The Three Characteristics Of Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychoanalytic Therapy The psychodynamic approach, pioneered by Freud, assumes that personality arises out of unconscious psychological processes that interact to determine our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Freud believed that personality has three components the id, which operates according to the pleasure principle; the ego, which operates according to the reality principle; and the superego, which internalizes society’s rules and values. The ego uses defense mechanisms to prevent unconscious conflicts among these components from becoming conscious and causing anxiety or guilt. Freud proposed that the focus of conflict changes as the child passes through psychosexual stages of development. These include the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage during which the Oedipus complex or Electra complex occurs, the latency period, and the genital stage. Many of Freud’s followers developed new theories that differed from his. …show more content…
They tended to downplay the role of instincts and the unconscious, emphasizing instead the importance of conscious processes, ego functions, and social and cultural factors. Horney also challenged the male-oriented nature of Freud’s original theory. Psychoanalytic therapy consists largely of using methods to bring out unconscious material that can be worked through. It focuses primarily on childhood experiences, which are discussed, reconstructed, interpreted, and analyzed. The assumption is that this exploration of the past, which is typically accomplished by working through the transference relationship with the therapist, is necessary for character change. The most important techniques typically employed in psychoanalytic practice are maintaining the analytic framework, free association, interpretation, dream analysis, analysis of resistance, and analysis of