Freudian psychoanalysis

Picture the mind as an iceberg: the tiny tip above the water is everything you're aware of, and the vast frozen bulk below is where the real action hides. That image is pure Freud, and examiners lean on it because psychoanalysis is the theory every later approach either extends or rebels against.

Start with the structural model — three forces in constant negotiation. The id is the newborn, pleasure-seeking engine that demands gratification now (the pleasure principle). The ego is the reality-tester and negotiator, mediating between raw impulse and the outside world (the reality principle). The superego is the internalized moralist — conscience plus ego-ideal — that judges and punishes with guilt. Neurosis, in this view, is the ego losing the balancing act.

Next, the levels of consciousness: the conscious (current awareness), the preconscious (memories you can readily call up), and the unconscious — the reservoir of repressed wishes, drives, and conflicts that Freud believed drive behavior even though we can't see it directly.

So how does the analyst reach the unconscious? Through the core techniques. Free association — the client says whatever comes to mind, uncensored, and the gaps and detours reveal buried material. Dream analysis — dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious," with a disguised latent content hidden beneath the remembered manifest content. And interpretation — the analyst offers hypotheses that make unconscious conflict conscious, ideally timed to the client's readiness. Add analysis of resistance (the client's blocks to the work), and you have the classic toolkit.

Clinical Pearl: Lock in the id = pleasure principle, ego = reality principle, superego = morality/conscience, and remember that the entire method aims to make the unconscious conscious. Free association plus dream analysis (manifest vs. latent) plus interpretation is the technique triad examiners test.