Psychology Freud's Psychoanalyis

Just a warning, Freud uses language and ideas that make some people feel awkward. There is a bit of sex terminology coming up (involving Freud's psychosexual stages), if you can't handle this and make an immature post it'll be deleted..

Here's a background on Freud: He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1856 and died in the year 1939. His research began as a neurologist where he realized that some illnesses that his patients had could not be explained. In one instance, a client named Anna O came in who lost feelings in her feet and hands from the wrist down and developed involuntary spasms. This occured soon after Anna's father had died, and since it is neurologically impossible for a person to develop numbness in only his or her hands and feet there had to be some other explanation. Freud and the doctor that he worked with realized that there was internal conflicts within Anna which were cured through hypnosis.

This led Freud to research the subconscious mind. A part of us that is constantly observing and taking in information without our awareness of it. The id part of the subconscious contains psychic energies. One of which is the Eros (sometimes called libido) is the need to be in union with society, the main part of this drive is sex. Now the Thanatos contains the death instincts, those that bring members of society apart. If you've ever noticed yourself looking around when you hear a car crash, really your Thanatos is at work because you want to see some massive destruction.

The superego contains all of the values and morals that you learn from your environment. This includes things that you are taught by your religion, family and school, as being the right thing to do.

The ego is like a referee between the id and the superego. For instance if a person is in a store and feels the urge to steal something(coming from the id of course), the ego warns that person that he or she will get punished if they do this. If a person's superego wants them to go out to a war torn country to yell "LOVE AND PEACE" the ego is what makes them realize that they will get killed if they do this, and that they better not.

Freud also argues that some mind processes are buried deep in our mind and occur when we don't know. He related this idea to an iceberg. The thoughts and perception that a person has are bobbing at the surface, but as we know only a small bit of the iceberg is at top and the rest is down below. Below the surface are thoughts of violence, sex, and many things that most would deny.

So, how do we deal with these supposedly negative but natural feelings that we have? Through defense mechanisms! Some of these mechanisms are denial, regression, projection, etc. For more info on these check http://allpsych.com/psychology101/defenses.html.

Freud also talks about psychosexual development. I won't go into depth about that here, but check http://allpsych.com/psychology101/sexual_development.html. Something that is important to this concept is "fixation". When a person goes through these stages there may be a negative event that keeps parts of that stage stuck with them. For instance, if something happens in the Oral stage (usually a negative weaning experience in this case) a person may end up smoking, or chew on pens, talk a lot, and so on later on in life.

Now that I've gone through the basics of psychoanalysis, what do you all think about it? I think it is an excellent insight into how the mind may work and expalin problems that a person could have. But, some researchers disagree since Freud's findings are hard to reproduce in other studies. Of course, Freud's ideas can also fall under the category of philosophy - since most of the findings are based on sound logic but are difficult to prove through stats and numbers, like Plato and the works of other philosophers.

As well, I think Freud kind of puts people into a circle. We could say "crap, I don't do those things and I don't think those things" and of course his response would be "denial!"

Here's a little silly question I had for a bonus mark, I know Christmas is over but it's still Winter.

"Santa goes to every single house in the world giving out presents in one night, every year. What type of fixation does this suggest?"

Sources: http://allpsych.com/psychology101
Wade, C. Et al. (2004). Psychology. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada Inc.

 

Didn't Freud also say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?

 

I've actually studied Freud during my Psychology classes, and I might say I was impressed about his "thoughts" when I first heard them.

Regression is a form of "Denial mechanism" - You put your mistakes into something else, such as " The reason I fail the test is because of the teacher! " . Or something like that, I think I might have mixed it with some other mechanism.

- Teddz

 

I know.. it's easy to overanalyze things, I do it all the time :s

And Teddz, I think that's more rationalization. Where you feel guilty about something that you did so you make excuses to make it seem okay. Regression happens when you go back to an earlier stage to relieve stress.. Something that kids normally do when they do something wrong is to talk about it out loud to themselves and as they get older this becomes internalized - But I know that sometimes when I do something wrong I talk to myself out loud, especially around exam time.

 

Ah yes, of course. It's been one year since I had Psychology classes

- Teddz

 

Santa goes to every house. I would call him a peaking tom.

Anyway. I love Frauds ideas on dreams. I did a paper back in high school. He was really in depth.

 

As far as I'm concerned, Freud does have some worth, however his ideas (particularly on psychosexuality) should NOT be applied to everything. I do agree with his defense mechanisms though.

However I do have a pair of dreams I -would- like someone to analyze psychosexually for my personal source of comedy!

Dream 1: My friends girlfriend, who I am not a fan of, lobs grenades at me across a field.

Dream 2: I was at home, and was wandering around the second floor of my house. All of a sudden, I see an ex of mine, and she looks absolutely fabulous. She's decked out in her best lingerie. Her hair style is amazing. Her eyes are deeper than ever, and her voice has a drop of honey to it. She walks towards me, sashaying seductively...

to my mothers waiting arms.

The door to the room they are in closes and I can hear muffled lesbian sex.



I woke up and immeadiately ran to the bathroom, puking my guts out.

 

To answer your question, I believe that this is a fixation on the superego...
the ego is suppose to balance out the id and the superego and in this case with santa....the superego has the most power.

 

On the exam I put that it's a fixation in the Phallic stage, since that includes like reckless behaviour. But it could also be that Santa is anal expulsive (that sounds really gross!)

And Neph, I'm not too sure what that dream means. Really, it takes years of medical school for psychoanalysts to figure out what dreams like that mean. Freud might possibly say that throwing up in the morning was a way to get rid of the guilt of dreaming something like that, though - a strange form of sublimation really.

 

Or he could have thrown up just for the simple fact that he just had a disgusting dream....