Personality Theories in Psychology: SIGMUND FREUD

Many have been the theories that have investigated the human mind and behavior. Studies in the field of psychology have their origin in the theories of psychoanalysis and studies of human behavior. In this Psychology-Online article, we will talk about the psychoanalyst par excellence, the great pillar of Sigmund Freud's personality theories in psychology. Where you will discover the personality in psychology according to Freud.

Sigmund Freud is considered the father of psychology as we know it. With his theory, philosophy and phrases, he has managed to inspire a great collective of psychologists and therapists. However, his books on psychoanalysis give rise to many debates and doubts about the veracity of Freud's theories.

Do you want to know more about the famous psychoanalyst? Keep reading this complete article!

Index

1. Sigmund Freud: short biography
2. Sigmund Freud's First Psychoanalysis: The Case of Anna O
3. Sigmund Freud's Theory: Psychoanalysis
4. Sigmund Freud's theory: the id, the ego and the superego
5. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis: life drives and death drives
6. Sigmund Freud's personality theory and anxiety
7. Freud's defense mechanisms with examples
8. Other defense mechanisms of Sigmund and Anna Freud
9. Psychosexual development according to Freud
10. The Oedipus complex
11. Sigmund Freud's personality theory
12. Sigmund Freud Therapy: Psychoanalysis and Interpretation of Dreams
13. Discussion: criticisms of Freud's theory and philosophy
14. Criticisms of the theory of sexuality according to Sigmund Freud
15. Criticisms of Freud's Theory of the Unconscious
16. Positive aspects of Sigmund Freud's theory
17. Sigmund Freud: books

Sigmund Freud he was born on May 6, 1856 in a small Moravian town called Freiberg. His father was a wool merchant with a keen mind and a good sense of humor. His mother was an active, vivacious woman, the second wife of Sigmund's father and 20 years younger than her husband. He was 21 when he had his first child, his cherished Sigmund from him. He had two half-siblings and six other siblings. When he was 4 or 5 years old (he does not remember well), his family moved to Vienna, where he would live most of his life.

Freud, a bright boyAlways at the head of his class, he entered medical school; one of the few options for a young jew in vienna in those days. There, he embarked on research under the direction of a professor of physiology named Ernst Brücke. The teacher believed in common notions or, if you like, radical notions of that time and that today we would know as reductionism: "there are no other forces than the common physicochemical ones to explain the functioning of the organism". Freud spent many years trying to "reduce" personality to neurology, a cause that he would later abandon.

In the following article you will learn more details about the biography of Sigmund Freud.

Beginnings of Sigmund Freud's theory

Freud was very good in his field of research, concentrating above all on neurophysiology and he even created a special technique for cell staining. But, there were only a limited number of positions and there were others above it. Brücke helped him to get a scholarship, first with the great psychiatrist Charcot in Paris and later in Nancy with the one who would later be his rival: Bernheim. Both scientists were investigating the use of hypnosis in hysterical patients.

After spending a short time as a neurology resident and as the director of a nursery school in Berlin, Freud returned to Vienna and married his longtime fiancee Martha Bernays. There he opened his neuropsychiatry practice, with the help of Joseph Breuer.

Sigmund Freud's readings and works earned him both fame and ostracism within the medical community. He surrounded himself with a good number of followers who would later become the nucleus of the psychoanalytic movement.

Unfortunately, Freud had a great propensity to reject those who disagreed with his theories; some parted with him amicably, others not, thus establishing competing schools of thought.

Sigmund Freud she emigrated to England just before World War II, when Vienna was no longer a safe place for a Jew and even more so of the stature of the famous Freud. Shortly afterwards, he died of maxillofacial cancer from which she had suffered for 20 years.

Freud's story, like most other people's stories, begins with others. This time it was his mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Breuer and his patient, Anna O.

Bertha Pappenheim, better known as Anna O. She was Breuer's patient from 1880 to 1882. At 21 years of age, Anna spent most of her time caring for her sick father, developing a major cough that had no explanation. physical, as well as speech difficulties, which ended in complete silence, followed by expressions only in English, instead of her native language, the German.

When her father passed away, the patient began to refuse food and developed a series of her unusual and strange symptoms. She lost feeling in her hands and feet, partial paralysis, and involuntary spasms. She also had visual hallucinations and tunnel vision. Whenever the doctors examined Anna for these seemingly physical symptoms, they found no demonstrable physical cause.

In addition to these symptoms, as if that weren't enough, she presented childish fantasies, dramatic mood swings, and several suicide attempts. Breuer's diagnosis was of what was called at the time hysteria (today, conversion disorder), which meant that she had symptoms that seemed physical, but were not.

At night Anna fell into states of "spontaneous hypnosis", as Breuer called them, which the patient herself called "clouds". (Anna had a high intellectual training and was a very prepared woman; so it is not surprising that she used very precise, even technical terms to designate some of her states, as in the case of hypnoid states, calling them clouds. N.T.). Breuer realized that despite these trance states, the patient could talk about her daytime fantasies and from other experiences, feeling better later. Anna called these episodes "chimney cleaning" and "the cure by the word."

On some occasions, during the "chimney cleaning", Anna provided some data that gave particular understanding to some of her symptoms. The first piece of information came right after she refused to drink water for a while: she remembered seeing a woman drinking water from a glass that a dog had licked earlier. When she remembered this image, she was disgusted and an intense feeling of disgust came over her… only to immediately drink the glass of water afterwards! In other words, her symptom (hydrophobia) disappeared as soon as she verbalized herself and she felt the particular sensation of disgust; that is, the basis of the symptom. Breuer called these states of spontaneous recovery catharsis, from the Greek for "cleanliness."

How was Anna O cured?

11 years later, Breuer and his assistant, Sigmund Freud, They wrote a book on hysteria where they explained her theory. All hysteria is the result of a traumatic experience that cannot be accepted in a person's values ​​and understanding of the world. The emotions associated with the trauma are not expressed directly, they simply evaporate: they are expressed through behavior in a vague, imprecise way. To put it another way, these symptoms have meaning. When the patient can come to understand the origin of her symptoms (through hypnosis, for example), then repressed emotions are released so they do not need to be expressed through they. It is similar to draining a local infection.

In this way, Anna gradually improved from her symptoms. But, it is important to note that she could not do it without Breuer: while she was in her states hypnotics, he needed to have Breuer's hands with her, and unfortunately, new her problems.

The controversy of the case of Anna O

According to Freud, Breuer acknowledged that the patient had fallen in love with him and besides, he was also attracted to her. In addition, the patient told everyone that she was pregnant with Breuer. You could say that she wanted him so much that her mind told her body that this was true, developing a hysterical pregnancy (today called pseudocyesis or psychological pregnancy. N.T.). Breuer, a married man in Victorian times, abruptly left the sessions and lost all interest in hysteria.

It was Sigmund Freud who later took up what Breuer had not openly recognized; namely, At the bottom of all these hysterical neuroses she lay a sexual desire.

Regarding Anna's evolution, she spent much of the remaining time in a sanatorium. Later, she became a highly respected and active figure. (Germany's first female social worker) under her own name: Bertha Pappenheim. She died in 1936.

Anna will always be remembered, not only as the inspiration for the most influential personality theory we have known, but also for his own achievements and for his fight for the rights of women women.

Freud didn't exactly invent the concept of conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly made it popular.

Psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud

The conscious mind it is everything that we become aware of in a particular moment: present perceptions, memories, thoughts, fantasies and feelings. When we work very focused on these sections, it is what Freud called preconscious, something that today we would call "available memory": it refers to everything that we are capable of remembering; those memories that are not available at the moment, but that we are able to bring to consciousness. Currently, no one has a problem with these two layers of the mind, although Sigmund Freud suggested that they constituted only small parts of the mind.

The unconscious

The largest part was made up of the unconscious and included all those things that are not accessible to our consciousness, including many that had originated there, such as our impulses or instincts, as well as others that we could not tolerate in our conscious mind, such as the emotions associated with trauma.

According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious it is the source of our motivations, be it simple food or sex cravings, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or scientist. Furthermore, we have a tendency to deny or resist these motivations of your conscious awareness, so that they are only observable in disguise. We will come back to this later.

According Freud's iceberg metaphor, the preconscious was the intermediate step between the conscious mind and the unconscious. It was easier to access than the unconscious and contains quite important information about our identity.

According to his theory of personality in psychology, Freudian psychological reality begins with the world full of objects. Among them, there is a special one: the body. The body^[1] it is special in that it acts to survive and reproduce and is guided to these ends by its needs (hunger, thirst, avoidance of pain and sex).

Sigmund Freud's personality structure

Next we will see the bases of Freud's Theory of Personality.

1. The id

A part (very important, by the way) of the body is made up of the nervous system, of which one of its most prevalent characteristics is its sensitivity to bodily needs. At birth, this system is more or less like that of any animal, a "thing", or rather, the It. The nervous system, like Ello, translates the needs of the body into motivational forces called drives (German for "Triebe"). Freud also called them wishes. This translation from need to desire is what has become known as primary process.

The It has the particular job of preserving the pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to immediately meet the needs. Imagine, for example, a hungry baby having a tantrum. He doesn't "know" what he wants, in an adult sense, but he "knows" he wants it… right now! The baby, according to the Freudian conception, is pure, or almost pure It. And the It is nothing more than the psychic representation of the biological.

But, although the Id and the need for food can be satisfied through the image of a juicy steak, the same is not the case for the body. From here, the need only grows greater and the desires remain even more. You will have noticed that when you have not satisfied a need, such as eating for example, this begins to demand more and more her attention, until there comes a time when no other can be thought of thing. This would be the desire breaking into consciousness.

2. The I

Luckily there is a small portion of the mind that we referred to earlier, the conscious, which is attached to reality through the senses. Around this consciousness, something of what was a "thing" becomes Me in the first year of the child's life. The Self rests on reality through its consciousness, looking for objects to satisfy the desires that the It has created to represent organic needs. This solution search activity is called secondary process.

The I, unlike the Id, functions according to the reality principle, which stipulates that "a need be satisfied as soon as an object is available." It represents reality and to some extent, reason.

3. The superego

However, although the ego manages to keep the id (and finally the body) happy, it encounters obstacles in the external world. Sometimes you come across objects that help you achieve your goals. But the Ego captures and jealously guards all these helps and obstacles, especially those rewards and punishments you get from the two most important objects in a child's world: mom and dad. This record of things to avoid and strategies to achieve is what will become Superego. This instance is not completed until the age of seven and in some people it will never be structured.

There are two aspects of the superego: one is the conscience, constituted by the internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the Ideal of the Self, which derives from the rewards and positive models presented to the child. Consciousness and the ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings such as pride, shame and guilt.

It is as if in childhood we had acquired a new set of accompanying needs and desires, this time more social than biological in nature. But unfortunately, these new desires can conflict with the desires of the Id. You see, the superego would represent society, and society seldom satisfies its needs.

Sigmund Freud's theory considers that all human behavior was motivated by drives, which are nothing more than neurological representations of physical needs. At first he referred to them as life drives. These drives perpetuate the following:

• The life of the subject, motivating him to look for food and water
• The life of the species, motivating you to seek sex. The motivational energy of these life drives, the "oomph"that drives our psyche, he called them libido, from the Latin signifier of "I wish"

Freud's clinical experience led him to consider sex as a necessity much more important than others in the dynamics of the psyche. We are, after all, social creatures and sex is the greatest of social needs. But, although we must remember that when Freud spoke of sex, he spoke of much more than just intercourse, libido has been considered as the sexual drive.

Later in his life, Freud began to believe that life drives did not explain the whole story. Libido is a living thing; the pleasure principle keeps us in constant motion. And the purpose of all this movement is to achieve stillness, to be satisfied, to be at peace, to have no more needs. It could be said that the goal of life, under this assumption, is death. Freud began to consider that "below" or "to one side" of the life drives there was a death drive. He began to defend the idea that each person has an unconscious need to die.

It seems like a strange idea at first, and it was certainly rejected by many of his students, but we think it has some basis in experience: life can be quite a painful process and exhausting. For the vast majority of people there is more pain than pleasure, something, by the way, that we have trouble admitting. Death promises liberation from conflict.

Freud referred to this as the nirvana principle. Nirvana is a Buddhist idea usually translated as "Heaven", although its literal meaning is "exhausting breath", as when a candle flame is gently blown out. It refers to non-existence, nothingness, emptiness; which is the goal of all life in Buddhist philosophy.

The daily evidence of the death drive and its principle of nirvana is in our desire for peace, to escape stimulation, in our attraction to alcohol. and narcotics, in our propensity for isolating activities, such as when we lose ourselves in a book or movie, and in our craving for rest and relaxation. dream. Sometimes this drive is represented more directly as suicide and suicidal wishes. And at other times, just like Sigmund Freud he said, in aggression, cruelty, murder and destructiveness.

Freud once said: "life is not easy".

The Self is right in the center of great forces; reality, society, is represented by the superego; biology is represented by the id. When these two instances establish a conflict over the poor Self, it is understandable that one feels threatened, overwhelmed and in a situation that seems like the sky is going to fall on them. This feeling is called anxiety and is considered as a sign of the Self that translates survival and when it concerns the whole body it is considered as a sign that it is in danger.

Freud spoke of three types of anxieties. The first is the reality anxiety, which can be called in colloquial terms as fear. In fact, Freud spoke specifically of the word fear, but his translators considered the word very mundane. We could then say that if one is in a pit full of poisonous snakes, one will experience a reality anxiety.

The second type of craving according to Sigmund Freud's theory is the moral anxiety and it refers to what we feel when danger does not come from the external world, but from the internalized social world of the Super-ego. It is another terminology to talk about guilt, shame and fear of punishment.

The last one is the neurotic anxiety. This consists of the fear of being overwhelmed by the impulses of the Id. If you have ever felt as if you were going to lose control, your reasoning or even your mind, you are experiencing this type of anxiety. "Neurotic" is the literal translation of the Latin meaning nervous, therefore we could call this type of anxiety, nervous anxiety. It is this type of anxiety that interested Freud the most and we call it simply anxiety.

In the following article you will find more information about Types of anxiety according to Freud.

The Self deals with the demands of reality, the Id, and the Superego in the best way it can. But when anxiety becomes overwhelming, the Self must defend itself. It does this by unconsciously blocking or distorting impulses, making them more palatable and less threatening. These techniques have been called ego defense mechanisms and both Freud and his daughter Anna, as well as other followers have pointed out a few.

It is important to comment that the definition of the majority of defense mechanisms we own is made by Anna Freud, not her father.

Denial

The Denial refers to the blocking of events external to consciousness. If a situation is too intense to handle, we simply refuse to experience it. As you might suppose, this defense is primitive and dangerous (no one can neglect reality for long). This mechanism usually works in conjunction with other defenses, although it can work exclusively.

On one occasion, while I was reading in my living room, my five-year-old daughter was watching cartoons on TV, I think the Smurfs. Like almost all children her age, he had a habit of being too close to the screen. At a certain moment where it seems that those responsible for the station were not paying attention Enough, they abruptly switched to an ad for a horror movie coming out soon in cinema. It contained many violent scenes of blood and slaughter, with a bloody knife, a hockey mask, and screams of terror. Since it was too late to save my daughter from such an invasion, I did what every psychologist parent would do with her son: Wow, that announcement was terrifying, right... She said: huh? I said next: That announcement… it was horrible, wasn't it? And she says: what announcement? I answered abruptly: That one with the hockey mask; the one with the bloody knife and those screams!. Apparently my daughter had deleted the entire ad from her head.

Since then, in my life I have seen many similar reactions in children when they are confronted with situations for which they are not prepared. I have also seen people fainting at an autopsy (people who deny the reality of a loved one's death) and students forgetting to look up their test scores. All of this is denial.

Repression

The RepressionA defense that Anna Freud also called "motivated forgetting" is simply the inability to remember a stressful situation, person or event. This defense is also dangerous and is almost always accompanied by others.

When I was a teenager, I developed a strong feeling of fear towards spiders, especially those with long legs. I did not know where that fear came from, but it was starting to be quite annoying when I was going to enter high school, before university. In high school, a counselor helped me cope better (with something he called systematic desensitization), but I still had no idea where the fear could come from. Years later, I had a particularly vivid and clear dream where I saw myself locked up by my cousin in a farmhouse at the back of my grandparents' house. The room was dark and very dirty. The ground was covered in (you may have known) spiders with long legs!).

The Freudian understanding of this dream is quite simple: I repressed a traumatic event (the farmhouse incident), But when in reality I saw spiders, the anxiety of the event arose without bringing with it the memory of the event.

Other examples abound in the literature. Anna Freud talks about one in particular who is particularly special: a young girl, haunted by a major guilt Because of her strong sexual desires, she tends to forget the name of her boyfriend, even when she is introducing her to her friends of her. Or an alcoholic who can't remember her suicide attempt, arguing that she must have "blocked". Or someone who almost drowned as a child, but is unable to remember the event even if others try to remind him... but he has a terrible fear of lakes and seas.

Note that for there to be a true example of defense, it must function unconsciously (Laplanche and Pontalis in their Dictionary of Psychoanalysis? Ed. Labor, 1993- establish that defense often acquires a compulsive character and acts, at least partially, unconsciously. N.T.).
My brother had a terrible fear of dogs when he was a child, but there was no defense at stake in this experience. He just doesn't want to repeat the experience of having been bitten by one of them. Commonly, what we call irrational fears or phobias derive from the repression of trauma.

Asceticism

Asceticism is the renunciation of needs is one of the defenses that we have heard the least about, but it has become fashionable again with the emergence of the disorder called anorexia. Pre-teens, when threatened by their emerging sexual desires, can protect themselves themselves unconsciously by denying not only their sexual desires, but also all their wishes. Thus, they embark on a life as if they were monks, with an ascetic tendency where they renounce any interest in what others renounce.

In the boys of today there is a marked interest in the self-discipline of martial arts. Fortunately, martial arts not only don't do (much) harm, it can even help them. On the contrary, the girls of our society very often develop a strong interest in reaching artificial standards of beauty based on thinness. Considering Freudian theory, these girls' refusal to eat is a cover for their denial of their sexual development. And of course society increases the pressure. What a mature woman represents for other societies is for us a woman with 20 extra pounds!

Isolation

The isolation (also called intellectualization) consists of separating the emotion (or affection. N.T.) of a painful memory or threatening impulse. The person may very subtly acknowledge that she has been abused as a child, or he may demonstrate an intellectual curiosity about her newfound sexual orientation. Something that should be considered as important, it is simply treated as if it were not.

In emergency situations, there are some people who feel completely calm and whole until the difficult situation is over, and that is when they break down. Something tells you to stay whole while the emergency lasts. It is quite common for us to find people totally immersed in social obligations around the death of a loved one. Doctors and nurses must learn to separate their natural reactions from their professional practice when are in the presence of injured patients, or when they need to operate on them, or simply when they have to nail a needle. They should treat the patient as less than warm humans with families and living a life similar to theirs. Many teenagers head out to see horror movies en masse, and even become obsessed with the question, perhaps in order to combat real fear. Nothing demonstrates isolation more clearly than a movie theater full of people laughing hysterically at the dismemberment of a human being on screen.

Displacement

The Displacement it is the "redirection" of an impulse to another target to replace it. If the impulse or desire is accepted by you, but the person it is addressed to is threatening, you divert it towards another person or symbolic object. For example, someone who hates her mother may stifle that hatred, but divert it to, say, women in general. Someone who has not had the opportunity to love a human being can divert her love to a cat or a dog. A person who is uncomfortable with her sexual desires for someone can derive this desire into a fetish. A man frustrated by his superiors may come home and start hitting his dog or his children or get into heated arguments.

Self-harm

Aggression against one's own self (We will use the English term itself here to refer to the "self, since in Spanish psychology the English word" self "is used more frequently. N.T.). It is a very special form of displacement and is established when the person becomes their own substitute target. It is usually used when referring to anger, irritability, and aggression, rather than more positive impulses. It is the Freudian explanation for many of our feelings of inferiority, guilt, and depression. The idea that depression is often the product of anger against an object (person) that we do not want to recognize, is widely accepted by Freudians and others of various currents.

Some time ago, at a time when I was not feeling very well, my five-year-old daughter spilled a glass of chocolate milk in her living room. I got up uncomfortable and began to tell her yelling at her that how was it possible that after she had told her so many times she did it again. That she had to be more careful because she was older and… etc. At that point, my daughter started hitting her head several times. Obviously, she wouldn't hit me on the head, right? Needless to say, since that event I have felt guilty until today.

Projection

Projection or outward displacement, as Anna Freud called it, is almost the complete opposite of aggression against one's own self. Understand the tendency to see in others those unacceptable wishes for us. In other words; desires remain in us, but they are not ours. I confess that when I hear someone talk non-stop about how aggressive our society is or how perverted that person is, I can't help but wonder if this person doesn't have a good buildup of aggressive or sexual urges that you don't want to see in them herself.

Let me show you some examples. A good and faithful husband begins to feel attracted to a pretty and attractive neighbor. Instead of accepting these feelings, he becomes increasingly jealous of his wife, whom he believes to be unfaithful, and so on. Or a woman who begins to feel mild sexual desires towards her friends. Instead of accepting such feelings as fairly normal, she becomes increasingly concerned about the high rate of lesbianism in her neighborhood.

The defense mechanisms discussed above are the main ones, however, and with the help of Anna Freud, we can mention others defense mechanisms:

Surrender

The Altruistic surrender it is a form of projection that seems at first glance to be the opposite: here, the person tries to meet his own needs vicariously through other people.

A common example is that of a friend (we always know one) who instead of looking for a friend or relationship by himself, entrusts others to have them. They are the ones that curiously tell you "and what happened last night with your date?" or "What, do you already have a partner or not?" An extreme example would be the person who fully lives her life for and through others. (Altruistic surrender is also common in dogmatic ideological groups, including "science" groups, as well as people who submit to a religion entirely or to a life dedicated solely to serving the the rest. N.T.).

Reaction or belief to the contrary

The Reactive training, or "belief in the opposite", as Anna Freud called, is the change of an unacceptable impulse for its opposite. Thus, a child. Angry with her mother, he can become a very concerned child for her and show a lot of affection for her. The child who is abused by a parent runs back to him. Or someone who does not accept a homosexual impulse, can repudiate homosexuals.

Perhaps the most significant example of reactive training is found in children between 7 and 11 years old. Most guys, without hesitation, will speak ill of girls or even want nothing to do with it. Girls will do the same for them. But if we adults see them play, we can tell for sure what their true feelings are.

Retroactive Cancellation

The Retroactive Cancellation It includes rituals or gestures aimed at canceling unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they have occurred. For example, Anna Freud mentioned a child who recited the alphabet backwards whenever he had a thought sexual, or that she would turn and spit when she met another child who shared his passion for masturbation.

In "normal" people, retroactive nullification is, of course, more conscious, formally asking for excuses or establishing acts of atonement. But, in some people the acts of atonement are not conscious at all. Take, for example, an alcoholic father who, after a year of verbal and perhaps physical abuse, gives his children the best toys at Christmas. When he spends the Christmas season and realizes that his children have not been fooled by the gifts, he He goes back to the usual bar and tells the bartender how ungrateful his family is, which leads him to to drink.

One of the classic examples of this defense is washing after sexual intercourse. We know it's perfectly common to wash after this, but if you have to shower for a long time and scrub thoroughly with strong soap, sex may not suit you much.

Introjection

The Introjection, often called identification, includes the acquisition or attribution of characteristics of another person as if they were one's own, since doing so solves some emotional difficulties. For example, if a child is left alone too often, he tries to become a "dad" in order to lessen his fears. Sometimes we see them playing with her dolls telling them not to be afraid. We can also observe how older children and adolescents worship their musical idols, pretending to be like them in order to establish an identity.

A more unusual example is that of a woman who lives next door to my grandparents. Her husband had died and she began to dress in her clothes, although neatly adapted to her figure. He began to introduce various of his habits, such as pipe smoking. Although to the neighbors, this was all strange and they called him the "man-woman", she did not present any confusion regarding her sexual identity. In fact, he later married, keeping to the end his men's suits and his pipe.

I must add at this point that in Freudian theory, the identification mechanism is the one through which we develop our Overself.

Identification with the Aggressor It is a version of introjection that focuses on the adoption not of general or positive features of the object, but of negative ones. If one is afraid of someone, I partially become him to eliminate the fear.
Two of my daughters, who have been raised with a rather short-tempered cat, often resort to meowing and scream to prevent her from suddenly coming out of a closet or dark corner and going to bite his ankles.

A more dramatic example is the one called Stockholm Syndrome. After a hostage crisis in Stockholm, psychologists were shocked to see that the hostages not only were they not terribly angry at their captors, but even extremely sympathetic towards they. A more recent case is that of a young woman named Patricia Hearst, from a very influential and wealthy family. She was kidnapped by a small group of self-proclaimed revolutionaries known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was held in closets, raped and mistreated. Despite this, she decided to join them, making short propaganda videos for them and even carrying a firearm in a bank robbery. After her arrest, her lawyers strongly defended her innocence, proclaiming her as a victim, not as a criminal. However, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison for the bank robbery. Her sentence was commuted after two years by President Carter.

Regression

The Regression it constitutes a going back in psychological time when one is faced with stress. When we are in trouble or scared, our behaviors become more childish or primitive. A child, for example, may start thumb sucking again or pee if they need to spend time in the hospital. An adolescent may begin to laugh uncontrollably in a situation of social encounter with the opposite sex. A college student must bring a stuffed animal from home to an exam. A group of civilized people can turn violent in a moment of threat. Or an older man who after 20 years in a company is fired and from that moment becomes lazy and dependent on his wife in a childish way.

Where do we retreat when faced with stress? According to Freudian theory, at a time in life where we feel safe and secure.

Rationalization

The mechanism of Rationalization it is the cognitive distortion of "facts" to make them less threatening. We use this defense very frequently when we consciously explain our actions with too many excuses. But, for many people with a sensitive ego, they use excuses so easily that they never realize them. In other words, many of us are pretty well prepared to believe our lies.

A good way to understand defenses is to see them as a combination of denial or repression with various kinds of rationalizations.

All defenses are, in fact, lies, even if we are not aware of them. Moreover, if we do not realize them, they are even more dangerous, if possible. As his grandmother says: "Oh, how we complicate our lives ...". Lies bring more lies and take us further and further from the truth, from reality. After a while, the Self cannot preserve us from the demands of the Id or it starts to listen to the Superego. Anxiety begins to rise strongly and we collapse.

But even so, Freud considered that defenses were necessary. We cannot expect a person, especially a child, to cope with all the pain and sorrow that life throws at them. Although some of his followers suggested that all defenses could be used for positive purposes, Freud said there was only one, sublimation.

Sublimation

The Sublimation it is the transformation of an unacceptable impulse, be it sex, anger, fear or any other, into a socially acceptable, even productive form. For this reason, someone with hostile impulses can develop activities such as hunting, being a butcher, a rugby or soccer player, or becoming a mercenary. A person who suffers from great anxiety in a confusing world can become an organized person, or a business person or a scientist. Someone with powerful sexual urges can become a photographer, an artist, a novelist, and so on. For Freud, in fact, all positive creative activity was a sublimation, especially of the sexual drive.

As I mentioned before, for Freud the sexual drive is the most important motivational force. He believed that this force was not only the most prevalent for adults, but also in children, and even infants. When Freud first presented his ideas on infantile sexuality, the Viennese public to whom addressed was not prepared to talk about sex in adults, and certainly even less in adults. kids.

It is true that the orgasmic capacity is present from birth, but Freud was not only talking about orgasm. Sexuality does not exclusively include intercourse, but all those pleasant sensations of the skin. It is clear that even the most prudish of us, including babies, children and adults, enjoy tactile experiences like kisses, caresses and so on.

The stages according to Freud

Freud observed that at different stages of our life, different parts of the skin gave us greater pleasure. Later, theorists would call these areas erogenous zones. He saw that infants get a great deal of pleasure from sucking, especially from the breast. In fact, babies have a great tendency to put everything around them in their mouths. A little later in life, the child turns his attention to the anal pleasure of retaining and expelling. Around the age of three or four, the child discovers the pleasure of touching his genitals. And only later, in our sexual maturity, do we experience great pleasure in our sexual intercourse. Based on these observations, Freud postulated his theory of the psychosexual stages.

• The oral stage it is established from birth to around 18 months. The focus of pleasure is, of course, the mouth. The infant's favorite activities are sucking and biting.
• The anal stage It is between 18 months to three or four years of age. The focus of pleasure is the anus. The enjoyment arises from retaining and expelling.
• The phallic stage it goes from three or four years to five, six or seven. The focus of pleasure is on the genitals. Masturbation at these ages is quite common.
• The latency stage it lasts from five, six, or seven years of age until puberty, around 12 years of age. During this period, Freud assumed that the sexual drive was suppressed in the service of learning. I should point out here, that although most children of these ages are quite busy with their homework, and therefore "sexually calm", about a quarter of them are deeply into masturbation and playing "games. doctors ". In the repressive times of Freud's society, children were calmer in this developmental period, of course, than they are today.
• The genital stage it begins at puberty and represents the resurgence of the sexual drive in adolescence, directed more specifically towards sexual relations. Freud established that both masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality and many other behavioral manifestations were immature, issues that currently are not for us.

These stages constitute a true theory of periods that most Freudians follow to the letter, both in their content and in the ages they comprise. Here you will find more information about the Freud's stages of psychosexual development.

Each stage includes a series of difficult tasks of its own from which a multitude of problems will arise. For the oral phase it is weaning; for anal, toilet training; for the phallic, it is the oedipal crisis, named for the Greek story of King Oedipus, who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother.

Let's see how the so-called Oedipal crisis works. The first object of love of all of us is our mother. We want his attention, we want his affection, we want his care; we love her, we desire her in a largely sexual way. However, the child has a rival to these wishes, personified in his father. This one is older, stronger, smarter and goes to bed with her, while the boy is displaced to sleep alone in her room. The father is the enemy.

Already at the moment when the child realizes this archetypal relationship, she has already noticed the differences between boys and girls, in addition to long hair and dressing styles. From his toddler point of view, the difference is that he has a penis, which the girl does not. In this period of life, he believes that it is better to have something than to lack it, so he feels satisfied and proud to have it.

But, the question appears: And where is the girl's penis?. Maybe she has lost it somehow. Maybe they cut it off. Maybe the same can happen to me! This is the beginning of castration anxiety, a misnomer to define the fear of losing one's penis.

Returning to the previous story, the boy, recognizing the superiority of his father and fearing his penis, begins to put into practice some of his ego defenses. He shifts the sexual urges from him to his mother to the girls and later to the women. And she identifies with the aggressor, her father, and tries to look more and more like him; that is, a man. After a few years of latency, she enters adolescence and the world of mature heterosexuality.

Penis Envy and Electra Complex

The girl also begins her life with love for her mother, so we are presented with the problem of having to redirect her affections towards her father before the oedipal process takes place. Freud responds to this with the penis envy. The girl has also noticed that given the difference between the two sexes, she cannot do anything. She would like to have a penis too, as well as all the power associated with it. Much later he will be able to have a surrogate, such as a baby. As every child knows, it takes a mom and dad to have a baby, so she turns her attention and affection towards dad, according to Freud's theory.

But, Dad, of course he's already taken by someone. The girl then moves him through the boys and men, identifying herself with mother, the woman who has the man she truly desires. We must note that there is something missing here. The girl does not suffer from the motivational power of castration anxiety, as she cannot lose what she has never had. Freud thought that the lack of this tremendous fear is what made women less firm. in their heterosexuality than men and a little less inclined towards moral aspects in general.

Before you get mad at this unappealing description of female sexuality, don't worry, many people have responded to this part of Freud's theory. We will return to this in the discussion section.

The experiences that one accumulates throughout life contribute to forging their personality or character as an adult. Freud believed that traumatic experiences had an especially strong effect at this stage. Certainly, each particular trauma could have its specific impact on a person, which could only be explored and understood on an individual basis. But, those traumas associated with the stages of development that we all go through, would have greater consistency.

If a person has any kind of difficulty in any of the tasks associated with these stages (weaning, toilet training or in the search for sexual identity) will tend to retain certain childhood habits or primitive. This is called fixation.

Fixation causes each problem of a specific stage to be considerably prolonged in our character or personality.

Character of Freud's stages: psychosexual development

If, at 18 months old, you are constantly frustrated in your need to suck, either because mom is uncomfortable or even rude to you, or simply wants to wean you too quickly, you may develop a character oral-passive. Such a personality tends to be highly dependent on others. They usually seek "oral gratification" such as eating, drinking, and smoking. It is as if they are searching for the pleasures that were lost in childhood.

When we are between 5 and 8 months old, we begin teething. An action that satisfies us a lot in this period is to bite everything within our reach, such as Mom's nipple. If this action causes displeasure or cuts too quickly. We can then develop a personality oral-aggressive. These people retain for life a desire to chew on things, such as pencils, gum, as well as people. They tend to be verbally aggressive, sarcastic, ironic, and so on, according to Sigmund Freud's theory of personality.

In the anal stage we are fascinated with our "bodily functions." In the beginning, we can do it any way and anywhere. Later, for no apparent reason, we begin to understand that we can have control over it, doing it in certain places and at certain times. And parents seem to greatly value the end product of these efforts!

Some parents submit to the child's mercy in toilet training. They ask him on his knees to do it in the toilet, they rejoice considerably when they do it well and it breaks his heart when they do not do it correctly. The child, meanwhile, is the king of the house, and he knows it. This child, with those parents, will develop a personality anal-expulsive (also anal-aggressive). These people tend to be corny, disorganized, and generous in the face of an offense. They can be cruel, destructive, and highly prone to vandalism and graffiti. Oscar Madison's character in the movie "The Odd Couple" is a good example.

Other parents are strict. They may be competing with the neighbors to see which of the children controls the toilet first (Many people believe that if a child does it very early in his evolution, it is a sign of great intelligence). They may use humiliation or punishment. This child may well suffer from constipation, constantly trying to control himself and will develop a personality later anal-retentive. It will be especially neat, perfectionist, and dictatorial. In other words, the anal-retentive is tied up everywhere, according to Sigmund Freud's theory of personality. The character of Felix Unger in the aforementioned movie is a perfect example.

In Sigmund Freud's theory of personality, there are also two personalities phallic, although none of them have been named. If the boy, for example, is too much rejected by his mother and further threatened by his overly manly father, he will possibly have a very poor sense of self-worth regarding his sexuality. In this case, I would try to deal with this either by declining any heterosexual activity; becoming a bookworm or becoming the macho of all women. In the case of a girl rejected by her father and threatened by an excessively feminine mother, it will also produce very low self-esteem in the area of ​​sexuality. Thus, it could become an ornamental flower vase and an exaggeratedly feminine beauty.

In another situation, if a child is not rejected by her mother and is rather overprotected in her weaknesses by her much more than hers by her passive father, he might develop an opinion of himself quite large (which will send him a lot of suffering when facing the real world and realizing that others do not love him as her mother did) and seem effeminate. After all, there is no reason why you should identify with your father. In the same way, if a girl is daddy's little princess and her best colleague and her mom has been relegated to a almost a servant position, the girl will be very superficial and self-centered, or on the contrary very male.

These different phallic characters demonstrate an important point of Freudian characterology: extremes lead to extremes. If you are frustrated or overly lenient, you are in trouble. And, although each problem tends to develop certain characteristics, the latter can be easily reversible. Thus, for example, an anal-retentive person can become excessively generous or be quite disorganized in some aspects of his life. This can be frustrating enough for scientists, but in fact it is the reality of personality.

Freud's therapy (in the field of psychology, "psychotherapy" is used to talk about psychological therapies. N.T.) has been the most influential of all, as well as the most influential part of Freudian theory as well. Here we will see some of its most important points:

Relaxed atmosphere. The client must feel free to express what he wants. The therapeutic situation is, in fact, a unique social situation, in which one should not feel fearful of social judgment or ostracism. In fact, in Freudian therapy, the therapist practically disappears. Add to this a comfortable daybed, dim lights, soundproof walls, and the environment is served.

Free association. The client can talk about anything. Freud's theory says that with good relaxation, unconscious conflicts will inevitably arise outside. If we stop a bit here, we don't have to go that far to see a similarity between this therapy and dreaming. However, in therapy, there is a therapist who is trained to recognize certain aspects or clues to problems and their solutions that the client overlooks.

Endurance. One of these clues is resistance. When the client tries to change the subject, or her mind goes blank, falls asleep, is late, or misses a session, the therapist says "Aha!" These resistances suggest that the client, through his free associations, is close to unconscious contents that he experiences as threatening.

Dream analysis. While we sleep, we present less resistance to our unconscious and we will allow ourselves some licenses, symbolically, that will flourish in our consciousness. These id wishes provide the client and therapist with further clues. Many forms of therapy use dreams in their practices, but the Freudian interpretation is different in the tendency to find sexual meanings in them.

Paraphrase. A paraphrase is a deviation from verbal speech. (Many times this act supposes a direct invasion of unconscious contents or of the It, also called "lapsus linguae". N.T.). Freud believed that these failures or deviations also suggested clues to unconscious conflicts. He was also interested in the jokes that his clients told. In fact, he believed that whatever the patient said always meant something; getting the wrong number when calling on the phone, deviating from the route, saying a word wrong, were serious objects of study for Freud. However, as he himself mentioned, in response to a student who asked him what the symbolic meaning of a cigar was, he replied that "sometimes, a cigar is nothing more than a cigar." Or not?.

Other followers of Freud developed a special interest in projective tests, such as the famous Rorschach spot test. The basic theory of this test is that when a vague stimulus is presented, the client completes it with his own unconscious themes. Again, this can provide further clues to the therapist.

Transfer, catharsis and introspection. (We will use "insight" and "introspection" interchangeably to refer to the same phenomenon. N.T.)

Transference occurs when a client projects feelings onto the therapist that more often have to do with other important people. Freud understood that transference was necessary in therapy to bring to light those repressed emotions that had been causing problems for the patient for so long. For example, one cannot feel truly angry if there is no person to be with. Contrary to popular thought, the relationship between the therapist and the client in Freudian theory is very close, although it is established in such a way that it cannot cross boundaries.

Catharsis is the sudden explosion and dramatic that occurs when trauma resurfaces. The small letters of a contract are not there for decoration!

Introspection is the state of alertness to the source of emotion or its traumatic source. Most therapy is achieved when insight and catharsis have been experienced. What should have happened many years ago and because they are too young to deal with it or because the pressure was too much for us, now it begins to arise, in order to achieve a life more happy.

According to Sigmund Freud's theory, therapy was simply "make the unconscious conscious".

There is nothing more common than a blind admiration for Freud and an equally blind rejection of him. Certainly the ideal posture lies somewhere in between these extremes. Let's start by looking at some flaws in Feudian theory.

The least popular part of Freud's theory is the Oedipus complex and associated ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy. What is the reality under these concepts? It is true that some children are very close to their parent of the opposite sex and are very competitive with the other of the same sex. It is true that some children worry about the differences between boys and girls and are afraid that someone will cut off their penises. It is not a lie that some girls also worry about this and would like to have a penis. And it is not uncertain that some of these children retain these feelings, fears, and aspirations into adulthood.

However, most personality theorists hold that these are singular rather than universal aberrations; exceptions more than rules. They occur in families that do not function as they should, where parents were very unhappy with each other and used their children against each other. These results arise from families where parents literally denigrate girls for their alleged failure and talk about cutting off the penises of boys who misbehave. (It has been shown over time that children suffer more from non-verbal commands and covert attacks than those visibly carried out. N.T.). And they especially occur in neighborhoods where the slightest information about sexuality is not welcome, and children only receive that information from other children.

If we consider the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety and penis envy of a In a more metaphorical and less literal way, they are very useful concepts. We do love our mothers and fathers in the same way that we compete with them. Children probably do learn standard heterosexual behavior by imitating the parent of the same sex, practicing it on the opposite. In a male-dominated society, having a penis (being male) is better than not having one and losing one's position as a man is quite scary. And the fact that a woman aspires to achieve the privileges of a man, rather than her masculine organ, is a reasonable question. But Freud did not tell us to take these concepts metaphorically. Some of his followers did.

A more general critique of Freudian theory rests on its emphasis on sexuality. Everything, whether good or bad, is the result of the expression or repression of the sexual drive. Many people criticize it, and wonder if there are more forces at play. Freud himself later added the death drive, but only to become another of his less popular ideas.

First of all, I want to clarify that in fact, many of our activities are motivated in some way by sex. If we take a penetrating look at our modern society, we can see that most advertising uses sexual images, movies and television shows do not sell very well if do not include a certain degree of stimulation, the fashion industry relies on a continuous game of show and hide and we spend a considerable amount of time every day playing games. flirt. But still, we don't believe that everything in life is sexual.

However, Freud's emphasis on sexuality was not based on the large amount of obvious sexuality in his society; rather it was based on intense avoidance of the same, especially in middle and upper classes and particularly in women. What we too easily forget is that our society has changed quite a bit in the last hundred years. We forgot that doctors recommended severe punishment for masturbation, that the word "leg" was dirty, that women who lusted after sex were immediately considered potential prostitutes and that the events of a newlywed's wedding night took her completely by surprise, being able to literally collapse with just think about them.

To Freud's credit, however, the move intellectually above the sexual attitudes of their culture. Not even his mentor Breuer and the brilliant Charcot could not fully recognize the sexual nature of their patients' problems. Freud's mistake was more a matter of extreme generalization and of not taking cultural changes into account. It is ironic to see that many of the cultural changes regarding sexual attitudes were due in part to Freud's work.

A last concept usually criticized is that of the unconscious. At present, it is not disputed that something similar to the unconscious plays a role in our behavior, but in a very different way from the nature of how it was defined.

Behaviorists, humanists, and existentialists argue that a) the motivations and problems attributed to the unconscious are far less than those promulgated by Freud, and b) the unconscious is not the great vessel of activity that he described. Most of today's psychologists consider the unconscious as everything that we do not need or want to see. Even some theorists don't even use the term.

On the other side of the coin, at least one theorist, Carl Jung, described an unconscious that outstrips Freud's. But we will talk about this author in his review.

People have the unfortunate tendency to "pay the righteous for sinners." If they do not agree with ideas a, b, and c, then they assume that x, y, z will be of the same sign. But Freud had some very good ideas, so good that they have been incorporated into other theories, to the point that we forget to give him credit for it.

First of all, Freud made us aware of two powerful forces and their demands on us. In a time when everyone believed in the rationality of the human being, he showed us how much of our behavior was influenced by biology. When people considered that we were individually responsible for our actions, they taught us the impact of society. When everyone believed that masculinity and femininity were God-imposed roles, he taught us how dynamic family patterns influence them. The id and the superego, the psychic manifestations of biology and society will always be with us in one way or another.

In second place there is the basic theory, going back to Breuer, that Certain neurotic symptoms are caused by psychological trauma. Although most theorists no longer believe that all neuroses can be explained, or that it is necessary to alleviate the trauma to improve, it is widely accepted that a childhood full of rejection, abuse and tragedy tends to produce an adult unhappy.

Third is the idea of ​​ego defenses. Even when you are uncomfortable with the Freudian idea of ​​the unconscious, it is clear that we are embarking on small manipulations of reality and memories of that reality to meet our needs, especially if these They're strong. I would recommend that you learn to recognize these defenses: you will find that having names will be of great help in seeing them in ourselves and in others.

Finally, Freud clearly established a form of therapy. Except for some behavioral therapies, the fundamental technique remains "The talking cure" and still involves the same atmosphere of social and physical relaxation. And even when some authors do not believe in transference, the highly personal nature of the therapeutic relationship is generally viewed as important to success.

Some of Freud's ideas are clearly tied to his culture and his time. Others are not so easy to check. Some might even belong more to Freud's own personality and experiences. But this author was an excellent observer of the human condition and much of what he said still has relevance, so much so that Freud will be part of the personality books for years to come. Even when some theorists come up with new theories about how we work, they will compare his ideas with Freudian ones.

To better understand Sigmund Freud's theories of personality in psychology, it is important to know the written legacy left by the same author, for this, we show you the most recommended books by Sigmund Freud:

• The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• Three Essays on Sex Theory (1905)
• Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1917)
• The me and the id (1923)
• The malaise in culture (1930)

To complete the information about the Freud's theories, we recommend these three tests:

• Sigmund Freud. Complete works. Amorrortu Editores.
• Freud. A life of our time. Peter gay. Paidos.
• Sigmund Freud. A century of psychoanalysis. Emilio Rodrigué. Editorial Sudamericana. (Excellent biography and also the first made by a Latin American).

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Personality theories in psychology: Sigmund Freud, we recommend that you enter our category of Personality.

1. We will refer to body as a word to translate "organism", since the term is more accepted in psychology. N.T.