Psychoanalytic Theory by Sigmund Freud

Muhammad Abubakar Mir
2 min readMar 18, 2021

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Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis and he gave the idea of free association and also he gives the analysis of dreams. His major contribution is the theory of psychoanalytic here we will discuss it.

Psychoanalytic theory state that there is three structure in the human mind Id, superego and ego our personality is created by these structures.

Id:-

The id, the oldest of the three systems, is concerned with satisfying basic physical needs for example sex, hunger, and thirst.

Superego:-

The superego is concerned with social laws and values and is often referred to as What society says you should do in the situation for example in our society people usually say that a good student admits to medical college or engineering college rest one are low grader or null students.

Ego:-

The ego is the intellectual aspect of our personality. It is divided between conscious and unconscious states. It’s what Sigmund Freud referred to as the “self,” and its role is to balance the id and superego’s demands in the real world. For example, A person is doing the job at a bank and his job is to count the money so its Id will urge him to steal the money to fulfill his dreams but its superego will urge him to do the job with honesty as stealing will humiliate himself in front of others.

Freud claimed that an individual with a strong ego has a healthy personality, and that ego imbalances may contribute to unhealthy behaviors.

Psychosexual stages of development:-

As a person grows from a child to an adult, the essence of the conflicts between the id, ego, and superego shifts, according to Freud. He claimed that these conflicts progress through five basic stages, each with its own focus: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. His theory was dubbed the psychosexual theory of growth, and each stage was linked to a different physical center of pleasure.

Since their biological pleasure-seeking desires concentrate on various areas of the body (what Freud called “erogenous zones”), the child is faced with different contradictions between their biological drives (id) and their social and moral conscience (superego) in these five phases. The ability of a child to overcome internal disputes influences their ability to cope and act like an adult in the future. Failure to resolve a stage may lead to a fixation on that stage, which can lead to undesirable personality traits; effective resolution of the stages contributes to a stable adult.

Although it theory gives very much information about new findings like id, superego, and ego due to lack of scientific evidence his theory holds criticism by other researchers But the majority of therapist finds his theory very much beneficial for them.

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Muhammad Abubakar Mir

🇵🇰 | Studying Clinical Psychology | Interest in Science, Psychology, Politics, and Criminology. For enquiries:-192520015@gift.edu.pk