Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939) is the founder of psychoanalysis and he industrialized the psychoanalytical law while the years 1885 to 1939 when he died in England a refugee from the Nazi regime prior to World War Two.
Freud's law of the mind was not a psychological school of conception but came out of his work in medicine, particularly the problems of the nervous system. Freud dissatisfied with the way psychiatry treated the mentally ill by classifying, that all abnormal action arose from the explanation of disease, but he proposed that some forms of abnormality arose from an imbalance of the mind due to the stresses and strains of everyday life. Freud could not experiment with the techniques of today but relied on consideration of his patients in the procedure of treatment, which lead to his understanding of a law of the mind.
Freud's case studies led him to believe that many of his patients reported disturbances in their daily lives through hysterical reactions to life events that they could not cope with. Freud discovered that through prognosis of their childhood experiences and current problems he could see a link (association) in the middle of their current behaviour and that of childhood trauma. After much conception and discovery Freud industrialized his law of personality based on the idea of conflict in the mind as a basis for a splitting of the personality into three areas of competing self interests that struggled for dominance within the person's mind.
Freud saw personality split into three areas that of the Super-Ego, which was industrialized through parental guidance initially and refined by schooling and peer group pressures. The second and more dynamic was the Id, that part of the mind that controlled biological needs and wants. The Id sought pleasure and avoided negative consequences. The last part was the Ego in which the persons present reality decided on the best procedure of action in the middle of the controlling aspects of the Super-Ego and the Id. For example the Id may require satisfying the need for hunger, this
Freud saw as a drive that was biologically motivated. Any way the Super-Ego may be in conflict with this request through the modern idea of diet and thinness and so put pressure of the mind to forestall the need being satisfied. The Ego must then step in and referee this conflict by testing reality. Is the required hunger the consequent of a length of time without food or is it the desire of looking desirable food such as chocolate and wanting this even though there is no useful requirement for its consumption? The conflict in normal population would be resolved by the Ego understanding of the current state of weight or need of the individual. The Id could be suppressed by the Ego from satisfying its desire and so the Super-ego would triumph over its rival. On the other hand if the Ego allows the consumption of the chocolate the Id has triumphed and the need satisfied.
Freud believed that these processes where mainly unconscious in the respect of satisfying biological needs and the mind only brings these to the face while a conflict of interests. In this case the desire for chocolate would become known only for the time of debate. Any way Freud was much more curious in his day of the underlying reasons for hysteria complicated in the frustration of the Id by collective institution particularly animated sexual frustration surrounded by women clients who while this era would have been branch to many taboos about their sexuality and the role they were imaginable to play in society. Dominance by a male society led many of Freud's clients to suffer guilt at inappropriate feelings that they would need to suppress in order to fulfil their role of subordinate females. Many of Freud's patience deflected these conflicts in the middle of desire (Id) and collective expectations (Super-ego) by building defences against thinking anguish. These defences Freud became to list as the mind's way of protecting itself from dissonence (Festinger 68).
Defence mechanisms came in several forms. Repression pushes unacceptable thoughts into unconscious; an example would be child abuse. A young woman whose stepfather has touched her genital area while her formative years may feel guilty that she found this touching pleasurable but later learned that it was morally wrong. Having pushed these thoughts and memory into unconsciousness she later transfers these feelings to others by projecting her guilt. When she at last marries she may find that her husbands sexual advances unconsciously remind her of the abuse and she rejects her husband and becomes frigid in her advent to lovemaking. Her husband may become abusive through frustration and merely reconfirm her inner-feelings that men are plainly abusers. Freud believed that through therapy the woman could be given understanding into her childhood trauma and through catharsis would relive the trauma and be able to put it into perspective and so relax her defensive attitude towards her current situation.
Other defence mechanisms that Freud explained were Reaction Formation, in which the opposite of an unacceptable impulse is expressed, Rationalisation where socially standard reasons are given for unacceptable motives, Displacement, an emotional response is redirected towards a safe object and corner where unacceptable motives/impulses are transferred to others.
Freud believed that his law was heavily rooted in the childhood experiences of his patients and that the process of being raised within a family has lasting effects on the personality of the individual. From this idea he industrialized a stage law of childhood emotional increase based on sexual maturation of the child from baby to adult. In the first of these stages the pleasure for the child is derived from the mouth as the instrument of exploration. Babies pick up objects and put them into their mouths to contemplate their shape and texture. Pleasing textures would match the feel of the breast in which the child already company with the pleasure of the Id's need for nourishment. After the first year the child moves to the Anal stage in which Freud believed that pleasure was derived from anal excretions and the keeping or releasing of faeces. If a mom fusses over the baby when potty training the child realises that he can have approval and attention from its mom by giving its expulsion to her in the form of faeces. The mother's pleasure in receiving this is expressed as attention giving behaviour. For other babies withholding faeces military the mom to continually attend to the child and showing concern at the lack of production.
Caution here should be noted that Freud was giving an example here of behaviour and not emphasising this one and only example. The same consequent can be witnessed in the child that throws its spoon onto the floor and witnesses its mom retrieving it. The child will throw the spoon several times to the floor having realised that attention can be won by repeated behaviour. The next stage after the age of three Freud saw as the Phallic where pleasure was achieved through the manipulation of the genitals. Children learn that touching themselves can generate a pleasant feeling. Parents often discourage this behaviour though censure. Often by telling the microscopic girl that that is dirty or not nice. Boys on the other hand may be encouraged by a Father's pride at his boy discovering his manhood. Girls may be brought to a reliance that that area is dirty which Freud believed led in later life to equate with uneasiness at being touched by a man sexually. By the age of six years Freud believed that a period of Latency began in which sexual motivation losses its importance up until the age of puberty in which the Genital stage begins through the discovery of pleasure through heterosexual relationships. Freud felt that it was important that each stage was progressed through ordinarily for the adult to function within society without perversions advent to the fore.
Freud was particularly curious in the conflict early on in childhood in the middle of the emotional battles for attention seeking. In boys he called this the Oedipus complicated after the legend of a son killing his father to marry his mother. Freud saw that boys would often compete for theirs mother's affection with their father who seemed to dominate her time. At first this would be seen in the form of tantrums but later the boy would try to emulate his father by copying his way of behaving to at last replace him in the mother's affection. Much of this is unconscious in character and ordinarily resolves itself through maturation. In girls a weaker version was the Electra complicated in which they emulated their mothers to impress the father and this could take the form of sexual flirting with the father to encourage his attentions. In today's society with such a taboo on incestuous relations many modern fathers aware of sexual abuse have been made to feel uneasy in their relations with their daughters as being misinterprated by others as not natural.
Once Freud had formulated his law he believed that it was universal in nature, meaning it could apply to all cultures and that through these insights patients could be understood in the light of their emotional conflicts, rather than a medical model of abnormality that strived for biological explanations of disturbed minds resulting in maladaptive behaviour.
Much of today's treatments in which Neo-Freudians work is still based in his reliance in childhood improvement and adult conflict in the middle of the opposing areas of the Id, Super-Ego and Ego. Eric Berne (64) industrialized a popular version of Freud's ideas in the change of the Id, Ego and Super-Ego by the model of population acting as Child, Adult and Parent. This form of prognosis was called Transactional prognosis in which the communications in the middle of adults where routed in choosing behaviour that brought about a desired outcome. His sublime book "Games population Play" shows that Freud's ideas can be interpreted in many forms. Other theorists such as Karen Horney believed the Freud did not reconsider the complicated feelings of women and that his law is heavily based on Victorian attitudes to the dominance of a patriarchal society. Despite all these criticisms Freud's ideas have become part of the western cultural, identity and language. The most popular form of psychoanalysis is Freud's customary version, which looks at the dynamics of the patient's history and its effects on their current behaviour. Using such techniques as Dream prognosis to locate unconscious symbolism to Free association in which the inpatient expresses deep emotional thoughts and desires, later to be known as the "talking cure". Freud felt that other areas such as transference and counter-transference in which the inpatient would project the father role onto the therapist and that the therapist would project their mind-set onto the inpatient all gave insightful material in which to help the inpatient accumulate control over their mind and behaviour.
References: Gross, R. (1999) science of mind a New Introduction, Pgs. 10/11, 101/103 507/510.
Berne, E (1964) Games population Play, Pgs. 1/37.
Feldman, R (1993) understanding Psychology, Pgs. 588/9.
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