Table of ContentsFeatures of Freud's Statements and Psychoanalytic TheoryHumanistic Maslow: A Person-Centered TheoryConcluding ThoughtsThere are countless studies and theories that attempt to define mental processes that occur at different stages of our lives. , as well as explaining the causes of certain behaviors and psychopathologies. Attempting to discover why humans are the way they are and why each individual has their own personality has given rise to several approaches: all of which are viable and contain valuable information. Each theory, no matter how different, has contributed to the ultimate goal of understanding the human mind. It is useful to discuss approaches such as Freud's psychoanalysis and Maslow's holistic dynamic theory, which seem very different on the surface but can be explored to find similarities that will help further the research. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Characteristics of Freud's Psychoanalytic Statements and Theory Sigmund Freud is known as the founder of psychoanalysis; the most famous of all personality theories. Essentially, psychoanalysis is a patient-centered approach, which Freud based largely on his experiences with patients, his analysis of his own dreams, and his extensive readings in various sciences and humanities (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2018 ). Freud considered mental life to be divided into conscious (what we know), unconscious (what we do not know that we know), and preconscious (what we do not know but can be remembered), and development was largely affected by the way in which these three levels interact. The conscious is everything that the mind is aware of and plays a very minor role compared to the unconscious and preconscious. Our unconscious directs impulses and instincts that override conscious awareness. The unconscious drives behaviors and is largely responsible for much of what a person does or feels. Freud believed that critical moments in development occurred during childhood. According to him, the way the developmental stages from infancy to childhood unfold shapes the way an individual thinks and behaves as an adult. He described children as going through five stages of sexual development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital). At each stage, a child will progress from enjoying sucking and biting with the mouth (oral), to toilet training (anal), to genital stimulation, or to the phallic stage (at this stage, Freud believed that the The child would turn his interest and (liking the opposite-sex parent and resenting the same-sex parent), followed by a period of non-existent sexual urges (latency) and finally turning to adult sexual interests (genital) What a child experiences during the early stages can alter their development as an adult and thus lead to either healthy, normal behavior or certain psychopathologies. While these stages occur, Freud theorized that what. he called the three provinces of the mind; the id, the ego and the superego also play an important role in the background. The id is known as the pleasure principle of the mind; seeking pleasure without regard for what is proper or right. Freud believed that an infant is the personification of an id free from the restrictions of the ego and superego (Feist, Feist, and Roberts, 2018). An infant sucks his thumb even though he only receives his nutrition by sucking his baby's nipple.mother, because he does not realize that sucking his thumb does not provide him with nourishment; the identifier is not logical and is not modified by experiments. After infancy, the ego comes into play and is responsible for managing reality; this is essentially what keeps the id and superego from taking over. For Freud, the ego is differentiated from the id when infants learn to distinguish themselves from the external world. While the id remains unchanged, the ego continues to develop strategies to manage the id's unrealistic and incessant demands for pleasure (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2018). The superego, or ideal self, arises from the ego and works at a conscious level where it strives for perfection, which is sometimes unrealistic. The ideal self is largely determined in childhood by parental values ​​and the way an individual was raised (McLeod, SA, 2007). Freud spent his time studying patients to better understand human personality. He worked on extracting repressed childhood memories from his patients through suggestive procedures and later sought to uncover them through dream analysis and free association. He worked one-on-one with his patients during typical therapy sessions. For Freud, dreams were the window into the unconscious and so he used his patient's dreams to learn about the unconscious processes that might be occurring. Essentially, Freud believed that the core of our personality is defined by the three provinces of the mind and is critically shaped by the experiences that occur during the five stages of sexual development. At each stage, the child faces conflicts between biological drives and societal expectations, and successful navigation through each will lead to a fully mature personality (Wolberg, 1974). Many of the important milestones that determine who an individual becomes occur during the first years of life and what is observed in adulthood is a product of these experiences. Humanist Maslow: A Person-Centered Theory Abraham Maslow adopted a “person-centered” humanist approach to defining personality. Maslow called his approach a holistic-dynamic theory because it assumes that the whole person is constantly motivated by one need or another and that people have the potential to move toward psychological health, or "self-actualization." (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2018). Maslow believed that perhaps too much emphasis was placed on biological factors and that a person had all the potential to grow throughout their life. To achieve this meaningful growth and ultimately achieve happiness, or “self-actualization,” certain needs must be met. To explain the “steps” an individual takes in life to achieve desired self-actualization, Maslow created a hierarchy of needs. . In this hierarchy, which he described as a staircase, the most basic needs are at the bottom, and must be met for other “higher level” needs to follow. The most basic needs begin with physiological needs. A human being needs food, water, oxygen, etc., which are the most important of all. This is a very primitive need that is usually satisfied in wealthy societies, so individuals do not actively suffer from these "needs" and can move up the hierarchy. After physiological needs, there are security needs; security, stability, dependence, protection and freedom from threatening forces. Unlike physiological needs, safety needs cannot be oversatisfied, because people can never be completely protected frommeteors, fires, floods, or dangerous acts of others (Feist, Feist, & Roberts, 2018). Love and belonging must follow the hierarchy because an individual needs to feel loved and form meaningful relationships. Children must have this need satisfied in order to grow psychologically. This is followed by esteem needs, such as self-respect, confidence, competence, etc., and finally, the hierarchy ends with self-actualization. Maslow implies that ultimately, a human being naturally strives for self-actualization, although not all individuals achieve this. Every person is capable and desires to move up the hierarchical ladder toward a level of self-actualization, but unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by the inability to meet lower-level needs (Mcleod, S., 2007). that he believed to be "realized", he began looking among the people he had met throughout his life, such as his colleagues. If someone is already self-actualizing, then I asked myself what motivates this person. In searching for an answer, he was motivated by intrinsic values ​​such as "truth, goodness, beauty, perfection, excellence, simplicity, elegance, etc." ". (Guest, HS, 2014). He had certain criteria for self-actualization, mainly that they were free of psychopathology, that they had progressed in the hierarchy of needs and that they were fully using their talents, abilities and potentialities. Maslow implemented a type of patient-centered therapy whose goal would be for clients to adopt values ​​such as justice, kindness, simplicity, etc., and free themselves from dependence on others. His form of psychotherapy aimed to help people achieve self-realization, often developing a warm and loving interpersonal relationship with the therapist, which would then lead to satisfying their needs for love, belonging, and esteem. This healthy form of therapy would then allow the client to establish these relationships in their life outside of therapy, thus bringing them closer to self-actualization. In contrast to what can be seen as Freud's rather pessimistic approach, Maslow appears to have a more optimistic view of the human experience. While Freud considers that most of an individual's development occurs early in life, during childhood, Maslow considers the fact that humans do not have a limited amount of time to fully develop. He theorizes that humans strive to "thrive" throughout their lives and have the opportunity to do so even into adulthood. Freud's psychoanalytic approach largely suggests that an individual does not have complete control over how they will behave later in life. If some delays were experienced during any of the psychosexual stages, this would lead to anxieties, neuroses, repressed emotions or more serious psychopathology. Maslow, on the other hand, does not address any particular point in an individual's life that could directly lead to permanent damage in adulthood. When examining Freud's theory of personality, humans are recognized as being almost primitive in nature, constantly subject to a battle of the id and superego to control animalistic pleasure-seeking impulses. From early childhood, humans work on autopilot to pursue pleasure, until they reach a point in their growth where the ego develops and essentially mediates actions aimed at conforming to expectations social. Looking at the actions of a human observed during infancy, Maslow would define these behaviors as the satisfaction of physiological needs or the most basic needs. This need must be satisfied.