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(1856 - 1939) With Josef Breuer, he laid the foundation of psychoanalysis with the
publication in 1893 of "On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena:
Preliminary Communication." This paper introduced Freud's seminal notion
of psychological conflict. Freud's most famous work, The Interpretation
of Dreams (1900), elucidated the nature of dreaming and primary process
thinking and presented his initial observations concerning childhood sexuality,
the oedipal conflict (see Oedipus complex), and the developmental roots of adult
psychopathology.
Freud initially conceived of psychological conflict as existing between the
conscious, self-preservative instinct of the ego and the repressed, mainly
unconscious sexual instinct (libido) - the so-called topographic model of
psychological functioning. In the early 1920s, Freud proposed a major
revision of his theory with his formulation of the "structural model" of the
mind that viewed the psyche as divided into the ego, id, and superego.
This conceptual model set the stage for the elucidation of the psychological
defenses and the subsequent important development of ego psychology; a central
preoccupation of current psychoanalytic observation and theory.
Source: Edgerton, Jane E. 1994. American Psychiatric Glossary, 7th Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press
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