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Psychoanalytic Theories: Freud’s perspective

David Asukwo. Ekpo

University of Regina
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What is psychoanalytic theory? Before we proceed with the main topic of this essay, it is

important that we understand what it is. Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality

organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis was a therapeutic approach, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, that tapped into the

unconscious mind of an individual to treat mental disorders. Although, his original ideas

regarding psychoanalysis have been developed in different directions, he paved the way to what

we know today as modern Psychology. Besides Freud, there were two other major individuals

who contributed to our understanding of the human psyche and personality; Carl Gustav Jung

and Alfred Adler--both of them were his students. However, this essay will be focusing on

Sigmund Freud, a man widely regarded as the father of modern psychology.

Before we get into the details of Freud’s Psychoanalytic theories, let us first briefly

summarize his biography. With this information, we might be able to better understand the kind

of man he was, which would help us to contextualize his theories and conclusions about the

human psyche.

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6th, 1856, in Freiberg, Austria—where we now know

to be Pribor, Czech Republic. He and his family moved to Vienna when he was 4 years old,

where he lived for almost all of his life. When he was born, his father, Jakob, was 40 years old

(an older man). In contrast, his mother, Amalie Nathansohn Freud, who was the third wife of his

father, was 20 years old. Freud was the first-born child of his mother. Over the course of 10

years, his mother gave birth to 8 children, including Sigmund. However, one of his siblings died

at 7 months when Sigmund was 2 years old. His father was a mediocre wool merchant and a

strict authoritarian. However, he was his mother’s favorite child. Sigmund Freud was always

smart. He got into medical school at the University of Vienna at the age of 17. However, he
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spent almost 8 years to finish a 4-year medical program. This was primarily because he pursued

many interests outside of medicine. For example, he learned 8 languages, was grounded in greek

literature and was well versed in Shakespeare. He chose medicine because it was one of the few

careers that were open to Jews in Austria, at the time—antisemitism was prevalent in the 19th and

20th century. He also saw the study of medicine as a vehicle for engaging in scientific research.

Freud was also very interested in becoming a professor of Neurology and published several

highly regarded articles on the topic, but he soon realized that his advancement through the

academic ranks would be slow. This, coupled with the fact that he needed money, prompted him

into private practice as a clinical neurologist on April 25th, 1886. He got married shortly after, to

Martha Bernays, the woman he was engaged to since 1882. During their engagement, he wrote

hundreds of letters to his fiancé. Together, they had 6 children; 3 daughters and 3 sons. They

were married until Freud’s death. It is important to note that one of his daughters, Anna, became

a famous child analyst in London.

Freud also had a cocaine phase. In 1884, he began to experiment with cocaine after

hearing from a German army physician that the drug enhanced the endurance of soldiers. He

published six articles on cocaine recommending it as a harmless substitute for morphine, among

other things. He found that it relieved depression and increased his ability to concentrate. He

concluded that it had no negative side effects. One of his associates, Carl Koller, presented a

paper describing an experiment in which cocaine was successfully used as an anesthetic during

eye operations. This paper brought Koller and Freud worldwide fame. However, as reports of

cocaine addiction began to pour in from all over the world, cocaine came under heavy scrutiny

from the medical community. Freud’s association with the harmful drug contributed to the

skepticism his medical colleagues treated his ideas with, later. Interestingly enough, Freud never
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got addicted to cocaine. However, he did get addicted to nicotine. Consequently, he got

diagnosed with mouth cancer in 1923. He underwent multiple surgeries from 1923, when he was

diagnosed, to 1939, when he died. During this period of his life, he refused to accept pain

reduced drugs, regardless of the extreme pain he was constantly in. As a result, his mind

remained sharp, and he worked on his theory until he died.

Freud believed that the mature adult mind was divided into three sub sections. The Id,

Ego, and the Superego. Id stems from the German “das es” meaning, “the it”. However, a

newborn’s mind consists exclusively of the Id. The Id consists exclusively of instinctual drives

that exist on the unconscious level. The Id demands immediate gratification of said innate drives

and it is said to run on the pleasure principle. An example would be hunger: Most have

experienced hunger so severe that they cannot think of anything but the satisfaction of said

hunger. As a result, people get, “hangry”, which means they get cranky when their hunger hasn’t

been satiated. The Id has two means of satisfying bodily needs; reflex action and wishful

thinking. Reflex actions respond to the source of the irritation immediately. For instance, a

person will sneeze when their nose is irritated. In so doing, they reduce tension. wishful

thinking, would be mental representations of physiological needs. For instance, if you are

hungry, your Id will automatically conjure up an image of food, which temporarily satiates the

hunger. This is called wish fulfillment. However, because wish fulfillment is only ever

temporary, which means another component of the psyche or personality must develop to

properly satisfy the Id. This component is the Ego.

The Ego, from the German “das ich, meaning “the I”, attempts to match the images of the

Id with real world objects or events. This process is known as identification. The Ego runs on

the “reality principle”. Because the Ego is aware of the images of the Id and external reality, it
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operates on both the conscious and unconscious levels. The Ego goes through the process of

reality testing to find appropriate objects or actions to satisfy the Id. For instance, if you are

thirsty, the Ego leads you to drink water to quench your thirst because it has tested other liquids

and found that water is most effective for quenching said thirst. However, if the only two

components of personality were the Id and the Ego, we would be totally void of morality and

ethical behavior when we are in a state of need. Thus, a third component of personality develops.

The third component is Superego. The term developed from the German “das uberich”,

which means “the over I”. It develops primarily from internalized patterns of punishment and

reward, that a child experiences. This means, that the Super ego of an individual is entirely

dependent on the values of their parents. Meaning, certain things the child will do will be

rewarded and others will be punished by the parent. These patterns become internalized, and the

superego fully develops when self-control replaces parental or environmental control. The fully

developed superego is made up of two subdivisions; the conscience and the ego ideal.

Conscience is the manifestation of the internalized patterns that were punished as a child, while

the ego ideal is the manifestation of the internalized patterns that were rewarded as a child. Thus,

the conscience is a with feelings of guilt for doing some perceived as wrong.

The superego constantly strives for perfection which complicates the job of the ego. This

is because not only must the ego satisfy the Id, but it also must satisfy the Id in a way that

doesn’t violate the values of the Superego. This means that no matter what the Ego does, it will

either violate the conscience to some extent, causing guilt, or it will fall short of the ego ideal’s

standards, causing shame.

Now let’s talk about Freud’s ideas on “psychic” energy. Freud believed that the principle

of conservation of energy could be applied to the mind. He believed that everyone is born with
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about the same amount of psychic energy, and he believed that this energy remained relatively

the same throughout an individual's life. However, he believed that this energy can be

transformed and distributed. He believed that what we invest our energy into determines a

person’s personality characteristics. There are two ways we can invest our psychic energy. The

first is cathexis. Cathexis describes the investment of psychic energy into thoughts or processes

that satisfy a need. Once a need is satisfied, the energy dissipates and becomes available for

investment elsewhere. However, some cathexes are undesirable, so the ego and superego come

together to create Anti cathexis, which is psychic energy devoted to inhibiting strong undesirable

cathexis. Undesirable cathexis leads to anxiety. For instance, if you desire a cheeseburger, the

desire for that cheeseburger and the thoughts to procure the cheeseburger is cathexis. But, if

you’re on a diet, then this cathexis is undesirable. This causes anxiety, which encourages Anti

cathexis to inhibit and or redirect that energy towards another desired object. Note that the

original cathexis isn’t destroyed but is redirected towards a safer, more desirable object.

Now let's tackle Freud’s developmental theory of psychosexual development. Freud

believed that every child went through a series of psychosexual development stages that were

based around erogenous zones. Furthermore, he believed that the adult personality fully forms at

the age of five.

The first of the five stages is the oral stage. This occurs typically to an infant between the

ages of 0 to 8 months. This stage is characterized by pleasure coming mainly through the mouth

through acts of sucking and swallowing. Adults who were fixated on the oral stage engage in an

abundance of oral activities such as eating, drinking, smoking and kissing, verbal abuse.

The next stage is the anal stage. Here, the erogenous zone is the anus. This stage is

characterized by pleasure from the expulsion of feces. However, the child must least to control
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his or her need to defecate to meet the demands of the society. Adults who are fixated on release

tend to be overly generous and creative. However, pleasure can also be derived from the

retention of feces. Fixation on this stage manifests physically, in problems with constipation.

Symbolically, these people tend to be stingy, orderly, and strive towards perfection.

The third stage is the phallic stage. The erogenous zone here is the penis. Yes, Freud

believed although women don’t have a penis, that this stage sufficed to explain both the male and

female experience. This was because, he believed the clitoris was a small penis. In this stage, the

Oedipus complex came into play. Essentially, both male and female children developed sexual

feelings towards their mother. However, the boy develops castration anxiety due to the fear he

now harbors towards his father, a rival to his mother’s affection. The boy then proceeds to

repress his feelings towards his mother and identify with the father. For the girls, they go through

a phase of penis envy. Where the girl blames the mother for her lack of a penis and this feeling

can last for years. A very broad, controversial, and complicated stage. This concludes the pre

genital stages.

The fourth stage is the latency stage. Here, sexual desires are repressed and displaced to

substitute activities such as learning. It usually lasts from around six years old to twelve years

old.

The last stage is the genital stage. And it begins at puberty. At this stage, the individual

begins to blossom into an adult and assuming they went through the pre genital stages with no

hiccups, they will become fully functioning adults and will go on to have healthy relationships

with the opposite sex.

Freud also had a theory called ego defense mechanisms. These are irrational methods the

ego employs to absolve the mind of anxiety, when rational methods are ineffective. The most
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basic of the mechanisms is repression. It is the most fundamental mechanism because, before any

other mechanisms occur, repression must first occur. There are many different mechanisms, so I

will only mention two. Denial of reality, as the name implies, is when an individual refuses to

accept a fact that causes them distress regardless of the abundance of evidence supporting said

fact. Finally, intellectualization. This is the process of stripping a distressful event of emotional

content by intellectual analysis. For instance, thinking about a fatal disease medically might help

minimize the pain of losing a loved one to said disease.

In truth, Freud’s theories are more than what I have written, and I am already past the

page limit. I believe that his theory on psychosexual development is not universal to every child.

I think there is a lot of truth to his idea of the 3 components of the psyche. However, it is hard to

scientifically test them. I believe his theory on ego defense mechanisms is solid. In all I don’t

think Freud should be as controversial as he currently is in the field of psychology.

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References

Olson, M. H. (2022). An introduction to theories of Personality (9th ed.). Pearson.

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