Psychic apparatus

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Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud's couch
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and superego Ego defenses Projection Introjection Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Resistance Denial Dreamwork Cathexis
Important figures Abraham Adler Balint Bion Breuer Chodorow Erikson Fairbairn Ferenczi Freud (Anna) Freud (Sigmund) Fromm Guattari Horney Irigaray Jacobson Jones Jung Kohut Klein Kristeva Lacan Laing Laplanche Mahler Rank Reich Spielrein Stekel Strachey Sullivan Winnicott Žižek
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Psychology of the Unconscious (1912) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923) Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964) Anti-Oedipus (1972) The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)
Schools of thought Adlerian Ego psychology Jungian Lacanian Interpersonal Intersubjective Marxist Object relations Reichian Relational Self psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis List of schools of psychoanalysis
See also Child psychoanalysis Depth psychology Psychodynamics Psychoanalytic theory
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In psychoanalytic theory, the term psychic apparatus (also psychical apparatus, mental apparatus) refers to the mental structures and mechanisms of the psyche. In Freud's 'topographical' model of the psyche, it refers to three systems – the Unconscious, the Pre-conscious, and the Conscious. In his later 'structural model', Freud described the psychic apparatus in terms of the id, ego and super-ego.^[1]