The Positive and The Negative about Freud’s Psychoanalysis Theory

Sigmund Freud
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Review of Freud’s Psychoanalysis Theory
Freud pioneered the psychoanalysis theory, which revolutionized psychology and developed a deterministic view of human nature based on instinct and personality. He opines that human beings are a slave to their primitive urges and do not have free will. Freud observed that thought contents are determined by the individual’s psychological and biological drives. He also noted that individuals could make rational decisions and judgments after considering their choices and consequences. Freud used the word ‘instinct,’ which stands for a wide range of impulses. He postulated that these primal instincts are the driving force of the id. Id, according to Freud, deals with the instinctual drives that seek immediate satisfaction according to the pleasure principle. The id seeks immediate satisfaction, and when its needs are not met, the individual gets into a state of anxiety and tension. Freud’s second division of the structure of the brain is the ego. The ego is conscious and governed by the reality principle. The third part of the brain is the superego which confronts the ego with moral rules. The ego tries to reconcile the id's needs and the superego's moral rules to determine the action by the individual. He classified the instincts into four broad categories; self-preservation, aggression, need for love, and the impulse to avoid pain and get pleasure.
Freud placed a lot of emphasis on childhood psychological development as an important determinant of future personality. He postulated that a child’s experiences are manifested in the adult, and it is impossible to disentangle the nature of an individual without understanding his/her childhood. He came up with several stages of a child’s development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. He also emphasized the importance of sexual drive and the much-criticized Oedipus and Electra complexes.
Freud also postulated that repression was the primary cause of neuroticism. He believed that if an individual repressed his instincts, they would lead to a mental conflict. He considered repression as a defense mechanism to avoid mental conflict. He argued that repression works in the short term and eventually leads to irrational behaviors that are uncontrollable. He prescribed psychoanalytic therapy for people who were neurotic. The goal of the therapy is to identify the cause of the repressed feelings, bring them to the conscious mind and find ways to control them.
The positive and negative of Freud’s work
Positives
Freud pioneered a new way of looking at mental illnesses. Before Freud’s theories and practices revolutionized psychotherapy, the previous methods were crude and ineffective. Freud’s psychoanalytic approach has been widely used and has been effective. Freud had a high efficacy rate of treating or rather alleviating the symptoms of mental illnesses by focusing on the unconscious mind and using psychoanalysis. He pioneered a new way of thinking about psychological problems. He also popularized that some thoughts are not in our conscious control. He pioneered a new way of thinking about mental illnesses not roo...