Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who is credited as being the father of psychoanalysis. The name comes from the greek word for soul “psyche” combined with the word analysis which means that psychoanalysis translated liberally means analysis of the soul.
It is a form of talking therapy which wishes to solve mental health struggles by studying and seeing the connections between the conscious and the unconscious using different techniques such as dream analysis and free association. Psychoanalysis is one of the most common methods used by psychologists nowadays.
Sigmund Freud is quite a controversial person and he is fully a product of his time and as such many of his views on women and sexual minorities are very antiquated and show an incredible amount of personal bias.
He studied medicine in Vienna where he lived most of his life until he was forced to flee Austria after Hitler’s takeover of Austria and went to Great Britain where he spent the rest of his life. He received a medicine degree in 1881, he then started working in cerebral anatomy and studying the human psyche in this regard he created a plethora of theories that have helped shape our understanding of the human mind and also a few that were quite strange. We will talk about the stranger ones but also about some of his more interesting ones.
Perhaps the most well known of his theories is the Oedipus complex named after the greek character who was cursed to fall in love with his own mother. The name makes the basic idea of this theory quite obvious, the Oedipus complex refers to the idea that children between the ages of 3 and 5 are sexually attracted to the parent of the opposite sex and feel a sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex, this stage is as he sees it part of the phallic phase, one of psychosexual development.
Another theory of his was that the human psyche is divided in three main parts: the ego, the id and the superego that work together to create the conscious and the unconscious mind. The Id represents the primitive and instinctual part of the self that manages impulses and instincts, it only responds to pleasure and is the first part that develops. The ego is part of the conscious personality, it is the opinion that people have of themselves and how they chose to present themselves and serves the role of satisfying the id without breaking societal conventions. The superego is the last part of the psyche and ensures that we behave in a good way and gives out rewards or punishments as it sees fit, it is the voice of conscience, our very own Jiminy Cricket if you will.
As we have seen from the words that I have written above Sigmeund Freud was a complicated individual and a product of his time who created a multitude of theories some stranger than others but all in all incredibly interesting.
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