For Freud the mind was like an iceberg, with the many motivations of the unconscious being much larger, but also out of sight, in comparison to the consciousness of which we are aware (Figure 12.7, “Mind as Iceberg”). Freud argued that we rarely understand why we do what we do, although we can make up explanations for our behaviours after the fact. These forces show themselves in our dreams, in neurotic symptoms such as obsessions, while we are under hypnosis, and in Freudian “slips of the tongue” in which people reveal their unconscious desires in language. Rather, he believed that all behaviours are predetermined by motivations that lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious.
#Id ego and superego definition free#
In terms of free will, Freud did not believe that we were able to control our own behaviours. These observations led Freud and Charcot to conclude that these disorders were caused by psychological rather than physiological factors.įreud used the observations that he and Charcot had made to develop his theory regarding the sources of personality and behaviour, and his insights are central to the fundamental themes of psychology. Charcot was experimenting with the use of hypnosis, and he and Freud found that under hypnosis many of the hysterical patients reported having experienced a traumatic sexual experience, such as sexual abuse, as children (Dolnick, 1998).įreud and Charcot also found that during hypnosis the remembering of the trauma was often accompanied by an outpouring of emotion, known as catharsis, and that following the catharsis the patient’s symptoms were frequently reduced in severity. For instance, some women experienced a loss of feeling in their hands and yet not in their arms, and this seemed impossible given that the nerves in the arms are the same as those in the hands. Although it is no longer used to describe a psychological disorder, hysteria at the time referred to a set of personality and physical symptoms that included chronic pain, fainting, seizures, and paralysis.Ĭharcot could find no biological reason for the symptoms. As is true of all theories, many of Freud’s ingenious ideas have turned out to be at least partially incorrect, and yet other aspects of his theories are still influencing psychology.įreud was influenced by the work of the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), who had been interviewing patients (almost all women) who were experiencing what was at the time known as hysteria. Many people know about Freud because his work has had a huge impact on our everyday thinking about psychology, and the psychodynamic approach is one of the most important approaches to psychological therapy (Roudinesco, 2003 Taylor, 2009). Freud is probably the best known of all psychologists, in part because of his impressive observation and analyses of personality (there are 24 volumes of his writings). One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding personality is based on the theorizing of the Austrian physician and psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded what today is known as the psychodynamic approach, an approach to understanding human behaviour that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Psychodynamic Theories of Personality: The Role of the Unconscious In this section we will consider two major theories of the origin of personality: psychodynamic and humanistic approaches. Identify the major contributions of the humanistic approach to understanding personality.Īlthough measures such as the Big Five and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) are able to effectively assess personality, they do not say much about where personality comes from.Summarize the accomplishments of the neo-Freudians.Describe the strengths and limitations of the psychodynamic approach to explaining personality.
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