Austrian neurologist who became interested in the patients who exhibited physical symptoms for which there seemed no physical basis. At the same time that Freud was questioning reasons for these patients' difficulties the work of Charcot, a hypnotist, aroused his curiosity regarding the relationship of the mind and body and the powers of mental suggestion. Over the several decades of his professional work, Freud developed a complex psychoanalytic, psychosexual theory of personality that has become a basis for much modern work of later psychologists and psychiatrists.
According to Freud, much of human behavior derives from motivations within the unconscious, the hidden emotions and memories that are not accessible to the intellectual consciousness. Many memories regarding childhood experiences may be repressed, and an individual may cope with remote and irrational urges by developing defense mechanisms which allow the person to function. These may range from repression, sublimation, and regression to projection, reaction formation, and rationalization, terms which have become a part of the vocabulary of a culture accustomed to Freudian theory. According to Freud, the basic human motivations are aggression and sex.
The stages of development, according to Freud, are the oral stage, the anal period, the infantile genital period, the latency period, and the mature genital period (Thomas, 1992, p. 143). Freud divides the levels of consciousness into the id (instinctual drives), the ego, and the superego which develop over the maturing process of the individual.
Freud's work was not developed from direct observation of children. He formed his theories from the free associations and dreams of the neurotic adults that he treated in his psychiatric practice. One criticism of his work is the fact that he worked only with individuals who had difficulty, and it is questionable whether his ideas could accurately by extended to norm...