Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

The Structure of the Psyche According to Z. Freud

Freud developed his psychoanalytic method while treating patients with hysteria. In his lectures on "Psychoanalysis," he acknowledges the contributions of another Viennese doctor, Josef Breuer, with whom he collaborated after his studies. Freud recounts the case of Breuer's patient, who suffered from a severe form of hysteria. Understanding the cause of her condition and the emotional upheavals she experienced was no easy task. Breuer employed hypnosis, prompting the young woman to recall the circumstances leading to her illness. It emerged that many of her symptoms were the result of "psychic traumas" associated with her time spent by the bedside of her gravely ill, beloved father and the intense emotions she endured there. Once Breuer facilitated her recollection and re-experiencing of these emotional states, her symptoms vanished. Breuer termed this method of treatment "catharsis" (from the Greek meaning "purification").

These experiments led Freud to consider that the realm of the psychic cannot be reduced merely to the conscious mind. Often, the true motives behind our behavior lie beyond our awareness, replaced by other, more accessible motives. In Breuer's patient, it became evident that the genuine causes of her psychological disturbance also resided outside her consciousness. Freud's further application of the cathartic method, this time not in a hypnotic state but in a normal state of the patient, reinforced his hypothesis and led him to conclude that the structure of the human psyche is complex and multifaceted.

In Freud's structural model of the psyche, he identifies two layers or elements: consciousness and the unconscious. He associates consciousness with clear and reliable perceptions that find verbal expression. Within the unconscious, Freud distinguishes two groups of phenomena. First, there are representations that were once conscious but have since receded from awareness yet can be brought back into consciousness at any moment. Freud refers to this type of unconscious as the latent or preconscious. Second, the unconscious also includes "sufficiently tense mental processes or representations" that do not reach consciousness due to opposing forces that repress these representations and prevent them from entering awareness. This latter type Freud calls the repressed unconscious. While the latent unconscious exists in a descriptive sense—meaning these representations are not presently in consciousness but can easily be retrieved—the repressed unconscious consists of representations that remain outside consciousness because they are barred from entry, facing closed gates or walls. Nonetheless, they significantly influence our behavior and emotional state, often causing various psychological disturbances. This form of the unconscious Freud designates as dynamic repressed unconscious, or the true unconscious, in the context of psychoanalysis.

Although existing outside consciousness, the repressed unconscious can be represented within it; otherwise, we would be unable to articulate anything about it. It manifests in slips of the tongue, lapses, dreams, and can be uncovered through the method of free association. However, the content of this representation in consciousness is often distorted, with the degree of distortion directly proportional to the strength of the resistance encountered by the unconscious on its way to consciousness. Freud refers to the unconscious as "It" (Es).

The realm of consciousness is designated by Freud as "I" (Ich). "We have constructed an image of a coherent organization of mental processes within a single personality and refer to it as the I of that individual," Freud writes. "This I is associated with consciousness, governing impulses towards action, that is, towards external manifestations. It is the mental instance that controls all partial processes, which sleeps at night yet still oversees the censorship of dreams." The I represents the superficial layer of the It, responsible for impulses towards action, connecting us to the external world, and exercising control over the demands of the It. It is the I that ensures the repression of certain desires and impulses into the realm of the It, constructing barriers and barricades on their path to consciousness. While the It operates on the pleasure principle, the I operates on the reality principle, tasked with reconciling our desires and impulses with the realities of our environment. Not everything within the I belongs to the conscious realm; as Freud noted, the I can also contain unconscious elements. However, when we consider it in the structure of the psyche in relation to its other components, particularly the It, we characterize it as conscious in contrast to the unconscious.

Freud metaphorically compares the relationship between the I and the It to that of a rider and a horse. The rider directs the horse, yet the powers of the rider and the horse are unequal, often compelling the rider to yield to the horse's movements. The forces of the I and the It are similarly unequal. The It is a boiling cauldron of passions, driven by forces aimed at satisfaction and aggression, occupying a more significant portion of the psyche's structure and playing a more substantial role than the I. The I is a delicate shell of the It, according to Freud, responsible for our connection to the real conditions of the external world, primarily striving to restrain the desire for immediate gratification and curb the forces of aggression. The It plays a more crucial role in shaping our behavior than the I, often bypassing the censorship of the I and masking its true goals to such an extent that the I, succumbing to these deceptions, inadequately comprehends the genuine motives of its actions or frequently confuses the will of the It with its own.

However, the significance of the I should not be underestimated, as it embodies human reason and prudence, allowing an individual to occupy a unique position within the structure of living matter. Alongside the It and the I, Freud identifies "a certain instance" within the structure of the psyche, which he refers to as the ideal I or super-ego, a differentiated structural unit within the I. The super-ego serves as the highest instance in the structure of mental life, functioning as the moral higher censor, or the conscience of humanity. Freud linked the formation of the super-ego to the resolution of the child's sexual phase of life, particularly the Oedipus complex. It is during this phase, in complex relations with the parents, that the infantile I accumulates strength through identification with them to overcome the Oedipus complex and its repression, thus creating the ideal I or super-ego. However, the super-ego reflects not only the experiences of the individual I. It is less closely connected to consciousness than the I. "While the I represents the external world and reality, the super-ego emerges as the advocate for the internal world or the It... Conflicts between the I and the ideal I ultimately reflect the contradictions between the real and psychological, the external and internal worlds."

The division of the human psyche into the It, I, and super-ego facilitates a better understanding of the mental mechanisms, yet it does not fully reveal the driving forces of mental life or its dynamics. Moreover, from Freud's perspective, the mental mechanism, the structure of any person's psyche—not just that of the mentally ill—contains these three elements. Freud distinguishes two types of drives that define mental activity and consequently human behavior: 1) sexual drives, or Eros, encompassing not only actual sexual desire and its repressed derivatives but also the instinct for self-preservation; and 2) the drive towards death, manifesting primarily in the instinct for destruction. In this context, the sexual drive and its inseparable energy, "libido"—the energy of sexual desire—are of paramount importance.

From Freud's viewpoint, the sexual instinct is inherent from the moment of birth, with infantile sexuality serving as a necessary stage in the journey toward normal adult sexuality. In this light, Freud presents himself as a proponent of pansexualism, perceiving the essence of the sexual instinct as the pursuit of pleasure, thus allowing us to view all sensations of pleasure as variations of sexual gratification.