Sigmund Freud
The basic assumption of Freud's psychoanalytic view of the person is an energy system in which all mental processes are considered to be energy flows, which can flow freely or can get sidetracked or dammed up. Freud argues that the goal of all behaviour is the reduction of tension through the release of energy, which produces pleasure. People function in accordance with hedonistic principles, seeking unbridled gratification of all desires. The endless pursuit of pleasure is, however, in conflict with society and civilization, as the uncontrolled satisfaction of pleasure is not accepted. In Freud's view, humans are primarily driven by sexual and aggressive instincts. Sexual and aggressive energy prevented from expression in a more direct way are converted to cultural activities such as art and science. Energy used for cultural purposes is, however, no longer available to sexual purposes and Freud concludes that the price of civilization is misery, the forfeit of happiness and a sense of guilt (Pervin & Oliver 1997).
Freud's theory of personality is based on the idea that much of human behaviour is determined by forces outside awareness. The relation between the person and society is controlled by primitive urges buried deep within ourselves, forming the basis of the hidden self. Freud argues that much of our psychic energy is devoted either to finding acceptable expressions of unconscious ideas or to keeping them unconscious. Freud constructed his concept of the unconscious from analysis of slips of the tongue, dreams, neuroses, psychoses, works of art and rituals (Pervin & Oliver 1997). In psychoanalytic theory, mental life is divided into three levels of awareness. The largest portion of the mind is formed by the unconscious system and only a very small part by the conscious. The preconscious-system stands like a partition screen between the unconscious-system and consciousness. (Ekstrom 2004). The conscious mind is like the tip of an iceberg, with its greatest part - the unconscious - submerged. Psychoanalytic theory is fundamentally a motivational theory of human behaviour and Freud claimed that "psychoanalysis aims at and achieves nothing more than the discovery of the unconscious in mental life" (Cited in: Pervin & Oliver 1997, 71).
Read more about this topic: Hidden Personality
Famous quotes by sigmund freud:
“Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.”
—John Irving (b. 1942)
“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“The act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)