Sigmund Freud is one of the most significant figures that shaped our views about childhood,

sexuality and personality in his theory of psychoanalysis (psychosexual) development, he

was born in 1856 and 83 years later died. Even though Freud did not make this theory for
the benefit of education, it seems be of help to the educators as their perception on child
behaviour will be sufficiently enriched and for some it will totally be changed and some of
the challenges the teachers face with children might be reduced because of this and he did
not only look at children but also looked at how these events can have an effect on the adult
later in life. In his psychosexual theory, he looked at 5 stages which are oral (0-1year six
months), anal (1 year six months-3years), phallic(3-6 years), latency (6-12 years) and lastly
the genital stage which lasts from 12 years when the child is most likely undergoing puberty
to adulthood. Freud said these stages are separated but yet sequential and each has a point of
focus and in the first stage he sighted the mouth, in the second, the anus, in the third the
genitals, in the fourth the sexual impulses are suppressed and in the last the child comes into
resolution with their responsibility. Freud said that in these 5 stages, there is a situation
where three elements come into contact with one another in a way that changes from time to
time and described them as id (totally unconscious and not logical), ego (only region in
contact with reality) and super ego(moral and ideal feature of personality). According to
him, these three elements where crucial in determining the stability of the individual and
hence advised that they should be kept stable to one another as if not achieved could lead to
anxiety. Under this he looked at neurotic, morality and realistic anxiety which will be
discussed further, Freud stated that ego is a fragment of the mind that mediates between
conscious and unconscious and is for a sense of identity and if this was not met, the
individual would trigger defence mechanisms (Liebert & spiegler 1987) he further said
defence mechanisms would be triggered when not aware and would deny or twist reality. In
his theory he also looked at the concepts of repression which he described as the process of
an individual preventing oneself from being aware of painful experiences, this could be said
to be the most basic defence mechanism. Fontana (1986). With this said, this chapter is
going to look at the implications of this theory to education or how it could be applied in
education.

Apart from the concepts talked about in the introduction, Freud also looked at the concept of
reaction formation where a feeling which is suppressed is substituted by is opposite for
example pupils might be agitated by the presence of a teacher but might be giving an
outward expression of being happy and interested around him to try to convince both

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themselves and the teacher, this formation belongs to level three defence mechanisms and
intellectualisation, displacement, dissociation repression. Freud also looked at rationalisation
where the individual tires to mask the real reasons by justifying the controversial ones
(which are logical in most cases but aren’t the real reasons for the consequence achieved)
and makes them look real and desirable and an example of this could be a student saying he
did not write the first assignments because he reported to class the day it was given where he
would have made efforts to enquire from the ones who reported early and submit.. he also
looked at fixation where the victim remains at the same psychological stage which feels
more comfortable There is also denial where the person just doesn’t want to accept a certain
thing where a student fails an examination but just doesn’t want to accept that that’s true and
apart from this he also looked at introjection where an individual takes in the good aspect of
another person they know and putting them into their ego unconciously. There is also
projection where a female student might be in love with a fellow male student in class but
will end up accusing him of being in love with her instead and is subtle in most cases.
Another of them is sublimation where the individual tries to take away the pain of certain
events by engaging in activities that are constructive like drawing, singing, playing football
and other sports game or simulations. There is also compensation where the student might
not be good at some aspect for example a certain subject and try to level up in that area for
example they will try to work extremely hard in that subject so that they can get better than
they are. There is also fantasy where the individual indulges in imaginary events in order to
get satisfaction they are similar to sublimation because the individual also takes away the
pain not directly but indirectly for example if mad at an individual, they will take away the
pain somewhere.

The theory of Sigmund Freud is significant in the education setup as its constituent parts can
help teachers to understand certain behaviours and where they root from. From here,
teachers can use the ideas of identification, displacement, defence mechanisms and
uneasiness (or nervous behaviour to show anxiety) and the origin of all these behaviours has
something to do with the people they are close to mostly their caregivers through the process
of identification which according to Freud can be defined as the process where the child’s
takes up the qualities or features of the same sex parents and begin to make conceptual
connections between themselves and their significant others. (Alleydog.com) for example if
the parents like to insult a lot, the child will follow suit as he will see this to be a normal way
of life and so this may also involve teachers because they are found with the children most

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of the time like in some private schools where children spend almost the entire day with the
teachers and because of this their way of behaving in the class can have a bearing of the
outcome of the child’s behaviour. Apart from identification, we can also look at the concept
or idea of anxiety where the child might show excessive uneasiness or distress resulting
from a feared situation. An example of anxiety is neurotic anxiety which involves children
from being calm in a situation where they are well controlled to just having an outburst or
violently uncontrolled anger all of a sudden. Apart from this, Freud also looked at other
types of anxiety which are objective anxiety which involves tangible things that possess a
threat to a person’s well-being and moral anxiety where the individual starts to think that
their principles or standards of behaviour are about to be compromised, it might lead to
children to feel unbefitting or insufficient. There is also realistic anxiety which is as a result
of children being afraid of a violent sudden past event, it can also be caused by children
wanting to achieve success in a more than necessary manner or trying to possess behaviour
in that manner when they start life at a new school or are introduced to a new teacher in a
certain subject. According to Psychologeni.com, displacement can be defined as moving
from one acting upon a wished for object to a substitute for the purpose of getting rid of
their negative feelings and hence categorised as a defence mechanism. “Sometimes
ritualistic gestures such as excessive handwashing (called obsessional compulsive
behaviour) develop in an attempt to remove such feelings symbolically”. (Fontana 1986).

Children at school often show traits of displacement like for example some pupils might be
bullying other pupils because they are frustrated of something or they might be bullied back
at home by their fathers or might experience their mothers being abused at the hands of the
father and so use other pupils as the substitute object or they might be making funny
comments against the teacher when he/she is in front teaching. Teachers will also encounter
this when pupils are emotionally strained as they may trigger defence mechanisms without
realising and an example is thumb sucking or sucking a pen which is a part of regression,
regression which could be said to be reverting to an earlier stage of development. other
examples could be a boy being relocated by his new parents to a new location and due to
missing his friends from the previous location; the child might start urinating like an
untrained baby, students also show forms of regression by writing graffiti on the school
walls and teachers might use knowledge from this theory to understand why they have such
behaviour and this might also affect the students in the classroom when they are anxious
about writing a test as this could also lead to regression and this depend because sometimes

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regressive behaviour might not be harmful but when severe might cause some harmful
withdraw methods and an example would be vandalism as this would result in school
property being destroyed by the children and it will affect the school financially as they will
have to repair the damaged infrastructure and from here, we might also see an example of
displacement for example students at Evelyne hone college who failed the test an entire
class and when they reached out for their results to be looked at once again, they felt ignored
and due to anger over needs not being met, they resulted in a substitute object which is
rioting. The concept of projection might also be used in the classroom setup as we saw
earlier, students might appear to class not ready to learn but might turn out against the
teacher that he is not ready to teach while rationalisation may be used by the students like in
the example above or when they keep on failing but give an excuse that they fail because at
home their parents are constantly arguing and so find no time to study or the girl child
saying she over works at home and so doesn’t have time to study or a student who works at
night giving an excuse in the same line. Students might also use fantasy like for example
when they are in class and they feel left out by the tutor because they don’t understand a
certain concept and are too shy to ask so they stop concentrating on the lesson and start
thinking of a future event or about what they are going to do at break time, they might also e
fantasising about the next lesson because they might like it but might not be in good terms
with the current one or the teacher in charge of it. D.M. Mclnerney(n.d.)

Teachers once after gaining this knowledge can use this to diagnose their students through
tests or activities like for example the first time a teacher meets the class he may ask the
students to give him their names and give a briefing about their hobbies and other things
about them and in this, the teacher might extract something which he can use as a tool when
going to teach in the sense that he can know which phrases to use so that he doesn’t trigger
negative emotions in some of the students and what to say to motivate them, teachers can
also allow the students to work in groups so that the can encourage group work and also
motivated once again, they can also use tools like music, teachers can also make their work
organised and components complementary to one another in order to make students
understand because if they find it hard we may find in a case where the child starts to
fantasise or uses other defence mechanisms like making noise in class, under this, teachers
may also try as much as possible to connect what they teach to the outside world in order to
help boost retention and comprehension in the students. Implications for Education Using
Freud’s Theory. (2017, Jan 04).

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Teachers can also use this theory to help children go past the conflicts in the stages they are
in by first recognising then helping them resolve these conflicts by satisfying their needs
otherwise, teachers might end up to be the reasons children face them for example in the
latency stage children like to play a lot and if teachers try to stop them from achieving this, it
could lead to the children to remain fixated at that stage even when they are old as they were
not fully satisfied with the stage, in Zambia, pupils at this stage are usually from grade one
to five as the standard is 7 years to start school and this stage starts from 6 to 12 and at this
stage, teachers of grade ones should allow the children to play until they play no more so
that they don’t feel the need to do so in grade 12 at college or work. For the anal stage if
teachers stop children from asking questions it could lead them to be scared of asking in the
future as this is their first experience cos children at this stage are usually at preschool or
kindergarten teachers in this stage can also use sensation tables and safety treasure baskets
when dealing with children in order to make learning more animated and exciting for the
children. I. Jay (2012).

In order to perform these operations however, teachers also need to have good knowledge
about behaviourism and cognition as most of these behaviours stated above are transparent
but this won’t be the case every time, some can be hard to see and in such cases it’s hard to
root out the problem and apart from this, they must ton only have the psychoanalytic view
but should have as many theories to broaden their knowledge about development and
motivation as a teacher without suffiecient knowledge here might fall short in terms of
delivering an effective lesson. M, Michael. (2017, May 13).

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REFERENCES

Anxiety. (n.d.). In Alleydog.com's online glossary. Retrieved

from: https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition-cit.php?term=Anxiety

Bighow.org (2017) psychoanalyitic Theory& Childrens Clasrrom Activities. Retrieved

from: http://bighow.org/1418859-
Psychoanalytic_Theory__amp__Children__039_s_Classroom_Activities.html

D.M. Mclnerney(n.d.) Educational Psychology : Construction Learning. Retrieved From:

https://books.google.co.zm/books?id=LDTiBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA380&lpg=PA380&dq=app
lying+freud%27s+psychosexual+theory+in+the+classroom&source=bl&ots=2Liu4empjn&s
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Identification. (n.d.). In Alleydog.com's online glossary. Retrieved

from: https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition-cit.php?term=Identification

Implications for Education Using Frueds Theory. (2017, Jan 04). Retrieved
from https://studymoose.com/implications-for-education-using-frueds-theory-essay

I. Jay (2012). Application of Sigmund freuds theory of psychosexual development. Retrieved

from: https://jaylordlosabia.blogspot.com/2010/08/applications-sigmund-freuds-theory-
of.html

Linkedin Corporations (2017) Freuds Psychoananlysis. Retrieved from:

https://www.slideshare.net/jnjpinugu/lesson-2-freuds-psychoanalysis

Monet, Michael. (2017, May 13). Psychoanalytic theory & children's classroom activities. .
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