Freud-The What And How

 Who and Why

So who was Sigmund Freud and why is important or even relevant to film? Well as I'm sure you all know he was a famous psychologist, but he did a lot to set standards that we still use even today in modern psychology. One of these was the invention of psychoanalysis, this is the basis for theories of therapy and treatments for patients, this then gives us an idea of characteristics of some peoples personalities or characteristics which help to get a better picture of ideas and ideals further down the line. 

He also published a few books notably "The Interpretation Of Dreams" where he talks about the idea that dreams are a gateway into our unconscious mind and some of our repressed desires etc. but basically the general takeaways from these two points is that he set some renown and known ways that are still used today and have become well established baseline for psychologists today.

However his most important development (in my opinion anyway) was the development of different neuroses to try and give a greater understanding of how the brain works giving us our personalities, I'll briefly go over them now: 

The id: This is what Freud called the pleasure driven portion of the subconscious (supposedly seen primarily from babies-3 year old's) where the brain's basic desires and emotions are housed. It needs some of the most basic things such as emotional and the need for instant gratification.

The superego: In this there are more specific things like ideals and the need for perfection that's passed down to us from society and parents this helps to guide us by dictating the do's that we must follow to act as an opposite against the id yet the id occupies more space but there's more power that goes behind the super. How is it balanced?

The ego: This is the main part of all the consciousness, the one that gives the control needed to balance out both the superego and the id in the mind as too much of either would be self destructive and that as we matured we grew to find the balance and indulge each other almost in sequence. Such as having the superego being in charge for a time (like for cleaning or work) then indulging in id when you get the reward (relaxing times or the paycheck) which helps fulfil all parts of the consciousness.

These are all devices or terms that Freud used when describing how the brain was built and the conscious was structured. There's still one term that I've mentioned but not really expanded on, and that's his technique of psychoanalysis. See back when he was still understanding the human minds and how it pieced together from understanding dreams [as mentioned previously] but other things as well like inferring meaning from slips of the tongue like something that was supposed to be hidden or trying to get an alternative behind a joke made.