Freud’s psychodynamic approach is one of the most well known theories and is world renowned for its structure and development. The theory relies heavily upon the past and how our experiences and fantasies govern our future. In 1923 Freud developed a structure model for psychoanalysis, consisting of the id, ego and super ego. These parts symbolise the different aspects of a person’s personality. The id is the biological instinctive part of human personality that is apparent at the id is ‘a chaos, a cauldron full of seething emotions’ (Nelson-Jones, 2000, p. 27). It operates with the pleasure principle and is without any logic, values or ethics, for example the id wants whatever feels good at a certain time. In contrast to the id is the super ego which is developed at around age five. This super ego

The next stage is the anal personality this occurs at ages one to three, it stems from the pleasure children receive from bowel movements. It is the contrast between the id and the super ego. The id telling the child to go anytime and the super ego telling them it is wrong to do this and holding the faeces until a more appropriate moment. Through pressure from parents the child learns to control their bowel movements and they begin to be toilet trained. If fixated in this stage a person can be said to be either anally expulsive or retentive, often being obsessive with cleanliness or being to the other extent very messy. These personalities tend to be striving for power and need to be in control. The third stage is the phallic stage; when the pleasure centre switches to the genitals. Freud proposed the Oedipus and Electra conflicts within this stage. This complex depicts the different fantasies between men and woman and the way in which we deal with them. The Oedipus complex is when a male child develops sexual urges towards his mother and sees the father as competition for the mother’s attention. However the child fears castration from the father and this causes the boy to repress the incenosuoius wishes and leads to identification with the father, hence the relationship is allowed to grow. This theory obviously works for boys but not for girls. For girls the Electra complex is important, this is when the girl recognises her lack of penis and inferiority of the clitoris and she holds her mother responsible for this. This is what we call penis envy. She will then see her mother as competition for her father’s attention however it is noted that in both these complex’s feelings are repressed into the unconscious. A fixation within this stage could result in overindulging or avoiding sexual contact. How we deal with these fantasies is imperative to how we develop as a person, thus the past again dictates our future mental health. As a child we experience conflicts throughout these stages and they need to be resolved successfully to enable a person’s progression.

Nelson-Jones, R. (2000) Six Key Approaches to Counselling and Therapy. London: Continuum.

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