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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Sigmund Freud's focus interest was the unconscious self. His ideas are not empirically testable but are enormously influential:

  • The unconscious: mental activity inaccessible to the self.
  • Id: the primary drive; motivated by pleasure alone – impulses, emotions, desires; present from birth.
  • Libido: 'an unconscious drive [providing] the energy and motivation for all development'; primarily sexual; present from birth.
  • Ego: channels id and libido impulses into socially acceptable outlets; maintains balance between id and super ego; emerges at ages two-five years.
  • Super ego: internalised parental restraint (same sex parent).

(See: Tilstone and Layton, 2004)