If self-analysis made Freud a relatively adjusted man, it never blunted the sharpness of his search for understanding. He was too restless an explorer to remain content with his theories, worked until his death on amendments and additions. He was far less tolerant toward others' discontent with his theories, bitterly opposed some followers' deviations, but might well have accepted others that have developed since. Some rudiments of the Freudian main theme and principal variations:
Sigmund Freud held that the nature of man is essentially biological; man is born with certain instinctual drives. Most notable: the drive toward self-gratification. Basic mental energy, or libido, is equated with sexual energy by making the word "sex" stand for all pleasure.
Infant's first search for gratification is limited to release of hunger tension—oral phase. If there is no nipple handy, he puts thumb in mouth. Next comes satisfaction from defecation—anal phase. Third, pleasure from sensation in sexual parts—phallic phase. (Association of sexual gratification with reproduction—genital phase—does not come until sexual maturity.) Beginning about age two, the child's emotional attachment to mother leads to wishes to displace father—Oedipal feelings (the older, more rigid concept of an Oedipus complex is now frowned upon).
The psyche is divided horizontally into conscious and unconscious, vertically into id, ego and superego. Gradually the child's unconscious fills more or less deliberately with things forgotten (suppressed] because they are unpleasant, and, more importantly, with emotions and drives which are too painful ever to be tolerated in consciousness (repressed).
The id, entirely unconscious, most primitive part of the mind, is concerned only with gratification of drives. The ego, almost entirely conscious, develops from experience and reason, deals with perception of the environment, tries to go about governing id. Superego, largely unconscious, sits as judge, decides whether or not ego may permit id the gratification it seeks; it is conscience, made up of attitudes absorbed unwittingly in childhood and (to a much less extent) of attitudes consciously learned or adopted later.
Neurosis, to Freud, results from unsuccessful attempt by the personality to achieve harmony among id, ego and superego, and this failure in turn results from arrest of development at an immature stage. Commonest cause of emotional disharmony: failure to resolve Oedipal feelings. Example: many girls who profess to seek marriage actually avoid it because the prospect activates the threat of unacceptable emotions which are fixated to their fathers.
Among the mechanisms used to deal with conflicts: projection involves denial of an unacceptable element in the self and projecting it onto others, e.g., man who bangs desk and shouts: "Who's excited? You're excited, not me!" Reaction formation covers conversion of unacceptable hostility into cloying solicitousness, seen in many do-gooders and some overprotective mothers who unconsciously reject their children.
Another way of using libidinal energy: sublimation into constructive and creative work or play.