FREUD: Essential Background Information

Click on picture for additional information on Sigmund Freud

     The Psychodynamic Approach:

Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

OVERVIEW

     Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is the founder of psychoanalysis.  Psychoanalysis is a theory of both normal and abnormal personality development.  The key assertions include unconscious conflict and early psychosexual development.  A psychoanalytical method of theory's main aim is to have the patient gain insight into his/her own presently unconscious thoughts and feelings.  Therapeutic tools include free association, interpretation, appropriate use of the transference relationship between patient and analyst.

Transference- the patient's tendency to react toward his/her analyst, as he/she did originally toward his/her own parents or other people central to his/her early life.

Free Association-  method used in psychoanalytic therapy in which patient is to say something that comes into his/her mind, no matter how apparently trivial, unrelated, or embarrassing.

PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVEL0PMENT

     Psychosexual Development is the description of the progressive stages in the way a child gains pleasure as he/she grows into adulthood.  It is defined by the zone of the body through which maximal pleasure is derived (oral, anal, genital) and by the object toward which this pleasurable feeling is directed (mother, father, sexual partner).  Pleasure is obtained by the stimulation of certain zones of the body that are sensitive to the touch -- mouth, anus, genitals.  Freud called these areas erogenous zones, because he believed the pleasures associated with each of them have a common element that is sexual.  The five stages of Psychosexual Development are as follows:
Stage One: Initially, most pleasure seeking is through the mouth.  This is called the Oral Stage.  There is an emphasis on sucking (the breast).
Stage Two: As the infant attains bowel control, emphasis shifts to the anus.  This is called the Anal Stage.  Pleasure is derived through activities related to elimination.
Stage Three: Increased interest in pleasure is obtained through stimulating genitals -- masturbation.  This is the Phallic Stage.  The genitals become the main source of gratification.  It is at this stage that the Oedipus Complex takes place.
Stage Four: This is the Latency Period in psychosexual development in which sexuality lies essentially dormant.  Roughly, this takes place when the child is five to twelve years of age.
Stage Five: The culmination of psychosexual development is attained in adult sexuality when pleasure involves not just one's own gratification, but also the social and bodily satisfaction of another.  This is called the Genital Stage.
Throughout psychosexual development, there is the possibility that a fixation may develop.  In Freud's theory of personality, a fixation is the lingering attachment to an earlier stage of pleasure seeking, even after a new stage has been obtained.

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

The blind Oedipus goes into exile led by his daughter.  Click on picture for more information on Oedipus.

     The Oedipus Complex is the general term for the impulses and conflicts that occur during the Phallic phase, at around age five.  In boys, it is a fantasized form of intense, possessive, sexual love that is directed at the mother.  This is soon followed by hatred for and fear of the father.  As the fear mounts, the sexual feelings are pushed underground, and the boy identifies with the father.

     Freud regarded the Oedipus Complex as the most important aspect of psychosexual development, because it envelopes the family triangle of love, jealousy, and fear (the root of internalized morality and out of which comes the child's identification with the same sex parent).  The Oedipus Complex is named after the  King of Thebes who unknowingly both killed his father and married his mother.

     At about three to four years of age, the Phallic Stage begins, and the boy becomes more and more interested in his penis -- a source of pride and pleasure.  Masturbation begins, but this is not enough, and so the boy seeks an external object.  The choice is his mother, and his father becomes an obstacle.  The father is his rival and the boy wants him to die.  the boy then begins to fear his father.  According to Freud, this fear is because the boy is certain that his father is aware of his son's hostility and will hate him in return.  The boy develops castration anxiety, and as a result of this horrid fear, he tries to repress all hostile feelings toward his father.  The repression is unsuccessful and the boy's anxiety becomes unbearable, so he dismisses his mother as an erotic object, and renounces genital pleasure.  The latency period follows and the boy finally identifies with his father.  He concludes that by becoming like him, he will one day enjoy an erotic partnership.