Sigmund Freud's Psychodynamic Perspectives

474 Words2 Pages

Psychodynamic perspectives are defined as ideal views stating that personality is unconscious. According to Sigmund Freud 's psychoanalytic theory, sex was the heart of all human activity. However, Freud’s definition of sex was “anything that provided organ pleasure”. Freud developed his approach to personality, by working with his patients that had hysteria. By listening and observing them, he came to the conclusion that everything that is done, had an unconscious cause. A way to demonstrates Freud’s perspective is using the iceberg analogy, there are three parts that make up the iceberg, these parts include the id, ego , and superego. The id is basically the drive that doesn’t think the situation through, it is known as the pleasure principle, the ego is the drive that puts the situation into reality, it’s known as the reality principle, the superego is literally the brain of all three. Ironically, the superego is what judges what is right and wrong, also called conscience, an example would be me wanting to eat ice cream. My id yells for me to eat the ice cream right now, while my ego says that I can just eat a small bowl …show more content…

In Freud’s mind, he believed that a sexual pleasure was met at each stage. Furthermore, Freud’s views on personality were popular, but several theorists had slightly different views. Instead of sex being the heart of human existence, Karen Horney believed that security was the motive for human existence. Next was Carl Jung, he went off of Freud’s viewpoint of unconsciousness, but he believed that Freud did not proceed deep enough to find all the facts. The last theorist that was mentioned was Alfred Adler. Adler used a different method of explaining personality. Adler’s individual psychology explained that people are motivated by trying to be perfect, not by