Psychoanalytic Theory - What Freud thought of Personality

 

We couldn't talk about the theories of personality or psychology without mentioning Freud. Sigmund Freud is one of the most famous and controversial minds of the 20th century. His Psychoanalytic perspective of personality offers a unique way of looking at the body and mind connection to personality. So, in order to know Freud, we have to know three following terms:

·         The id

·         The ego

·         The super-ego

These are the three parts of your personality. Well, according to Freud these three characters are driven by unconscious energy. Now a person may not always hear or talk to these parts of their personality. But they are all silently going through a struggle to influence our decisions and our behavior. The it'd is the bad boy of our subconscious. It is an impulsive part of the psyche that seeks pleasure and avoids pain at all costs the id wants instant gratification It is the part of you that grabs for food as a baby or acts to satisfy sexual desires without thinking it through. Now the super-ego lies on the opposite end of the spectrum this part of the psyche wants to control the id if humans acted only based on receiving Instant gratification and immediate pleasure. We would surely be in a whole lot of trouble the super-ego. Unconsciously and consciously acts to follow the rules of society and tries to keep id from causing some serious damage long-term. Now the ego lies in between the middle of these two entities in between the id and the super-ego. The ego is in constant struggle to balance out these two forces and try to make pleasurable decisions without causing too much damage. It's like a well minded adult standing in the middle of two children wanting to overthrow each other.

So how do Freud's ideas influence the way that we shape our personality? Well one of his theories was that as a child grows into an adult. They encounter five psychosexual stages of development during each of these stages of development. The id is focused on a specific erogenous zone now the ego must struggle to balance out the pleasure seeking it and the moral super-ego during each of these phases. Internal conflicts will result in many different types of struggles now Freud said Personality is formed by the process and the results of each of these struggles. So, there are five basic stages:

·         The first one is oral.

·         The second one is anal.

·         The third one is phallic.

·         The fourth one is latency.

·         The fifth one is genital.

Freud believes that most of our personality has actually been formed by the time that we reach at the age of five. A child has gone through the oral, the anal, and most of the phallic stages now if the child continues to struggle with balance during these stages. They will develop something called Fixations. Stage one is the oral stage. Oral fixations include smoking or problems with eating if someone fails to master potty training or they still struggle during the anal stage then as they Grow into an adult, they may become a sloppy or a lazy person this is actually where we get the term anal retentive during the third stage the Phallic stage: Freud believed that boys and girls start to notice the differences in each other and develop either the Oedipus complex or penis envy. Oedipus complex is the idea that unconsciously young boys feel possessive of their mother and as a result they feel very aggressive towards their father. Freud also believed that young girls experience something called penis envy and due to their lack of a penis developed fixations to follow them until they're an adult. If Freud's ideas make you uncomfortable either for the fact that he focuses explicitly on sex or that he seems to frame women as the lesser sex.

Freud has never ceased to face criticism for his work unlike many psychologists. He actually did not use empirical research studies to back up his theories. He worked solely with adults on a case-by-case basis still. However, the psychoanalytic perspective remains as one of the top personality theories to date unlike the humanist theory and Freud's focus remains in the unconscious. He explores the idea that in order to develop the root of our personality we have to dig deeper than what we experience on the surface.

Psychoanalytic therapy grew out of Freud's theories this approach involves a therapist questioning their patient about their childhood memories or possible events in the past that might have led to struggles between the id and the super-ego. Freud believed that humans repress a lot of their emotions now his goal during therapy sessions was to bring those unconscious feelings and emotions into the conscious mind.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heinz Hartmann Ego Psychology and the Mechanisms of Adaptation

  Heinz Hartmann devoted considerable time to the study of the Ego's Defenses and their functions from the perspective of the Adaptation. However, he seems not to have expanded on the defenses explained by Freud. The ego mobilizes defenses to protect itself from four types of dangers including conflicts among: ·          The id, ego, and super ego conflict. ·          Conflict in interpersonal relations. ·          Conflict in social norms. ·          Conflict in response to trauma. Mechanism of Adaptation: Heinz Hartmann described the "Mechanisms of Adaptation" that are more or less firmly established in the ego of an adult and always run to the same course unconsciously, just as Anna Freud describes the "Defense Mechanisms". These mechanisms are established in the ego to defend against un-described or disturbin...
Read more

Assessment techniques by George Kelly

 The Interview Kelly’s primary assessment technique was the interview. As he put it, “If you don’t know what is going on in a person’s mind, ask him; he may tell you!” (1958, p. 330). Adopting what he called a “credulous attitude,” Kelly accepted the client’s words at face value, believing this was the best way to determine the person’s constructs. He also recognized that a person might deliberately lie or distort the reported version of events. However, what the client said must be respected, even if not always fully believed. Self-Characterization Sketches: Another technique used to assess a construct system is to have the person write a self characterization sketch. Kelly’s instructions to the client were as follows. “I want you to write a character sketch of [client’s name] just as if he were the principal character in a play. Write it as it might be written by a friend who knew him very intimately and very sympathetically, perhaps better than anyone ever really could know h...
Read more

Introduction to Aaron Beck

  Aaron Temkin Beck is an American psychiatrist who is professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is regarded as the father of both cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Early Life Aaron Temkin Beck was born on July 18, 1921, in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the youngest of five children. Both of his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States. Two of Beck's siblings had died before his birth, an older brother in childhood and an older sister in the influenza pandemic of 1919. As a result of these tragedies, Beck's mother was chronically depressed for several years and became overprotective of her youngest son. Beck came to think that he was a replacement for his sister, and that his mother was disappointed that he was not a girl. Beck developed several phobias in the course of his childhood. One was a blood/injury phobia, which he related to his experience with surgery for his broken arm at age seven. D...
Read more