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Freudian Theory

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Submitted By itsanissax33
Words 714
Pages 3
Jane Arnone
Professor Rivera
Psychology 101
11/20/12
Freudian Theory Whether you agree with him or disagree, Sigmund Freud has strongly influenced Western culture and psychology itself. Freud and his influences show today in literary and film interpretation, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. Sigmund Freud always showed signs of great intelligence. After a long history of studying for hours and hours as a teen, medical school in adulthood, and then setting up private practices specializing in nervous disorders, Freud then began to search for causes to these certain disorders that would change human self-understanding. When Freud made his “discovery” of the unconscious he came about it by observation. He speculated things such as that lost feeling in one’s hand or unexpected blindness or deafness. He connected those feelings to the fear of touching genitals or not wanting to see or hear something that arouses intense anxieties (Myers). Freud eventually turned to free association, in which he told patients to relax and say whatever came to mind no matter how trivial. He believed that this would allow him to retrace that line of thought into patients unconscious where he would be able to access painful memories from childhood. This theory of personality and the associated treatment is called psychoanalysis. Freud is famous for comparing our unconscious mind to an iceberg. Our conscious awareness floats above the surface while our unconscious, the larger part that includes thoughts and feelings, floats beneath. It is believed by Freud that personality arises from efforts to resolve a conflict between impulse and restraint. When understanding the mind during this conflict he proposed three systems that interact: the id, ego, and superego (Myers). The id contains unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. It operates

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