According to the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of development, every person is born with innate sexual instincts. The internal mental instance - It - is a hereditary factor, and the influence of the external environment, society determines the emergence of consciousness and the Super-I. It and the Super-I, heredity and the external environment put pressure on the I, and the influences of the environment displace sexual drives, being with them in antagonistic, contradictory relations. Society acts as a source of all kinds of traumas.
Out of these conclusions grows the theory of development as the theory of childhood trauma. Personal development is seen by Freud as coinciding with psychosexual development. Features of the stages of the latter in a child (oral, anal, phallic, genital) determine the fate of life, the type of character and personality, as well as a variety of mental disorders (pathologies, neuroses), life problems and difficulties in an adult.
Each of the stages of psychosexual development is characterized by a certain way of manifestation of sexual energy (libido) through erogenous zones characteristic of a given age. If the libido is not adequately satisfied, a person runs the risk of stopping at this stage and certain personality traits are fixed in him.
According to Freud, psychosexual activity begins during breastfeeding, when the baby's mouth becomes an erogenous zone - a zone of pleasure ( oral stage). It remains so throughout a person’s life, even in adulthood there are residual manifestations of oral behavior: chewing gum, biting nails, smoking, kissing, overeating, drinking alcohol, oral sex, etc.
All infants experience certain difficulties associated with weaning from the mother's breast, nipple, horn, because this deprives them of the corresponding pleasure, and the greater these difficulties, the stronger the concentration of libido in the oral stage. If a child received excessive or insufficient stimulation in infancy and there was a fixation at the oral stage, then, according to Freud, he will form oral-passive personality type. He will expect a “maternal attitude” towards himself from the world around him, constantly seek support and approval, and will turn out to be overly dependent and trusting.
In the second half of the first year of life, the second phase of the oral stage begins - oral-aggressive, or oral-sadistic when a child develops teeth and biting becomes a means of expressing dissatisfaction and frustration caused by the absence of the mother or the delay in gratification. Fixation at this stage is expressed in adults in such personality traits as a love of debate, pessimism, critical "nibbling", cynicism, a tendency to exploit and dominate others in order to satisfy one's own needs.
When fixing at the oral stage, the following personality traits are formed: insatiability, greed, dissatisfaction with everything offered, the desire to enjoy the habit of smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating, being verbally aggressive, engaging in oral sex etc. Already at this stage, according to Freud, people are divided into optimists and pessimists.
With toilet training, the focus shifts first to sensations related to defecation ( anal stage), and later on those associated with urination ( urethral phase). During this period, children enjoy holding and expelling feces.
Freud showed that the way parents teach their child to use the toilet has an impact on his later personal development. If they behave inflexibly, insisting: "Now go to the potty", the child has a protest, a tendency to "hold", constipation begins, anal-holding personality type, which is characterized by stubbornness, stinginess, punctuality, methodicalness, inability to endure disorder and uncertainty.
Parental strictness in this aspect also leads to the fact that there is anal ejector type, which is characterized by a tendency to destruction, restlessness, impulsiveness, even sadistic cruelty. If parents encourage their children to empty their bowels regularly and praise them for this, then, according to Freud, the ability to self-control develops, positive self-esteem is cultivated, and even creative forces develop.
Finally, around the age of 4, these private desires are combined, interest in the genitals begins to predominate ( phallic phase). Children can examine their genitals, masturbate, show interest in birth and sexual relations, spy on sexual relations parents, experience sexual urges. At the same time, the Oedipus complex (or Electra in girls) develops, the essence of which lies in a predominantly positive attitude towards the parent of the opposite sex and aggressive behavior towards the parent of the same sex.
According to Freud, children later part with these tendencies because of the fear of castration. At the age of 5-7 years, the boy suppresses, displaces from consciousness his sexual desires in relation to his mother and begins to identify himself with his father (adopts his traits): he masters the norms and models of male role behavior, learns the basic moral standards, i.e., the Super-I is formed as a result of overcoming the Oedipal complex. In the case of excessive love, guardianship of the boy by the mother, or an incomplete family, or in the case of maternal coldness, alienation, the boy has difficulty in overcoming the oedipal complex. In his later life, psychological difficulties may then appear (the "mama's boy" syndrome, the boy's increased dependence on his mother, as a result of which the man is not even able to create his own family, meet his love) or deviations (the "Don Juan" syndrome, a tendency to homosexuality , incest).
Girls overcome the Electra complex (according to the Greek myth, Elektra persuades her brother to kill their mother and her lover and avenge the death of their father), suppress the attraction to their father and identify with their mother.
Adult men with fixation on the phallic stage behave boldly, boastfully, recklessly, strive to achieve success, to prove their masculinity that "they are real men" by conquering women, as Don Juan did (show phallic-narcissistic character). In women, phallic fixation leads to flirting, seducing, promiscuity, dominance, assertiveness and self-confidence. Phallic fixation causes the formation of a hysterical character in women.
The unresolved problems of the Oedipus complex were regarded by Freud as the main source of subsequent neurotic behaviors, especially those associated with impotence, frigidity, homosexuality, incest, and the search for a partner who would be a "replacement" of parents. According to this psychologist, the most important periods in a child's life are completed before the age of 5: then the main structures of the personality are formed (the structures of the I and the Super-I have already been formed). The phallic stage corresponds to the emergence of such traits as self-observation, prudence, rational thinking, exaggeration of social manifestations of behavior characteristic of one sex or another.
Latent stage(5-12 years old) is characterized by a decrease in sexual interest, the psychic instance of I completely controls the needs of the It, the energy of a person is directed to schooling, mastering the universal experience and culture, various forms of behavior characteristic of this sex, to establishing friendly relations with peers and adults beyond family environment.
During this period, the child begins to enjoy the achievement of success in a particular type of activity (study, sports, creativity, etc.). Excessive fixation at this stage causes an increased tendency to ambition, achieving success at any cost, to careerism, forms the character of a “workaholic”, for whom interests, success in work, career, business become the main content of life, and love, family, children, friends and etc. are shifted to the background, hidden, of little significance. Fixation at the latent stage also causes the formation of a schizoid character.
With the onset of puberty, genital stage sexual development, when sexual drives and interests are intensified and concentrated on certain members of the opposite sex. According to Freud, all adolescents in early adolescence go through a “homosexual period”, prefer the company of peers of the same sex with them and even episodic homosexual games. However, gradually the partner of the opposite sex becomes the object of libido energy and courtship begins. The passions of youth usually lead to the choice of a marriage partner and the creation of a family.
genital stage(12-18 years old) is characterized by the return of childhood sexual desires, all former erogenous zones are combined, and there is a desire for normal sexual intercourse. However, its implementation can be difficult, and then regressions are possible, returns to the previous stages of development: the strengthening of the aggressive aspirations of the id, the oedipal complex and the aspirations for homosexuality.
Normal development, according to Freud, occurs through the mechanism of sublimation, and development proceeding through the mechanisms of repression, regression or fixation gives rise to pathological characters. The two most striking types of character that are formed at this stage are described: psychic homosexuality and narcissism.
People with psychic homosexuality do not manifest it as a sexual perversion, but build their lives by preferring friends and close ties in the company of people of the same sex to the family, giving priority to friendship and activities in the circle of people of the same sex.
The second type of sexual character is narcissism, when all the energy of the libido is directed by a person to himself. Attention is concentrated on oneself, one's actions and experiences. The main thing is self-satisfaction and complacency.
Under favorable circumstances, development ends with the onset psychological maturity , the main features of which are:
- the ability of a person to love another by himself, and not for the sake of satisfying his sexual needs;
- the desire of a person to manifest himself in productive work, in creating something new and useful for people.
But not everyone reaches this stage; many people, for various reasons, seem to "get stuck" in the previous stages. Fixation on them represents the inability to move from one psychosexual stage to another. It leads to an excessive expression of the needs characteristic of the stage at which the stop occurred, forming the character and type of personality, the specific problems of adult life.
Thus, early childhood experiences play a critical role in shaping the adult personality.
Fixation can occur both as a result of frustration (when the child's psychosexual needs are suppressed by parents and do not find optimal satisfaction), or as a result of overprotection on the part of parents, when they do not allow the child to control himself. In any case, according to Freud, there is an excessive accumulation of libido, which later, in adulthood, can be expressed in the form of "residual behavior", a specific character and specific deviations.
Freud and his followers developed a detailed dynamic system in which various emotional and psychosomatic disorders are correlated with specific features of libido development and maturation.
Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, studied the patterns of child development and noted that in parallel with the sexual (oral, anal, phallic, latent, pubertal stages) there is a corresponding development of aggressiveness (biting, spitting, grasping with a hand as oral aggressiveness, then destruction and cruelty, sadism - at the anal stage, then - lust for power, boasting, arrogance at the phallic stage, and everything ends with dissocial manifestations in adolescents at the pubertal stage).
Each phase of a child's development, according to A. Freud, is the result of resolving the conflict between internal instinctive drives and the restrictive requirements of the external social environment. Normal child development occurs in leaps and bounds, not gradually step by step, but forward and back again, with progressive and regressive processes in their constant alternation. Children in their development take, as it were, two steps forward and one step back. It is seen as a process of gradual socialization of the child, subject to the law of transition from pleasure to reality. If the search for the first is the inner principle of the child, then the satisfaction of desires depends on the outside world, and in childhood it largely depends on the mother. Therefore, the mother is the first legislator for her children, and her mood, her likes and dislikes noticeably influence their development. “What develops most quickly is what the mother likes most and is welcomed by her” (A. Freud).
The child remains immature as long as his desires dominate him, and the decision to satisfy them or refuse them belongs to the outside world, parents and other people. The desire to satisfy his desires at any cost, based on the principle of pleasure, can determine his antisocial behavior. Only when a child is able to act according to the principle of reality, take into account the requirements of the social environment, analyze and control his intentions and independently decide whether this or that impulse needs to be rejected or turned into action, is it possible to pass to an adult state. But it should be borne in mind that progress towards the principle reality does not in itself guarantee that a person will follow social requirements,
According to A. Freud, almost all normal elements of a child's life, such as greed, jealousy, self-interest, push the child in the direction of asociality, and with the help of the protective mechanisms of the psyche, some instinctive desires that are not approved in society are forced out of consciousness, others they turn into their opposite (reactionary formations), are directed to other goals (sublimation), are redirected to other people (projection). So difficult and painful is the socialization of the child, his inclusion in the life of society.
Organization of the protective process is an important and necessary component development I. The development of memory, speech, thinking is necessary condition for the development of the personality and socialization of the child. Thus, rational thinking contributes to the understanding of the relationship between cause and effect, and adaptation to the requirements of society and the surrounding world ceases to be a simple submission: it becomes conscious and adequate. The formation of the reality principle and the maturation of thought processes - necessary components socialization, which opens the way for its new mechanisms (such as imitation, identification, introjection), for the exit of the child from the family to school, from school to public life, when a person gradually gives up personal advantages and takes into account the interests of other people, moral norms and the laws of society.
Freud recognized the existence of two basic instincts - life and death. The first of them, or Eros, includes all the forces that serve to maintain life and procreate. Sexual instincts and sexual energy (libido) are the most important. The death instinct, or Thanatos, underlies all manifestations of cruelty, aggression, murders and suicides, all harmful forms of behavior that destroy human health and life (drunkenness, drugs). It obeys the principle of entropy, is associated with the desire to maintain dynamic balance! as a result of which all living beings have an inherent desire to return to an indefinite state from which they came out, and people unconsciously strive for death. This position of Freud is controversial and is not recognized by many psychologists.
Thus, from the position of psychoanalysis, a person is a contradictory, tormented, suffering creature, whose behavior is mainly determined by unconscious factors, despite the opposition and control of consciousness. As a result, man is often also a neurotic and conflicted being. Freud's merit lies in the fact that he drew the attention of scientists to a serious study of the unconscious in the psyche, for the first time he singled out and began to study the internal conflicts of the personality.
Freud's psychoanalytic theory is an example of a psychodynamic approach to the study of human behavior, where it is believed that unconscious psychological conflicts control this behavior.
Table 5.4.
| Human understanding | Man is a contradictory biosocial sexual being, inside of which there is a constant struggle between his unconscious sexual desires, his consciousness and conscience, as a result of which he himself does not know how he will act in the next moment and why he will commit this or that act. |
| Personality | Personality is a holistic structure of the relationship of It, I, Super-I |
| Attitude towards the body | The body and psyche are interdependent, the Body is the source of the main vital energy, motives, instincts, inclinations and, accordingly, problems, personal conflicts associated with their satisfaction. Bodily diseases are psychological in nature, that is, the psyche can affect the body. Bodily features are understood as symbols of the expression of psychological and personal problems. |
| social relations | Family as a model of society. Here relations are formed between individuals (child - mother, child - father, child - other child), which are formative for future social relations. The choice of friends, spouse, preference for this or that boss, lifestyle - all this is set by the initial family relationships and experiences. In social relations, a person continues to solve those problems that have arisen in family ties. |
| Will | Will acts as one of the possible sources of defense mechanisms, i.e., volitional effort is aimed at working with an undesirable symptom, suppresses it. |
| Emotions | The emotional life of a person is the main source for understanding true motivation. The emotions themselves are:
At the heart of any negative emotion is a repressed affect that generates anxiety. Freud was mainly concerned with negative emotions as manifestations of a person's unconscious complexes. |
| Intelligence | Intelligence- this is the instrument of the I, the instrument of conscious work. The emotional life and the motives associated with it are accessible to intellectual consideration, that is, it can explain the symptom, reveal its true nature. True explanation is freedom from illusions, from imaginary values. Any aspect of the unconscious can be considered rationally. The development of the intellect is a means of strengthening the Self, consciousness, and personality development. If I am strong, then the intellect can be used to explain the true nature of the symptoms; if it is weak, then it is an additional source of weakness, since the explanations will be incorrect, distorted. |
| Self (real self) | Self is an balanced whole, the unity of all personality structures. There is no separate substance of the self. The real self is always connected with the body. |
| Human freedom | Human freedom is extremely limited, this is an illusion: all manifestations of human activity (actions, thoughts, feelings, aspirations) are subject to powerful unconscious instinctive forces, especially sexual and aggressive ones. Human behavior is no longer subordinated to consciousness, but to unconscious motives, the essence of which a person can never fully know. |
| Heredity | Congenital hereditary structure, unconscious It forms the basis of personal structure and development. The psychosexual development of a person is biologically, genetically determined, although the conditions of the social environment in early childhood can greatly influence the subsequent development of the personality. Although the Superego is a product of the social environment, the significance of the environment is still secondary in comparison with the primacy of biologically determined instincts. |
| Behavior variability | The personality of an adult is shaped by the experience of early childhood, is characterized by what stage of psychosexual development he has reached or fixed at, and practically remains unchanged in adulthood. Under the influence of psychotherapy, behavioral modifications can occur, but not a radical change in the structure of the personality. |
| Understanding the human psyche | People live in a subjective world of feelings, emotions, meanings, which are the cause of other phenomena - actions, reactions, injuries, etc. A person does not build his behavior consciously; unconscious factors influence more, therefore the cognizability of the psyche is achieved with difficulty - thanks to scientific methods. |
| Attitude towards psychotherapeutic help | Freud's concept considers mental disorders as a consequence of psychotrauma and unconscious complexes that have arisen. Behavioral disorder arises as a result of a conflict between the id and the superego, which the consciousness of the ego is unable to resolve. Psychoanalysis as a method of psychotherapy is an effective, individual intrapsychic method aimed at finding and neutralizing the causes that caused unconscious complexes and neurotic symptoms, at providing assistance in awareness by the patient of the causes, manifestations and ways to overcome neurotic symptoms. |
Instincts are the driving force behind behavior
Psychoanalytic theory is based on the notion that people are complex energy systems. In accordance with the achievements of physics and physiology of the XIX century, Freud believed that human behavior is activated by a single energy, according to the law of conservation of energy (that is, it can go from one state to another, but its amount remains the same). Freud took this general principle nature, translated it into the language of psychological terms and concluded that the source of psychic energy is the neurophysiological state of excitation. Further, he postulated: each person has a certain limited amount of energy that feeds mental activity; the goal of any form of behavior of the individual is to reduce the tension caused by the accumulation of this energy, which is unpleasant for him. For example, if a significant part of your energy is spent on comprehending the meaning of what is written on this page, then it will not be enough for other types of mental activity - for dreaming or watching a television program. Likewise, the reason you are reading this may be to ease the pressure of having to take an exam next week.
Thus, according to Freud's theory, human motivation is entirely based on the energy of excitation produced by bodily needs. According to him, the main amount of mental energy produced by the body is directed to mental activity, which allows you to reduce the level of excitement caused by the need. According to Freud, mental images of bodily needs, expressed in the form of desires, are called instincts. The instincts manifest innate states of excitation at the level of the organism, requiring an exit and discharge. Freud argued that any human activity (thinking, perception, memory and imagination) is determined by instincts. The influence of the latter on behavior can be both direct and indirect, disguised. People behave in one way or another because they are motivated by unconscious tension - their actions serve the purpose of reducing this tension. Instincts as such are "the ultimate cause of all activity" (Freud, 1940, p. 5).
Essence of life and death
Although the number of instincts can be unlimited, Freud recognized the existence of two main groups: instincts life and of death. The first group (under the general name Eros) includes all the forces that serve the purpose of maintaining vital processes and ensuring the reproduction of the species. Recognizing the great importance of the life instincts in the physical organization of individuals, Freud considered the sexual instincts to be the most essential for the development of the personality. The energy of sexual instincts is called libido(from Latin "want" or "wish"), or libido energy- a term used in the meaning of the energy of life instincts in general. Libido is a certain amount of psychic energy that finds discharge exclusively in sexual behavior.
Freud believed that there is not one sexual instinct, but several. Each of them is associated with a specific area of the body, called erogenous zone. In a sense, the whole body is one large erogenous zone, but psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the mouth, anus, and genitals. Freud was convinced that the erogenous zones were potential sources of tension and that manipulation of these zones would reduce tension and produce pleasurable sensations. Thus, biting or sucking produces oral pleasure, bowel movements lead to anal gratification, and masturbation leads to genital gratification.
The second group are the death instincts, called Thanatos, - underlies all manifestations of cruelty, aggression, suicides and murders. Unlike the energy of the libido, as the energy of the life instincts, the energy of the death instincts has not received a special name. However, Freud considered them biologically determined and as important in the regulation of human behavior as the life instincts. He believed that the death instincts obey the principle entropy(that is, the law of thermodynamics, according to which any energy system tends to maintain dynamic equilibrium). Referring to Schopenhauer, Freud stated: "The aim of life is death" (Freud, 1920b, p. 38). Thus, he meant to say that all living organisms have a compulsive desire to return to an indefinite state from which they left. That is, Freud believed that people have an inherent desire for death. The sharpness of this statement, however, is somewhat softened by the fact that modern psychoanalysts do not pay such attention to the death instinct. This is probably the most controversial and least shared aspect of Freud's theory.
What are instincts really?
Any instinct has four characteristics: source, target, object and stimulus. A source instinct - a state of the body or a need that causes this state. The sources of life instincts are described by neurophysiology (for example, hunger or thirst). Freud did not give a clear definition of the death instincts. Target instinct always consists in the elimination or reduction of the excitation caused by the need. If the goal is achieved, a person experiences a short-term state of bliss. Although there are many ways to achieve an instinctive goal, there is a tendency to maintain the state of arousal at some minimum level (according to the pleasure principle).
An object means any person, object in the environment, or something in the individual's own body that provides the satisfaction (i.e., purpose) of an instinct. The actions leading to instinctive pleasure are not necessarily always the same. In fact, the object can change throughout life. In addition to flexibility in the choice of objects, individuals are able to delay the discharge of instinctive energy for long periods of time.
Almost any behavioral process in psychoanalytic theory can be described in terms of: 1) binding, or directing energy to an object ( cathexis); 2) an obstacle that interferes with the satisfaction of instinct ( anticathexis). An example of cathexis is emotional attachment to other people (that is, the transfer of energy to them), enthusiasm for someone's thoughts or ideals. Anti-cathexis manifests itself in external or internal barriers that prevent the immediate weakening of instinctive needs. Thus, the interaction between the expression of instinct and its inhibition, between cathexis and anti-cathexis constitutes the main bastion of the psychoanalytic construction of the system of motivation.
Finally, stimulus represents the amount of energy, force, or pressure required to satisfy an instinct. It can be assessed indirectly by observing the number and types of obstacles that a person has to overcome in search of a particular goal.
The key to understanding the dynamics of the energy of instincts and its expression in the choice of objects is the concept displaced activity. According to this concept, the release of energy and the relaxation of tension occurs due to a change in behavioral activity. Displaced activity occurs when, for some reason, the choice of the desired object to satisfy the instinct is impossible. In such cases the instinct may shift and thus focus its energy on some other object. Consider the following not so rare situation. Your boss has intimidated you about the actions that will follow if you don't do your job. You come home, slam the door, kick the dog, and yell at your spouse. What happened? You took out your anger on objects that are not directly related to your condition; it was an indirect expression of emotion.
Freud believed that many socio - psychological phenomena can be understood in the context of the displacement of two primary instincts: sexual and aggressive. For example, the socialization of a child can be partly explained as the result of a successive shift of the sexual need from one object to another, as required by parents and society. Similarly, racial prejudice and wars can be explained by the shifting of aggressive impulses. According to Freud, the entire fabric of modern civilization (art, music, literature) is the product of a displacement of sexual and aggressive energy. Without being able to enjoy directly and immediately, people have learned to shift their instinctive energy to other people, other objects and other activities, instead of those intended for direct release of tension. In this way, complex religious, political, economic and other institutions emerge.
No direction has gained such loud fame outside the field of psychology as psychoanalysis. His ideas influenced art, literature, medicine and other fields of science related to man. It got its name from the founder Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Based on the ideas put forward by him, with a certain adjustment and addition, a whole psychological direction was gradually formed - "psychoanalysis". Such theories include the concepts of Horney, Adler, Jung, Fromm, Reich, and others, although each of them was original.
Term psychoanalysis has three meanings:
- theory of personality and psychopathology;
- method of therapy for personality disorders;
- method of studying the unconscious thoughts and feelings of a person.
Freud's theory of the structure of the psyche
Freud used a topographic model, according to which three levels can be distinguished in mental life:
- consciousness;
- preconscious;
- unconscious.
The level of consciousness consists of sensations and experiences given to a person at a particular moment in time. Consciousness captures only a small percentage of all information stored in the brain, some of which is only conscious for a short period and then quickly sinks into the preconscious or unconscious as the person's attention shifts to other cues.
The area of the preconscious, sometimes called available memory, includes all experiences that are not currently conscious, but can easily return to consciousness spontaneously or with minimal effort.
The deepest and most significant layer of the human psyche is the unconscious. It is a repository of instinctual drives plus emotions and memories that threaten consciousness so much that they have been suppressed and forced into this area, but it is such unconscious material that largely determines the daily functioning of a person. Unconscious experiences are completely inaccessible to the consciousness of people, but to a large extent determine their actions.
Based on many years of clinical observations, Freud formulated a psychological concept according to which the human psyche consists of three levels: It, I, Super-I. This is the structural model of mental life.
It is an unconscious part of the psyche, a seething cauldron of biologically innate instinctive drives: aggressive and sexual. It is saturated with sexual energy - libido. A person is a closed energy system, and the amount of this energy in everyone is a constant value. Being unconscious and irrational, It obeys the principle of pleasure, that is, the latter, like happiness, is the main goal in human life.
The second principle of behavior - homeostasis - a tendency to maintain an approximate internal balance. The level of I (Ego) - consciousness - is in a state of constant conflict with It, suppresses sexual desires. It is formed under the influence of society. Three forces act on the I: It, Super-I and society, which makes its demands on a person. I tries to establish harmony between them, obeys not the principle of pleasure, but the principle of "reality".
The super-ego serves as the bearer of moral standards; this is the part of the personality that plays the role of critic, censor, conscience. If I make a decision or perform an action in favor of It, but in opposition to the Super-I, then I will experience punishment in the form of guilt, shame, and pangs of conscience.
The relationship between the structural and topographic models of mental life can be depicted as follows: the sphere of the id is completely unconscious, while the ego and the superego operate on all three levels.
Rice. 5.1.
The concept proposed by Freud can be depicted in the form of a diagram, where the interaction of the unconscious, superego and preconscious appears more figuratively.
I (Ego) is responsible for making decisions, seeking to express and satisfy the desires of It (Id) in accordance with the restrictions that are imposed by the rules of society, the outside world. Therefore, the Ego helps to ensure the safety and self-preservation of the organism, analyzing, reasoning, making decisions.
The formation of the child's psyche, especially the Superego, occurs through overcoming the oedipal complex. According to Freud, the Greek myth about King Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, is hidden, according to Freud, the key to the sexual complex that supposedly gravitates over every man: the boy is attracted to his mother, perceiving his father as a rival, causing both hatred and fear , and admiration; the boy wants to be like his father, at the same time wishing him death, and therefore feels guilty, afraid of his parent. Fearing castration, the child overcomes the sexual attraction to the mother, overcomes the Oedipus complex (by the age of 5-6), and he develops a Super-I, a conscience.
The super-ego, or super-ego, contains a system of values and norms that are compatible with those accepted in the human environment and allow him to distinguish what is good and bad, moral and immoral. Freud divided the super-ego into two subsystems - conscience and the ego-ideal. The first means the ability for critical self-assessment, the presence of moral prohibitions and the emergence of a feeling of guilt in a person when he did not do what he should have done. The ego-ideal is formed from what is approved and highly valued by parents and the person himself, he leads the individual to establish high standards for himself.
The superego is considered fully formed when parental control is replaced by self-control. But this principle is not consistent with reality. The Super-Ego tries to completely suppress the “indecent desires” associated with the It, and direct a person to perfection in thoughts, words and deeds, punishes and torments spiritually and even physically if a person violates the norms of conscience.
The super-ego does not allow instincts into the self, and then their energy is sublimated, transformed, embodied in other forms of activity that are acceptable to society and man (creativity, art, social and labor activity), in forms of behavior (in dreams, slips of the tongue, slips of the tongue). , jokes, puns, in free associations, in features of forgetting). In this way, sublimation- this is the transformation of the energy of repressed, forbidden desires into other activities that are allowed in society. If the libido energy does not find a way out, then a person develops mental illness, neurosis, hysterical states, and longing.
Between the three systems of the psychic structure, zones of conflict are clearly visible, which can destabilize the personality if the Self is unable to restore balance.
Realistic conflict resolution is possible only with a fairly strong ego, which not only determines the requirements of the id, but also overcomes the pressure from the superego. But this is the ideal case. More often, conflict zones in the mental structure lead to the frustration of the id, i.e., to such mental states that are accompanied by negative emotions and experiences: irritation, anxiety, and despair. Frustrations induce the ego to relieve tension with the help of various kinds of "exhaust valves", which include those identified by Freud and his daughter Anna psychological defense mechanisms.
To save from the conflict between I and It apply different means. Protective behavior allows a person to protect himself from those problems that he is not yet able to solve, relieve anxiety associated with threatening events (loss of a loved one, favorite toy, lost love of other people for themselves, etc.), and also helps to “leave from the threatening reality", sometimes and transform this threat. For a while, a defense mechanism is simply necessary, because a person cannot immediately solve the problem. But if time passes, and it is not solved, then the protective mechanism becomes an obstacle to personal growth, a person's behavior turns out to be unpredictable, and he can harm himself. He moves away from reality and from the tasks that he needs to solve. Thus, the defense mechanisms themselves often give rise to more and more new problems, and the real person hides, replacing it with pseudo-problems.
Freud identified the following defense mechanisms:
- Repression of desires- involuntary removal of desires, thoughts, feelings, experiences that are unpleasant or unacceptable in certain situations from consciousness to the area of the unconscious, It. Suppression is never final, repressed thoughts do not lose their activity in the unconscious, and to prevent their breakthrough into consciousness, a constant expenditure of psychic energy is required, as a result of which it may not be enough to maintain a person’s activity and health. As a result, repression is often the source of bodily illnesses of a psychogenic nature (headaches, arthritis, ulcers, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, etc.). The psychic energy of repressed desires is present in the body of a person regardless of his consciousness and finds its painful expression. There is a demonstrative indifference to reality. Allocate complete suppression, when painful experiences are so muffled that a person forgets them and does not remember that they were in his life, but they indirectly affect his health and behavior. They also talk about displacement. This is partial suppression, when a person “restrains” experiences, tries not to think about them, although he cannot completely forget them and they “erupt” in the form of unexpected violent affects, inexplicable actions, etc.
- Negation- withdrawal into fantasy, denial of any event as "untruth": "This cannot be." A person is completely indifferent to logic, does not notice contradictions in his judgments.
- Rationalization- an unconscious attempt to justify, explain one's wrong or absurd behavior, building acceptable moral, logical justifications, arguments in order to explain and justify unacceptable forms of behavior, thoughts, actions, desires. As a rule, these justifications and explanations do not correspond to the true reason for the committed act, which may not be realized by a person.
- Inversion, or opposition- substitution of actions, thoughts, feelings that meet the true desire, on the opposite. For example, a child initially wants to receive maternal love, but, not having this, begins to experience the exact opposite desire - to annoy, anger the mother, cause a quarrel and hatred of the mother for herself.
- Projection- an unconscious attempt to get rid of an obsessive desire, idea, attributing it to another person, attributing to another person one's own qualities, thoughts, feelings - i.e., "distance of the threat from oneself." When something is condemned in others, it is precisely this that is not accepted in oneself, but a person does not recognize such a fact and does not want to understand that these same qualities are inherent in him. For example, he states: "Some Jews are deceivers", although in fact it means something else: "I sometimes deceive." Thus, projection allows you to place the blame for your shortcomings and failures on someone else. It also explains social prejudice and the phenomenon of the "scapegoat", since ethnic and racial stereotypes are a convenient target in order to attribute negative personality traits to another.
- Substitution. The manifestation of an emotional impulse is redirected from a more threatening object or person to a less threatening one. For example, a child, after being punished by his parents, pushes his little sister, breaks her toys, kicks the dog. The sister and the dog take the place of the parents with whom the child is angry. Less common is this form of substitution, when it is directed against oneself: hostile impulses addressed to others are redirected to oneself, which causes a feeling of depression or self-condemnation.
- Insulation. This is the separation of the threatening part of the situation from the rest of the mental sphere, which can lead to a split personality, to an incomplete self.
- Regression. Return to an earlier, primitive way of responding. Stable regressions are manifested in the fact that a person justifies his actions from the position of a child's thinking, does not recognize logic, defends his point of view, despite the correctness of the interlocutor's arguments. He does not develop mentally, and sometimes childhood habits (nail biting, etc.) return. In difficult cases, when the present situation is unbearable for a person, the psyche defends itself, “going down” to an earlier and safer period - for example, to early childhood, and regression leads to a loss of memory of later stages of life. "Mild" manifestations of regression in adults include incontinence, discontent. They manifest themselves in the fact that a person, pouting, does not talk to others, opposes authority, becomes childishly stubborn, or drives a car at a recklessly high speed.
All people use defense mechanisms. However, it is undesirable to overly rely on them, because they distort the picture of the needs, fears, aspirations of the individual. All defense mechanisms have common properties:
- they operate on an unconscious level and are therefore means of self-deception;
- they distort, deny or falsify the perception of reality in order to make the situation less threatening for the person.
Anxiety, or a sense of impending danger, can be of the following types:
- Realistic: emotional response to the threat of real dangers of the outside world, helps to ensure self-preservation.
- Neurotic: an emotional response to the danger that unacceptable impulses from the id will become conscious. The fear that the ego will be unable to control sexual or aggressive desires and that something terrible can be done, entailing serious negative consequences.
- Moral: The ego is threatened with superego punishment when it seeks to actively express immoral thoughts or actions, and the superego responds with guilt, shame, and self-blame.
- Social. It arises in connection with the threat of exclusion from a group of people due to unacceptable actions. Freud later showed that anxiety, originating in the superego, develops into fear of death and the expectation of retribution in the afterlife for past or present sins.
Anxiety in neurotics is the result of inadequate discharge of libido energy, a means of warning a person of impending danger. It occurs when there is a threat to the body. With genuine danger, anxiety comes from a specific external source, with neurotic - from the unknown.
In infancy and childhood it arises as a result of excessive excitation of instincts, later it appears in anticipation of danger, and not as a reaction to it. An alarm signal mobilizes protection - mechanisms aimed at avoiding a real or imagined external threat, or psychological protection that neutralizes the increased excitation of instincts.
Instinctive drives, which in some situations were unacceptable, and therefore turned out to be expelled from consciousness, suppressed, hidden in the unconscious part of the psyche, are stored as hidden centers of excitation and gradually loosen the defense system. Thus, neuroses develop as a result of a partial failure of the defense system. A more severe disorder of its mechanisms leads to psychiatric diseases (for example, schizophrenia), which are characterized by a significant deformation of the ego and perception of reality.
is the belief that all human behavior is at least partially due to unconscious impulses. The basis of the motivation of behavior, according to Freud, is the desire to satisfy innate instincts - the physical needs of the body. The individual seeks to reduce stress to a minimum level. And in this regard, Freud's concept is similar to the behaviorist point of view: the same principle of homeostasis and stress relief.
But there are also significant differences. The individual strives to return to some initial state (which was disturbed by birth and subsequent development) up to non-existence. The basic instincts, according to Freud, are the instincts of life and death. The life instinct can take two main forms: reproduction of one's own kind (sexual need) and maintenance of the individual's life (ordinary physiological needs). It should be noted, however, that the life instinct of the first type (sexual need) plays a particularly important role in Freud's concept. The death instinct is the opposite of the life instinct and is expressed in such forms of behavior as aggression, masochism, self-accusation, self-abasement.
At first glance, the assumption of the existence of the death instinct looks at least strange. However, it must be borne in mind that Freud's philosophical views were characterized by psychic dualism: emphasizing the struggle and opposition of two opposite principles. The dynamics of this struggle is actually the basis for the development and functioning of both an individual and society as a whole. Everything in the universe strives for inevitable disintegration, disappearance, and life as a way of organization, unification is only that short period of time when the individual triumphs over this disintegration. But even during this short period of time, the death instinct carries the individual with it. The instincts of life (Eros) and death (Thanatos) go hand in hand: love coexists with hate, nutrition with gluttony, self-love with self-destruction and self-destruction.
Sublimation - the direction of the energy of instinct to perform activities that are not related to the direct satisfaction of needs.
Instincts provide the individual with energy, which is the source of his activity. Moreover, if the direct satisfaction of the instinctive need is impossible for some reason (the presence of moral restrictions, fear of punishment, etc.), the energy of the instinct can be directed in a different direction: the discharge of tension can occur due to the fulfillment of completely different - not related to the instinct - types of activities. Imagine a steam boiler, it has high pressure, and if you do not release steam, it can burst. The valve needs to be opened. If one of the main valves is closed (for example, immediate sexual satisfaction is impossible), you have to use others (politics, creativity, business). Such a direction of the energy of instinct in a different - in contrast to the direct satisfaction of needs - channel is called sublimation. The solution to the problem of explaining human behavior, therefore, consists in finding out the reasons for the direction of instinctive energy in one direction or another.
Society consists of individuals who have their own biological characteristics - the state of health, the characteristics of physiological processes in the body, differences in the structure and functioning of the nervous system, which determine the natural inclinations of a person. On the basis of natural inclinations, abilities are formed that a person realizes in his life. The formation of the needs of the individual is influenced both by its natural individual traits and the impact of the social environment.
In different eras, society had a need to use various natural inclinations and abilities of people. Thus, under the conditions of the caste system, abilities that were not related to the occupation prescribed for this caste seemed unnecessary. For example, a person born in the caste of merchants had the right to engage only in trade, in the caste of laundry - only washing, etc.
One of the main trends in the development of relations between man and society is the individualization of the individual. Development, economies, increasingly complex production processes required more and more qualified, competent and independent workers. At present, this leads to the gradual formation of an individual style of production activity and an individual style of consumption interconnected with it. The mechanism of interaction between the individual and society is being modified and rebuilt. This is reflected in the balance of individual and social needs.
In human communities, there have always been differences between the needs of individuals, groups of people and society as a whole. As already noted, special mechanisms have been developed to regulate relations between society and the individual - these are, first of all, morality and law.
1. Introduction
One of the leading ideological, theoretical and methodological foundations of Western sociology of the classical period, and in particular its psychological direction, was a set of Freudian doctrines that had a significant impact on all social thought.
Having originally created a new psychotherapeutic method for the treatment of psycho-nervous diseases - psychoanalysis, the Austrian doctor and psychologist, Professor Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) developed his ideas, in particular, in such works as “Totem and Taboo. Psychology of Primitive Culture and Religion" (1913), "Psychology of the masses and analysis of the human "I" (1921), "Anxiety in culture" (1929) and others, and brought them to the level of a kind of psycho-sociological doctrine of human existence in normal and pathological .
The philosophical and sociological doctrine of Freud (Freudianism, "depth psychology") significantly transformed the dominant traditions of the psychological direction of Western sociology, contributed to a certain synthesis of its various currents, their modernization.
The most significant part of Freud's psychoanalytic sociology is the doctrine of man, which is a set of different order concepts about the nature and essence of man, his psyche, the formation, development and structure of personality, the causes and mechanisms of human activity and behavior in various social communities.
One of the distinguishing features of Freud's teachings was the assertion of the principle of universal determination of mental activity, which led to a significant expansion of research horizons and a multidimensional interpretation of the motives of human behavior.
2. The main ideas in the views of Z. Freud on a person and his personality
According to Freud, the beginning and basis of human mental life are various instincts, drives and desires, originally inherent in the human body.
Underestimating the consciousness and social environment in the process of formation and being of a person. Freud argued that the leading role in the organization of human life is played by various kinds of biological mechanisms. In particular, he believed that every person from birth has incest (incest), cannibalism (cannibalism) and a thirst for murder, which have a great influence on all mental activity of a person and his behavior.
Having formulated a psychoanalytic paraphrase of Haeckel-Müller's phylogenetic law, Freud insisted on it. that the spiritual development of the individual briefly repeats the course of the development of mankind, due to which in their mental structures each person bears the burden of the experiences of distant ancestors.
According to Freud, the dominant role in the organization of human behavior belongs to the instincts. Freud's speculative theory of instincts was based on the understanding and interpretation of instincts as a "mental reflection" of the needs of the human body and as a kind of biological and mental indivisible stereotype of human behavior.
Freud argued that two universal cosmic instincts play a particularly important role in shaping a person and his life: Eros (sexual instinct, life instinct, self-preservation instinct) and Thanatos (death instinct, aggression instinct, destruction instinct, destruction instinct).
Representing human life as the result of the struggle of the two eternal forces of Eros and Thanatos, Freud believed that these instincts are the main engines of progress. The unity and struggle of Eros and Thanatos, according to Freud, not only determine the finiteness of the individual's existence, but also very significantly determine the activities of various social groups, peoples and states.
Being engaged in the therapy of psychoneuroses and the study of the causes that give rise to them, Freud discovered neuroses, the possible cause of which was the conflict between sexual drives and desires, on the one hand, and moral-volitional restrictions, on the other. In this regard, he suggested that neuroses (and other neurotic states) may arise as a result of the suppression of erotic desire. Taking this assumption as a proven fact, he put forward the hypothesis that the disorder of the human psyche (inevitably leading to a change in his personality) is due either to direct erotic experiences, or these same experiences inherited by the individual from previous generations, or a combination of direct and inherited experiences.
Inappropriately extending the private conclusions of his clinical practice to humanity as a whole (according to Freud, the difference between a neurotic and a healthy person is of no fundamental importance), he raised these conclusions to the dogma of his metapsychology and proclaimed the sexual instinct as the main determinant of human activity.
According to Freud, the suppression and realization of the sexual instinct, consisting of partial instincts arising from various organic sources, form the basis of all manifestations of mental activity, as well as the formation of the personality, the motivation of its behavior and the folding of the most essential features of a person.
Trying to substantiate these views, Freud put forward several more hypotheses designed to explain the mechanisms of the sexual instinct and the reasons for its exceptional influence on the formation and functioning of the personality,
According to Freud, the bearer of the sexual instinct is the universal mental energy that has a sexual coloration (libido), which he sometimes interpreted as the energy of sexual desire or sexual hunger.
In Freud's theory, the concept of libido plays a very important role. Considering this, it should be noted that Freud was unable to develop an unambiguous interpretation of libido and, depending on certain turns of theoretical research, he interpreted libido in one sense or another.
In some cases, Freud spoke of libido as a quantitatively changing force and declared that we distinguish this libido from energy, which should generally be taken as the basis of mental processes. In others, he argued that the libido, in its deepest basis and in the final result, is only a product of the differentiation of energy that acts in general in the psyche. He defined libido as sexual hunger, reflecting the sexual needs of man and animals, as a universal sexually colored psychic energy. (Later, Freud also suggested the existence of another important moment of mental life - mortido - the drive to death, the aggressive drive.)
Freud interpreted libido as an exceptionally powerful motivational principle that has a decisive influence on human behavior. He believed that the energy of sexual attraction can be sublimated (transformed and transferred) to various objects and find an outlet in a variety of human activities acceptable to the individual and society. At the same time, Freud attributed an exceptionally wide range to the forms of manifestation of libido - from elementary physiological acts to scientific and artistic creativity. Subsequently, the energy of sexual desire and the mechanism of sublimation were proclaimed by Freud as the basis and engine of human life.
This position predetermined the nature of his teaching, one of the distinguishing features of which was pansexualism - the explanation of the phenomena of human existence mainly or exclusively by the sexual aspirations of individuals.
An essential part of Freud's teachings was his theory of complexes. Having borrowed from C. Jung the idea of a complex as a group of representations connected by one affect, Freud developed the concept of complexes as a set of unconscious emotionally colored representations that affect human behavior and health.
Considering that the peculiarities of experiencing and suppressing erotic desire are the source of psychoneuroses, Freud paid considerable attention to the development of Oedipus complexes, castration and inferiority.
According to Freud, the most important role in the formation and life of a person is played by the Oedipus complex. While examining the dreams of his patients, Freud drew attention to the fact that a significant part of them reported to him with indignation and indignation about dreams, the main motive of which was sexual intercourse with their mother.
Seeing a certain tendency in this, 3. Freud suggested that such dreams give certain grounds for believing that the first social impulse of a person is directed to the mother, while the first violent desire and hatred are directed to the father.
This alleged unconscious attitude, the main content of which was considered the erotic attraction of the child to the mother and the aggressive feeling towards the father associated with it. Freud called the Oedipus complex (Oedipus complex). The name given by Freud to this complex is not accidental. It is connected with his psychoanaistic interpretation of the Greek myth of King Oedipus in the tragedy of the same name by Sophocles, when the Theban king Oedipus, against his will and without knowing it, kills his father (Laia), marries his mother (Jocaste) and becomes the father of children who at the same time time are his brothers on the maternal side.
The basic idea of Freud's interpretation of the Oedipus situation is extremely simple: the actions of King Oedipus represent only the fulfillment of the desires of our childhood. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex has always gravitated over all men - every boy is sexually attracted to his mother, perceiving his father as a sexual rival, whom he fears and hates. At the same time, it must be emphasized that these tendencies and drives are subliminal in nature, that is, they are not recognized by their carriers.
Thus, as Freud believed, in the human psyche there are diametrically opposed conscious and unconscious feelings directed at the same object, which in itself explains the well-known inconsistency of the human mental organization.
