Freud categorised the aspects of the unconscious mind into the following three sections:
- ID, a primitive part of the personality that pursues only pleasure and instant gratification.
- Ego, part of the personality that is aware of reality and is in contact with the outside world.
- Superego, part of the personality that controls thoughts and behaviour.
Freud was particularly preoccupied with the sexual content of dreams. He believed that sex was the root cause of what occurs in dreams. According to Freud, every long slender or elongated object represents the phallus, while any cavity or receptacle represents the female genitalia.
In the case study it mentions that Alice dreams about boxes falling on top of her. Applying Freud’s theory, Alice could be dreaming about her genitalia. This may be linked to the fact that she is newly divorced and doesn’t, according to the case study, have a partner to satisfy her sexual needs.
To interoperate the dream another way, the boxes falling on top of her may represent the difficulties Alice faces in her day-to-day life such as her financial difficulties.
Defence Mechanisms
We use defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt which arise because we feel threatened or because our unconscious becomes too demanding.
Repression is the first defence mechanism that Freud discovered. Repression is an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing thoughts from becoming conscious. Thoughts that are often repressed are those that would result in feeling of guilt from the superego.
Projection involves individuals attributing their own thoughts, feeling and motives to another person. Thoughts most commonly projected onto another are ones that would cause guilt such as aggressive and sexual fantasies or thoughts. For instance, you might hate someone, but your superego tells you that such hatred is unacceptable. You can 'solve' the problem by believing that they hate you.
Reaction Information is where a person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels. By using the reaction formation the id is satisfied while keeping the ego in ignorance of the true motives. Conscious feelings are the opposite of the unconscious, love/ hate.
Freudian Slips
A Freudian slip, also called parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of some unconscious ("dynamically repressed"), subdued, wish, conflict, or train of thought. The concept is thus part of classical psychoanalysis.
Slips of the tongue and the pen are the classical parapraxes, but psychoanalytic theory also embraces such phenomena as misreading, mishearing, temporary forgetting, and the mislaying and losing of objects.
In general use, the term 'Freudian slip' has been debased to refer to any accidental slips of the tongue. Thus many examples are found in explanations and dictionaries which do not strictly fit the psychoanalytic definition.
For example: She: 'What would you like—bread and butter, or cake?' He: 'Bed and butter.
