Personality of Sigmund Freud - Essay Example

Freud suggested three cognitive systems of human personality that are ego, id, and superego. It works on the pleasure principle, the ego works on the reality principle and the superego represents internalized rules of parents in society.

Freud also enunciated a theory of psychosexual development and mentioned five stages of human development that are oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. He said that if some psychological impediment occurs at any stage, the development of a person may get stuck at that particular stage.

Freud on the basis of his theory of unconscious motivations and stages of human growth mentioned a range of psychological processes like defense mechanisms, sublimation, displacement, projection, rationalization, regression, and hysteria.

Freud did venture into a clinical analysis of psychological issues. At first, he tried hypnosis, but later he turned to free association. Freud also gave an elaborate theory of dreams and the hidden meaning of dreams people have.

The thing least known about Freud is that he happened to be a very powerful person who had scarce respect for dissent and criticism. It is said that Freud falsified the health records of his patients and implanted suggestions in his patients’ minds regarding instances of sexual abuse. He was positively a megalomaniac. He loved the attention and considered himself to be the center of all things. He exercised powerful control over his work and expected none of his protégés to question him or profess any sort of difference.

The thing that is known about Freud is that he had a very comfortable and luxurious family life and he happened to be the apple of his mother’s eye. While he was young his family provided him with whatever he wanted and applauded his every achievement.

The thing that is not told about Freud was that he was an astute plagiarist who stole ideas from the works of some of the most celebrated European minds. He least respected the privacy of his patients and treated them in an inhuman way.

In his school days, he deeply loved and admired his mother and loved to buy and read books. At school, he happened to be a meritorious student and had a very sportive personality. He was also very good at languages. He had a close relationship with a male friend during his teenage and his youth was not that sex centered as it usually is. He was admitted to the University of Vienna to study medicine. This is how his illustrious career began.

He married Martha in 1886 after conducting a long distances love affair with her for a long time. Though Freud’s book on dreams scarcely contained only 4 pages of sexual imagery, he was generally obsessed with sex throughout his career. He had a thriving practice in Vienna. Many of the medical luminaries of his times were influenced by him. Still, he preferred to contrive a prophet-like persona and expected his followers to act as his apostles, always allowing him to have the last word in matters pertaining to psychoanalysis. Jung was one of his early followers who fell apart from Freud owing to his autocratic and dictatorial approach toward things. Freud had a long stint in the US where he agreed to lecture on psychoanalysis. Freud was always marred by the fears of academic threats and was in fact obsessed with retaining control over his close followers and students.

When the Nazis took over Austria, Freud successfully escaped to England to save himself and his career. Some people in Britain considered ideas of Freud to be rather fanciful owing to the pockets of anti-Semitism existing in England. Overall he was well-received in England and solicited much support and approval from the people.

Freud developed some health issues during his stay in London for which he underwent surgery. Eventually the jaw cancer he developed physically drained him and he found it hard to dedicate that much time and energy to his work. Till his last days, Freud staunchly maintained that his life’s works were his own and that he had not stolen any ideas from others. He died in September 1939, surrounded by his family and physician. He always claimed his profound dominion over the science of psychoanalysis.