SIGMUND FREUD AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT:The Superego

History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

Lesson 29

SIGMUND FREUD AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was and Austrian psychiatrist who was born in 1856 and died in 1939. He worked at Vienna

and later in England. He is the inventor of psycho-analysis as a method of treatment. Born in Moravia, he

lived most of his life in Vienna, receiving his medical degree from the Univ. of Vienna in 1881.

Freud was a doctor, writer, researcher and a professor. When Freud graduated from the medical school and

started doing research that was the time when hypnotism was a prevalent method of treatment of mental

disorders. He was impressed with works of Charcot, using hypnotism. Working with Joseph Breuer he saw

the advantages and disadvantages of hypnotism as a method of treatment.

His medical career began with an apprenticeship under J. M. Charcot in Paris, and soon after his return to

Vienna he began his famous collaboration with Josef Breuer on the use of hypnosis in the treatment of

hysteria.

Based upon his practice, he formulated the concept of unconscious mind and its role in creating mental

diseases. Freud discovered the unconscious functions of mind which according to him were responsible for

mental diseases.

Freud also thought that the parts of the mind play a dominant role in creating mental diseases. He gave the

parts of mind as follows:

The Id is the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby's mind is all Id want, want, want.

The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. And it has only one rule--the

"pleasure principle": "I want it and I want it all now".

Ego

The Ego functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego develops out of growing awareness that you

can't always get what you want. The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the "reality principle".

The Ego realizes the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the Superego. The Ego's job

is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego

denies both instant gratification and pious delaying of gratification.

History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

The Superego

The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop. It might be called the moral part of the mind. The

Superego becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly

strives for perfection, even though this perfection/ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility. Its

power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.

The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good

behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what

the child's parents approve of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behavior.

The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels his or her parents will disapprove or punish.

According to Freud, all human beings develop psychologically and during this process they pass through

different stages of psycho-sexual development. He said that the unconsciousness expresses itself in mental

symptoms, dreams and psychopathology of everyday life. He developed the theory of psycho-pathology of

everyday life. Slips of tongue, slips of memory etc. are representative of psychopathology of everyday life.

He developed the theory of interpretation of dreams. He explained dream work in terms of: Manifest

Contents; Latent Content, Displacement, Condensation, Symbolism etc.

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