Lecture 3- Freud

Freud was a pyschologist and had many theories about the mind and how it worked. He believed that people's behavior, emotions and thoughts were due to three things the Id, Ego and the Superego. The Id he thought was all to do with the pleasure principle and how to avoid pain. The Ego controls the reality principle, it is aware of how to act in society and knowing that what we do has consequences, the Ego is the balnce between the superego and Id. The Superego holds our social balnce and our morals often in direct response to the right and wrong we were taught by our parents. These three used together according to Freud build our personality. He believed that the battle between the Id, Ego and Superego could cause repression resulting in using defence mechanisms. They include Denial, Displacment of emotions, Intellectualization- taking an objective viewpoint, Projection of uncomfortable feelings passed to others, Rationalization creating credible justifications, Reaction formation- overacting in the opposite way to fear, Regression- acting like a child, Repression of pushing uncomfortable thoughts into the subconscious and Sublimation-redirecting wrong urges into socially acceptable actions. This part of Freuds pyschology makes sense in a way. However the psychosexual stage of his theories is rather strange. The stages of this theory are the Oral stage at 0-2 years old where the child bites, sucks and swallows which can lead to habits using there mouth such as smoking, biting nails etc. The next stage is the Anal stage at 2-4 years where the child is being toilet trained this stage can lead to the child either being incerdiblly clean as adults or generally messy people. The phallic stage at 4-6 is where the child becomes aware of genitals, Freud believes that boys had a desire for their mothers and feared their fathers would castrate them, whereas girls envied boys for having a penis so were attracted to their fathers and hated their mothers. The latency stage at 6-puberty was when the sexual desires were sublimated into sports and hobbies and children of different sexes became friends. Then there is the last stage which is the genital stage from puberty is when people start to be sexually aware of the opposite sex but social rules may hinder what they act upon. Freuds theories were completely based upon the unconscious mind so they can't actually be scientifically tested. His theories are strange especially the psychosexual stage so I find it hard to actually take his theories seriously.