Freud's Attachment Style Essay

Our attachment style can influence a number of factors in our life, from partner selection to how relationships progress. Recognizing our attachment pattern can help us understand our strengths and vulnerabilities. Attachment styles are established in early childhood attachments and can continue to function as working models for relationships in adulthood. This affects how individuals react to their needs and how they can go about meeting these needs.
From birth, infants appear to have the ability to respond to other human beings, supporting the ides that human beings have an inclination towards sociability. This process of socialization is continuous from birth to adulthood. An attachment bond to a parent figure or caregiver marks the child’s
This process is related to the different psychosexual stages, which he proposed every child goes through. According to Freud, the important stages are the oral, anal, and phallic stages. However, because Freud’s emphasis reflects a culture and society, which was male-dominated, his theoretical positions relate more specifically to boys rather than girls. His key observations on the attachment of a child to an adult concern his notion that young boys develop an unconscious desire for a sexual relationship with their mothers, and begin to see their fathers as rivals for their mother’s attention and affection. Freud believed that the boy would eventually identify with the father figure and join sides with him for fear that his father would castrate him. This is called the Oedipus complex, taking place during the phallic stage. The only way a child can resolve this issue is by identifying with the father (the idea of “if you can’t beat them, join
For Freud, the personality consists of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego. There must be equilibrium between these components in order for there to be a balanced personality, meaning the person will not experience any serious emotional problems. Of all three elements, the superego is the one that operates as the conscience, “guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles” (Feist et al., 2013, p. 32) and takes on a sort of authoritarian parent role. Since the adult personality of an individual depends a great deal on how the child and parent or caregiver formed an attachment, if the superego is too well developed or over developed, then the person will feel guilt-ridden or