By: Amit Kothiyal
Submitted: 2009-09-23 07:10:19 | Word Count: 513
Sigmund Freud was a great personality who earned a good name during his life time and has made many helpful and famous discoveries that are still being used in the field of psychology to determine personality traits of people.
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Freiberg in Moravia. He was a son of a wool merchant who had a great sense of humor. Sigmund was a child of his father’s second wife who was just 21 years of age when she gave birth to him.
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He was brilliant as a child and did very well in his academics. After his primary education he took admission into a medical school. He involved himself in research and neurophysiology. He spent many years in an attempt to reduce personality to neurology.
He was the one who made the concept of conscious and unconscious mind popular. The conscious mind of an individual is the one that he is aware of at any time and the present memories, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and fantasies. While working on this concept he discovered the preconscious mind. The preconscious mind comprises of the available memory. The thoughts and memories that a person is not aware off at a particular time but can be readily brought to mind. Freud discovered that these two layers of the memory of mind are the smallest parts.
The largest part of the mind is made up of unconscious memory. This part of the memory is made up of things, thoughts, memories, perceptions that a person is not aware of including things that originate in this area of mind like instincts, drives and memories associated with a traumatic situation. We may not know about the presence of such feeling and emotions but they may suddenly appear when we see something tragic or traumatic happening to someone else.
Freud also explained the concept of Id, Ego and Super Ego. All these things apply to human nervous system. The Id works with pleasure principle. It understands the demands of the mind and tries to take care of it immediately. For example, when you feel hungry, you start looking for something to eat. If you ignore such demands for a time, there comes a point when the Id demands more attention from you to satisfy it. At this time the Ego of the individual becomes active and starts searching for food to satisfy the urge.
The Ego of an organism struggles to fulfill the Id and maintains the record of resources, rewards and punishments. The records that is stored for future reference such as what trick to follow and things to avoid becomes Super Ego.
Sigmund Freud also gave some more concepts like anxiety, depression and defense mechanisms to the world of psychology. These and such other concepts that were propagated by Sigmund Freud made him popular and famous in the field of psychology.
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