Psychology Atlas

How The Mind Works
Theories and Concepts

Psychoanalytic Theory

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Freud's psychoanalytic theory holds that personality develops through unconscious mental processes shaped by repressed, often childhood, experience, accessible through techniques like dream analysis and free association. It rests on three personality structures, id, ego and superego, operating on the pleasure, reality and morality principles, with defense mechanisms guarding consciousness from disguised unconscious material.

Facts
Core Claim
Personality develops through unconscious mental processes shaped by repressed experience, surfacing only in disguised form through dreams, symptoms and slips. 1
Origin Year
1899 2
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1. Psychoanalytic theory
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Quote, body text
disguised or distorted form
2. Sigmund Freud
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Quote, Development section
In 1899, he published The Interpretation of Dreams
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