Hailed as "the father of psychoanalysis", Sigmund Freud lived and worked in Vienna in the late 19th century and early on in the 20th. I'll only briefly summarize his main theory here-- if you're interested in more info, do a web search or get out to your local library-- trust me, there's TONS of stuff on Freud out there.
Freud brought forward a lot of theories about human behaviour, the bare basics of which I'll talk about here. Really, the major thing about Freud is his idea that there are two parts to the human mind: the CONSCIOUS and the SUBCONSCIOUS. We operate in the conscious area, but Freud's theory is that there are subconscious processes that can account for almost all our behaviour.
In the subconscious, Freud said, there are three parts. These are the famous ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO. First of all, the ID (from the Latin for 'it') is the basest part of all. It represents our desires and drives that are purely animal in instinct, like the need for food and sleep-- and most especially, sexual pleasure (sex is big with Freud). If the ID were in charge of us, the world would be chaos. People would be running everywhere, satisfying all their desires, with no account for decorum or decency or even a respect or acknowledgement of other human life or personal boundaries.
The EGO is pretty much the Greek word for the first singular pronoun, "I". This part of the subconscious is the part that makes us understand that we are all separate. We all have our own concepts of ourselves because of our individual Egos. The Ego reigns over the Id to an extent-- it is, after all, a step up. But still, even if the Ego was in charge of everything, it'd still be pretty chaotic. That's why there's a SUPEREGO, which is the part of our subconscious that is the controller of everything. Here is where we have social rules that govern things. For example, you've had a rather large meal and digested it thoroughly. The id-controlled being would defecate wherever it found itself. But the SuperEgo is in charge of being in control: the SuperEgo-governed person would restrain his/herself until they can safely reach a washroom.
That is sort of the core of Freudian thought. Here's some other things that are also important and useful to know:
Freud thought that the unconsious Id, because it was repressed all the time by the superego, made for a lot of trouble in humans. Most of the time he explained all behaviour as being a subverted form of Id expression. But the big way for the Id to control everything was in DREAMS. When we sleep, the SuperEgo and Ego sleep as well, and the Id has free reign over everything! So Freud suggested the study of DREAMS to discover what was really going on behind there, in the subconscious mind.
But it's not that easy to know about what's going on with the Id. After all, we don't often dream of defecating in the middle of a social gathering! But what Freud says happens is, In these dreams, our desires are represented as symbols. So if you walk past a tower in your dream, that represents a phallus, so you know your Id is wanting sex. That's just one example, and it's really basic, but I hope you can get the gist of it! Freud wrote whole books on the idea of dream analysis, and even classified all the symbols that represent sexual anxiety and other Id needs.
If there's anything else you need to know about Freud, it's about the OEDIPUS COMPLEX. This is Freud's idea that everyone is in love with their opposite sex parent. It's not really in love so much as wanting to have sexual control over this parent. It's named after the Greek story about Oedipus, a man who -through a twist of fate- ended up married to his own mother. According to Freud, every child goes through this phase, and some people never really get out of it.
I hope this will help you brush up on your Freud, and better understand Star Wars: A Twentieth Century Fairy Tale. Of course, there is much, much more to Freud, and many commentaries on his theories. Remember, we don't know for sure that this is all TRUE (and the majority of people today believe it isn't true at all): but it became a foundation for how we see human behaviour anyways. Also, Bettelheim is really hung up on Freud, and if you read his book, you really should get out and read more about Freud beforehand. Most people today don't like Freud that much, but because I had to do a Bettelheim-ian analysis of Star Wars, this material is important to understanding my paper.
(Click here to brush up on your Bettelheim)