The psychoanalytic approach to adult personality development has its roots in the theories of Sigmund Freud. His theories encompassed four domains—level of consciousness, personality structure, defence mechanisms, and stages of psychosexual development.
Freudian theory postulates that adult personality is made up of three aspects: (1) the id, operating on the pleasure principle generally within the unconscious; (2) the ego, operating on the reality principle within the conscious realm; and (3) the superego, operating on the morality principle at all levels of consciousness. The interplay of these personality structures generates anxiety that must be reduced through various defence mechanisms. These mechanisms act to obscure the true, anxiety-laden reasons for one’s behaviour.
What is Id?
The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. The id is a part of the unconscious that contains all the urges and impulses, including what is called the libido, a kind of generalized sexual energy that is used for everything from survival instincts to appreciation of art. The id is also kind of stubborn, for it responds only to what Freud called the pleasure principle (if it feels good, do it), and nothing else.
What is Ego?
The ego is ‘that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.'(Freud, 1923, p. 25). The ego operates according to the reality principle, working out realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands, often compromising or postponing satisfaction to avoid negative consequences of society. The ego considers social realities and norms, etiquette and rules in deciding how to behave.
What is Super Ego?
The
superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are
learned from one’s parents and others. It develops around the age of
3 – 5 years during the phallic stage of psychosexual
development. The superego is seen as the purveyor or rewards
(feelings of pride and satisfaction) and punishments (feelings of
shame and guilt) depending on which part (the ego-deal or c
onscious)
is activated.
Iceberg module:
Freud often used the metaphor of an iceberg to describe the two major aspects of human personality.2 The tip of the iceberg that extends above the water represents the conscious mind. As you can see in the image on top, the conscious mind is just the “tip of the iceberg.” Beneath the water is the much larger bulk of the iceberg, which represents the unconscious. Sigmund Freud didn’t exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he certainly was responsible for making it popular and this was one of his main contributions to psychology.
Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, whereby he described the features of the mind’s structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.
Freud delineated the mind in the distinct levels, each with their own roles and functions.1
- The preconscious consists of anything that could potentially be brought into the conscious mind.
- The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. This also includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily and brought into awareness.
- The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. The unconscious contains contents that are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.
Defence Mechanism:
is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and outer stressors. In the first definitive book on defence mechanisms, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936),[15] Anna Freud enumerated the ten defence mechanisms that appear in the works of her father, Sigmund Freud: repression, regression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against one’s own person, reversal into the opposite, and sublimation or displacement
Pathological
- Conversion: The expression of an intrapsychic conflict as a physical symptom; examples include blindness, deafness, paralysis, or numbness. This phenomenon is sometimes called hysteria
- Splitting: A primitive defence. Both harmful and helpful impulses are split off and segregated, frequently projected onto someone else. The defended individual segregates experiences into all-good and all-bad categories, with no room for ambiguity and ambivalence. When “splitting” is combined with “projecting”, the undesirable qualities that one unconsciously perceives oneself as possessing, one consciously attributes to another
Immature
- Idealization: Tending to perceive another individual as having more desirable qualities than they may actually have
- Introjection: Identifying with some idea or object so deeply that it becomes a part of that person. For example, introjection occurs when we take on attributes of other people who seem better able to cope with the situation than we do.
- Projective identification: The object of projection invokes in that person a version of the thoughts, feelings or behaviours projected.
- Somatization: The transformation of uncomfortable feelings towards others into uncomfortable feelings toward oneself: pain, illness, and anxiety.
- Wishful thinking: Making decisions according to what might be pleasing to imagine instead of by appealing to evidence, rationality, or reality.
Neurotic
- Isolation: Separation of feelings from ideas and events, for example, describing a murder with graphic details with no emotional response.
- Rationalization (making excuses): Convincing oneself that no wrong has been done and that all is or was all right through faulty and false reasoning. An indicator of this defence mechanism can be seen socially as the formulation of convenient excuses.
- Regression: Temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way, for example, using whining as a method of communicating despite already having acquired the ability to speak with an appropriate level of maturity.
- Undoing: A person tries to ‘undo’ an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought by acting out the reverse of the unacceptable. Involves symbolically nullifying an unacceptable or guilt provoking thought, idea, or feeling by confession or atonement.
- Upward and downward social comparisons: A defensive tendency that is used as a means of self-evaluation. Individuals will look to another individual or comparison group who are considered to be worse off in order to dissociate themselves from perceived similarities and to make themselves feel better about themselves or their personal situation.
- Withdrawal: Avoidance is a form of defence. It entails removing oneself from events, stimuli, and interactions under the threat of being reminded of painful thoughts and feelings.
