THE 5 MOST IMPORTANT THEORIES OF FREUD IN PSYCHOANALYSIS - PSYCHOLOGY - 2025

The theories of Freud has been influential in the world of psychology and outside it until today. Some of the best known are the principle of pleasure, drive and repression. Concepts such as the unconscious are part of the vocabulary of most people and their definition is due, to a large extent, to the discoveries of this eminent psychoanalyst.

In turn, Freud's theories left their mark on the treatment of psychopathologies, as mental illness was related to the environment in which the patient lives and to his personal, family and social history. This view is opposed to the idea that psychological illnesses are due only to biological or cognitive phenomena exclusively of the subject.

Freud and other psychoanalysts: (from left to right, seated) Freud, Sàndor Ferenczi and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon and Ernest Jones. 1922.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of Psychoanalysis, a practice formulated for the treatment of psychopathological disorders, based on the dialogue between the patient and the psychoanalyst. His work has left an indelible mark on the culture and history of humanity as they have generated substantial changes in the conceptualization of subjectivity.

His theories are not without controversy, of course. Freud was the third most cited author of the 20th century according to the Review of General Psychology .

Many philosophers, such as Karl Popper, have discredited psychoanalysis as pseudoscience, while others, such as Eric Kandel, consider that psychoanalysis "represents the most coherent and intellectually satisfying point of view on the mind."

Differences between psychoanalysis, sexuality and genitality

Before starting to talk about Freud and his theories, it is necessary to clarify that in psychoanalysis, sexuality and genitality are not the same.

Sexuality is a much broader concept, which covers almost the entire life of human beings, since it refers to the ways of relating to others, of loving, hating and feeling.

Genitality is more limited and refers only to genital sexuality, that is to say, intercourse or onanism.

The 5 most important theories of Freud

Throughout his prolific writing career, Freud revised his writings numerous times, adding depth to his arguments or making amends.

We leave here the 5 most important theories outlined by Freud so that the reader can know a little of the vast work of this great thinker:

1- The pleasure principle (and the

Freud and Fliess

Children are completely selfish; they feel their needs intensely and fight hard to satisfy them. ».- Sigmund Freud.

The pleasure principle postulates that the psychic apparatus seeks, as its ultimate goal, to achieve pleasure and avoid displeasure, and thus satisfy biological and psychological needs. Pleasure is the force that guides the process of identifying the person.

It works only in the systemic unconscious, and it is the principle that governs all its operation. That is why unpleasant representations are repressed, because they transgress order.

The pleasure principle unconsciously leads to the attainment of basic survival needs.

Why do we have symptoms?

Knowing that this principle exists, asking yourself this question becomes an obligation. Why would a person suffer from a symptom, suffering in their daily living if they are supposed to live under the pleasure principle?

The answer is in the previous paragraph: the pleasure principle is unconscious, while the reality principle operates in consciousness.

The reality principle is the opposite pole to the pleasure principle, the person is aware of the real environment and knows that he has to adapt to it in order to live in society.

We learn as we mature to repress our instincts based on social rules in order to obtain pleasure in a longer term and in a more diminished way but according to reality.

The subject has an irreconcilable representation and represses it, so he forgets it. But, since the ego is governed by the principle of reality, the representation returns as a return of the repressed, in the form of a symptom.

The subject no longer remembers what it was that he repressed, he only suffers a symptom that maintains a relationship (sometimes close, others distant) with the repressed. The pleasure principle has not been contradicted: the subject prefers to suffer a symptom rather than remember the irreconcilable representation, which remains unconscious.

Is there something beyond the pleasure principle?

After the end of World War I, Freud encountered numerous soldiers who constantly relived the traumas they suffered during the war through dreams. Considering that the dream is a place of fulfillment of the desire (that is, the Principle of pleasure governs), repeating these traumas became an important theoretical contradiction.

Freud set about revising his theory, for which he came to conclude that there is a "source" in the human psyche that is beyond the Principle of pleasure, that is, it does not obey its laws because it exists prior to said principle.

It is an attempt to link or acknowledge the existence (although it may later be repressed) of a representation. It is a step prior to the principle of pleasure and without which it would not exist. Then: the representation is linked to the psychic apparatus - its existence is recognized -, and then it is judged pleasant or unpleasant to take the corresponding action - Principle of pleasure.

This amendment allowed Freud to account for people's compulsion to repetition, in which (whether in therapy space or in everyday life) humans tend to always stumble over the same stone, that is, we repeat over and over the same errors or very similar variations.

2- The drive

Freud and his daughter Anna

Unexpressed emotions never die. They are buried alive and come out later in worse ways. «-Sigmund Freud.

This concept articulates the psychic with the somatic and is called by Freud a hinge concept, to explain sexuality.

There are internal stimuli in the human being that are constant and that, unlike hunger, cannot be appeased through an interaction with something outside, such as eating.

In turn, because they are internal, they cannot be run away either. Referring to the principle of constancy, Freud postulates that the cancellation of this organ stimulus gives an instinctual satisfaction.

The drive consists of four properties:

• Effort / thrust: It is the driving factor. The sum of force or measure of constant work carried by the drive.
• Goal / end: It is the satisfaction achievable when canceling the stimulus from the source.
• Object: It is the instrument by which the drive reaches its goal. It can be part of the body itself and is not determined in advance.
• Source: It is the body itself, its holes, its surface, especially the border areas between the inside and outside. It is experienced as arousal.

The drive is not satisfied in the object, this is the instrument by which it manages to cancel the stimulus, which is its only goal and what gives it satisfaction.

Freud affirms at the beginning that there are two drives that are in conflict: the sexual drives and those of self-preservation. In the journey through his childhood, the child encounters different "typical" objects that satisfy his sexual drive and according to which he goes through different stages:

• Oral stage: The object of satisfaction is the mouth.
• Anal stage: The object of satisfaction is the anus.
• Phallic stage: The object of satisfaction is the penis, in boys, and the clitoris, in girls.
• Latent stage: The child abandons his sexual explorations and engages in more intellectual activities.
• Genital stage: It coincides with the entry into puberty, where the pubescent re-explores their sexuality based on intercourse and reproduction.

Once the repetition compulsion and the Beyond the Pleasure Principle have been conceptualized, Freud changes the drive duality and groups the sexual and self-preservation drives as the Life Drive.

He opposes them to the Death Drive, which is the human's tendency to cancel all stimuli and find a state of "nirvana" where there are no more stimuli, that is, in death. These two drives tend to work together (mixed) but when they separate is when symptoms appear.

3- The repression

"Dreams can be so declared: They are hidden realizations of repressed desires." -Sigmund Feud.

This concept is central to psychoanalytic theory. People have subconscious thoughts that are key in development and in people's lives.

Repression is a psychic defense mechanism: when a representation (an event, a person, or an object) becomes intolerable for the subject, irreconcilable with the accumulation of representations that it houses in its mind, the psychic apparatus represses it and makes it unconscious this representation, so the subject "forgets" it (although in truth, he does not know that he remembers it).

In this way, you can move on with your life “as if” that event, person or object had never been known.

Later, in his text "Repression", Freud identifies two types of repression that are part of every subject: Primary repression and secondary repression:

The primary repression

It is an unconscious operation that founds the mental apparatus. Through this repression, the representation of the sexual drive is inscribed in the psyche, thanks to which the subject is able to desire and seek the fulfillment of her desire.

This repression gives strength to the mental apparatus to attract the repressed and prevent it from becoming conscious.

Secondary repression

Also called repression proper.

The psychic representative of the drive is repressed, that is, that which is intolerable to the subject's psyche and of which he does not want to know anything. Secondary repression is what we describe at the beginning of this section.

The return of the repressed

Freud always stated that there is no such thing as a 100% successful repression, so the repressed always returns and usually does so through a neurotic symptom (an obsession, a hypochondria, for example) or a substitute formation such as a joke, a dream or a slip.

4- The unconscious

«The unconscious is the largest circle that includes within itself the smallest circle of the conscious; Every conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, while the unconscious can stop with this step and still claim the full value as a psychic activity. "-Sigmund Feud.

Intimately linked to repression, the unconscious is another central concept in psychoanalysis and where a large part of the psychoanalytic "action" takes place. It is necessary to clarify beforehand that everything that is repressed is unconscious, but not everything that is unconscious is repressed.

Freud, in his text "The unconscious" expands in depth to explain this concept more clearly, giving three definitions of the unconscious:

Descriptive

It is simply everything that is not conscious.

This property is not necessarily due to the fact that this representation has been repressed, it may happen that it is not a content that should be used at that moment (it is latent), therefore it is "stored" in the unconscious. It is also often called Preconscious.

Dynamic

It is that which is inaccessible to consciousness due to secondary repression, that is, it is those repressed contents.

These contents can only return to consciousness as returns of the repressed, that is, as symptoms or substitute formations, or through therapy, through the word.

Systemic (structural)

It is a structural place within the psyche.

Unlike the other two definitions, this one does not refer to unconscious contents, but to the way the unconscious works as a system of thought.

Here there is no denial, doubt or certainty, as well as contradiction or temporality. This is because there is no word, but endowments.

As an example, let's think of a tree. In doing so, we did two things: think of the word "tree" and imagine a tree. Well, the descriptive and dynamic definitions refer to the word "tree" while the systemic to the representation of a tree.

This separation is what allows two contradictory representations to exist in the systemic unconscious or two different times coexist.

This is the case in dreams, where a person (for example, a friend) can represent others (the friend can also be another friend and a relative simultaneously) and be located in different times (the childhood friend is still in the dream as a child at the same time as the dreamer is an adult).

5- The Oedipus complex

«The sexual desires with respect to the mother that become more intense than the father, is perceived as an obstacle for him; this gives rise to the Oedipus complex. «-Sigmund Freud.

Undoubtedly one of the most important theoretical contributions of psychoanalysis and one of its most relevant theoretical pillars. The Oedipus complex (in the male) maintains that the child wants to seduce his mother but this leads to a conflict with his father, who has forbidden him to take her as his own.

The complex begins in the phallic stage and is a response to maternal seduction, since the child has known his body (and his pleasure zones), he has erogenized it in part thanks to the maternal care he has received such as being caressed, bathed or even cleaned after going to the bathroom.

Since the child cannot carry out his task of seducing his mother, he is forced to accept his own phallic castration, carried out by the paternal prohibition (the installation of the law), so the complex is buried and gives way to the Latency Stage until the arrival of puberty.

Upon reaching the Genital Stage, the child is no longer looking for his mother, but for another woman, but his passage through the Oedipus Complex has left indelible marks on the way in which he will now relate to others and influence his choice in the women you want to take as a couple.

Freud developed this theory based on the male sex, not explaining the development of this theory in women. It would be later Carl Jung who developed the theory of the Electra complex, understood as the female version that explains the Oedipus Complex in women.

Keep enjoying Freud's theories with this video:

References

1. Freud, S.: The interpretation of dreams, Amorrortu Editores (AE), volume IV, Buenos Aires, 1976.
2. Freud, S.: Three essays on sexual theory, AE, VII, idem.
3. Freud, S.: Note on the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis, AE, XII, idem.
4. Freud, S.: Remember, repeat, rework, idem.
5. Freud, S.: Drives and drive destinations, AE, XIV, idem.
6. Freud, S.: Repression, idem.
7. Freud, S.: The unconscious, idem.
8. Freud, S.: Beyond the pleasure principle, AE, XVIII, idem.
9. Freud, S.: The burial of the Oedipus complex, AE, XIX, idem.
10. Freud, S.: The I and the id, idem.
11. Freud, S.: The infantile genital organization, idem.
12. Freud. S.: Scheme of psychoanalysis, AE, XXIII, idem.
13. Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology 6 (2): 139–152. doi: 10.1037 / 1089-2680.6.2.139.
14. Kandel ER., "Biology and the future of psychoanalysis: a new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited." American Journal of Psychiatry 1999; 156 (4): 505-24.
15. Laznik, D.: Syllabus of the subject Psychoanalysis: Freud. Publications Department of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
16. Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.; Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology 6 (2): 139–152.
17. Kandel ER., "Biology and the future of psychoanalysis: a new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited." American Journal of Psychiatry 1999; 156 (4): 505-24.