12.1. Psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung
The theory of psychoanalysis advanced by Sigmund Freud is based on the idea that both behavior and psychic of a personality are strongly affected by the unconscious and subconscious processes. S. Freud was the first to formulate the now generally shared view that consciousness is only a part of psychics. The psychic processes going on in the unconscious and subconscious spheres strongly affect individual emotions and behavior. In some situations, the subconscious cerebral activity is inhibited by the consciousness, while in other cases this activity is unconsciously controlled by the behavior.
In his model of personality, S. Freud based it on the widely spread phenomena of human psychics. It is common knowledge that many actions of a human being are induced by the desires, which can give gratification but also provoke conflicts with other people. Since some individuals enter into a conflict, while other persons avoid it under the same conditions, the Freud's model incorporates a psychic element, which implements inhibitory (repressive) function. An important component of human psychics is the senses of moral and conscience. The types of desires repressed by the conscience depend on age and personal moral education. Thus, the human psychics includes still other (the third) component, which 'accumulates' the public moral norms. One of the major features, which differs the human beings from the animals is the ability to repress the most sexual impulses in the cases when they could provoke the conflict and troubles. S. Freud postulated the greatest role of sexual drive in the structure of human psychics, and namely this drive controls other unconscious processes in Freud's personality model.