Sigmund Freud and Subconscious

 Sigmund Freud Philosophy

And Theories of Child Development

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is famous for his theories about the subconscious mind.

He moved with his family to Austria, Vienna, at the age of four or five years as far as he remembered. A brilliant student, he entered medical school there.

He was working under the direction of a physiology professor named Ernst Bruck in medical school in Vienna. Bruck was embracing what we now call reductionism where he tried to reduce all human life to biology and chemistry.

Freud spent many years trying himself to reduce personality to neuroscience, a cause which he eventually gave up on.

He was very good at his research on neurophysiology. But only a limited number of positions were available in medical school in Vienna at the time, and there were others ahead of him.

Bruck helped Freud to get grant to study with the great psychiatrist Charcot in Paris, then with his rival Bernheim in Nancy. Both were investigating the use of hypnosis on people with hysteria.

He finished his residence in neurology, where he worked as a director of children's hospital in Berlin, and came back to Vienna. He practiced neuropsychiatry with the help of Joseph Breuer.

Freud books brought him both fame and ostracism. And with a number of very bright sympathizers, he started his psychoanalysis great project.

Sadly, Freud did not accept well those who didn't agree with his thoughts and theories. Some separated with him friendly, while the others went to found competing schools of thought.

The Unconscious Mind

Although Freud did not invent the idea of conscious versus unconscious mind, but he was the one who made it popular.

The Conscious Mind

Is what we are aware of at any particular moment of time; perception, feelings, fantasy, thoughts, memories.

The Preconscious

Is the memory available at our reach. What we can easily call to our conscious mind but were not otherwise thinking of before calling it.

Freud and the Theory of Subconscious

Freud suggested that the largest part of our mind lies in our subconscious. Everything not easily available to our awareness including what was already started there as desires and instincts, and things we unawaringly hide there when we can't bear looking at them and when it's painful to live with them, including sad or bad memories and painful emotions associated with traumatic events.

Freud considered the unconscious to be the source of our motivations.

When Did Subconscious Start?

Instincts and drives, what Freud also call wishes, starts when we were born, with the infant, and is called "it" or "id", which is a call to take care of what we need immediately without delay. Have you ever seen a hungry infant crying himself blue? He wants food, and he wants it now. Well, I don't like to call the infant "it" or think of him or her in the terms of some brainless entity, and I always dream of the day when we can completely decipher their brains.

Freud viewed the baby's id as pure, and as the psychic representative of biology.

If we mentally visualize the full personality as an iceberg, the id will represent the large immersed unseen part of it, completely unconscious, at least most of the time. When you are hungry and deny your need for food, this will begin to attract more and more of your attention until a point comes, if you don't have something to eat and you kept denying your call for food more and more longer, that point will come when you can't think of anything else but food. This is a drive breaking into consciousness.

A small portion of  the mind is open to the world through the window of senses. Around this little bit of consciousness in the first year of our life, some of "it' becomes "I"; some of the "id" becomes the "ego".

The ego relates us to reality in our early life by means of our consciousness. We reach for objects to satisfy our wishes that the "id" creates to represent what we need.

Unlike the id, the ego functions according to the reality principle: "take care of the needs as soon as an appropriate object is found."

As the ego struggles to keep the id (and the baby) happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets objects that help it attaining it's goals. The ego keeps record of both obstacles and aids and a track for rewards and punishments it met in it's way towards achieving goals, by the most influential objects in the world of the baby: mom and dad.

This record of things to avoid and strategies to take forms what we know as "superego", which is not completed until about seven years of age. Although, in some people it's never completed.

Aspects of Superego

There are two aspect of superego. One is the conscience, which is internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called "ego Ideal", which drives from rewards and positive models presented to the child.

The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.

Freud also presented what we know as defense mechanisms that are used to protect the person from negative feelings and alleviate anxiety.