A theory from the hospital ward, still in the nursery

Psychoanalytic theory, the paper says, was advanced by Freud in the late nineteenth century, and was one of the theories that had a considerable, constructive influence on the development of early childhood education into the 1960s. It grew, in this account, out of the work of treating patients in a psychiatric hospital, and became a way of talking about human nature and about the development and structure of personality — one of the most comprehensive and best-known theories in that field, the author writes. It is described as both a theory of personality and a proposal for treatment. Freud tried to explain how personality is formed, and also developed techniques that could be used to treat neurosis. The starting point, citing Yoon Ju-young (2003), is the idea that the root of psychological problems lies in unconscious sexual conflict.

The infant in this view is not a small adult. It begins life in the form of extremely instinctual needs that demand immediate satisfaction, and in helplessness. Freud's emphasis, the paper adds, was mostly on biological instinct or drive, on the relationship between parent and child, and on unconscious feeling.

Five stages, three agencies, and a base laid early

Child development is written as a series of five stages of libido. Freud, the paper notes, used a broad definition of sexuality and called these periods psychosexual stages. In each of them, the impulses of the original instinct, seeking pleasure, concentrate on a particular part of the child's body and on the activities tied to that part; sexual energy is directed toward an erogenous zone, and fixation can occur in the course of the stage. If a basic impulse is not resolved at one stage, the author writes, a permanent defect in personality development is the result. Alongside the stages sits another claim: the basic foundation of an individual personality is firmly formed while the first five years of life are being passed.

Inside the mind, an instinct — the id — is said to exist. The ego and the superego try to control it, and do not entirely succeed. Unconscious impulses, according to Freud as the paper reports him, come out as slips of the tongue made without thought, as dreams, as habitual behavior or neurotic symptoms, and sometimes as art, literature, or scientific activity that society is prepared to accept.

A cause for every act, and a line the extract does not cross

For the analysis of child development, the paper says, psychoanalytic theory emphasizes psychic determinism and unconscious motivation, and sets two basic assumptions: every human action has a cause, and human behavior is governed by instinctual impulses the person does not consciously know — cited from Ko Young-hee (1995, pp. 190–191). Psychoanalysis, it adds, always thinks of some relation between a present state or action and a past one; that causal relation is what Park Ah-cheong (2003, p. 143) is cited as calling psychic determinism. Most of the behavior a person shows, in the paper's restatement of Freud's basic assumption, is governed by unconscious processes: thoughts, hidden motives, desires and fears that influence what a person does.

The assignment had asked the writer to choose one perspective and to consider what it might imply for early childhood education. The extract records the influence of the theory on that field into the 1960s, and then stays with the infant, the stages, and the structure of the mind. A worked-out classroom section is not clearly here, and this page does not invent one. The useful thing to carry away is the picture the paper does give: a helpless infant on a developmental clock, whose first five years are said to set a base that later stages can still mark, or scar.

Sources

1. A campus paper on the psychoanalytic view of child development, drawing on Freud as presented in the report and citing Yoon Ju-young (2003), Ko Young-hee (1995), and Park Ah-cheong (2003).

Last updated: 14 November 2026