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Freud's Innovations

Freud made two major contributions: developing a theory of the human mind and behavior, and a clinical technique for helping unhappy people. His most significant idea was the conception of the unconscious - the thoughts and feelings occurring below our conscious awareness that influence our behavior. Freud proposed the mind has layers including the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. He also suggested the unconscious is divided into the id, ego, and superego, representing primitive instincts, morality, and reality. Freud believed humans are driven by innate libidinal and death instincts and that the libido develops by fixing on different objects as one matures. Many accept parts of Freud's theories while rejecting others.

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58 views2 pages

Freud's Innovations

Freud made two major contributions: developing a theory of the human mind and behavior, and a clinical technique for helping unhappy people. His most significant idea was the conception of the unconscious - the thoughts and feelings occurring below our conscious awareness that influence our behavior. Freud proposed the mind has layers including the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. He also suggested the unconscious is divided into the id, ego, and superego, representing primitive instincts, morality, and reality. Freud believed humans are driven by innate libidinal and death instincts and that the libido develops by fixing on different objects as one matures. Many accept parts of Freud's theories while rejecting others.

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Freud's Innovations

Freud has been influential in two related, but distinct ways. He simultaneously developed a
theory of the human mind and human behavior, and a clinical technique for helping unhappy (i.e.
neurotic) people. Many people claim to have been influenced by one but not the other.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Freud has made to modern thought is his conception of
the unconscious. During the 19th century the dominant trend in Western thought was positivism,
the claim that people could accumulate real knowledge about themselves and their world, and
exercise rational control over both. Freud, however, suggested that these claims were in fact
delusions; that we are not entirely aware of what we even think, and often act for reasons that
have nothing to do with our conscious thoughts. The concept of the unconscious was
groundbreaking in that he proposed that awareness existed in layers and there were thoughts
occurring "below the surface." Dreams, called the "royal road to the unconscious" provided the
best examples of our unconscious life, and in The Interpretation of Dreams Freud both developed
the argument that the unconscious exists, and developed a method for gaining access to it.

The Preconscious was described as a layer between conscious and unconscious thought - that
which we could access with a little effort. (The term "subconscious" while popularly used, is not
actually part of psychoanalytical terminology.) Although there are still many adherents to a
purely positivist and rationalist view, most people, including many who reject other elements of
Freud's work, accept the claim that part of the mind is unconscious, and that people often act for
reasons of which they are not conscious.

Crucial to the operation of the unconscious is "repression." According to Freud, people often
experience thoughts and feelings that are so painful that people cannot bear them. Such thoughts
and feelings - and associated memories - could not, Freud argued, be banished from the mind,
but could be banished from consciousness. Thus they come to constitute the unconscious.
Although Freud later attempted to find patterns of repression among his patients in order to
derive a general model of the mind, he also observed that individual patients repress different
things. Moreover, Freud observed that the process of repression is itself a non-conscious act (in
other words, it did not occur through people willing away certain thoughts or feelings). Freud
supposed that what people repressed was in part determined by their unconscious. In other
words, the unconscious was for Freud both a cause and effect of repression.

Freud sought to explain how the unconscious operates by proposing that it has a particular
structure. He proposed that the unconscious was divided into three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego.
The Id (Latin, = "it" = es in the original German) represented primary process thinking - our
most primitive need gratification type thoughts. The Superego represented our conscience and
counteracted the Id with moral and ethical thoughts. The Ego stands in between both to balance
our primitive needs and our moral/ethical beliefs. A healthy ego provides the ability to adapt to
reality and interact with the outside world in a way that accommodates both Id and Superego.
The general claim that the mind is not a monolithic or homogeneous thing continues to have an
enormous influence on people outside of psychology. Many, however, have questioned or
rejected the specific claim that the mind is divided into these three components.
Freud was especially concerned with the dynamic relationship between these three parts of the
mind. Freud argued that the dynamic is driven by innate drives. But he also argued that the
dynamic changes in the context of changing social relationships. Some have criticized Freud for
giving too much importance to one or the other of these factors; similarly, many of Freud's
followers have focused on one or the other.

Freud developed the concept of overdetermination to account for the multiple determining causes
in the interpretation of dreams rather than rely on a simple model of one-to-one correspondence
between causes and effects.

Freud believed that humans were driven by two instinctive drives, libidinal energy/Eros and the
death instinct/thanatos. Freud's description of Eros/Libido included all creative, life-producing
instincts. The Death Instinct represented an instinctive drive to return to a state of calm, or non-
existence and was based on his studies of protozoa. (See: Beyond the Pleasure Principle). Many
have challenged the scientific basis for this claim.

Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object. He argued
that humans are born "polymorphously perverse," meaning that any number of objects could be a
source of pleasure. He further argued that as humans developed they fixated on different, and
specific, objects - first oral (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then anal
(exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in controlling his or her bowels), then phallic. Freud argued
that children then passed through a stage where they fixated on the parent of the opposite sex.
Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a
progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay need
gratification. (see Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.)

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