Freud Theory Course 2021

Sigmund Freud’s work marks the beginning of psychoanalysis, a way of understanding the mind that focuses on unconscious processes, early relationships, and the inner conflicts that shape behaviour. Freud proposed that much of our mental life operates outside awareness, and that symptoms, dreams, slips of the tongue, and fantasies all express hidden wishes and fears.

At the centre of his theory is the idea that the mind is divided into three interacting parts: the id, driven by instinctual desires; the ego, which negotiates reality; and the superego, which represents internalised moral demands. Development, in Freud’s view, unfolds through stages in which the child’s relationship to bodily experience and to caregivers shapes later emotional life.

Freud also introduced the concept of defence mechanisms, the mind’s way of managing anxiety and conflict. These defences—such as repression, denial, and projection—protect the individual but can also limit growth when overused.

Although later thinkers expanded, revised, and sometimes challenged Freud’s ideas, his central insight remains influential: that unconscious emotional life profoundly shapes how we think, feel, and relate to others.