Freud: Psychoanalysis

Freud: Psychoanalysis

Question 1

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian Jew who, forced into exile by the Nazis, ended his days in London. Recognized as a genius in his own time, his ideas were subsequently dismissed, although they are experiencing a revival today. The Freud's childhood and adolescence was marked by large incisions. During school, the young Sigmund Freud had only a few non-Jewish friends. In the Vienna of that time anti-Semitic humiliations were rife. Sigmund was witness to his father to secure such attacks continued not to defend what a painful disorder of the father-son relationship with the result. The Freud's childhood and youth was marked by the religious views of his parents. His father was an Orthodox Jew educated, but Judaism's son learned from his mother, whose favorite he was. From this intimate relationship was also his theory of the Oedipus complex, for he was in love with the mother and the father was jealous. Later, he also said, due to the influence of the mother to be well acquainted with Jewish customs. But he also criticized some of their education weaknesses. He accused her of being naive fundamentalist. The Czech nanny, a Catholic, had influence on his worldview, because they told him from heaven, hell and the punishments of those Catholics had feared. They also visited with the small Sigmund and the Catholic mass (Clark, 1989).

Question 2

The psychoanalytic perspective on human behavior and criminality is most commonly associated with Sigmund Freud, who created the theory as an explanation of human personality and emotional development and as a guide to clinical practice. While there have been many expansions and refinements to the original work, Freudian theory is utilized as an explanatory tool and in therapeutic intervention in its original form and conceptualization even today. Freud was without doubt one of the most influential thinkers of his time (Fromm, 1959).

Question 3

Freud also believed that the human personality, like the human mind, comprised three parts. These he called the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the most primitive of these three parts of personality and is contained in the unconscious. The id is governed by the need for immediate gratification, and it has no concern for the needs or welfare of others. Freud called this most basic reality of the human personality the pleasure principle. We are all driven toward, sex, food, aggression, and all life necessities. The impulsive natures of the id suggest that we will act toward these wants in potentially socially unacceptable manners. The sex drive Freud called the libido, and the drive toward aggression and death he termed thanatos. These life and death drives and the conflict between them are at the core of the impulse laden id.

The ego develops as the individual matures through Freud's prescribed stages of psycho-sexual development. The child governed by the id learns that simply following impulses can have negative consequences. The individual learns that society is governed by rules and learns that the desires he or she is feeling have ...