#3: Sigmund Freud

If you’re going to talk about psychology, you cannot forget to mention one of the most famous psychologists: Sigmund Freud.  Sigmund Freud is thought to be one of the great contributors to the field of psychology based on his research on the unconscious mind, a key component into unlocking multiple psychological disorders.  Born in Freiberg, Austria, Freud lived in a time of scientific innovation where even the most humble of scientists were asking the boldest of questions and slowly enough, those questions were being answered.    Freud was most famous for his technique of psychoanalysis for he believed that people suppress thoughts that are difficult to handle and banish them to the unconscious mind, which he believe, was the key to unlocking a person’s true nature or values.

Freud originally worked with a world renowned neurologist who used techniques such as hypnosis to treat patients.  However, Freud felt that hypnosis was not effective for all patients and preferred talking to his patients more to treat them.  One of the major things that Freud believed in was that the human psyche consists of three main parts: the ego, the super-ego, and the id.  The super-ego was believed to be the moral part of human personality that always believes that what is morally sound should always be the choice of action.  The id was the exact opposite in that it relies purely on action and impulse while the ego was meant to be the balance between both an irrational and rational thought process and was reflected to the world for the most part.  Freud felt that the best ways to unlocking the things displaced or repressed from the ego was through dream analysis and free association.  Despite all his contributions to the field of psychology, many people feel that his rational for some behaviors is quite unreasonable and that perhaps some of the symptoms patients supposedly had due to repressed memories were in fact his own displacement of his feelings toward his mother and childhood.

Works Cited

Hergenhahn, B. R. An Introduction to the History of Psychology. Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005. Print.

Hersall, David. History of Psychology. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1984. Print.
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