Sigmund Freud thought that what you do comes from the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. This highly problematic endeavor is what the "mind" does. Most determinant in one's early years, conflicts coming from the "pleasure principal" last a lifetime.

For Freud, the mind is intimately linked to past experience (both conscious and unconscious). How much and what mental experience a person has repressed is key to evaluating how he/or she functions at present, along with behavioral effects caused by the admixture of sexual drive (libido) and aggression. Freudian psychoanalysis seeks out significant childhood events and their attendant fantasies, wishes, and dreams.

At the core of Freudian factors that makes up personality is the development of libidinal drives through the oral, anal, and phallic phases in childhood, and of the id, ego, and superego through the later latency and adolescent periods.

The oral stage of development (birth to about 18 months of age) is marked by libidinal gratification through the lips, mouth, and tongue. Such gratification in the anal phase (about 18 months to age 3) is accomplished through the retention and passing of feces. In the phallic phase, the genitals become primary to libidinal drives. The id, representing the effects of libido and aggression, the ego, standing for self-identity, and the superego, or conscience, dominate during the latency period (from the phallic phase to puberty) and adolescence, and they are shaped by education and socialization with significant others.

Freudian psychoanalysis aims to enable the client to discover unconscious conflicts, and once revealed, respond to such conflicts rationally, thus controlling and abating neurotic behaviors.