Freud and psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6 1856 in a place called Freiberg that was at that time part of the Austrian Empire.  His interest to the world is mainly in the field of psychoanalysis, which he pioneered and championed throughout his life.

Freud looked at a person's mind as being composed of three parts (in a similar way to Plato's Tripartite Theory of the Soul)  with the mind being split into:

Id (our 'animal' brain, made up of base desires)
Ego (the rational part of our minds)
Super-Ego (our internal policeman, that perpetually berates us for our actions or inaction)

Freud was a pessimist, and believed that the Ego was hopelessly out-gunned by the Id and the Super-Ego.  He believed that only by psychoanalysis could the Ego be helped to hold its own against this two-pronged attack.

However, Plato argued that the soul was split into Appetitive, Rational and Spirited parts, and that it was possible for the rational part of the mind to control the more appetitive and spirited parts of the mind.

At the time of Freud's work becoming available, it was considered ground-breaking and exciting, Freud gained a great deal of popularity and his work was initially widely accepted with little criticism.  It was only after careful study that criticisms of his work began to surface, in some cases among former students who had previously followed him avidly.

Freud is not held in such high regard today.  It was found upon attempting to repeat his techniques, that the results of some of his case studies may have been falsified, and that psychoanalysis does not, in fact, offer the benefits suggested by Freud.

In addition, Freud's attitude to, and explanations of, female sexuality are without merit, except as an example of misogyny at work.

Freud's concepts of the Id, Ego and SuperEgo remain popular and widely used today, but his views on sexuality generally, and female sexuality in particular, have been dis-proven as conjecture.  In reading his work today, you'd be forgiven for suggesting he should see a therapist...