Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis, and during his highly productive and distinguished career developed a pioneering theory of the nature and workings of the human mind, and applied it to psychology and Western culture in general. It made an immeasurable impact.
Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.
Perhaps the most impactful idea put forth by Freud was his model of the human mind. In this model, there are three metaphorical parts to the mind:
- Id: it’s the unconscious level that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories.
- Ego: It is the most tied to reality and begins to develop in infancy. It is the part that mediates between the desires of the id and the superego in a socially appropriate way.
- Superego: portion of the mind in which morality and higher principles reside, encouraging us to act in socially and morally acceptable ways (McLeod, 2013).
In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, stating that the main purpose of dreams is to achieve individual wish fulfillment by enabling individuals to deal with some of their repressed problems against reality (Sigmund Freud Biography, n.d.).
He also distinguished between the manifest content (the actual dream) and the latent content (the true or hidden meaning behind the dream).
It was also in The Interpretation of Dreams that Freud introduced perhaps his most famous concept of the Oedipus complex. It describes a child’s desire for their opposite-sex parent and feelings of envy, jealousy, resentment, and competition with the same-sex parent. It’s important to note that there’s very little evidence that the Oedipus complex is real.
From the hypnotic experiments, and in collaboration with his colleague Josef Breuer, Freud developed a novel approach in which patients talked about what came to their minds — memories, dreams, thoughts, emotions, etc. And then sequentially analyzed this information to determine the symptoms of the patient. The process is called “Free association”.
Anna O. suffered from hysteria. Hysteria is a condition in which the patient exhibits physical symptoms like paralysis, convulsions, hallucinations, loss of speech, etc, with no apparent physical cause. Her doctor (and Freud’s mentor), successfully treated Anna by helping her recall forgotten memories of her traumatic event.
In conversations with her, it was revealed that she developed a fear of drinking when a dog she hated drank from her glass. It happened while I was taking care of my father.
She did not express her fear of his illness, but later during psychoanalysis. As soon as she had a chance to become aware of these unconscious thoughts, her numbness disappeared.
Sigmund Freud (1894, 1896) noted many ego-defense mechanisms that he mentioned in his writings. His daughter Anna Freud (1936) developed and fleshed out these ideas, adding ten of her own. Many psychoanalysts add other types of ego defenses as well.
Anna Freud defined defense mechanisms as “unconscious resources used by the ego” to decrease internal stress ultimately. Patients often devise these unconscious mechanisms to decrease conflict within themselves, specifically between the superego and id.
- Denial is a defense mechanism proposed by Anna Freud that involves refusing to accept reality, thereby ignoring external painful events.
- Repression is an unconscious defense mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious.
- Projection, which Anna Freud also called displacement outward, is almost the complete opposite of turning against the self. It involves the tendency to see your unacceptable desires in other people.
- Displacement occurs when the Id wants to do something which the Superego does not permit. The Ego thus finds some other way of releasing the psychic energy of the Id. Thus there is a transfer of energy from a repressed object-cathexis to a more acceptable object.
- Regression functions as a form of retreat, enabling a person to psychologically go back in time to a period when the person felt safer.
- Sublimation is similar to displacement but takes place when we manage to displace our unacceptable emotions into behaviors that are constructive and socially acceptable, rather than destructive activities. Sublimation is one of Anna Freud’s original defense mechanisms.
- Rationalization is a defense mechanism proposed by Anna Freud involving a cognitive distortion of “the facts” to make an event or an impulse less threatening. We do it often enough on a fairly conscious level when we provide ourselves with excuses.
- Reaction formation, which Anna Freud called “believing the opposite,” is a psychological defense mechanism in which a person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels.
- Introjection, sometimes called identification, involves taking into your the personality characteristics of someone else because doing so solves some emotional difficulty. For
- Identification with the Aggressor is a defense mechanism proposed by Sandor Ferenczi and later developed by Anna Freud. It involves the victim adopting the behavior of a person who is more powerful and hostile towards them.
Critical evaluation
Freudian theory is good at explaining behavior, but bad at predicting it (which is one of the goals of science). For this reason, Freud’s theory is not falsifiable and cannot be proven or disproved. For example, the unconscious is difficult to objectively test and measure.
Freud may also have exhibited research bias in his interpretation. He may have focused only on information that supported his theories, ignoring information and other explanations that did not fit them.
Even if Freud’s recollection of the events discussed in therapy was perfectly accurate, the descriptions given to him by the patient may not have been consistent with reality. It is well known that he took little time to review his experiences, especially the testimony that accused his family of sexual abuse.
Critics argue that he should have interviewed his family to determine the accuracy of the patient’s account.