Lesson Notes

Lesson 13.2a  Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Four Key Concepts

Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and terminology has become a part of popular culture for many years. Words such as ego, repression, and unconscious have been used and misused for years. This lesson looks to put these terms into their proper context, as Freud intended.

Levels of Consciousness: One of Freud’s most influential contributions to psychology is his work on the psyche. Freud used an iceberg to help people understand how our psyche worked.  The three levels of consciousness are the conscious, preconscious, and the unconscious. As you can imagine, the unconscious, like the majority of an iceberg, is beneath the surface. This part of our psyche consists of anxiety-laden thoughts and instinctual motives. Our preconscious hovers around the surface and is readily available to us. Finally, the conscious, the part above the water, consists of our thoughts and motives that are aware to us at the moment.

Personality Structure: Freud believed that our personality had three primary structures, each residing at least partially in our unconscious. The first mental structure, located entirely in our unconscious called the id. The id seeks pleasure and tries to avoid pain. The second structure is the superego. The superego operates on the morality principle, it is the center of our morality (i.e. parental and societal expectations). The final part of our personality structure is our ego. The ego is based on the reality principle. It seeks to balance out the needs of the id and the superego. It is the ego that is most in touch with our conscious awareness – our identity of ourselves as a person.

Defence Mechanisms: Freud believed that anxiety provoking thoughts that cannot be dealt with by the ego are reduced by distorting reality in the form of defence mechanisms. For example, when a husband is mad at his wife, but instead yells at his child is experiencing the defence mechanism known as displacement. In other words, rather than dealing with the anxiety of yelling at his wife, he transfers that anxiety to his child which causes less anxiety.

Psychosexual Stages of Development: Freud’s stages of development were influential when they were first discussed, but are criticised by many today. The premise behind these stages is that the id’s impulses and the social demands placed on the child are in conflict with each other. If the child is able to deal with this conflict they will pass through to the next stage. But, if the child’s needs are not met, then the child may fixate at a certain stage and/or possibly regress at a later date. For example, a person who does not properly resolve the conflict of the anal stage, may become either anal expulsive (messy) or anal retentive (neat and controlling). Read through each of these stages and understand the role of each erogenous zone and conflicts within each stage.

Lesson 13.2b  Neo-Freudian/ Psychodynamic Theories: Revising Freud’s Ideas

In this lesson you will be studying three psychologists who use psychoanalysis as the basis of their theories, but have some differences between their beliefs and those originally thought of by Freud. Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Karen Horney, are all influential theorists who have termed phrases such as inferiority complexes, archetypes, and penis envy. It is not that Freud’s thoughts and ideas have been completely dismissed, instead they have been reinvented by these neo-Freudians.

Lesson 13.2c  Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories: Criticisms and Enduring Influence

As you have previously learned, Freud’s ideas and theory have been very influential to the field of psychology. Even with these contributions there are still five common criticisms, from the lack of cross-cultural support to the inadequate empirical support, that are raised by many psychologists today.