Without a doubt, Sigmund Freud has had more of a lasting influence on the world than any other psychologist. Yet another major movie about his life and work was recently released (Freud's Last Session). Of course, as modern psychological scientists and practitioners know, when we move inside the field, we find something of a "love-hate" relationship with Freud. Many psychologists see Freud as a towering genius, whereas many others see him as a pseudoscientist who borders on being a charlatan.
Let's briefly summarize the three elements that make up the heart of Freud's psychology. Then, update those frames with a modern theory that unifies psychological science into a coherent whole1. The result is we can keep the Freudian baby and remove the bathwater.
Freud called his theory "psychoanalysis," the three central ideas are the topographical model of consciousness, the structural model of personality, and the core functional model of mental processes.
The topographical model refers to how Freud mapped consciousness. It divides consciousness into consciousness, which refers to the things the person is explicitly and self-consciously aware of; pre-consciousness, which refers to the things that are stored in memory but can be easily accessed; and the unconscious, which refers to things that influence what a person thinks and feels, but that they are not explicitly aware of.
Freud's structural model of personality divides the human psychological system into three primary domains: the id, the ego, and the superego. The ego refers to the self-conscious domain of "I-myself." The id refers to the animal, or "it," forces that are beneath self-conscious awareness but drive people toward and away from things. The superego is the "above me" aspect of culture, and the standards of important others tell the person who they should be and how they should behave. The superego gets internalized in the form of an introject or an inner identity that judges the person.
The basic "iceberg" map shows how the topological and structural models are related. Consciousness is the tip of the iceberg and refers to the self-conscious experience of being in the world and the conscious reasons one has for what one is doing. It overlaps with the ego, although some aspects of the ego are not conscious. The id is largely unconscious, although aspects of it can be made conscious through introspection and insight. The superego is partially conscious and partially unconscious.
Turning to Freud's core model for mental processes, it is important to know that, prior to developing psychoanalysis, Freud was a neurologist who studied the nervous systems of fish and crayfish. He noticed a core feature of neurons: they either tend to be activating or inhibiting. The steam engine was a prominent technology of the day, so it makes sense that Freud's core functional model of the mental process was the hydraulic-drive model. That is, he saw core forces pushing to be released, which he thought was the root of pleasure. However, reality would often clash with these drives and desires, so they needed to be inhibited. This activate/drive versus inhibit/defend tension is at the heart of Freud's thought about psychological processes. It is why "repression," or the unconscious inhibition of drives, is central to Freudian theory.
According to the unified theory of psychology, both Freud's admirers and his detractors have a point. Freud was a brilliant observer of human psychology, and he saw key structures and functional processes at the heart of our psychology. At the same time, he had the wrong conception of evolution, his topographical map was too limited to map fully what we mean by consciousness, his core model of the mind-brain system was off-key, and he often generated fanciful ideas and claimed they were scientifically based on a spurious method.
Still, we can use the unified theory of psychology and update Freud to frame his key insights in a way that is consistent with modern knowledge. The result is that we can keep the Freudian baby and eliminate the Freudian bathwater.
Starting with the topographical model, we can thank Freud for helping elucidate the dynamics associated with unconscious processes. However, his topographical model was not up to the task of mapping the territory. The unified theory gives us the map of mind to clarify the domains of mental processes and the concept of consciousness2.
Whereas Freud's vocabulary only gives us consciousness versus unconsciousness, the map of mind identifies three layers. The first domain is called mind1, and it consists of the nonconscious layer of neurocognitive activity. The second domain is called mind2, and it is the domain of subjective conscious experience. This is the world of nonverbal feelings, like pleasure and pain, perceptions, and images. Finally, there is the domain of self-conscious reflection, language-based thought, and explicit reason-giving. This is the domain of mind3.
Notice that we have added a layer by differentiating subjective conscious experience from self-conscious reflection. Freud's model fails to include this important distinction, which is the source of much confusion.
The map of mind also includes distinctions between the epistemological point of view (interior versus exterior) and whether the domain under consideration happens within the individual or between the individual and the environment. As I show in my recent book, A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology, these distinctions are absolutely crucial if we are to develop a comprehensive vocabulary for mind, behavior, and consciousness.
Shifting to the structural model, the unified theory of psychology includes a mode of human consciousness directly connected to Freud's structural framework, called the updated tripartite model of human consciousness3. Like Freud's model, it includes three domains. The first domain is the experiential self. Consistent with Freud's id, it aligns with the animal aspect of our being. However, it is not right to consider this domain "unconscious." Rather, it is the seat of our perceptual or phenomenological consciousness. It includes both the witness function of our mind and it includes our "primate heart." In addition, rather than only having drives that always ultimately reduce to sex and aggression, the unified theory posits that the primate heart functions via the attachment system and seeks status, love, and autonomy.
The ego in the updated tripartite aligns directly with Freud's conception of the "I-myself" domain of human experience. The narrating portion of the human self can generate explicit reasons for what is happening and why one is doing what one is doing. Consistent with much work on psychodynamic defense mechanisms, the updated tripartite model identifies the "Freudian Filter" as the filtering process by which the ego builds rationales for what is going on in the experiential self and can also repress material that is upsetting or creates cognitive dissonance. In addition, with its "Justification Hypothesis," the unified theory provides a clear evolutionary explanation for the evolution of the ego, which is something Freud never understood.
The third domain in the updated tripartite is the persona. This domain overlaps with the superego but is also somewhat different from it. The term persona comes from the ideas of Freud's most famous student, Carl Jung. It refers to the public-facing aspect of our consciousness, how we work to maintain our image and reputation and anticipate how others will see us. Consistent with Freud's work, the dynamics of the persona lead to the development of an internalized voice that tracks other's approval, often in the form of an inner critic.
Last, we can use the unified theory to update Freud's hydraulic model into a more sophisticated model based on the modern science of how mental processes work. Instead of an energy-drive model, a more accurate frame is that the nervous system is an information-processing network that functions as a behavioral control system. Freud's model is lacking here because information theory, cybernetics, and the cognitive revolution all happened decades after Freud developed his ideas. The unified theory of psychology frames the core of mental processes with behavioral investment theory4. It frames the nervous system as an investment value system that has evolved to guide animals in the environment toward paths of investment via predictive processing and recursive relevance realization. Although different from Freud's hydraulic-drive model, it nonetheless shares some basic features with it. For example, the first principle of behavioral investment theory is the principle of energy economics, which can be thought of as the way the nervous system directs energy, defined as work effort, toward the environment to effect change.
The bottom line is that Freud was a brilliant observer of the human condition who built a fascinating model that can be updated and framed in a way consistent with modern psychological science. In particular, the unified theory of psychology allows us to place Freud's key insights together as part of a coherent picture of the human condition. In a way that is largely consistent with the core of Freud's vision, the unified theory frames us as animals who are behavioral investors regulating our work effort toward survival and reproductive success, who are also primates concerned with power, love, and freedom, who are also persons who live in a culture of norms, regulations, and standards that we need to navigate. In short, much as Freud claimed, we live as socialized, justifying apes who struggle to reconcile our lives with that fact and make meaning out of it.
References
1. Henriques, G. R. (2011). A new unified theory of psychology. New York: Springer.
2. Henriques, G. R. (2022). Mental behaviors and the Map of Mind1,2,3. In A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology (pp. 287-319). Palgrave Macmillan.
3. Henriques, G. R. (2022). Justification Systems Theory. In A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology (pp. 87-118). Palgrave Macmillan.
4. Henriques, G. R. (2022). A metatheory of Mind1. In A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology (pp. 321-355). Palgrave Macmillan.
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