Neuroscience and Personality: Freud's Idea of the Conscious, Preconscious and Unconscious Mind

Freud believed human behavior was not consciously controlled, and credited three parts in the mind to any psychological activity. These are called the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious. Personality too was given three parts, the id, the super ego and the ego. Freud believed these parts in our mind have their individual parts to play in the way we go about life. He also stated the only way to work through conflicts that arise from our subconscious and unconscious mind is through dream analysis and psychoanalysis. Other key concepts in psychodynamic theory are the psychosexual stages of development, anxiety, defence mechanisms, and free association.

The history of Psychodynamic psychology originated with Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century. Freud proposed a psychodynamic theory to which personality consists of the id. The Id is present at birth and it resides in the world of unconsciousness. Freud also said that the unconscious is also a place where human instinctual biological drives reside. The drives direct our behaviour towards choices that promise to satisfy our basic human needs. The drives ensure our survival like drinking water and eating food, the desire for reproduction and the necessity for aggression.

The psychodynamic approach was proposed by Freud. This approach towards personality is based on the notion of underlying forces such as the id, ego and superego which are either present from birth or develop during childhood shape our behaviour and personality as such. Experiences in childhood are proposed to be the basis of human personality, according to Freud and as such Psychodynamic theory proposes that some undesirable unbalances between the id and superego can create the arising of ego defence mechanisms which explain individual differences in behaviour. Freudian theory has been adapted by neo-Freudians, however while psychodynamic

Psychodynamic theories of Sigmund Freud focus on how a child’s instinctual mind interacts with his or her social environment and the important people in it to produce many characteristics and behaviors. There are the structure of the mind and the structure of personality.

The Psychodynamic Approach was first approach by Sigmund Freud; he dealt with the understanding that personality came from our unconscious state of mind. And that unconscious state interacted to determine our thoughts, behaviors, and feelings (Bernstein, 425). Freud also created the psychoanalytical theory stating that personality led the way to handling psychological disorders. He divided personality into three main topics; which are the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the basis of each human being’s instincts we are all born with. It is the immediate wants I crave; it may show more selfish side. The ego is the part that subdues the id and calms it down. It allows me to think and realize certain actions may upset someone else around me. The superego is

Behaviour determined by irrational forces, unconscious motivations 0biological/instinctual drives, evolve through key psycho sexual stages in first 6 years of life

Sigmund Freud, a well-known psychologist portrays an interest in the Psychodynamic approach to Psychology. Freud developed a theory relating to personality in the aftermath of his observation of patients experiencing a disorder called conversion hysteria. He took particular interest in the unconscious

The psychodynamic perspective was originally theorised by Sigmund Freud. Psychodynamic theory suggests that much of human motivation, action, and thought, are governed by unconscious mental processes. These processes can conflict with one another causing compromises between the contending motives. Freud argued that these mental processes and motivations are determined by two biological drives: aggression and sex. These drives, Freud suggests, are internal states of tension that augment in pressure until satisfied (Burton et al., 2009).

The psychodynamic approach founded by Sigmund Freud was a lot of our behavior, is determined by unconscious thoughts, memories. Freud developed the first complete theory of mind and is the founder of a series of techniques called psychoanalysis. This aims to explore the unconscious mind by using techniques, such as free association, dream interpretation etc. and then and be used treat abnormal behavior. Psychodynamic psychology ignores the aspects of science and instead focuses on trying to get inside the head of individuals to make logic of their relationships, experiences and how they see the world. (McLeod, 2007). Freud’s theories

Psychodynamic Approaches were derived from Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory. He believed that many of the things that we do are not just derived from our consciousness but also from our sub-consciousness. He believed that everything that we do as children from

Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through internal conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego (Wikipedia, 2017).

The psychoanalytic perspective, is the outlook that behavior and personality are effected by the conflict between one’s inner dreams n and expectation of society. Most of this conflict occurs in unconscious, which is outside the knowledge of an individual. Renowned psychologist, Freud established the psychoanalytic theory as an explanation for perplexed phenomena such as the meaning behind dreams, slips of the tongue, and behavioral reflex reactions to stressful situations. The unconscious is a primary focus in psychoanalytic theory due to its typical development in childhood and the ways in which it influences nearly every detail of an individual’s life. The unconscious mind also holds unvented memories and unexpressed urges that make their process into the conscious mind through a variety of different means. However, topographical theory of the mind states that conscious, preconscious, and unconscious serve as motivating forces in human behavior. Corsin & Wedding (2011) define the conscious as mental activity which individuals are fully aware of, preconscious as thoughts and feelings that could be easily brought to mind and unconscious as thoughts, feelings, and desires of which one is unaware of.

Freud viewed the unconscious mind as the primary source of human behavior. Freud saw the conscious mind as only the “tip of the iceberg” of the mind, because people are not always conscious of every decision they decide to make. For example, you may consciously think ‘I’m thirsty.’ and drink water, but according to Freud, that only scratches the surface of the decisions we make. According to Freud, the unconscious mind contains “significant” and “disturbing” thoughts and experiences that we need to keep out of the conscious mind. Traumatic events would be one such example of a thought that needed to be kept out of the conscious mind, and therefore was

Psychoanalysis was the first formal theory of personality influenced by Sigmund Freud. Freud divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. He later revised this notion and

In his attempt to understand human motivations and behaviors, Freud developed more structured, mechanistic and scientifically based theory of the human mind. While his methods were congruent with the zeitgeist of his time, and his discoveries and ideas were invaluable, he ended up triggering an unintentionally deleterious trend by attempting to make the study of the mind objective (Aron, 1991) thus de-personalizing psychology (i.e., loss of the subject-subject relation in favor of the object-subject).