Before Freud, the self exploration is more about conscious self. And people’s behavior is mostly analyzed during the time they are conscious: awake and alive. However, one third of a person’s life is spent sleeping. People dream during sleep. Is dream important or is it just meaningless or unrealistic to people’s life?
Freud was a psychologist and he spent most of his time analyzing people’s unconsciousness: while people sleep. Freud believed that the self is multilayered. On the basis of consciousness, he divided the self into the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. He also divided the mental functions into the id, the ego and the superego. The two models he used are similar, but different. The id is located in the same place as the unconscious. The ego and superego consist of elements of both the conscious and unconscious.
In Freud’s theory, the unconscious exerts dominant influence upon people’s personality. People’s basic instincts, such as craving, aggression and sexual orientation, exist in the unconscious. The instincts look for satisfaction or gratification and are the stimulus for action. The unconscious is not observable and tend to work in an irrational or illogical way. It is manifested by dreams or “slips of the tongue”. In contrast, the conscious is observable and operates in a rational and practical way. In both the unconscious and the conscious, the stimulus motivates people to act for satisfaction. However, the means taken by them to achieve the goal are different. The conscious takes consequences into consideration, while the unconscious does not. The conscious has control upon the irrational tendency of the unconscious. The pressure of the conscious upon the unconscious is suppression. Without any suppression, the consequences can be devastating, such as emotional eruption or sexual assault.
Repression is a defense mechanism which is utilized by people unconsciously to deny a traumatic memory a place in the conscious. The unconscious is a timeless and an unknown realm to people and it greatly influences people’s daily conscious functions. Traumatic unconscious memory from childhoods can cause serious behavior problems, such as Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
The unconscious memories can be traced during dreams or by means of psychoanalysis therapy. During dreams, people do not have pressure from the conscious and their instincts can be satisfied without thinking of the consequences. Psychoanalysis therapy is used to release the repression to trace true emotions and experiences from childhood. The therapy helps bring the unconscious to the preconscious, which is the reservoir for memories to easily surface to the conscious when some slight exertion is placed. The root causes of abnormal behavior are acknowledged by patients through psychoanalysis therapy. Then, their behavior problems can be treated accordingly.
The Id, ego and superego contribute to people’s behavior. The Id is in the same location as the unconscious and it contains the primitive instincts and it is unrealistic. The ego is realistic, but it has no concept of right or wrong. The superego recognizes the morals which are learnt from their parents or others during childhood. The superego controls id’s impulses and guide ego to strive for moralistic goals or perfection. The ego mediates between the desire of the id and the morality of superego.
People understand their conscious lives and the unconscious is often overlooked. Freud brought the concept of the unconscious to light and stressed that the unconscious influences people’s lives more than any others. The two models Freud utilized overlapped with each other.
Understanding of the two models help people understand the root causes of some behavior problems. People’s behavior is then guided for morality and perfection.
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