Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis theory
Introduction
The psychoanalytic theory includes personality organization theory and personality development dynamics that guide psychoanalysis, a clinical technique used to treat psychopathology. The theory was established in the late 19th century by Sigmund Freud, although it has undergone several refinements. Sigmund focused hi theory towards the study of the mind and related attributes of psychology that make up the mind. He also focused on treatment through the use of free association and transference phenomena. He stressed the recognition of events of childhood that potentially influence adults’ mental functioning. This essay aims to illustrate some Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis theory, besides well-known theory, the notable indifferences toward a woman.
According to the personality structure, it is based on three dominant structures of the human mind, including Id, ego, and superego. Conflicts among the above-identified fundamental structures of the human mind and humans’ effort to establish a balance among what every structure desire dictates how we express our behavior and approach the world. The balance we ultimately strike in any particular situation is a determinant of how we eventually resolve the presenting conflict between the two tendencies of behavior, including humans’ socialized internal control over pleasure-seeking drives and our biological aggressive and those drives.
The Id is regarded as the most primitive among the three fundamental structures of the human mind. It is concerned with the instant gratification of primary physical urges and needs. It functions entirely outside of conscious thought (unconsciously). The Id is perceived as the mean base of personality as it defines how an individual will be psychological. It operates the system through the preservation of energy. The identifier is an internal courtyard, explaining why the refrain of increasing strength becomes sensitive to it. According to Freud, when the tension increases and externally stimulation occurs, the internal pressure increases and goes back to normal stages as soon as the function is over (Frosh, 2012). Based on Freud ( 7), this principle of tension reduction by which the Id operates is called the pleasure principle.
The ego structure of the human mind is the rational and pragmatic part of humans’ personalities. It is perceived as less primitive that the Id. It is also partly conscious and unconscious. Freud perceived the structure as the self, and the ego’s primary function is to balance the demands of both the superego and id in the effective reality context (Frosh, 2012). The ego functions by supplying the organism with its needs. For example, a hungry person first sometimes portrayed in the mind of food hunger because the mind is sending the message that the body needs food supply. Freud’s theories say that food is located in the outer world; it is essential to determine territory, meaning food accomplishment. He suggested that the personal memories of food pertain to the sight or the smell of food as it comes to the senses.
The superego, the third and last personality, is the internal representation of traditional values and ideals society. It is concerned with social morals and rules. Superego is similar to what the majority of people refer to as their moral compass or conscience. It is developed during the learning process of a child regarding what the culture perceives as right and wrong. One example of the superego creates emphasis between mother and child, and children need to conduct their behavior to avoid getting punished.
The superego has to enhance a moral value referee to aim to develop acknowledgment of the reward and punishment. A bonus is given when a child follows guidance by obeying, and discipline is applied to the child when a child fails to behave. The purpose of that is to create conscience, which is one the subsystem of the superego—Freud’s theory about instinct. For instance, the superego function is to restraint the impulses of the id. According to Freud, aggressive sexual activities seem that society rejects it. Further, Freud argues that the organization advises the ego to switch moralistic goals for a realistic one by flourishing perfection.
Freud held the belief that ego, id, and superego are in regular conflict and that adult behavior and personality are deeply rooted in the outcomes of the above internal struggles across childhood. Besides, he believed that an individual with a robust ego possessed a healthy personality. Any imbalances occurring in such a system potentially contribute to neurosis, which is thought to be depression and anxiety. It can also lead to unhealthy behaviors.
According to Freud, the nature of conflict among the human mind’s structures, including id, ego, and superego, transform over time as an individual undergoes growth from childhood to adulthood. Particularly, he held that the conflicts usually progress via a series of five fundamental phases, where each of the stages has varying focus (Frosh, 2012). The stages include oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital phases.
On the other hand, Freud’s theories of personalities refer to a number of things that represent various theories. For instance, a newborn baby cry when they are hungry. A baby also manifests discomfort when diapers need to be changed. Besides, the baby’s faces look happy when all their psychological needs are met (Frosh, 2012). Despite too many theories, Sigmund Freud experiences challenge to understand women. The difficulty can be identified from his biography since a child privilege was given to him over women.
Since he was the oldest person on the family, he was honored to rule and take control of the household. It is established that the era of the 1880s, men had total control of the family. Reflecting on Freud’s family component, he took advantage of his parents and depicted selfish attributes. As a result, his parents were compelled to remove the piano out because of his instigate problem among his sisters. Freud had two powers against his sisters; one of them is because there were no other male children. The second power is that men had complete authority over women during his era. It is also possible to talk about the third power, which included that Freud had no feelings toward women since the early time of his life. Nevertheless, masculinity and the lack of sensitivity about women made him state that he entirely did not understand women. Reading the text allows an easier understanding of things, especially that the eagerness depicted by Freud to keep controlling women.
When he commented on women calling names such that they needed to stay on the shadow as it was seen in the past. He perceives women as lacking the right of expression or engage in productive activities to better their lives. Jews men and those from other ethnicities used to look down upon women. Women are compelled to advocate, fight for their rights, and come out of the darkness. The perception that men used to have on women does not affect them. Women have, over recent years, attained freedom. They engage themselves in the employment sector and work together with men to earn nearly the same salary.
Even though Sigmund Freud no longer exists, if he lived to witness women strive and flourish in modern society. There are humongous professional women. In the modern world, men are forced to hire individuals for their households to take care of kids, cook, and do other jobs. The wives of these men are in the army, in the workforce, and any management business. The women emphasized Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Jung’s Analytic Theory, where they compare their attitude about women.
Jung’s Analytic theory fails to show respect for women. The majority of Jung’s assumptions of the analytic theory is a reflection of his theoretical variations with Sigmund Freud (Fordham, 2018). For instance, even though Jung agrees with Freud that an individual past and experiences during childhood dictate future behavior, he also maintained that people are shaped by our aspirations or future too. The perception of women is that they are objects to be played with. Jong wants to kill his wife after because he was not faithful to her. He was a type of person-years ago and cannot distinguish between his jobs and the patient. He used to be involved in sexual activities with any woman.
Freud also depicts the same since he was unfaithful and used to control men. He was deep in having relations worldwide up to the point of an extreme situation where he was involved in a relationship with his sister-in-law. Therefore, these two theorists have no control over their sexual activities. Lastly, Freud has no respect for women as he said that he does not understand them. Jong also fails to respect women because he knows that he does not have respect for his wife. It is depicted that he wanted to kill her. Therefore, both Freud and Jong have similarities.
Exercise#3
The dynamics of personality
The goal of this essay is to inform you about some theories of Roger’s and Skinner of self-theory in terms of personality. Dynamic structure deals with self-actualization that can be propelled with motivation. Snaggy and Comb theory, as well as Maslow, also support these theories. It is very important to understand about some personality that can be traced from infancy to adulthood.
The dynamic of personality came with a good structure of a good personality.” It is the assumption that the organism is a purely monistic dynamic system in which one dives suffices to account with all behavior “(p 205). I must commend that a good personality leads and follow the part by supporting one another and flourish in the lane. Based on this module, the organism actualizes itself along the lines laid down by heredity. It becomes more differentiated, more expanded, more autonomous, and more socialized as it matures.”
This article stressed these issues that everything reflects on the personality of an individual. A good personality of a person is that he or she has that good tendency to move forward. For example, a good personality leads to a good outcome. Individuals having therapy with this personality have that tendency to move toward a tangible outcome. This is because his personality makes the person easier to advance as well to improve with his therapy section.
This article says that the developments of personality organisms and self, although they position the inherited tendency of actualizing themselves, are subject to strung influences from the end, especially from the social environment”. I think that an individual grows in a decent environment and that a good environment could travel with the person for the rest of his or her life. For example, the development of personality under the psychological theory, Freud has mentioned about five stages of individual starting from infancy to adulthood.
The first stage is the infancy, where a newborn’s first month of life starts responding to a parent’s stimuli. The newborn is able to move body parts such as hand and head. They are also able to place their hands in the mouth. Other developments include the ability to see and recognize certain smells, smile, and cry to indicate that they need help.
The second stage is the infant stage. The infant develops new abilities in the first year of his life. Within three to six months, the infant has control of his head movement and bring his hand and finger to his mouth. The third phase is the toddler stage. In this stage, children age between one to three years depict the ability to walk on their own without any help. The fourth stage is preschool. The ages of three to five years old children shape their motor skills. During stage five, which is referred to as school age, the children are six to 12 years old. They have the capacity to have confidence and meet friends. The child starts to develop dynamic flare-up slowly. When this child gets to his adolescence, the dynamic structure moves from adolescence to adulthood, which is the formation of a child’s personality.
Child development is related to the stages identified above. Starting from newborn to stage of five, a child at that stage can recognize and react to some zone of his or her body that involves the dynamic activity. The development of a child includes cathexis and antitheses, which describe the mental concentration of energy an object or idea about things, the oral stage in which the child fully aware of his eliminative functions. Based on Freud’s analysis, the oral stage is related to cathexes and the antitheses, which represent the anal stage of development. Therefore, stages of development in a child go through a lot of dynamic differentiation during the first five years of life. Then when they reach adolescence, changes continue in the formation of personality according to Freud’s theory. The changes are in line with the development of personality, which Freud emphasized.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
On the other hand, Abraham Maslow emphasized on self-actualization. The hierarchy of needs theory developed by Maslow is parallel to a majority of human developmental psychology theories. The other theories concentrate on describing growth stages in human beings. Maslow’s developed a classification system that offers a reflection of the universal needs of society and moved to more acquired emotions (Fallatah & Syed, 2018). Based on the article, Maslow, as a student of psychology, focused on healthy people. He came to the United States with a purpose to conduct further investigation. During that time, he meets a lot of psychologists, including two mentors. In his investigation, he realized that people are different as he was having a problem finding a good human being. Maslow was disappointed because he was having trouble finding to prove self- actualization. His question was going beyond private life, reluctant to reply to the questions he raised, until the realization that he needs to use a different approach, for being a Good Human Being.
According to Maslow, when the level of need is not met, it is because the person pathologically is crippled. When the self-actualization has a barrier, then all needs are not in place. Self-actualization is when Good Human Being meets all of these criteria, including food, safety, love, shelter, and belongings. According to Maslow, basic needs have to be regulated to satisfy human needs before considering complete human (Fallatah & Syed, 2018). Belonging is a natural, essential, and high quality of life. Human beings must have basic needs to attain self-actualization. That was the theory of Maslow in regard to self-actualizing. I have a personal experience similar to presented in the above theory. As a child growing in a rural small town in Honduras, I was age four, going to 5 years old. After eating dinner, I would hear my mother having a conversation with my father about kindergarten registration. I was very excited because I want to feel the experience of being in the school setting.
As they had the conversation, my father would suggest my sister was going to school the following day, although he would leave me out. My mother inquired why he would opt to leave me out when I was nearly five years old. According to my mother, I was old enough to join the school. However, my father would consider the decision as a waste of money, especially buying the required items for school. His argument was that I would still continue doing some of the things she does back home when she is taken to school. The behaviors he pointed out include steering all day while at home. The arguments represented his perception regarding my personality. In my country, life was very hard based on challenging adversity daily. It was harder when you have a big family to support, and we were a family of ten members.
My father kept his word as he registered my sister in school, living me out. When the season to harvest had come, my parents had to move to the farm. My mother was to accompany my father since she was to offer her help. The period saw us left under the care of our elder siblings. I would then follow my sister every day as she attended kindergarten. It was from this when the teacher noticed from the first day that I would learn even better than my elder sister.
One day, the teacher decided to approach my father, trying to persuade him to register me to officially join the kindergarten. However, he declines the suggestion, although he did not stop me from attending school every day. Finally, when school time ended in November, I managed to pass from kindergarten to first grade. When the teacher went to my house to give my certificate to my father, he was angry at the teacher. He started arguing with them about the incident. He was not satisfied with the result of my attendance at the kindergarten and was not pleased with the grades.
As a result, he decided to travel to the city to visit the board of education and file a complaint about the teachers. When the teachers received the report, they traveled to the city with all my work to present it to the judge. The judge ruled in favor of teachers and granted them permission to proceed and register me in the first grades. The act did not go well with my father, as he felt humiliated. At that age, I was very young to understand a lot of things. As I grew up, I was able to acknowledge my father’s viewpoint as that he did not want to accept that I was a very bright child.
My sibling never got to even complete first grades. My parents have nine kids, but this particular sister did not learn to write and read as she would be perceived as illiterate. The rationale for writing the above personal information is that after reading Maslow’s information about self-actualizing, it made me recall my early life. At an early age, I had to fight to be educated. Today I feel that I attained self-actualization since I did not let my father’s wrong perception toward my persona be a barrier to accessing education. From the kindergarten to 12 grades in Honduras, I never repeated grades. Therefore, Maslow is right in stating that self-actualization is when all of the human needs are met.
Self-actualization, according to Maslow, is a description of the desire that contributes to an individual realizing their full potential. When individuals depict self-actualization, they have attained the apex of human existence and that the individual has become everything they are capable of becoming in their life (Fallatah & Syed, 2018). The realization of full potential potentially occurs in numerous ways, although it generally involves the attainment of a robust sense of fulfillment and psychological health. Self-actualized individuals usually accept themselves and other individuals. They also depict a well-developed sense of creativity and keep meaningful and deep relationships. Besides, self-actualized individuals demonstrate a sense of purpose and conduct constant tasks that are geared toward the given purpose. Since self-actualization includes self-awareness and a robust sense of purpose, and the impression that the basic needs of an individual are met, it becomes a difficult goal to attain (Fallatah & Syed, 2018). Nevertheless, individuals who manage to attain self-actualization are in a position to retain access to a particular level since they understand the required skills to attain fulfillment.
Conclusion
The psychoanalytic theory focuses on describing the human development and the various stages involved starting from childhood to adulthood. The focus can also be on the brain where structures of the human mind, including id, ego, and superego, have been discussed. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains self-actualization as the level when an individual has attained all that they are capable of achieving.
References
Fallatah, R. H. M., & Syed, J. (2018). A critical review of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In Employee Motivation in Saudi Arabia (pp. 19-59). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-67741-5_2
Fordham, M. (2018). Jungian psychotherapy: A study in analytical psychology. Routledge.
Frosh, S. (2012). A brief introduction to psychoanalytic theory. Macmillan International Higher Education.