Freud and psychoanalysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Freud and psychoanalysis - Research Paper Example No matter what level of education an individual might have, it is likely he or she is familiar with the name of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s name is now synonymous with the theory of psychoanalysis. It is a science he essentially invented near the beginning of the 19th century. Sigmund Freud began his career as a medical doctor. He worked in Vienna with mental patients and it is because of this work that he is today considered one of the founding fathers of modern day psychology. It was while working with these patients that Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory. Clearly, Freud’s original training was not in the field that he started. He originally worked as a neurologist, but the common method of treating patients was to use hypnosis, something Freud wasn’t very good at but which forced him to take a more imaginative approach to treating the mind that would revolutionize the way people thought about thought (Robbins, 1999). Although Freud was obviously not the fir st individual to study how the mind worked and he would obviously not be the last, Freud is given credit for making the first major break-through in treating the mind as an entity existing at least partially separate from the body. He identified that there were at least three different levels of thought and realized that these levels interacted and intertwined. Putting these pieces together led to his development of psychotherapy. Freud classified three major components as comprising an individual’s psyche. These were the id, the ego and the superego. This intuitive leap from biological function to mental processes did not occur by accident. To fully understand Freud’s theories, his theoretical model of the human mind and how these ideas translate into his theories regarding human culture, it is necessary to understand how these ideas developed as well as how Freud expressed