Sigmund Freud Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Sigmund Freud - Essay Example (Cherry, 2014) Freud’s theory states that all intuitive energy is produced by the libido. Freud proposed that our mental states were affected by two contending strengths: cathexis and anticathexis. Cathexis was portrayed as a financing of mental energy in an individual, thought or object. Through anticathexis ego prevents the id from performing actions that are not socially acceptable. In addition to this Freud believed that human behaviour was motivated by two gut feelings: life and death. Life is connected to basic needs such as survival and etc. Death instinct is related to self destructive behaviour. In the basic structure of personality the mind is organized in two ways, consciousness and unconsciousness. The conscious mind includes all those things that we are aware of. The unconscious mind consists of things like wishes, desires, memories and etc; our mind is not aware of these however they continue to have an influence on our mind. He compared the human mind to an iceberg. The tip that is visible represents the consciousness and the rest represents the unconsciousness. Freud also divides the mind into three different modules; the id, ego and superego. The stages of development state that as children grow they go through some psychosexual stages. At each stage the libido focuses on a different body part. If however there is a problem in one of the stages, the process of development might get stuck. There can be obsession with something that might be related to that stage. (Cherry, 2014) Sigmund Freud, in addition to his excellent and sweeping theories of the human mind, he left his imprint on various people who turned out to be some of psychology’s greatest researchers. Some of the well known names are Anna Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Erik Erikson. (Cherry, 2014). However he was confronted by Otto Rank,