Personality Freud example essay topic

HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: HOW IT AFFECT PERSONALITY M aranda Leggett Theories of Personality January 31, 2001 MWF 12: 00 - 1: 00 pm For years many have wondered what is it that shapes personality. The true question is, "What is psychology". This definition if broad and in varies from culture to the social setting. With the though of this does Cattell's definition stand true.

Personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation / personality is... concerned with all behavior of the individual both overt and under the skin (Cattell 50). Under the skin could this mean in the unconscious? When I think of the word unconscious the definition of psychoanalysis comes to mind. Psycholoanalysis is a method for learning about the mind, and also a theory, a way of understanding the processes of normal everyday mental functioning and the stages of normal development from infancy to old age. Individuals are often unaware of many of the factors that determine emotions and behavior.

These unconscious factors may create unhappiness, sometimes in the for of recognizable symptoms and at other times as troubling personality traits difficulties in work in love relationship, or disturbances in mood and self esteem. When looking at these definitions it isn't difficult to see how the two affect each other. There are two people who had big influences on psycho analysis and psychology. The Early years of Freud Born to the parents of a forty year old wool merchant, Jacob Freud, and a 20 year old, Am allie Nathanson Freud, was born may 6 in frei berg Austrian 1856 and he was the first of eight children born to his mother in the course of ten years (textbook n. p. g. ).

Freud was an outstanding student and always being at the top he graduated at the head of his high school. He entered medical school at the university of Vienna at the age of seventeen. It took him almost eight years to finish a four year program. Freud chose medical school because medicine was one of the few careers open to a jew in Austria at the time (textbook p). Freud wasn't interested in the medical field though he saw medicine as a key, to engage in scientific research. Freud hoped to be a professor in neurology and did many things to follow this dream, he was disappointed to find that advancement in neurology would be slow for a jew and he knew that he didn't have enough many.

April 25, 1986 Freud entered a private practice as a clinical neurologist. During his years of study he married Martha Bernal to whom he had been engaged to since 1882 and he had three boys and three girls. (Garcia 208). The only one who followed Freud's footsteps was his daughter named Anna, who grew up and became a leader in the field of psychology (Gay 67).

Freud received a small grant that allowed him to study with the famous French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot who was experimenting with hypnotism. At the time Jean-Martin Charcot was considered second in prominence to only Louis Pasteur. At this time Charcot was working with patients who suffered from a men tall illness called hysteria. Some of these people appeared to be blind or paralyzed, but they actually had no physical defects. Charcot found that physical symptoms could be relieved through hypnosis (Garcia 209). He later left.

Realizing that the unconscious is important Freud returned to Vienna in 1886 and began to work extensively with hysterical patients. While discussing a case Freud said: In the study of hysteria, local diagnosis electrical reaction do not come into picture while discussing the exhausted account of mental processes, of the kind we were accustomed to having from imaginative writers, enables me by the application of a few psychological formulas, to obtain a right in the form of hysteria". Even though Freud tried hysteria, he stopped because he found his patients wasn't being hypnotized. He gradually formed his illness. He called the fundamental pf psychoanalysis, which if known also as free association, for his theories and his methods. When freud's ideas were first present there were many reactions some were hostile and others were attracted to these ideas.

By 1910 he had gained inter nation. Which two were his two close friends, Alfred Alder and Carl Jung. Garcia 210). Freud observed that many patients behaved according to drives and experiences of which they were not consciously aware.

He then concluded that the unconscious plays a major role in shaping one's eh avior. He also conclude that the unconscious is full of memories of events from early child hood. Freud not that t if these memories were especially painful, that people would keep them out of conscious awareness. He used the term defence mechanism for the methods by which individuals handled painful memories. Freud believed that patients used mass amounts of energy to form defense mechanisms (Gay 97). Typing up energy could affect a person's ability to lead a productive life, casting an illness called neurosis.

Personality Freud also believed that many childhood memories death with sex. He believed that his patients' reports of sexual abuse by a parent were fantasies reflecting unconscious desires (Freud 19). He theorized that sexual functioning begins at birth, and that a pes on goes through several through several psychological stages of sexual development. He though that all children were born with powerful sexual and aggressive urges that must be tamed.

In learning to control these impulses, children acquire a sense of right and wrong. They become "civilized" The process and the results are different for boys and girls. Freud believed the normal pattern of psychosexual development is interrupted in some people. These people become fixated at an earlier, immature stage. He felt such fixation could contribute to mental illness in adult hood A theory that Freud had was that the rain in divided into three parts. The id, the ego, and the superego.

Bibliography

Cattell, R.B. (1950) "Personality: A Systematic Theoretical and Faculty Study" New York McGraw: McGraw Hill.
Ellen berger, H.C. (1970) "The Discovery of the Unconscious" New York: Basic Books, Freud S.
1951) "An introduction to theories of Personality B.
R. Hergenbahn and Mathew H". Olson-SihedGarcia, M.E. (19 -- ) "The Truth of Freud" New York: Normal, p 208 Gay P. Freud: (1988) "A Life For Our Time".
New York: Norton. p. 67-69 Heavy, Liam F. (1994).
Freud, Jung and Joyce: "Conscious Connections". Comtemporry Review, p 265, 28-32. Jurkevich, Guyana. (1991).
Unamuno's Intra historia and Jung's Collective Unconscious: Parallels Convergence and Common". Comparative Literature, p. 43, 43-60. Kremer, Jurgen W. (1999).
Facing the Collective Shadow" Revision, 22, 2-5. Never, Andrew. (1996).