Introduction to Freud
Who was Freud and why was he so influential?
Freud's Theories
Sigmund Freud was arguably the world's first psychoanalyst, pushing forwards psychology and significantly influencing modern-day our understanding of the mind's workings.
Freudian thought agrees our mind is divided into 3 sections; the id, ego and superego, and human behaviour is influenced by a primitive sexual desire. The first part of the mind, the id, aims to fulfill our primitive needs - in essence, it's the inner child, which has sometimes unreasonable demands that cannot be fulfilled. The second part of the mind, the ego, is the conscious which is capable of accepting that we cannot have what we want for practical reasons. Finally, the superego is the moralistic area of the mind which understands that what is needed to be done to fulfill our desires may be immoral. Freud claimed that the superego develops as a separate entity from the id and ego at around 5 years, which explains children's unreasonable demands and absence of understanding.
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