Applying Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory and Adlerian Individ

Applying Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory and Adlerian Individual Psychology to Personal Life Experience

Introduction

Personology is the branch of psychology that focuses on the study of the individual's characteristics and of the differences between people. Unlike everyday knowledge of human nature - which is unsystematic, subjective, and often inaccurate - personology aims to improve our understanding of people by basing its theories on scientific methods. It may therefore be described as the formal, scientific counterpart of our informal knowledge of human nature. The most comprehensive elements of personology are found in personality theories, each of which represents a purposeful, sustained effort to develop a logically consistent conceptual system for describing, explaining, and predicting human behaviour. This essay draws on two foundational theoretical frameworks covered in this course: Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory and Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology. Specific psychological constructs from each theory will be identified, expanded with theoretical explanation, and applied to personal life experience in order to generate genuine insight into the self. An African psychological perspective will also be incorporated as a complementary lens. Together, these frameworks demonstrate that self-understanding is deepened significantly when everyday knowledge of human nature is examined through the rigorous concepts that personology provides.

Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

The Unconscious Mind

One of Freud's most enduring and foundational contributions to psychology is his identification of three levels of consciousness within the psyche: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious level contains all the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of which a person is currently aware, and its contents change constantly. The preconscious level holds information that is not immediately in focus but can be recalled to consciousness with relatively little effort - it consists mainly of memories that are not painful or anxiety-provoking. The unconscious level, however, is the most psychologically significant of the three. It contains the person's forbidden drives and those memories of events and wishes that cause pain, anxiety, and guilt - material so threatening to the ego that it cannot be allowed to surface into conscious awareness.

Central to Freud's theory is the principle of psychic determinism: the belief that all behaviour, without exception, is determined by forces within the psyche, including those of which the individual is completely unaware. This means that even seemingly trivial or accidental behaviours - slips of the tongue, forgetting a name, choosing a particular word - are not random but are expressions of unconscious wishes and conflicts. The implication is profound: what we consciously believe drives our behaviour is often a surface rationalisation of what the unconscious has already set in motion.

Applying this construct to my own life, I have noticed a recurring pattern of becoming disproportionately anxious and withdrawn in situations involving direct conflict or criticism. For a long time, I explained this to myself as simply being a 'sensitive' or 'introverted' person. Informed by Freud's model of the unconscious, however, I can now recognise that this response is not a rational, freely chosen disposition. It is more likely the expression of unconscious memories from early childhood - experiences in which expressing disagreement or disappointment led to emotional withdrawal or disapproval from caregivers. Because those experiences generated pain and anxiety, they were repressed into the unconscious, where they continue to shape my automatic responses to conflict in the present. This insight is significant because it reveals that simply deciding to respond differently is insufficient; genuine change would require engaging with the material that lies beneath the surface of conscious awareness.