). The id personality called ‘the unconscious” is the personality that focuses on maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain through reflexes and drives such as hunger or bladder tensions (Crain, pp. 268-269). The id concept is impulsive, chaotic and unrealistic.

    Read More

  • Freudian Concepts as seen throughout Inception

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    McLeod, Saul. "Id, Ego and Superego." Id Ego Superego. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. .

    Read More

  • A Freudian Perspective of Marlow in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

    1969 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Freud’s research on the mind he found three functional areas--the id, the superego, and the ego. These interrelated parts permit the self to function in society. The id is the innermost component of the three. It is the extreme unconscious. This is where the child-like unsocialized drives and instinctual impulses arise. The id knows no rules and does not abide to any external logical laws. It is only ruled by the desire for pleasure. When the id sees something it wants, all it says is, "I want that, I want that, I want that," like a young child in a toy store. The id is selfish; it represents self-centeredness in its purest form.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

    2351 Words  | 5 Pages

    The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Superego In The Fall Of The House Of Usher

    1569 Words  | 4 Pages

    “There are so many different walks of life, so many different personalities in the world.” Hope Solo describes that there are many different ways to walk the paths of life, and that these paths are filled with people of dissimilar personalities. Similarly to Hope Solo’s idea of incompatible personalities, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, developed the concepts of the id, ego and superego. As Freud described them, these concepts are the three parts of the human psyche. The id part of the brain operates on the “pleasure principle”, the superego is the moral component of the human psyche, and the ego is the balance between both the id and the superego. Freud, along with many other Americans, began to realize that people, especially characters

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud: The Comparison Of The Id, Ego And Superego

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    McLeod (2008) states that the superego attempts to manage the urges of the id and convince the ego to think and act towards moralistic goals rather than simply realistic ones and to strive for perfection. There are two aspects of the superego: the ideal ego and the conscience. The ego ideal is the general idea one has of how to behave to be classified as an upstanding member of society; it includes norms, rules and standards for good behavior. The methods he used to obtain his information and data raised questions from other scientists.

    Read More

  • Sigmund Freud's Theory Of Psychoosexual Development

    1724 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sigmund Freud was one of the original pioneers in the field of Psychology. The work that he accomplished throughout his lifetime laid a foundation for many theorists after him. The theorists that worked in Psychology, after Freud, were able to form their own thoughts, ideas, and hypotheses about the human mind after learning from his work. Sigmund Freud’s major contribution in the field of Psychology was his theory about the human psyche; which he called the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego. This theory was based on the human personality and its formation. Many of Freud’s analysis strategies became common practice in the field of Psychology and are still used today. Sigmund Freud will always be one of the most influential figures in the

    Read More

  • Freud and Aristotle’s Theories of Human Nature

    1307 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Psychological - or more strictly speaking, psychoanalytic -investigation shows that the deepest essence of human nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain needs... [are] self-preservation, aggression, need for love, and the impulse to attain pleasure and avoid pain...” At its simplest form, this quote perfectly explains Sigmund Freud’s theory on human nature. Human beings, according to Freud, are in a constant state of conflict within themselves; trying to satisfy their animalistic instincts, while also maintaining a socially appropriate life. Freud termed these animalistic tendencies that we have, the Id. The Id is essentially our unconscious mind, it is the part of us that has been there since the day we were born and is what drives our life’s needs and desires. The Id simply aims to satisfy our sexual or aggressive urges immediately, without taking into account any further implications. On the other hand, Freud used the term, the Superego, to describe man’s conscience and sense of morality. It is the Superego’s job to keep the Id in check by combatting the desire to satisfy urges with the feeling of guilt or anxiety. Finally, the Ego, is the conscious representation of the constant battle between the Superego and the Id. It must work to satisfy human’s instinctual tendencies while taking into account their conscience and doing what is rational and acceptable. Freud argues that these internal process that are constantly at work in our mind are what shape humans to do the things that they do. Thus, he believes, the goal of human nature is to satisfy our basic aggressive and sexual desires while adhering to cultural and social standards.

    Read More

More about Sigmund Freud: Psychodynamic Perspective

Open Document