“We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?”
—Niels Bohr
PLAN AHEAD…
• How did Sigmund Freud explain personality development? Did he emphasize sexuality and the unconscious? What are id,ego , superego,and Oedipus complex?
• Who were some of Freud’s followers, and how did they react to his theory?
The first of the modern personality theories was developed by Sigmund Freud and is known as psychoanalytic theory. The psychiatric practice of this theory is called psychoanalysis. Freud’s ideas were plentiful, profound, and often controversial. His theory about personality has had tremendous influence on societies around the world through many different disciplines. Not only psychology has been influenced and informed by the ideas of Freud, but also literature, art, philosophy, cultural studies, film theory, and many other academic subjects. Freud’s theory represents one of the major intellectual ideas of the modern world. Right or wrong, these ideas have had a lasting and enormous impact.
Exploring the Unknown
To understand Freud’s theory of personality, we must begin with the concept of the unconscious. This is the cornerstone idea in psychoanalytic theory. Freud believed that most behaviors are caused by thoughts, ideas, and wishes that are in a person’s brain but are not easily accessible by the conscious part of the mind. In other words, your brain knows things that your mind doesn’t. This reservoir of conceptions of which we are unaware is called the unconscious. Psychoanalytic theory proposes that personality characteristics are mostly a reflection of the contents of the unconscious part of the mind.
Sara is the daughter of my good friends, and I watched her mature through adolescence and young adulthood. Throughout her teens, she was shy,cautious ,and conservative in her political views and her approach to life. But in her twenties,Sar a changed abruptly and dramatically,bec oming animated, gregarious,and extremely liberal. Everything about her seemed to blossom and change. Do you know someone like that? As a psychologist,w atching Sara made me wonder how any personality theory could adequately capture the nuances of the complex and changing thing we call personality. Many psychologists have developed theories about personality—how to describe it, how it emerges,what influences it,how it changes,and what constitutes a healthy or an abnormal personality. Here you will learn about the most important personality theory: psychoanalytic theory.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
“A Freudian slip is when you mean one thing and say your mother.” —Anonymous
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis.
Freud’s first book, Studies in Hysteria, was written with his colleague Dr. Joseph Breuer in 1896. The book consists of a series of case studies of people who had physical complaints in the absence of any organic cause, what was then known as hysteria. Most doctors at that time believed there was some organic cause for these symptoms and that research would eventually discover it. But Freud and Breuer believed that the cause of hysteria was in the unconscious—in the anxiety-provoking thoughts that lurked there, hidden from awareness. Their first patient was a woman named Bertha Papenheim, who later went on to become a successful and important feminist leader. In the literature, she is known as Anna O. She began as a patient of Breuer, to whom she reported a large number of physical complaints, such as paralysis of her legs and right arm, that seemed to have no organic cause. In addition, after receiving hypnosis and therapy from Dr. Breuer for some time, Anna O. came to harbor the delusion that she was pregnant with Dr. Breuer’s child (a type of delusion that is sometimes called hysterical pregnancy). This was tremendously upsetting to Dr. Breuer (and to his wife). Although Breuer had had great success in relieving many of her hysterical symptoms, he was terribly embarrassed by this turn of events and resigned as Anna O.’s therapist. Sigmund Freud took over and was able to complete Ms. Papenheim’s cure by helping her to uncover the unconscious causes of her physical complaints. This case is presented in the 1962 film Freud.
Pushing Things Down
Freud believed that the unconscious is a part of our biological nature and that it operates naturally, just as do all our biological functions. Freud suggested that certain ideas and thoughts are repressed, that is, pushed out of awareness and into the unconscious. This happens, according to Freud’s theory, when those ideas and thoughts are threatening to us. Repression works something like our immune system: It protects us from dangerous things. In the case of personality, dangerous things include anything that threatens self-esteem or feelings of comfort and pleasure. When we have thoughts or ideas that are threatening, they are pushed out of consciousness because awareness of them produces anxiety. They make us feel nervous. Thereby, through repression, our unconscious protects us from anxiety. Here’s an example from my personal life: I hate going to meetings. (That is a key fact in understanding this example.) One day, I had a meeting scheduled for 3 o’clock. I put the agenda of the meeting on my desk and wrote reminders to myself on my desk calendar and on my wall calendar. After returning to my office just before 3 o’clock, I looked at the meeting agenda on my desk, I looked at the meeting reminder on my desk calendar, and I looked at the reminder on my wall calendar. Then I put on my coat and went home! Three times I was reminded of the meeting, yet I did not go to the meeting. Although I looked at the agenda and the two reminders, I went home with no awareness that I was missing a meeting. I did not forget to go to the meeting. Forgetting and repressing are not the same thing. My unconscious was looking after me. It protected me from that horrible meeting by repressing it! Of course, Freud wasn’t talking about missing meetings. But this analogy might help you understand the idea of repression. Freud’s theory is about how psychologically charged and threatening experiences, especially things that happen during childhood, can be repressed and later affect behavior and moods. Sexual abuse in childhood, for example, would be a very horrible experience that Freud theorized could affect one’s personality through repression. Even sibling rivalry might be threatening enough to one’s ego to be a source of repression.
Freud was named Sigismund Schlomo Freud by his parents. He never used his middle name and gradually switched his first to Sigmund during his university years. As a young man, Freud taught himself Spanish so that he could read Don Quixote in the original.
Can you give some examples that might represent repression—things from your life, from people that you know, or from books or movies? How are repression and forgetting different from each other?
THINK TANK
Some people find it fun and interesting to keep a dream journal. Keep a pen and paper near your bed, and when you awaken, immediately attempt to recall your dreams and write them down. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, set your alarm to wake up at a different time than usual, maybe 20 minutes earlier. Can you find any meanings in your dreams? What themes are common?
THINK TANK
Dreams and Slips
Although repression keeps undesirable information in the unconscious and out of awareness, that repressed information is influential and, according to Freudian theory, can seep out of the unconscious and express itself through behaviors, thoughts, and dreams. Unconscious thoughts express themselves in a disguised form so as not to overly disturb the conscious mind. It is as if the unconscious is a boiling cauldron of threatening and anxiety-producing ideas, but the steam from this boiling pot can filter up into our awareness and influence our behaviors and haunt our emotions and cognitions. Freud proposed that the best place to look for clues to the unconscious is in dreams. A dream, Freud said, is a disguised form of what we unconsciously wish for. Dreams are wish fulfillment. Through them, we get what our unconscious wants. But dreams are not obvious and direct mirrors of unconscious ideas. A dream must be analyzed and interpreted in order to understand the clues that it provides. The things that are present and the events that happen in a dream are known as the manifest content of the dream. These are disguised versions of unconscious thoughts. The meanings of those dream elements are called the latent content of the dream. A dream about an Egyptian mummy (the manifest content) might be a dream about one’s mother (mommy); or it might be a dream about frustration (being bound); or it might be about a desire for more freedom; or it might represent a wish to be hugged and cuddled or to feel possessed by someone; or it might be an expression of the death wish (thanatos, as opposed to the life wish, eros) that Freud used to explain suicides, war, and other circumstances; or it might represent a desire to go to heaven or to be warm or to be rested (all possible latent contents). The manifest content, the mummy, represents something in the unconscious, the latent content. Freud developed a number of counseling techniques (including dream interpretation) intended to help reveal what was in his patients’ unconscious minds based on the belief that revealing the contents of the unconscious would cause the patient’s symptoms to disappear. Sometimes, according to Freud, a mistake is not a mistake. Just as dreams have hidden meanings, some mistakes have hidden meanings. When we make a mistake that is influenced by the unconscious (when a mistake is not a mistake, when a mistake has meaning) it is called a Freudian slip, for example, a slip of the tongue. If you accidentally call your boyfriend or girlfriend by the wrong name, it might just be a mistake; but it might be a Freudian slip. That is, it might be a mistake that reveals something about your unconscious thoughts and wishes. If a person has done something that he believes to be wrong (perhaps he told a lie earlier in the day) and this act has made him feel guilty, then perhaps later, while peeling potatoes, he might unintentionally cut himself. Freud said that sometimes such an act is no accident. The feelings of guilt in the unconscious might have directed the person to cut himself as a punishment for his lying. Remember, it does no good to ask a person whether this is true. Freud’s theory says that this information is in the unconscious—a person is not aware of it. In fact, during therapy, Freudian psychoanalysts believe that if a patient becomes overly upset when a therapist suggests that there is a particular thought or wish in the patient’s unconscious, this might be evidence that the therapist is on the right track. In psychoanalytic theory, this is known as resistance, referring to the idea that patients will resist suggestions that probe the anxiety-producing contents of the unconscious. The unconscious wants to keep those thoughts from awareness and becomes upset when they are approached. One of the techniques used in psychoanalysis is to analyze the patient’s resistance, to see what clues it might provide regarding the person’s unconscious thoughts. Theoretically, the stuff in the unconscious is there because it is bothersome to the person. The mind actively represses the information, whether that is rational or not. Freud’s view is that repression might be harmful and might be the cause of a patient’s mental or behavioral symptoms. Freud’s “cure” is to reveal the unconscious information. If a therapist suggests that a patient’s problems might be connected to his relationship with his mother and the patient screams, “Leave my mother out of this!” the psychoanalytic therapist views this response as indicative of repression and resistance and a signal that therapy should proceed in that direction.
Mental Protection
Psychoanalytic theory suggests that there are other ways in which our unconscious protects us besides by repression. These protective devices of the unconscious are known as defense mechanisms. Here are some examples.
• Rationalization: Sometimes our unconscious makes up a good-sounding reason to explain something we don’t like. If we fail a test, we blame it on others. If our favorite candidate doesn’t win the election, we say that it’s for the best anyway. If we don’t complete an assignment, we think the teacher was unfair to have given the assignment. “Sour grapes” is another example—if we don’t get something we want, we find something wrong with it and convince ourselves we’re better off without it. Rationalizing protects us from the anxiety of seeing ourselves as deficient. This is a common defense mechanism because of the importance placed on giving good reasons for things. However, this is not rational, it is rationalizing. Being rational means being objective. In rationalization, our mind protects us with a reason that only sounds good; it is not objective, it just seems to be. Our mind is trying to help us out!
• Projection: In this case, when we have some thoughts or feelings that we consider to be wrong or upsetting, we project them onto other people instead of on ourselves. If I believe that a certain attitude or feeling that I have is terribly wrong, I will claim that others have it. A person who wants to use illegal drugs but who believes that it would make him a horrible person might expect everyone else to want to use illegal drugs. This defense mechanism deflects the anxiety away from us and onto others. Many of the predictions that a person makes about someone else are, in fact, true about the person making the prediction. Be careful what you say about others, it might be true about you! If a man says that he believes people lie on their resumes, perhaps it’s an indication that he has an inclination to lie on his resume. Is he simply being objective? Or is he saying people lie because his unconscious knows he would act that way? That would be projection.
• Sublimation: We sublimate if we redirect or rechannel our undesirable emotions and thoughts into a socially acceptable activity. If I am full of rage and horrible thoughts, I might vigorously wash my car. Many people sublimate by pouring their emotions into works of art. The famous painter Vincent van Gogh is the example that is most often given. His mental and emotional distress seems evident in the vivid colors, thick paint, and forceful brushstrokes of his paintings. We can imagine van Gogh’s moods merely by looking at his paintings. Many famous composers and poets also are good examples of this defense mechanism. Their mental anguish is redirected into wonderful works of art. There is a long list of composers and poets who suffered from depression and bipolar disorder. That is a tragedy, but one that provided us with a world of music and literature. Through sublimation, unpleasant mental energy is redirected into acceptable work.
• Reaction formation: Sometimes people’s mental and emotional energy is so threatening that they adopt the reverse—the opposite—of what they really want. A person who believes that drinking alcohol is a terrible sin yet who has a desire to drink alcohol might be protected by reaction formation. In this case, the person’s unconscious adopts a hatred of alcohol. The person might join groups that protest alcohol use and might attempt to pass laws against drinking alcohol. She becomes vociferous, wildly critical of alcohol. We might say, paraphrasing Shakespeare, that she protests too much. If a man believes that being gay is a horrible thing yet feels attracted to other men, he might express a deep hatred of gays and attempt to harm them. In reaction formation, a person’s unconscious takes on the beliefs that are opposite of the true desires, those repressed in the unconscious. This protects the conscious part of the mind from what the unconscious considers to be awful.
• Displacement: Freud suggested this defense mechanism to explain how a person’s unconscious wishes could appear in dreams but in disguise. A woman who is angry with her brother Tom might dream that she harms a noisy tomcat. Her conscious will not be aware of the connection between the names. Her anger is displaced onto a symbol of her brother. This defense mechanism is often used to explain behaviors outside of dreams; for instance, when a person’s displeasure is directed toward some object other than the source of the displeasure (for example, if an employee displaces his anger toward his boss onto his wife, a subordinate, or his dog).
• Denial: This defense mechanism is a primitive form of repression. In this instance, a person simply denies things that produce anxiety. The term is often used today in referring to people who have obvious problems with alcohol, drugs, or relationships but refuse to accept that those problems exist.
• Regression: Under conditions of severe trauma or stress, a person might revert to developmentally earlier forms of behavior and thinking. This is known as regression. A person who is under significant stress, for example, might begin sucking his or her thumb. Freudian theory argues that regression provides a person with feelings of security and calm when under threatening conditions. There are many other defense mechanisms that have been proposed by Freud and other psychoanalytic theorists, but these seven, together with repression, will give you a good understanding of the basic premise of Freud’s ideas about where personality comes from. At the center is the unconscious and its biological drive to protect us from “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” —Mark Twain
The projective tests (such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test) are based on the concept of projection. That is, it is assumed that what a person sees in an ambiguous stimulus is a reflection of the person’s personality–people project their characteristics (values, traits, ideas) into the stimulus.
Connecting Concepts
What is threatening. Defense mechanisms protect us from anxiety and threats. In that sense, they are useful and good. However, they can go too far and take us into abnormality. When defense mechanisms become extreme, they cause more problems than they solve. A person might then develop symptoms of mental disturbance. Freud proposed a clinical therapy to deal with those instances, as noted above, a therapy known as psychoanalysis. The essence of this approach is to reveal the contents of the unconscious to the patient so that he or she can see that there is nothing to be afraid of. This, Freud said, will result in a disappearance of the symptoms.
Personality Structures
Freud suggested an analogy about the mind. He said that the mind is like an iceberg in the ocean, floating 10% above the water and 90% below. The unconscious, Freud proposed, makes up the vast majority of our mind. In Freud’s view, only about 10% of our behaviors are caused by conscious awareness—about 90% are produced by unconscious factors. According to psychoanalytic theory, most of what controls our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings is unknown to our aware minds. Normally, the unconscious guides us. Freud said that the mind could be divided into three abstract categories. These are the id, the ego, and the superego. Although these are known as structures, do not take the term literally. Freud did not mean that these are physical parts of our bodies or our brains. He coined these terms and proposed this division of the mind as abstract ideas meant to help us understand how personality develops and works, and how mental illnesses can develop.
1. The id: Latin for the term “it,” this division of the mind includes our basic instincts, inborn dispositions, and animalistic urges. Freud said that the id is totally unconscious, that we are unaware of its workings. The id is not rational; it imagines, dreams, and invents things to get us what we want. Freud said that the id operates according to the pleasure principle—it aims toward pleasurable things and away from painful things. The id aims to satisfy our biological urges and drives. It includes feelings of hunger, thirst, sex, and other natural body desires aimed at deriving pleasure.
2. The ego: Greek and Latin for “I,” this personality structure begins developing in childhood and can be interpreted as the “self.” The ego is partly conscious and partly unconscious. The ego operates according to the reality principle; that is, it attempts to help the id get what it wants by judging the difference between real and imaginary. If a person is hungry, the id might begin to imagine food and even dream about food. (The id is not rational.) The ego, however, will try to determine how to get some real food. The ego helps a person satisfy needs through reality.
3. The superego: This term means “above the ego,” and includes the moral ideas that a person learns within the family and society. The superego gives people feelings of pride when they do something correct (the ego ideal) and feelings of guilt when they do something they consider to be morally wrong (the conscience). The superego, like the ego, is partly conscious and partly unconscious. The superego is a child’s moral barometer, and it creates feelings of pride and guilt according to the beliefs that have been learned within the family and the culture.
Freud theorized that personality contains three structures—the id, ego, and superego—and that the mind is like an iceberg, the unconscious making up 90% while the conscious (like the tip of the iceberg floating above water) makes only 10% of the mind. Id Ego Conscious mind Preconscious (outside awareness but accessible) Unconscious mind Superego Freud did not develop his theory on the basis of scientific experiments, such as correlation and controlled studies. He drew his conclusions mostly from the patients that he saw. He used the case study method.
Connecting Concepts
Freud theorized that healthy personality development requires a balance between the id and the superego. These two divisions of the mind are naturally at conflict with one another: The id attempts to satisfy animal, biological urges, while the superego preaches patience and restraint. The struggle between these two is an example of intrapsychic conflict—conflict within the mind. According to psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are automatic (unconscious) reactions to the fear that the id’s desires will overwhelm the ego. Freud believed that a healthy personality was one in which the id’s demands are met but also the superego is satisfied in making the person feel proud and not overwhelmed by guilt. If the id is too strong, a person will be rude, overbearing, selfish, and animalistic. If the superego is too strong, a person is constantly worried, nervous, and full of guilt and anxiety and is always repressing the id’s desires. An overly strong id makes one a psychopath, lacking a conscience, or an ogre, selfishly meeting one’s needs without concern for others. An overly strong superego, on the other hand, makes one a worrier, a neurotic, so overwhelmed by guilt that it is difficult to get satisfaction. Sometimes it is said that the ego is the mediator between the id and the superego, but this is not what Freud said. The ego does not help to find compromise; the ego helps the id to satisfy its desires by focusing on what is real.
The Stage is Set
Freud theorized that personality traits evolve through a series of stages that occur during childhood and adolescence. These are called psychosexual stages because they focus on mental (psyche) ideas about sex. However, it is important to note that Freud’s language was German, and not everything from German translates precisely into English. When we say that Freud’s theory concentrates on “sex,” we are using that term in an overly broad manner. There is no word in English for exactly what Freud was talking about. “Sensuality” might be closer than “sex” to the concept that Freud had in mind. Freud was referring to everything that gave a person bodily pleasure. In psychoanalytic theory, sucking your thumb is part of sex. Massaging your neck is also included. Freud believed that these pleasurable activities of the body were instinctually inborn and that they were often frowned on by society. The sexual activities that were most disapproved of were repressed into the unconscious and therefore were most likely to influence personality. Freud proposed that personality traits arise at certain times of our lives. For instance, dependency is a personality trait that arises during childhood when the child is very dependent on others. In a sense, Freud suggested that the seeds of adult personality traits are planted during childhood. The particular things that happen to us, those things that were repressed because they were sexual or traumatic, are retained in our unconscious and thereby sprout up as adult personality characteristics. The seeds of our adult traits were planted during the psychosexual stages. The adult personality, according to Freud, is a reflection of the contents of the unconscious. The unconscious is the reservoir of important things that happened to us in childhood. Biological urges, trauma, sexuality, aggression, and other incidents that were repressed provide the impetus for certain personality traits. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, an adult personality trait is a throwback to some unconscious urge, such as the urge to gain parental favor. If too much or too little satisfaction occurs during a childhood stage or if a traumatic event occurs during that stage, then a person will exhibit personality traits consistent with that stage. This is known as fixation. We say that a person with babyish traits such as dependency or biting his or her fingernails is fixated in the oral stage. According to psychoanalytic theory, the roots of personality are found in childhood.
Recap — Sigmund Freud developed an intricate theory of personality known as psychoanalytic theory. The therapeutic practice is called psychoanalysis. — This theory says that traumatic events are repressed into the unconscious part of the mind,wher e they can influence behavior and personality. — Freud described hysteria as an example of repression. — Freud taught that slips of the tongue and dreams could be analyzed to give clues as to what is in a person’s unconscious. The elements of a dream are called the manifest content; the hidden meanings are called the latent content. — In psychoanalytic theory,the mind protects itself from threats by using defense mechanisms such as repression,r ationalization, and sublimation. — Freud theorized three structures of personality: the id (seeks pleasure),the ego (judges reality), and the superego (morality,including conscience). — Intrapsychic conflict can involve disputes between the id (which attempts to satisfy biological urges) and the superego (which represents morality).
The Psychosexual Stages
Freud’s psychosexual stages are as follows:
1. Oral: The first stage in Freud’s theory covers babies up to about the age of one and a half years. The driving force during this stage is interest and pleasure in activities involving the mouth (hence the term oral), such as sucking and biting. Adult oral personality traits that derive from the oral stage include anything to do with the mouth, such as smoking, overeating, or biting the nails, and anything that is babylike, such as being naïve (“swallowing” anything you are told) or being dependent on others.
2. Anal: This stage centers on toilet training, beginning around the age of 18 months or two years and extending up to preschool, about age three. The term anal, of course, refers to the anus, the rear end (the opposite end of oral), and one of the jokes in psychology is that you can’t spell analysis without anal. This joke makes light of the fact that Freud believed this stage to be crucial in planting the seeds for a number of adult personality traits. In the anal stage the child is being toilet trained and is learning to hold in and to let out at appropriate times. Therefore, Freud proposed that personality traits related to either holding in or letting out were formed during the anal stage. The following traits are known as anal-retentive (finding pleasure from holding in): neatness, orderliness, punctuality, cleanliness, compulsiveness, perfectionism, and stinginess. The following are called anal-expulsive (finding pleasure from letting out): being undisciplined, messy, disorderly, late, impulsive, and overly generous.
3. Phallic: This stage occurs approximately during the preschool years. The term phallic means any representation of the penis, which, according to Freud, is the main occupation of the unconscious during the childhood years of about three to six among both boys and girls. It is at this time, theoretically, that children become aware of whether or not they have a penis, and Freud believed that this causes a bit of anxiety in the unconscious parts of their minds. Boys, Freud reasoned, become protective of their penis and fear having it taken away. This is known as castration anxiety and might be manifested in a young boy’s fear of knives, scissors, or being bitten by dogs. Girls, Freud thought, feel resentful that they do not have a penis and hence seek phallic things and activities that will provide them with feelings of power and possession. This is known as penis envy and might be seen when preschool girls develop a deep fondness for horses, unicorns, and other strong, masculine things or long, pointed objects. Freud proposed an unconscious drama during this stage that he called his most important idea. It is called the Oedipus complex (sometimes referred to as the Oedipal conflict). This unconscious process is named after the Greek story of Oedipus, the man who was raised by foster parents and grew up to unwittingly kill his biological father and marry his biological mother. Freud said that a similar drama occurs in the unconscious minds of preschool boys, who favor their mothers and fear their fathers (castration anxiety). The child resents the father for getting all of the mother’s attentions. Many psychoanalysts suggest a similar conflict for preschool girls, referred to as the Electra complex; it is essentially the reverse of the situation for boys: love and desire for father, resentment for mother. According to psychoanalytic theory, these complexes become so severe and anxiety-producing that the child’s unconscious must resolve them using a defense mechanism. The solution is for the child to begin to identify with the same-sexed parent. The child begins to internalize the personality of the same-sexed parent, thereby relieving the anxiety and vicariously winning the love of the opposite-sexed parent. For a little boy, being like daddy means no longer having to fear and resent him, and it also means getting mommy’s love through daddy. For a little girl, it means winning daddy’s love by being like mommy. This process is called identification with the aggressor; sometimes simply known as identification. The result is that children begin to internalize the values, morals (the superego), traits, attitudes, and behaviors of their parents. In fact, in 1925, Freud concluded that he had been wrong about penis envy in young girls and theorized that the Oedipal struggle for girls, as well as for boys, centered on love for the mother. As you can imagine, this remains a controversial idea among psychoanalysts.
4. Latency: After resolving the Oedipal conflict through identification (at about the age of six), children enter a stage during which sexual urges are dormant or resting. The term latent means that something is present or has potential without being active or evident. During this stage, sexual urges are taking a recess; they are at a minimum. From about the ages of 6 to 12, boys typically stick together and say that they do not like girls, or they act squeamish around girls. Similarly, girls during this stage are highly critical of boys, are shy around them, and avoid them. Apparently, the demands of the previous stage and the Oedipal drama were so overwhelming that the unconscious needs a bit of a rest.
5. Genital: This final of the psychosexual stages arises during adolescence when teenagers begin again to show sexual interests. This stage leads to adult affection and love. If all has gone well in the previous stages, Freud theorized, interest during adolescence is on heterosexual relationships. This is a time of exploring pleasure through more mature love and affection.
TABLE 8.1
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
| Stage | Approximate Ages | Main Features |
| 1. Oral | Birth–1 1/2 or 2 | Mouth,dependency |
| 2. Anal | 1 1/2–3 | Toilet training, give and take |
| 3. Phallic | 3–6 | Oedipus complex, identification, super ego |
| 4. Latency | 6–12 | Repression of sexuality |
| 5. Genital | 12–Adulthood | Development of normal sexuality |
Can you think of characters from literature or movies that represent psychoanalytic concepts? Is it always good to know what is in one’s unconscious? Why or why not?
THINK TANK
One should not think of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory as a scientific theory, but more as a form of literature or storytelling. People often ask whether Freud’s theory is right or wrong. This question is difficult to answer, perhaps impossible, because psychoanalytic theory is not totally a scientific or empirical theory that can be tested to determine its veracity. It is probably best to treat psychoanalytic theory as a series of interesting stories with plots and characters. Whether these stories are good or not depends on the extent to which they provide a deeper and better understanding of human personality development. Some of Freud’s concepts have met that test—for example, the unconscious, repression, the importance of childhood sexuality, and the influence of parenting on the child’s personality. It is hard to deny the basic tenets of psychoanalytic theory: The unconscious can influence our behaviors and our personality, things that happen in childhood plant the seeds for adult personality development, traumatic events in childhood can have lasting effects on our personalities, and the sexual drive is an important factor in our lives that can influence our personality. On the other hand, many of Freud’s ideas are not supported by research and observation. His theory provides some provocative ideas about the course of human development and the causes of behaviors, but these often fail when put to an empirical test. Perhaps a good way to conclude this discussion of Freud’s ideas is to use a variation on Freud’s remark about his cigar smoking: Sometimes a theory is just a theory. Freud had great influence, particularly early in the twentieth century, and he had many followers who developed their own theories of personality development, often contradicting Freud’s. Here are a few of the major ideas of some neo-Freudians, early followers of Freud who splintered off and formed their own theories.
