Free association was used to explore and understand the unconscious mind.
Letting their mind wander while actively thinking out loud is known as free association. Soon after, however, Freud abandoned practicing hypnosis and instead began having his patients simply discuss their thought processes, free from any judgment.įreud found that his patients received greater relief when they openly talked about whatever was on their mind at the time. It is here that he began using hypnosis in his work as an attempt to help his patients explore their memories and cope with their struggles. In 1886, Freud began his private psychiatry practice. A year later, Freud started working as a doctor at Vienna General Hospital in 1882. At just 17 years old, he went to medical school at the University of Vienna with a focus in neurology, later graduating with a medical degree in 1881. Simply put, personality is the sum of the id, the ego, and the superego and their interactions with each other both consciously and unconsciously.īorn in Moravia, later becoming the Czech Republic, Freud entered the world in 1856. Freud believed that the conscious level of personality was only the tip of the iceberg.
In Freud's theory of id psychology, he states that most of our nature is not from a conscious level, but instead on a subconscious level. In what is possibly his most important contribution, Freud explains that human personality is composed of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. Known for his theories on human development, sexuality, and the unconscious mind, not many others have contributed so much to the world of psychology. The father of psychoanalysis, Freud was a revolutionary in the field of psychology. Perhaps the most well-known psychologist to study the human psyche is Sigmund Freud. The human psyche is a compilation of conscious and unconscious systems that affect everything that we do. Have you ever wondered why you are the way that you are? What exactly defines somebody's personality? People have been trying to understand the human psyche for thousands of years. Talk With A Board-Certified Psychology Expert.