What influences personality?

Childhood experiences have a great influence on personality. Everyone is born with sexual and aggressive urges -- urges that we must learn to control early in our lives. As we learn to control the urges, we also learn right from wrong.

My theory of psychosexual development describes how a child goes through several stages, fixating on particular parts of the body. In one of these stages, a boy competes with his father for the attention of his mother; a girl competes with her mother for the attention of her father. What the child experiences during these stages will affect personality in later years.

In more general terms, personality can be described as a kind of energy system, not unlike a steam engine. The energy fueling personality comes in two forms: life drives, which are a person's erotic and pleasure-seeking urges, and death drives, which are aggressive and destructive urges.

How does the mind work?

We know a great deal about how the mind works. Take a look at the unconcious, for example. Everyone's personality has a large unconcious component. Events buried or forgotten in the unconcious influence our behavior.

Consider a simple slip of the tongue. You intend to call your friend a "good friend," but instead you tell him he's a "good fiend." You claim you didn't mean it, but did you really? Perhaps your true feelings are surfacing from deep within your unconcious?

Tell us about your education.

I attended high school at the Sperl Gymnasium, where I finished at the head of my class during each of my last six years there.

When I graduated, I had still not decided what I wanted to do with my life. I really didn't have any great desire to become a physician. However, just before leaving school I was introduced to an essay by the philosopher Goethe, entitled "Nature." This beautiful essay made an impression that led me to the medical profession. I decided to become a medical student and, at the age of seventeen, enrolled in the University of Vienna.

Nine years later I entered Vienna's General Hospital, where I trained with the psychiatrist Theodor Meynert. I subsequently went to Paris and studied with the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.

What is the purpose of psychology?

The purpose of psychology is to understand how the mind works so that we can help people deal with neuroses, or mental and emotional disorders.

Psychology's function is both diagnostic and therapeutic. By knowing how the mind works, we can better diagnose a problem. And through therapy, namely psychoanalysis, we are able to treat the problem.

Psychoanalysis helps us to gain mastery over unconscious impulses. It is the technology to improve the human mind.

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