SIGMUND FREUD

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Freud did not grasp the full implications of Breuer’s experience

until a decade later, when he developed the technique of free
association.

Freud came to the SCREEN

conclusion, based on his
clinical experience with MEMORIES

female hysterics, that the Freud was uncertain about

most insistent source of
resisted material was
sexual in nature.
he concluded that, rather than
being memories of actual events,
these shocking recollections were
the residues of infantile impulses
and desires to be seduced by an
adult.
the precise status of the
sexual component in this
dynamic conception of the
psyche. His patients seemed
to recall actual experiences
of early seductions, often
incestuous in nature.

SEXUALITY AND DEVELOPMENT

Freud sought to understand the nature and

variety of these illnesses by retracing the
sexual history of his patients. This was not
primarily an investigation of sexual experiences
as such. Far more important were the patient’s
wishes and desires, their experience of love,
hate, shame, guilt and fear – and how they
handled these powerful emotions.

Freud’s account of the episode was as follows.

Freud came to see in this troubling interaction
the effects of a more pervasive phenomenon,
which he called transference . It was largely to
facilitate transference that Freud developed his
celebrated technique of having the patient lie
on a couch, not looking directly at the analyst,
and free to fantasize with as little intrusion of
the analyst’s real personality as possible.

THE PSYCHE
THE UNCONSCIOUS

MIND Freud (1923) later developed a

more structural model of the mind
He developed a topographical
comprising the entities id, ego, and
model of the mind, whereby he
superego (what Freud called “the
described the features of the
psychic apparatus”). These are not
mind’s structure and function.
physical areas within the brain, but
Freud used the analogy of an
rather hypothetical
iceberg to describe the three
conceptualizations of important
levels of the mind.
mental functions.

Luis Guy
Miguel Brazao
Carla Lopez
Mia Costa