The first is the idea of the importance of unconscious feelings. Freud’s first case studies purported to show the way that when strong feelings cause conflict, they may be blocked from awareness - repressed. This, however, doesn’t mean that they go away. One way they may express themselves is in the form of neurotic symptoms, usually in some way expressing the underlying conflict. As an example, a young woman who was disgusted by seeing a dog drink from a household glass developed symptoms where she couldn’t drink liquids. Unconscious feelings may also show themselves in distorted form in dreams. The goal of Freudian dream interpretation is to unravel the different kinds of distortion which mask the motivations underlying the dream. Freud also thought slips of the tongue and the mistakes we make were motivated by unconscious conflicts and feelings.

The second base of Freud’s theories is his theory of psychosexuality and its foundations in early childhood. He related psychosexuality to the pleasurable sensations that come from the stimulation of certain body areas. He saw the young child as going through a biologically timetabled series of stages. Initially, at the oral stage, the erogenous area is the mouth and - as you may have noticed - when babies get old enough to be able, they love putting things to their mouths. (Each stage is characterised by a particular body area, a physical ‘mode’ - at the oral stage, sucking or biting - and a psychological ‘modality’ - at this stage the child is dependent on others for survival and satisfaction.)

The anal stage comes next where the core conflict relates to the requirement of the child to control his/her own body functions to the requests of others. According to Freud, this may lay the foundation for many different kinds of personality characteristics from stinginess (holding on) to creativity (being proud of what you produce!). In particular, it lays the foundation for your style of relating to authority - whether this be conformity or rebellion.

The third or phallic stage focuses on the genital area and in boys takes the form of the famous Oedipal conflict. Feeling close to the mother, and developing an awareness of the relationships of others, the boy may come to perceive the father as a rival, producing feelings of both hostility and fear. Given the child’s focus on the phallus at this stage, this can take the form of unconscious fears of castration. If all this sounds rather far-fetched to you, think of the extraordinary themes found in the classical fairy tales, where people are frequently eaten (oral aggression) and giants' heads are cut off (castration of the father?). Many psychoanalysts would see the popularity among young children of such bloodthirsty themes as indication of their resonance with children’s unconscious feelings.