Psychoanalysis

Early life experiences and the unconscious

The early years of your life are crucial in forming your unconscious. In childhood, you were not yet aware of many things around you or even yourself. You could not express all of your thoughts or feelings because they were too complex for verbal expression. Instead, they were stored away in the unconscious part of your mind as memories, feelings and impulses that could only be expressed through dreams and automatic actions (slips of the tongue). This process continues throughout our lives as we continue to experience new information–consciously or unconsciously–and store it away for future use.

What causes neurosis? (fear of loss, fear of castration)

The basic cause of neurosis is the fear of loss, which results from a conflict between the ego and the superego. The ego is a person’s conscious awareness and sense of self; it controls our thoughts, feelings and actions. The superego is an unconscious part of our personality that includes moral values that we learn from others as children–for example, telling a child not to hit other kids or eat sweets before dinner. These two parts work together to form what Freud called “the reality principle”: they try to keep you safe by preventing you from doing things that could hurt yourself or others (i.e., crossing against traffic lights). But sometimes these systems don’t work properly because they’re not balanced with another system called “id”–your instinctual drives such as hunger or sex drive–which wants immediate satisfaction regardless of consequences!