Evaluate the Extent to Which Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development Can Help Us to Understand a Client’s Presenting Issue?” Essay

“Evaluate the extent to which Freud’s theory of psychosexual development can help us to understand a client’s presenting issue?”

Sigmund Freud’s most vital contribution to the study of psychology and human behaviour was his notion of the “dynamic unconscious”. This view was that the unconscious mind played a precisely important role in determining how an individual behaved. Freud put forward the principle of multiple determinations, which suggests that every psychic event is determined by the simultaneous action of several others. He saw the unconscious mind as the actual source of mental energy, which determined behaviour. He based his belief on the results of trials with hypnosis. When he was able to produce and remove symptoms of hysteria in his entranced patients.

Continuing this theory has an underlying belief that individual’s behaviour is the direct result of the influences of all past experience. These influences would have an even greater effect if they were from childhood. Freud believed that these first experiences formed solid foundations on which the developing client would structure the rest of their life. The adult personality was directly formed in childhood, according to the experience and treatment as a child. If the experiences in childhood were happy and balanced, then the child could develop into a normal, well balanced and adjusted adult.

The psychodynamic approach places great emphasis on the years of childhood, investigating how the client comes to terms with and resolves any conflict conjured in this early period of life. It continues to help the client to understand and overcome this conflict. Freud was the first psychologist who allowed great emphasis to the relevance of those early years. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality, personality is composed of three main fundamentals. These elements of personality