Freud's view of human beings was negative; he proposed that people are inherently selfish, impulsive, and irrational. Behavior is a result of unconscious processes, as well as biological and instinctual needs and drives. Behavior is determined by sex drives, and adult action is influenced by psychosexual states. There is a finite quantity of libido store in the id.

Dream concepts:

1. Dreams - composites of symbolic conceptualizations which are derived from recent and remote memories and formed by current feelings, attitudes, and motivations of the individual; dreams are distortions of life experiences in accordance with the regressive thinking processes that prevail during sleep which are shaped by the immediate psychological needs of the individual.

2. Manifest content - the apparent content of the dream; a mask of events and situations that conceals the fundamental latent meanings of the dream. Manifest content is a composite of memories of events in the recent past (usually within the previous 24 hours) and memories of the distant past.

3. Latent content - the fundamental meaning of the dream; underlying thoughts, desires, and fantasies related to the deeper emotional reactions of early infancy.

4. Dream work - the process whereby latent dream content becomes apparent by exploring matters such as early experiences, attitudes, and fantasies toward parents and siblings, defenses and conditionings, emotionally charged current life experiences, interpersonal dynamics, repressed unconscious impulses, and nascent conflicts that create anxiety.