Sigmund Freud was among the top minds of the 19th and 20th century. His contributions to the world of medicine alone are worthy of admiration, but as the father of psychoanalysis, Freud has impacted the world in a way that still persists today. His creation, psychoanalysis, formed a whole new perspective on the treatment of mental illness (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 545) and has been a stepping stone from which many psychological theories have developed. And while he and his theory are the subject of controversy, Sigmund Freud was, without a doubt, paramount to the field of psychology. Central to this complex theory, were the concepts of the the structural theory of the psyche, the psychosexual stages of development, and dreamwork. Employing these concepts, and others, Freud provided a basis from which psychoanalysis, a comprehensive approach in which the goal is to bring repressed thoughts and emotions into consciousness in order to deal with them rationally, could arise (Fadul, 2014, p. 188). Separate from what they contributed to the psychoanalytic theory, these concepts have also managed to enact their own influence on the field of psychology.
Freud’s history is important for the conceptualization of psychoanalysis and for the components that make it up. For Freud it all began March 6th 1856 with his birth in Freiberg, Moravia (Austin, 2004). Eldest child to Amalia Freud, Freud credits his success to her preferential treatment of him in his childhood, calling it a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which her belief of him as special, contributed to his belief in himself, which allowed him to later create great things, namely the psychoanalytic approach (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 518). Also important was Freud great admiration of the works of Charles Darwin and Theodore Lipps in his early life (Pigman, 1995). Lipps’s focus on the unconscious and empathy undoubtedly fueled Freud’s interest in the unconscious (Pigman, 1995), and Darwin’s work, popular during Freud’s time, allowed Freud to associate humans with animals, allowing him to see humans as being driven by internal instincts like animals, which Freud later believed to be an unconscious drive among the human species (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 517). However, his association with Josef Breuer was of particular significance to the development of psychoanalysis and the concepts that make it up. Breuer, a physician, had a patient with the pseudonym Anna O (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 520). Through Breuer’s treatment of Anna O, Freud learned the importance of hypnosis for retrieving forgotten (repressed) traumatic memories; began to learn how these forgotten (repressed) memories could impact someone’s behaviour; and learned how revealing these repressed memories were important to “curing” said behaviour (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 521). By 1886, a psychoanalysis closer to how it currently known developed. Freud began his own practice, and while initially, he used Breuer’s version of hypnosis, Freud noted the effectiveness of simply talking freely (free association), and later, dream analysis, to the retrieval of repressed memories (Hergenhahn, 2009, p. 523).
Largely important to the psychoanalytic theory, and therefore psychoanalysis, is the structural theory of the psyche. In psychoanalysis, this nearly foundational to the theory of personality, as it built of the idea of consciousness (what people are actively aware of), preconscious (what people can become readily aware of), the unconscious (what is being repressed from consciousness). The structural theory of the psyche suggests that the psyche is made up of three parts which enact on the different levels of consciousness: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the first structure to develop, and is with people at birth. It is concerned with the “pleasure principle” and is completely unconscious and made up of the instincts that drive human behaviour. The id is concerned with instantaneous fulfilment of needs, whether they are sexual or physiological in nature, so as to reduce tension. Reality and morality are of no consequence to the id, meaning that the id is unconcerned with laws, the physical world, or social norms. Parapraxis, Freudian slips, are also unconscious and could be seen as the id’s unconscious wishes slipping out into everyday speech and actions. The ego, is the second part of the psyche to develop. This part of the psyche acts via the “reality principle.” Its job is to meet the needs and wishes of the id while adhering to the realities of the physical world, meaning it fulfills the needs of the id in a way that is reasonable and realistic. It also meets the standards of the superego, the last structure to develop. The superego acts according to the “morality principle.” The superego arises from internalizing the social norms of society: the rights versus the wrongs. There are two parts to the superego: the first is called the conscience and is learned through punishment. The conscience makes people feel guilt for doing (or thinking of doing) behaviour that they had been punished for in the past; the second part is the ego-ideal, which instead develops through reward. The ego-ideal rewards the person with positive feelings for engaging in behaviour that they had been rewarded for in the past. The job of the ego then becomes to meet the needs and wishes of the id without offending the moral standards of the superego and causing guilt. When the ego is unable to fulfill this function, it sometimes employs unconscious defenses (ego defense mechanisms) to deal with wishes that conflict moral standards and reality, among the most salient, repression (hiding the wishes from consciousness). As a whole, the structural theory of the psyche (intertwining with the levels of consciousness) greatly contributed to psychology. One way it did this was being one of the first to provide comprehensive explanations for normal behaviour, doing so by highlighting how unconscious desires of the id motivate all behaviour, which allowed psychology to (attempt) to remove the “mysteriousness” out of everyday behaviour. Parapraxis as being the unconscious wishes of the id “slipping” out, helped explain normal behaviours like why someone may lose their wedding ring or “accidentally” call a disliked colleague by the wrong name. The structural theory of the psyche provided a basis from which even normal everyday humour, particularly of the aggressive or sexual kind, could be explained by stating that it too was a form of wish fulfillment for the id. Normal, and not only abnormal, behaviour being explained comprehensively by psychology was particularly innovative and significant contribution to psychology made by Freud.
The stages of psychosexual development were of equal significance to psychology, and certainly, a substantial portion of the psychoanalytic theory. Building from the structural theory of the psyche, that underlies the psychoanalytic theory, this “concept” suggests that the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain areas of the body in a predictable way as children develop into adults; hence, the developmental stages. These areas of “pleasure-focus” are called erogenous zones. Childhood experiences with the erogenous zones are largely what makeup adult personality: a healthy personality is a product of healthily passing through the stages while a personality with unhealthy traits, is characteristic of not passing through the stages healthily but rather being fixated at a particular stage. The first of these stages develops at birth and lasts until18 months of age, the oral stage. The oral stage, has id’s energies directed towards oral pleasure; the erogenous zone is the mouth. During this stage, pleasure comes from sucking and swallowing, notably from the caregiver’s breast (to derive breast milk) (XX-Britannica-XX). Oral gratification can also come from thumb-sucking or sucking on objects (XX-Britannica-XX). Fixation, or inability to progress to the next stage, could occur from too early weaning (undergratifying) or too late weaning (overgratifying).