Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was and Austrian psychiatrist who was born in 1856 and died in 1939. He worked at Vienna
and later in England. He is the inventor of psycho-analysis as a method of treatment. Born in Moravia, he
lived most of his life in Vienna, receiving his medical degree from the Univ. of Vienna in 1881.
Freud was a doctor, writer, researcher and a professor. When Freud graduated from the medical school and
started doing research that was the time when hypnotism was a prevalent method of treatment of mental
disorders. He was impressed with works of Charcot, using hypnotism. Working with Joseph Breuer he saw
the advantages and disadvantages of hypnotism as a method of treatment.
His medical career began with an apprenticeship under J. M. Charcot in Paris, and soon after his return to
Vienna he began his famous collaboration with Josef Breuer on the use of hypnosis in the treatment of
hysteria.
Based upon his practice, he formulated the concept of unconscious mind and its role in creating mental
diseases. Freud discovered the unconscious functions of mind which according to him were responsible for
mental diseases.
Freud also thought that the parts of the mind play a dominant role in creating mental diseases. He gave the
parts of mind as follows:

Id
The Id is the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id – want, want, want.
The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. And it has only one rule--the
“pleasure principle”: “I want it and I want it all now”.

Ego
The Ego functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego develops out of growing awareness that you
can’t always get what you want. The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the “reality principle”.
The Ego realizes the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the Superego. The Ego's job
is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and bear the long-term consequences in mind. The Ego
denies both instant gratification and pious delaying of gratification.

The Superego
The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop. It might be called the moral part of the mind. The
Superego becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly
strives for perfection, even though this perfection/ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility. Its
power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.
The Superego has two subsystems: Ego Ideal and Conscience. The Ego Ideal provides rules for good
behavior, and standards of excellence towards which the Ego must strive. The Ego ideal is basically what
the child’s parents approve of or value. The Conscience is the rules about what constitutes bad behavior.
The Conscience is basically all those things that the child feels his or her parents will disapprove or punish.
According to Freud, all human beings develop psychologically and during this process they pass through
different stages of psycho-sexual development. He said that the unconsciousness expresses itself in mental
symptoms, dreams and psychopathology of everyday life. He developed the theory of psycho-pathology of
everyday life. Slips of tongue, slips of memory etc. are representative of psychopathology of everyday life.
He developed the theory of interpretation of dreams. He explained dream work in terms of: Manifest
Contents; Latent Content, Displacement, Condensation, Symbolism etc.
Sigmund Freud formulated a theory of defense mechanisms. Some of them include denial, repression,
regression and projection. The id, the ego, and the superego formulate the model that Freud used to
describe the components of human personality. The ego, tempered by the superego, is that conscious part
that acts as mediator between the instinctual drives of the unconscious id and the social environment.
According to Freud, the ego has developed what he calls defense mechanisms, to cover for the wild
demands of the id, which would rarely be socially acceptable. All of the defenses can be described as a
combination of denial or repression with different ways of rationalization.
When we rationalize, we are distorting the facts to make the event or our own impulses less threatening;
that is, diluting the anxiety to a manageable level. We often come to believe our own distortions, or excuses,
or even lies.
Repression
The unconscious purpose of repression operates in a person who is not able to recall a threatening situation
or may completely forget that a disliked person ever was a part of his/her life. Phobias can be examples of
repression because the person has an unreasonable fear but may have no idea how it originated.
Denial
Denial is characterized by having a conscious awareness at some level, but simply denies the reality of the
experience by pretending it is not there. An example: a person who faints at a horrible real-life occurrence,
such as the death of a loved one. Or, that same person might intellectually know that a person has died but
refuses to “accept it” while she may still wait for the usual time the person came back from work.
On a lighter note, a student may refuse to pick up her final grade from a difficult class because she knows it
is not an acceptable grade. She simply denies the reality of the grade. As a defense mechanism, denial
becomes more difficult to maintain as one matures. Its use requires much energy and the mind looks at
other possibilities of defense.
Regression
Regression involves a movement back in developmental time to when a person felt safe and secure. Often,
that is childhood. For example, person who has suffered a difficult divorce or death of a spouse may want
to revisit the home of his/her childhood – those tender years before pain overruled all other feelings.
Projection
Projection is attributing your own unacceptable impulses to someone else. The impulses are still judged
unacceptable but they belong to someone else, not you. At that point you are free to criticize that person
for having such terrible impulses. The final result is that you no longer feel threatened and you can maintain
your self-esteem by ignoring an objectionable aspect of yourself.
These were some examples of defenses that a person develops. Based upon his observations, Freud also
developed a theory of neurosis. According to his theory:
Neurosis=Predisposition + trauma
Which means that Neurosis is the result of a predisposition which is inclination or a tilt toward something,
and trauma which is a sudden shock resulting from, for example, an unexpected incident.
Based upon his experience he formulated his method of treatment of mental disorders which is called
psychoanalysis. The procedure of psychoanalysis includes:
o Free association
o Interpretation of dreams
o Interpretation of psychopathology of everyday life
o Analysis of resistance
o Analysis of transference
Freud also wrote extensively on ancient religions, social psychology and other topics.

Anna Freud
Anna Freud was born on December 3, 1895 and she died on October 9, 1982. She was the sixth and last
child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to
the newly born field of psychoanalysis.
Her field of specialization was Child Psychology. As such, the formation of the fields of child
psychoanalysis and child developmental psychology can be attributed to Anna Freud. Her main
contribution in this field was the Identification with aggressor among the children who dominates the rest
of the children.
Anna Freud furthermore developed different techniques of assessment and treatment of children disorders,
thereby contributing to our understanding of anxiety and depression as significant problems among
children.

Heinz Hartmann
Heinz Hartmann was born in 1894 at Vienna, Austria and he died in 1970. He was a psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst. He is considered one of the founders and principal representatives of ego psychology.
Hartmann was born to a family known for producing writers and academics. His own father was a
professor of history, and his mother was a pianist and sculptor. Hartmann’s interest was in Freudian
theories.
He chose to enter into analysis with Freud and was noted as a shining star amongst analysts of his
generation. His work marked the development of the theoretical movement known as Ego-psychology. He
elaborated the functions of ego. He stated that Ego integrates and coordinates tendencies in humans.

Ernst Kris
Being a follower of Freud, Ernst Kriss further elaborated the role of ego. According to him Ego controls
regression.

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Born with personality is an accident but dying as a personality is an achievement.