What is Freud's psychoanalytic theory?
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, proposed that behaviour is shaped by unconscious processes and childhood experiences. His early drive psychology (around 1905) held that behaviour is driven by unconscious aggression and sexuality; it introduced the Oedipal complex and made dream analysis central to understanding the mind. His three pillars for exams are the topographic model, the structural model and the psychosexual stages, with the defence mechanisms as the way the ego handles the resulting conflict.
| Concept | Core idea |
|---|---|
| Topographic model | Mind by level of awareness: conscious, preconscious, unconscious |
| Structural model | Mind by function: id, ego, superego |
| Psychosexual stages | Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital; each has an erogenous zone and a conflict |
| Defence mechanisms | Unconscious ego strategies that reduce conflict and anxiety |
| Treatment | Psychoanalysis: free association, dream analysis, interpretation of transference |
What is Freud's topographic model of the mind?
The topographic model divides the psyche into three parts according to how aware the person is of the content.
| Level | Meaning | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Conscious | The part of the mind a person is always aware of | Immediate |
| Preconscious | Just outside awareness but can be brought into consciousness with relative ease | Effort of attention or recall |
| Unconscious | Contains unconscious drives and conflicts | Only through free association, psychoanalysis and indirect routes such as dreams and parapraxes (Freudian slips) |
What are the id, ego and superego?
In the later structural model Freud described personality as three interacting components. The id is the unconscious part of the mind, driven by instinctual desires and operating on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification. The superego is the internalisation of moral constraints and societal norms, striving for ideal behaviour. The ego is the mediator between the two and between them and external reality, guided by the reality principle. The ego also employs defence mechanisms to handle anxiety.
| Structure | Principle | Awareness |
|---|---|---|
| Id | Pleasure principle; instinctual drives | Entirely unconscious |
| Ego | Reality principle; mediator and executive | Conscious, preconscious and unconscious parts |
| Superego | Internalised moral standards and ideals | Conscious, preconscious and unconscious parts |
What are Freud's psychosexual stages of development?
Freud proposed five stages of psychosexual development, each tied to an erogenous zone and a conflict that must be resolved for healthy personality formation. Fixation at a stage is linked to characteristic traits.
| Stage | Age (approximate) | Focus and conflict | Fixation traits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral | Birth to about 18 months | Mouth, sucking and feeding; dependency and trust | Passivity, dependency, oral habits such as smoking |
| Anal | About 18 months to 3 years | Bowel control; autonomy and self-control | Anal-retentive (excessive orderliness) or anal-expulsive (messiness) |
| Phallic | About 3 to 6 years | Genitals; Oedipus or Electra complex; resolution leads to identification with same-sex parent and superego development | Unresolved Oedipal conflict |
| Latency | 6 years to puberty | Sexual impulses sublimated into school, friendships and hobbies; relative calm and ego development | - |
| Genital | Puberty onward | Sexual impulses directed to appropriate others outside the family; mature sexual identity | - |
What are defence mechanisms?
Sigmund Freud introduced defences in relation to the id, ego and superego, and Anna Freud defined them as 'unconscious resources used by the ego' to reduce internal stress. Patients use them to lessen the conflict between the superego and the id. They can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on context and severity, can persist, regress or evolve across life stages, and early identification of maladaptive defences in adolescence may help predict later personality disorders.
| Defence | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Repression | Subconsciously blocking undesirable ideas or impulses | No recollection of a trauma although awake during it |
| Suppression | Consciously choosing to block undesirable ideas; contrast with repression (subconscious) | Pushing intrusive thoughts of a trauma out of mind |
| Denial | Dismissing external reality to avoid an uncomfortable situation | Person with substance use insisting there is no problem |
| Projection | Attributing one's own unacceptable impulses to someone else | A person who is unfaithful accuses the partner of infidelity |
| Displacement | Transferring emotion from a threatening target to a safer substitute | Stressful day at work, then lashing out at family |
| Rationalisation | Justifying behaviour with a seemingly rational explanation | Stealing money because 'I needed it more than they did' |
| Reaction formation | Replacing an unacceptable impulse with its opposite | Excessive kindness to someone disliked |
| Sublimation | Channelling unacceptable impulses into socially useful pursuits | Aggression channelled into sport |
| Regression | Reverting to behaviour of an earlier developmental stage | Bed-wetting after a stressful event in a toilet-trained child |
| Identification (introjection) | Internalising behaviours observed in others without awareness | Child adopting parents' behaviours |
| Conversion | Physical symptoms unexplained by pathophysiology | Conversion disorder (functional neurological symptom disorder) |
| Splitting | Failing to integrate positive and negative aspects; all-or-none thinking | Typical of borderline personality disorder |
| Acting out | Detrimental behaviours that distract from other stressors | Conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder |
| Intellectualisation | Excessive thinking and over-analysing to distance from emotion | Researching an illness extensively instead of showing emotion at diagnosis |
| Isolation of affect | Avoiding the emotion linked to an idea or event | Describing a house fire in a purely factual way |
| Compensation | Focusing on achievement in one area to offset inadequacy in another | Poor grades, then extra effort in extracurriculars |
| Anticipation | Planning and solving problems before they arise | Rehearsing hard interview questions |
| Humour | Using comedy to reduce negative emotion | Telling a funny story at a eulogy |
| Avoidance | Keeping away from uncomfortable thoughts, people or places | Avoiding driving after a road accident (PTSD) |
| Schizoid fantasy | Retreating into imagination to avoid discomfort | Seen in schizoid personality disorder |
How are defence mechanisms graded by maturity?
Vaillant developed a hierarchy of defensive maturity, later refined by Perry's Defense Mechanisms Rating Scale. Defences lie on a continuum from immature through neurotic to mature, and in Kernberg's spectrum mature defences characterise healthy personalities, neurotic defences neurotic structures, and immature and psychotic defences borderline and psychotic organisations. Mature defences such as sublimation, humour, altruism and affiliation are linked to long-term psychosocial adjustment; heavy use of immature defences goes with more psychopathology and interpersonal difficulty. Clinical observation links anxious traits with repression or undoing, and borderline or trauma-related organisation with splitting, projection or projective identification.
| Level | Examples | Association |
|---|---|---|
| Mature | Sublimation, humour, altruism, affiliation | Healthy functioning, good long-term adjustment |
| Neurotic (middle ground) | Repression and undoing are typical of anxious traits | Neurotic personality structures |
| Immature | Splitting, projection, projective identification, fantasy | Borderline organisation, greater psychopathology |
| Psychotic | Examples are not itemised in the sources used here | Psychotic organisation |
What are the techniques of psychoanalysis?
- Free association: the patient says whatever comes to mind, to reach unconscious material.
- Dream analysis: dreams are a route to the unconscious, central to Freud's method.
- Transference: the unconscious repetition in the here and now of pathogenic conflicts from the past; analysing it is regarded as the primary source of change.
- Interpretation: the analyst's verbal communication to the patient, ranging from clarification (elucidating conscious thoughts) and confrontation (tactfully bringing unconscious thoughts, emotions or behaviours into awareness) to interpretation proper (a hypothesis tying the material together).
- Core assumptions: complex unconscious processes lead deterministically to conscious thought and behaviour, and observable behaviour has more than one unconscious origin.
Psychodynamic therapy builds on these ideas to help patients become aware of unconscious processes and defences. It is used in depression, anxiety, eating disorders and personality disorders, and meta-analyses show efficacy comparable with CBT and pharmacotherapy in mild to moderate mood disorders. For biological treatments see mood disorders and electroconvulsive therapy.
What are the common traps in Freud and defence-mechanism MCQs?
- Id = pleasure principle; ego = reality principle; superego = morality. Do not swap.
- The id is entirely unconscious; ego and superego span conscious, preconscious and unconscious.
- Repression (unconscious) versus suppression (conscious).
- Displacement (shift the emotion to a safer target) versus projection (attribute your own feeling to someone else).
- Reaction formation = opposite behaviour; sublimation = channel into acceptable activity.
- Regression = return to an earlier stage; conversion = psychological conflict as physical symptom.
- Splitting is characteristic of borderline personality disorder.
- Stage ages: oral 0 to about 18 months, anal to about 3 years, phallic about 3 to 6, latency 6 to puberty, genital after puberty.