Psychology Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

-Austrian, doctor
-father of psychoanalysis
One of the first psychologists to study human motivation
-Psychiatry vs. Psychology
-up until 20th century frontal lobotomies were performed on patients
Freud-believed that mental illness is a result of nurture, not nature.
He asked the question:
What makes people do things?
Answer: MOTIVATION
Needs motivate human behaviour (food, shelter, clothing)

Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. (From Maslow, A. (1970}. Motivation and personality (2nd ed.).
New York: Harper & Row; reprinted by permission of Harper Collins Publishers.)
Being deprived of a need arouses a feeling called a DRIVE OR DESIRE. Animals respond
instinctively, humans learn various ways to respond.

Human motivation explains the reasons why people behave the way they do.
People have DRIVES OR DESIRES in the back of their minds
ie: Will to live, will to die
Some of these desires cause people to behave irrationally.
People are born with a certain number of instincts or DRIVES (human instinctive behaviour)
The human mind has 3 aspects which influence behavior:

Eg
o
Supereg
o
ID- unconconscious part of theImind
(this part of the mind seeks to bring
d us pleasure)
-primitive parts of our personality including
aggression and sexual drives
EGO-conscious part of the mind (Rational Self). Decides what action to take for positive means and
what to do based on what is believed is the right thing to do. Aware of reality.
SUPEREGO- unconscious part of the mind that
acts as our conscience. Reminds us of what we should do.
The ID and the SUPEREGO are in constant conflict. Your DRIVE tells you to do one thing , while
SOCIETY tells you to do something else.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, compared the human mind to an iceberg. The tip above
the water represents consciousness, and the vast region below the surface symbolizes the unconscious
mind. Of Freuds three basic personality structuresid, ego, and superegoonly the id is totally
unconscious.

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water" (S. Freud)
If you dont resolve this conflict between the ID and the EGO, you may experience unhappiness or
mental distress.

Thus, in order to understand motivation, you must understand what is in your unconscious memory.
This is the basis for PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis has as its core the idea that each of us has an unconscious part whose existence,
activities and thoughts are hidden behind a mental barrier that we cannot voluntarily remove. Behind
this barrier are repressed and psychologically dangerous thoughts that give rise to unconscious conflicts,
which in turn, can result in psychological and physical symptoms. - Plotnik, p. 514
How do you get this out?
1) FREE ASSOCIATION
-ink blot pictures, word association (Way of tricking you to lull your conscious mind to sleep
to bring out the unconscious).

2) HYPNOSIS
- Freud was one of the first to use this. This is a way of freeing the unconscious mind or opening up
drawers to remember vivid details of the past.
3) DREAMS
-

Freud believed dreams were your unconscious mind talking to you. Dreams were very
symbolic and difficult to analyze.

Eg: driving a car (driver) means you feel in control of your life
(passenger) someone else is in control of your life / Horses symbolize freedom
MEDITATION
Some Buddhist monks meditate for 15 hours a day!
Bibliography

http://users.rcn.com/brill/freudarc.html

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/f/freud.htm

http://www.allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html

Introduction to Psychology 4th edition. Rod Plotnik.

http://encarta.msn.com/media_461543697/The_Mind_as_an_Iceberg.html

http://www.inkblottestwallpaper.com

The important work Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams is still argued by modern day
researchers as a viable tool for studying the dream process. In it, he describes five distinct
processes which are brought into play during dreamwork:
Displacement: This is where the dreamer represses an urge, and then redirects that urge to
another person or object. If the individual were to engage in the literal dream of killing their
mother-in-law (a repressed urge), the strong emotions evoked in the dream would awaken the
dreamer. Instead of killing the mother-in-law, in displacement the dreamer might instead have the
fantasy within the dream of the mother-in-law being crushed in a car accident.
Condensation: This is the process whereby the dreamer disguises a particular urge, emotion or
thought by condensing, or contracting, it into a brief dream image. This brief event symbolizes the
deeper meaning behind it, which in most cases is not readily evident.
Symbolization: This is where the repressed urge is played out in a symbolic act. For instance, in
Freud's methodology the act of inserting a key into a keyhole would have sexual meaning.
Projection: This is the projection of the dreamer's repressed desire onto other people, but should
not be confused with displacement as it does not involve objects. In projection, instead of
dreaming about sleeping with their co-worker, the individual would dream of their boss in bed with
the desired sexual partner, projecting the urge onto the boss rather than literally dreaming
themselves in the bed.
Secondary revision: This is the expression Freud uses for the final stage of dream production.
After the individual undergoes one or more of the other four dreamwork processes, they then
undergo the secondary processes of the ego in which the more bizarre components of the dream
are reorganized so the dream has a comprehensible surface meaning. This surface meaning, once
arrived at through secondary revision, is called the manifest dream.
The process of dreamwork in Freudian theory is to interpret the content of the manifest dream,
using psychoanalysis to decode the manifest content of the dream, and discover the hidden, "real"
meaning of the dream which is termed the latent dream. This is discussed extensively in his book,
and has been built upon by a variety of other researchers through the ages. Others, however,
entirely discount Freud's work. Their methodologies for the interpretation of the dream will be
discussed in future articles.