The Theories of Freud Have influenced the world of psychology and out of it until today. Some of the best known are the principle of pleasure, drive and repression.
Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of Psychoanalysis, a praxis formulated for the treatment of psychopathological disorders, based on the dialogue between the patient and the psychoanalyst.
His work has left an indelible mark on the culture and history of humanity as they have generated substantial changes in the conceptualization of subjectivity. Concepts such as the unconscious are part of the vocabulary of most people and their definition is due, to a large extent, to the discoveries of this eminent psychoanalyst.
In turn, Freud's theories left their mark on the treatment of psychopathologies, when mental illness is related to the environment in which the patient lives and his personal, family and social history.
This view runs counter to the idea that psychological illnesses are due only to biological or cognitive phenomena exclusively of the subject.
His theories are not without controversy, of course. Freud Was the third most cited author of the S.XX according to the magazine Review of General Psychology (Journal of General Psychology) [1] .
Numerous philosophers, such as Karl Popper , Have discredited psychoanalysis as Pseudoscience , While others like Eric Kandel consider that psychoanalysis"represents the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the mind" [2] .
Differences between psychoanalysis, sexuality and genitality
Before beginning to read, it is necessary to clarify that, in psychoanalysis, sexuality Y Genitality they are not the same. Sexuality is a much broader concept, encompassing almost the entire life of human beings, as it refers to ways of relating to others, to love, to hate and to feel. Genitality is more limited and refers only to genital sexuality, that is to coitus or onanism.
The 5 most important theories of Freud
Throughout his prolific career as a writer, Freud reviewed his writings on numerous occasions, adding depth to his arguments or making amendments.
We leave here the 5 most important theories outlined by Freud so that the reader can know a little about the vast work of this great thinker:
1- The pleasure principle (and the beyond )
" Children are completely selfish; Feel their needs intensely and struggle rudely to meet them .".-Sigmund Freud.
The principle of pleasure postulates that the psychic apparatus seeks, as the ultimate goal, to achieve pleasure and avoid displeasure, and thus to satisfy biological and psychological needs. Pleasure is the force that guides the process of identifying the person.
It works only in the systemic unconscious, and is the principle that governs all its functioning. That is why unpleasant representations are repressed, because they transgress the order.
The pleasure principle leads unconsciously to the reach of basic survival needs.
Why do we have symptoms?
Knowing that this principle exists, asking yourself this question becomes an obligation. Why would a person suffer a symptom, suffering in their daily living if it is supposed to live under the pleasure principle?
The answer is in the previous paragraph: the principle of pleasure is unconscious, while in consciousness operates the principle of reality.
The principle of reality is the opposite pole to the principle of pleasure, the person is aware of the real environment and knows that he has to adapt to it in order to live in society.
We learn as we mature to repress our instincts based on social rules to be able to obtain more long-term pleasure and more diminished but according to reality.
The subject has an irreconcilable representation and represses it, so he forgets it. But, as the I Is governed by the principle of reality, the representation returns as a return of the repressed, in the form of a symptom.
The subject no longer remembers what it was that repressed, only suffers a symptom that maintains a relationship (sometimes close, some distant) with the repressed. The principle of pleasure has not been contradicted: the subject Prefers Suffer a symptom rather than remember irreconcilable representation, which remains unconscious.
Is there anything beyond the pleasure principle?
After the end of World War I, Freud encountered numerous soldiers who revived constantly The traumas they suffered during the war through dreams. Taking into account that sleep is a place of fulfillment of desire (ie, governs the Principle of pleasure), repeating such traumas became an important theoretical contradiction.
Freud went to review his theory, so he came to the conclusion that there is a"source"in the human psyche that is beyond Of the Principle of pleasure, that is to say that it does not obey its laws because it exists previous To that principle.
This is an attempt to flirt Or recognize the existence (even after it can be repressed) of a representation. It is an anterior step to the pleasure principle and without which it would not exist. Then: the representation is linked to the psychic apparatus - it is recognized its existence -, and then it is judged pleasurable or unpleasant to take the corresponding action -Principio del placer.
This amendment allowed Freud to account for the Compulsion to repeat Of people, in which (either in the therapy space or in everyday life) humans tend to Always stumble with the same stone , That is to say that we repeat again and again the same errors or very similar variations.
2- The drive
" Unexpressed emotions never die. They are buried alive and depart later in worse forms ".-Sigmund Freud.
This concept articulates the psychic with the somatic and is called by Freud a concept hinge , For explaining sexuality.
There are internal stimuli in the human being that are constant and that, unlike hunger, can not be appeased through an interaction with something external, as it would be to eat.
In turn, by being internal you can not either you can run away from them. Referring to the principle of constancy, Freud postulates that the cancellation of this stimulus organ Gives satisfaction Drive .
The drive consists of four properties:
- Effort / push : It is the motor factor. The sum of force or measure of constant work that carries the drive.
- Meta / fin : It is the satisfaction achievable when canceling the stimulus of the source.
- Object : It is the instrument through which the drive reaches its goal. It can be part of one's own body and is not predetermined.
- Source : It is the body itself, its holes, its surface, especially the edge areas between the inside and the outside. It is experienced as excitement.
The drive is not satisfied in the object, this is the instrument by which it manages to cancel the stimulus, which is its only goal and what gives it satisfaction.
Freud affirms at the outset that there are two drives that are in conflict: the sexual drives and those of self-preservation. In the course of his childhood, the child finds different"typical"objects that satisfy his sexual drive and according to which transits different stages:
- Oral stage : The object of satisfaction is the mouth.
- Anal stage : The object of satisfaction is the anus.
- Phallic stage : The object of satisfaction is the penis, in the children, and the clitoris, in the girls.
- Latent stage : The child abandons his sexual explorations and engages in more intellectual activities.
- Genital stage : It coincides with the entry into puberty, where the puberty reexplores his sexuality as a function of intercourse and reproduction.
Once the compulsion of repetition and the Beyond Of the Pleasure Principle, Freud changes the drive duality and groups the sexual drives and self-preservation as Life Pulse.
It opposes the Pulsion Of Death , Which is the tendency of the human to cancel all stimulus and find a state of"nirvana"where there are no more stimuli, that is, in death. These two drives usually work together (mixed) but when They separate Is when the symptoms are manifested.
3- The repression
" Dreams can be thus declared: They are hidden realizations of repressed desires ".-Sigmund Freud.
This concept is central to psychoanalytic theory. People have subconscious thoughts that are key to the development and life of people.
Repression is a mechanism of psychic defense: when a representation (an event, a person, or an object) becomes intolerable for the subject, irreconcilable with the accumulation of representations that lodges in his mind, the psychic apparatus It suppresses And renders that representation unconscious, so that the subject"forgets"(although in truth, it does not know that it remembers it).
In this way you can go on with your life"as if"had never become aware of that event, person or object.
Later, in his text"The repression", Freud locates two types of repression that are part of every subject: Repression primary And repression high school:
Primary repression
It is an unconscious operation that founds the soul apparatus. Through this repression the representation of the Sexual instinct , Thanks to which the subject is able to desire and seek the fulfillment of his desire.
This repression gives strength to the psychic apparatus to attract the repressed and prevent it from becoming conscious.
Secondary repression
Also called repression Proper .
The Psychic representative Of the drive, that is, that which is intolerable to the psyche of the subject and of what he does not want to know anything about. The secondary repression is described at the beginning of this section.
The return of the repressed
Freud always affirmed that there is no such thing as a 100% successful repression, so that the repressed always returns and usually does it through a neurotic symptom (an obsession, a hypochondria, for example) or a Substitution training Like a joke, a dream or a lapse.
4- The unconscious
" The unconscious is the largest circle that includes within itself the smallest circle of the conscious; All conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, while the unconscious can stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity ".-Sigmund Freud.
Intimately linked to repression, the unconscious is another central concept in psychoanalysis And where much of psychoanalytic"action"takes place. It is necessary to clarify in advance that Everything repressed is unconscious, but not everything unconscious is repressed.
Freud, in his text"The unconscious"expands in depth to explain this concept more clearly, giving three definitions about the unconscious:
Descriptive
It is simply everything that is not conscious.
This property is not necessarily due to the fact that this representation has been repressed, it may happen that it is not a content that must be used at that moment (it is latent ), So it is"stored"in the unconscious. Also called Preconscious .
Dynamic
It is that inaccessible to the conscience because of the secondary repression, that is to say are those contents Repressed .
These contents can only return to consciousness as a return of the repressed, ie as symptoms or substitute formations, or through therapy, through the word.
Systemic (structural)
It is a structural place within the psyche.
Unlike the other two definitions, it does not refer to unconscious contents, but to the way in which the unconscious works as a system of thought.
Here there is no denial, doubt or certainty, nor contradiction or temporality. This is because there is no word , But endowments.
As an example, let's think of a tree. In doing so, we did two things: think of the word"tree"and imagine a tree. Well, the descriptive and dynamic definitions refer to the word"tree"while the systemic to the representation from a tree.
This separation is what allows that in the systemic unconscious exist two contradictory representations or coexist two different times.
This is the case in dreams, where a person (for example, a friend) can represent others (the friend can also be a friend and a relative simultaneously) and place himself at different times (the childhood friend is still in the dream Like a child at the same time as the dreamer is an adult).
5- The Oedipus complex
" Sexual desires about the mother that become more intense than the father's are perceived as an obstacle to him; This gives rise to the Oedipus complex ".-Sigmund Freud.
Undoubtedly one of the most important theoretical contributions of psychoanalysis and one of its most relevant theoretical pillars. He Oedipus complex (In the male) argues that the boy wants to seduce his mother but this brings with him a conflict with his father, who has forbidden to take it as his own.
The complex begins in the phallic stage and is a response to the seduction Maternal, since the child has known its body (and its pleasure zones), it has partially erogenizado thanks to the maternal care that has received as being caressed, bathed or even cleaned after going to the bathroom.
Since the child can not carry out his task of seducing his mother, he is forced to accept his own Phallic castration, Carried out by the paternal prohibition (the installation of the law), reason why the complex is Buries And gives way to the Stage of latency until the advent of puberty.
Upon reaching the genital stage, the child no longer seeks his mother, but another woman, but his passage through the Oedipus Complex has left indelible marks in the way he will now relate to others and influence his choice in The women you will want to take as a couple.
Freud developed this theory on the basis of the masculine sex, not explaining the development of this theory in women. It would later be Carl Jung who developed the theory of Electra Complex , Understood as the female version that explains the Oedipus Complex in women.
Continue to enjoy Freud's theories with this video:
References
- Freud, S.: The interpretation of the Dreams, Amorrortu Editores (A.E.), volume IV, Buenos Aires, 1976.
- Freud, S.: Three Essays of Sexual Theory , A.E., VII, idem.
- Freud, S.: Note on the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis , A.E., XII, idem.
- Freud, S.: Remember, repeat, rework , Ditto.
- Freud, S.: Pulsions and drives of drive , A.E., XIV, idem.
- Freud, S.: The repression , Ditto.
- Freud, S.: The unconscious, idem.
- Freud, S.: Beyond the Pleasure Principle , A.E., XVIII, Idem.
- Freud, S.: The burial of the Oedipus complex , A.E., XIX, idem.
- Freud, S.: The I and the it , Ditto.
- Freud, S.: The child genital organization , Ditto.
- Freud. S.: Outline of psychoanalysis , A.E., XXIII, idem.
- Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Review of General Psychology Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century." 6 (2): 139-152. Doi: 10.1037 / 1089-2680.6.2.139.
- Kandel ER.,"Biology and the future of psychoanalysis: a new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited."American Journal of Psychiatry 1999; 156 (4): 505-24.
- Laznik, D.: Program of the subject Psychoanalysis: Freud. Department of Publications of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- [1] Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Review of General Psychology Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; Et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century." 6 (2): 139-152.
- [2] Kandel ER.,"Biology and the future of psychoanalysis: a new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited." American Journal of Psychiatry 1999; 156 (4): 505-24.