Freuds Theory Of Psychoanalysis Essay Research Paper

Freuds Theory Of Psychoanalysis Essay, Research Paper

Asher Grossman History 10H

April, 2000 Dr. Taylor

Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis

Freud’s methods of psychoanalysis were based on his theory that people have repressed, hidden feelings. The psychoanalyst’s goal is to make the patient aware of these subconscious feelings. Childhood conflicts that are hidden away by the patient, become revealed to both the analyst and the patient, allowing the patient to live a less anxious, more healthy life.

Methods of hypnosis were originally used by Freud to find the cause for anxiety, but he dismissed them as being too inaccurate. He started to use methods of free association to delve into the patient’s sub-conscious. By assessing the patient’s reactions to the analyst’s suggestions, Freud saw that the analyst could help the patient become consciously aware of his repressed childhood conflicts and impulses. By interpreting the patient’s dreams, the analyst can provide an insight into the patient’s conflicts as well. The therapist’s interpretations of the patient’s free associations and dreams are known as psychoanalysis.

Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, however, does have its problems. One of its drawbacks is that it is based on the assumption that repressed conflicts and impulses do in fact exist. Today this assumption is being challenged, and is provoking intense debate.

Freud first developed these methods of psychoanalysis when he met with patients whose disorders did not make neurological sense. A patient, for example, may have suddenly gone blind. The problem is that there is no damage to either of his eyes. Freud began to wonder if this disorder might be psychological rather than physiological. A patient not wanting to see something that aroused anxiety might have caused his own blindness, he hypothesized. In order to find out what the anxiety stemmed from, he used methods of free association where the patient would say whatever came into his mind. Through the slips made when the patient was told to carry out the free-association process, and some of the patient’s beliefs and habits, Freud could delve into the patient’s subconscious. These thoughts produced a chain directly into the patient’s subconscious, and unearthed memories and feelings. This process soon became known as psychoanalysis. Freud also believed that dreams were an important way of getting into the patient’s subconscious. By analyzing dreams, he could reveal the basis of conflict within the patient.

Freud believed the mind was made up of three main parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the subconscious. The conscious region is the part that people are most aware of and what others can see. The preconscious region holds thoughts and feelings that a person can become aware of but that are mostly hidden away. Finally, the subconscious region consists of thoughts and feelings which are completely hidden away and which one is mostly unaware of. Some believe that the preconscious region is really a small part of the much larger subconscious region. Freud said that the mind is like an iceberg, with most of it, the subconscious, hidden away, and only a small part, the conscious, showing above the water, able to be seen. Why, then, would the majority of the mind be hidden; why is the subconscious region so much larger than the conscious region. Freud explained that the answer is that one forcibly blocks thoughts and feelings that he does not want others to become aware of. Although the person is not fully aware of these feelings, he still expresses them in disguise through the way he makes his choices. Using psychoanalytic methods, Freud was able, he said, to learn what feelings the patient had blocked and hidden in his subconscious.

Freud developed one of his most famous theories of the mind when he realized the source of conflict in a person. He theorized that there were three interacting systems within the mind: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the largest part of the unconscious, and operates mainly on the need to gain pleasure and satisfaction. It mainly is the driving force behind a newborn infant who has no cares of the outside world, and will start to cry the moment it needs to be satisfied. The id is mostly the instincts that are part of a person for his whole life. The ego develops in a young child as a method to cope with the real world and satisfy the id’s impulses in more realistic ways other than crying. The ego can be seen as the moderator between the id and superego. Finally, the superego is the region of the mind that is mostly conscious. The superego forces the ego to consider the most ideal way of dealing with a problem. It is made up of morals, values, and culture’s influence on a person. The superego’s demands are very much opposed to those of the id, and it is the ego that must struggle to balance the ideas of the two. To live in a society one must be able to control the sexual impulses of the id.

The roots of the anxiety in most of Freud’s patients, he discovered, had usually come from conflicts that they had been subject to in early childhood. He concluded that in a growing child, the id begins to focus on certain pleasure-seeking areas of the body. These areas Freud called the erogenous zones. The id’s constant changing of erogenous zones he called psychosexual stages. From birth to around 18 months old is k