Contributions_of_Sigmund_Freud_to_Psychology

CONTRIBUTION OF SIGMUND FREUD TO PSYCHOLOGY He was born in Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire in May 1856.Sigmund Freud had enormous impact on the field of psychology. Freud was influenced by Breuer who was interested in hysteria. His work led to an understanding of personality, clinical psychology, human development and abnormal psychology. He wrote and theorized on broad range of subjects including sex, dreams, religion, hysteria, women and culture. Sigmund’s theories and major contribution * The id, ego and super ego * Life and death instincts * Psychosexual development * Defense mechanism * Conscious and unconscious mind 1. The id ego and super ego Freud introduced the idea that a part of the ego is unconscious. The ego is that part of the id which has through perception being modified by the external world. The id controls our basic biological needs and desires. The ego operates on rationality and makes decisions on what to do or not to do. Whenever the id has a demand, the ego makes a cognitive analysis of the situation. The ego is the mediator between the id and the super ego. The super ego censors and keeps repressed material. ` 2. Life and death instincts Life instincts are sometimes referred to as sexual instincts. They are instincts that deal with survival and reproduction. They are important for sustaining the life of an individual as well as species. They also include such drives as thirst, hunger and pain avoidance. According to Freud, the goal of all life is death. He concluded that people hold an unconscious will to die but the wish is largely tempered by the life instincts. According to Freud, self-destructive behavior is an expression of the energy created by the death instincts. When this energy is directed outward onto others, it is expressed as aggression and violence. 3.Psycho-sexual development Freud broke down periods of child development into stages called the psychosexual stages. The stages are: Oral 1-2 years Anal 2-3 years Phallic 3-5 years Latency 6-12 years Genital 13 years and above. He believed that if one of these stages was not completed correctly, a child would grow into an adult that was not well adjusted. He emphasized the importance of the influence of early parent-child relationship on development. He believed that the parents ability to manage the child’s sexual and aggressive would have a large effect on how the child behaved as an adult. 4.Defense mechanism According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny and distort reality through processes such as repression ,identification and rationalization. Defense mechanism are used when someone is in a situation that causes anxiety. 5.Conscious and unconscious mind He argued that the unconscious influenced not only abnormal individual behavior but also normal behavior of the individual in social institutions. He argued that dreaming had a key role in psychoanalytic theory. A dream is everybody’s contact with the unconscious.