Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the most influential figure in the history of psychology and whether you have an interest in psychology or not it is certain you would of heard of Sigmund Freud. The area of psychology that Freud worked in to gain a better understanding of human behaviour was called the psychodynamic approach and it places great emphasis upon the unconscious mind, believing that an individual has awareness of only a fraction of their thoughts and mental processes. Freud began as a neurologist and from observations on his patients Freud came up with this movement and is considered the founder of the psychoanalytical movement.

Freud is renowned for his theory of personality where he claims that the personality comprises of three components:

      The Id

      The Ego

      The Superego

The best way to distinguish between the three components are:

      The Id is the only structure present at birth and therefore innate, it is the unconscious mind and strives to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual pleasure principle.

      The Ego is the conscious and is driven by the reality principle, which acts as a check on the id.

      The Superego is both the conscious and unconscious mind, it is the moral voice of the personality and controls the id, particularly with regard to sexual and aggressive needs. The superego is influenced by the cultural norms of the society of which and individual lives in.

The structures of the mind that Freud said is made up of of can be seeing in his ‘ice-berg structure’.

Freud is also known for his psychosexual theory which proposes that an individual must pass through one stage to reach the next stage of development. The stages were:

      Oral Stage (0-2 years)

      Anal Stage (2-3 years)

      Phallic Stage (3-6 years)

      Latent Stage (6-11 years)

      Genital Stage (11+ years)

Freud believed that each stage could have a negative outcome and the individual could become fixated or stuck at that stage.