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Freud's topographical model assumes three regions of mind: the conscious, the preconscious (ordinary memory), and the unconscious (a part of mind that isn't accessible to consciousness). The unconscious holds threatening or unacceptable ideas and urges. Freud's structural model assumes three facets of personality.
The id (the original part) is the source of all energy. It follows the pleasure principle (that all needs should be immediately gratified), exists only in the unconscious, and uses primary-process thinking (primitive and separate from reality). The ego eventually develops because the id ignores the demands of the external world, and those demands cannot adaptively be ignored.
Ego follows the reality principle (that behaviour must take into account external reality), operates in all three regions of the mind, and tries to see that id impulses are gratified in a realistic way. The ego uses secondary-process (reality-based) thought.
The third facet, superego, is a representation of rules by which parents reward and punish the child. It has two parts: ego ideal represents standards of moral perfection; and conscience is a representation of behaviours that are considered bad. Both function in all three regions of the mind. Once the superego develops, the ego must mediate the id, superego and reality. |
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| Id impulses form two categories: |
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| Id impulses form two categories: life instincts aim for self-preservation and sexual pleasure; death instincts are self-destructive and may turn outward as aggression. Evidence of a death instinct may exist in cell biology, in the form of apoptosis. Catharsis is the emotional release resulting from the release of an impulse. |
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| Anxiety is a warning signal to the ego. Reality anxiety is fear of a threat in the world. Neurotic anxiety is fear that id impulses will get out of control and get you in trouble. Moral anxiety is fear of violating the superego's moral code. The ego deals with anxiety (and sometimes prevents it from arising) by employing defence mechanisms. |
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| Defense Mechanism (Freud) |
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| The basic defence is repression—forcing id impulses and other threatening material out of consciousness. Denial is a refusal to acknowledge the reality of something that lies outside the mind. Other defences, which typically act along with repression, are projection (attributing an unacceptable impulse to someone else), rationalisation (developing an acceptable but incorrect explanation for your action), intellectualisation (separating your thoughts from your feelings and allowing the thoughts but not the feelings to be in awareness), displacement (shifting an impulse from one target to another, usually a safer one), and sublimation (transforming an unacceptable impulse to an acceptable one). |
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| Psychsexual Stages (Freud) |
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| Freud argued that child development proceeds through psychosexual stages, and that adult personality is influenced by how crises are resolved at each stage. In the oral stage, sexuality centres on the mouth, and the crisis involves being weaned. In the anal stage, sexuality centres on the anus, and the crisis involves toilet training. In the phallic stage, sexuality centres on the genitals, and the crisis experienced there (which results in Oedipal and Electra complexes) involves lust for the opposite-sex parent, as well as fear of, and rivalry with, the same-sex parent. The latency period is a calm interval with no serious conflict. The genital period is maturity, in which genital sexuality shifts from selfish narcissism to mutual sharing. |
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| The psychoanalytic orientation holds that the unconscious is the key to personality. Freud believed that the unconscious reveals itself in many ways in day-to-day life. Parapraxes are acts of forgetting and 'slips of the tongue/pen' that occur when unconscious desires cause you to act in a way other than as you consciously intend. The unconscious is also revealed in dreams, which have manifest content (what's in the dream) and latent content (the determinants of the dream, many of which are unconscious). |
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| Topographical Model of Mind |
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| Many people assume the mind has two regions. One holds conscious experi- ence: the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors you’re aware of right now.The other contains memories, now outside awareness but able to come to awareness easily. Drawing on ideas of other theorists of his time, Freud added a third region. Taken together, the three form what Freud viewed as the mind’s topography—its surface configuration. |
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| preconscious.Things in the preconscious can be brought to awareness easily. For example, when you think of your phone number or the last movie you saw, you’re bringing that information from the preconscious to conscious. |
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A key function of the ego is to delay grati- fication of impulses and urges until a later time. Delay of gratification is a mark of a mature personality. It’s also a major goal of socialization. To become full and productive members of soci- ety, children must learn to wait for rewards (work now but be paid later). Inability to delay gratification predicts use of cigarettes, alcohol, and mari- juana among high school students (Wulfert, Block, Santa Ana, Rodriguez, & Colsman, 2002) and may play a role in development of criminal behavior
The basis for delay also differs slightly from boys to girls (Funder, Block, & Block, 1983). Among boys, it’s closely related to the ability to control emotional impulses, to concentrate, and to be deliberate in action. This fits the idea that delay of gratification is an ego function, aimed at control over id impulse expression. Delay among girls, in contrast, is more related to intelligence, resourcefulness, and com- petence, suggesting that they recognize delay as being the situationally appro- priate response. |
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| Structural Model (id, ego, superego) |
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| Freud (1962/1923) also developed a structural model of personality. He saw per- sonality as having three aspects, which interact to create the complexity of behavior. They aren’t physical entities but are perhaps best thought of as labels for three aspects of functioning (Grigsby & Stevens,2000).We know them as the id,ego,and superego. |
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The id is the original component of personality, present at birth. The id (the Latin word meaning “it”) is all the inherited, instinctive, primitive aspects of personality.The id functions entirely in the unconscious. It’s closely tied to basic biological processes, which underlie life. Freud believed that all psychic energy comes through it.Thus the id is the “engine” of personality.
The id follows what’s called the pleasure principle: that all needs should be satis- fied immediately.
The id satisfies needs via the primary process: forming an unconscious mental image of an object or event that would satisfy the need. In the case of a hungry infant, the primary process might produce an image of mother’s breast or a bottle. In the case of being separated from someone you love, the primary process produces images of that person.The experience of having such an image is called wish fulfillment |
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Tension reduction by primary process has a drawback, however. It doesn’t connect well with reality. As a result, a second set of functions develops, termed the ego (the Latin word for I).The ego evolves from the id and harnesses part of the id’s energy for its own use.The ego tries to make sure the id’s impulses are expressed effectively, by taking into account the external world. Because of this concern with the outside world, most ego functioning is in the conscious and preconscious. Given the ego’s ties to the id, however, it also functions in the unconscious.
The ego follows the reality principle.This means taking into account external reality along with internal needs and urges. Because the ego orients you toward the world, it leads you to weigh the risks of an action before acting. |
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| The Ego (delay discharge) |
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Thus, a goal of the ego is to delay the discharge of the id’s tension until an appro- priate object or context is found (see Box 1).The ego uses the secondary process: matching the unconscious image of a tension-reducing object to a real object. Until such an object can be found, the ego keeps the tension in check. The ego’s goal is not to block the id’s desires permanently.The ego wants the id’s urges to be satisfied. But it wants them satisfied at a time and in a way that’s safe—that won’t cause trouble because of some danger in the world
The capacity for realistic thought allows the ego to form plans of action to satisfy needs and test the plans mentally to see whether they will work.This is called reality testing.The ego is often described as having an “executive” role in personality, as it mediates between the desires of the id and the constraints of the external world.
The ego can seem to be a positive force, because it exercises restraint over the id. That can be misleading, though.The ego has no moral sense. It’s entirely pragmatic, focused on getting by.The ego wouldn’t be bothered by cheating or stealing or setting loose the pleasure principle, as long as no danger is involved.The moral sense resides in the third part of personality (Superego) |
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| The Superego (Ego Ideal and Conscience) |
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The superego is the embodiment of parental and societal values. The values in your superego stem mostly from the values of your parents.
The superego is further divided into two subsystems. The ego ideal comprises rules for good behavior or standards of excellence.The conscience comprises rules about what behaviors the parents disapprove of and punish
Thus, the ego ideal reflects things you strive for, and the conscience reflects things to avoid.
The term ego strength refers to the ego’s ability to be effective despite them (Barron, 1953). With little ego strength, the person is torn among competing pres- sures.With more ego strength, the person can manage the pressures. |
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| The superego also operates at all three levels of consciousness. It has three inter- related goals. First, it tries to prevent (not just postpone) any id impulse that would be frowned on by one’s parents. Second, it tries to force the ego to act morally, rather than rationally.Third, it tries to guide the person toward perfection in thought, word, and deed.The superego exerts a “civilizing” influence on the person, but its perfec- tionism is quite removed from reality. |
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| These biological proc- esses, operating via the id, have been called instinct and drive.These two terms differ from each other in other contexts (see Box 2), but they’re used interchangeably here. A drive has two related elements: a biological need and its psychological rep- resentation. For example, a lack of sufficient water in the body’s cells is a need that creates a psychological state of thirst, a desire for water.These elements combine to form a drive to drink water. These processes are continuous. Drive states build until an action causes their tension to be released. If a drive isn’t expressed, its pressure continues to build.This view of motives is called a “hydraulic” model. In this view, trying to prevent a drive from being expressed only creates more pressure toward its expression. |
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| Life (2 classes of Drives) |
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| Ultimately, he contended that all drives form two classes (Freud, 1933). The first is termed life or sexual instincts (collectively called Eros). Eros is a set of drives that deal with survival, reproduction, and pleasure. Not all life instincts deal with erotic urges per se. Hunger and pain avoidance, as well as sex, are life instincts. Collectively, the energy of the life instincts is known as libido. |
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| Death Instincts (2 classes of Drives) |
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A second set of drives is death instincts (also termed Thanatos). Freud’s view of these instincts is reflected in his statement that “the goal of all life is death” (Freud, 1955/1920). He believed that life leads naturally to death and that people desire (uncon- sciously) to return to nothingness.The expression of death instincts is usually held back by the life instincts, however.Thus, the effects of the death instincts aren’t always visible.
nterestingly, however, today’s biology assumes a death instinct in human physiology.That is, there is an active gene-directed suicide process, termed apoptosis, which occurs in human cells in certain circumstances. It’s critical in development |
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| Catharsis (when drive instinct isnt released and continues to build up) |
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| We said earlier that if the tension of a drive isn’t released, the pressure remains and even grows. At some point, the buildup of energy may be so great that it can’t be restrained any longer. At this point, the impulse is unleashed. The term catharsis is used to refer to the release of emotional tension in such an experience. |
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| Much of the activity of personality—in people who are perfectly normal, as well as people with problems—concerns anxiety. Freud (1936/1926) didn’t view anxiety as a drive per se but as a warning signal to the ego that something bad is about to happen. Nonetheless, people seek to avoid or escape anxiety. Freud (1959/1926) distinguished three types of anxiety, reflecting three kinds of bad things.T |
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| three types of anxiety, reflecting three kinds of bad things. |
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- Reality Anxiety
- Neurotic Anxiety
- Moral Anxiety |
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| The simplest is reality anxiety, which arises from a danger in the world. You experience it when you realize you’re about to be bitten by a dog,crash your car, be yelled at for a mistake at work, or fail an exam. As its name implies, reality anxiety is rooted in reality.We deal with it by fixing, avoiding, or escaping from the situation that creates the feeling |
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| The second type, neurotic anxiety, is an unconscious fear that your id impulses will get out of control and make you do something that will get you punished. This isn’t a fear of expressing the id impulses but a fear of the punishment that will result from expressing them. Because punishment often follows impulsive actions |
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| The third type of anxiety is moral anxiety.This is the fear people have when they have violated (or are about to violate) their moral code. If your moral sense for- bids cheating and you’re tempted to cheat, you feel moral anxiety. If your moral sense forbids having sex before marriage and you’re just about to have sex, you experience moral anxiety. Moral anxiety is felt as guilt or shame. Again, it’s important to be clear about the difference between this type of anxiety and reality anxiety.The threat of punishment from society isn’t the source of moral anxiety. Its source is internal, in your conscience |
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| Anxiety (Ego can engage defense mechanisms) - Repression |
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Definition
When anxiety arises, the ego responds in two ways. First, it increases problem- oriented coping efforts. It tries to deal (consciously) with the source of the threat.This works pretty well for reality anxiety. Second, the ego engages defense mechanisms: tactics it develops to help avoid the other kinds of anxiety.When defenses work well, they keep anxiety away. Defense mechanisms share two characteristics: First, they all can operate unconsciously. Second, they all distort or transform reality in one way or another.
The central mechanism of defense is repression. Indeed, Sigmund Freud often used the terms defense and repression interchangeably. In repression, a certain amount of energy available to the ego is used to keep unacceptable impulses out of conscious- ness. Repression can be done consciously (which Anna Freud called suppression), as the person tries to force something out of awareness |
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| Denial (Defense Mechanisms) |
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| Another simple defense occurs when people are overwhelmed by a threatening reality. This defense is denial: refusal to believe an event took place or a condition exists.An example is the mother who refuses to believe that her son has been killed in combat. Another is a child abused by a parent who goes on as if nothing were wrong ( |
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| Projection (Defense Mechanisms) |
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| In projection, your reduce anxiety by ascribing your own unacceptable qualities to someone else.You project traits, impulses, desires, or even goals onto another person (Kawada, Oettingen, Gollwitzer, & Bargh, 2004). Projection provides a way to hide your knowledge of a disliked aspect of yourself while still expressing that quality, though in a highly distorted form (Mikulincer & Horesh, 1999). For example, if you feel hostile toward others, you repress the feeling.The feeling is still there, however. In projection, you develop a perception that others hate you or are out to get you. In this way, your hostile impulse is expressed but in a way that’s not threatening to you |
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| Rationalization and Intellectualization (Defense Mechanisms) |
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ety by finding a rational explanation (or excuse) for a behavior that you really did for unacceptable reasons. For example, the man who cheats on his income tax may rationalize his behavior as reducing the amount of money spent on weapons in the world.
Another defense is intellectualization: the tendency to think about threats in cold, analytical, and emotionally detached terms. Thinking about events in this way allows people to dissociate their thoughts from their feelings. It separates and isolates the threat- ening event from the feeling that normally would accompany it (Barrett,Williams, & Fong, 2002). For example, a woman who finds out her husband is dying of cancer may learn as much about cancer and its treatment as she can. By focusing on the disease intellectually and compartmentalizing that information, she shields herself from distress. |
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| Displacement and Sublimation (Defense Mechanisms) |
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| Displacement is shifting an impulse from one target to another. This often happens when the intended target is threatening. Displacement is a defense in such cases because substituting a less threatening target for the original one reduces anxiety. For example, the student who’s angry with her professor and takes it out on her very |
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| Displacement and Sublimation (Defense Mechanisms) |
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| Sublimation also lets impulses be expressed, by transforming them to an acceptable form. In this case, it’s not something about the target that creates the threat but some- thing about the impulse.Anxiety goes down when a transformed impulse is expressed, instead of the initial one. Freud felt that sublimation, more than any other mechanism, reflects maturity. Sublimation is a process that keeps problems from occurring, rather than functioning after anxiety is aroused. |
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| Freud viewed personality development as movement through a series of stages. Each is associated with an erogenous zone: an area of the body that’s the focus of sexual energy in that period. For this reason, the stages are called psychosexual stages. In Freud’s view, the child has conflicts at three stages. If the conflict isn’t well resolved, too much energy gets permanently invested in that stage, a process called fixation. Because the energy for personality functioning is limited, this means less energy is available to handle conflicts in later stages. As a result, it’s harder to resolve later con- flicts. In this sense, each stage builds on previous stages. |
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The oral stage is from birth to roughly 18 months.During this time,much of the infant’s interaction with the world occurs through the mouth and lips, and gratification focuses
There are two oral substages. During the first (lasting roughly 6 months), the infant is helpless and dependent. Because he or she is more or less limited to taking things in (food and other experiences), this part is called the oral incorporative phase
The second part of the oral stage starts with teething. It’s called the oral sadis- tic phase. Sexual pleasure now comes from biting and chewing (and even inflicting pain—thus sadistic). During this time, the infant is weaned from the bottle or breast and begins to bite and chew food.Traits arising during this phase trace to this newly acquired ability.This phase is thought to determine who will be verbally aggressive later on and who will use “biting” sarcasm. |
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| The anal stage of development begins at about 18 months and continues into the third year. During this period, the anus is the key erogenous zone, and pleasure comes from defecation. The big event of this period is toilet training. For many children, toilet training is the first time that external constraints are systematically imposed on their satisfaction of internal urges.When toilet training starts, children can no longer relieve themselves whenever and wherever they want.They must learn that there’s an appropriate time and place for everything. |
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| The phallic stage begins during the third year and continues through the fifth year. During this period, the focus shifts to the genital organs. This is also the period when most children begin to masturbate, as they become aware of the pleasure that results. At first, the awakening sexual desires are completely autoerotic; that is, sexual pleas- ure comes totally from self-stimulation. Gradually, however, the libido shifts toward the opposite-sex parent, as boys develop an interest in their mothers and girls develop an interest in their father |
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| Oedipus complex and Electra complex |
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| Boys’ desire to possess their mothers and replace their fathers is termed the Oedipus complex (after the character in the ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex, who unwittingly marries his mother after killing his father). Comparable feelings in girls are sometimes called an Oedipus complex and sometimes an Electra complex (after the Greek character Electra, who persuades her brother to kill both their mother and their mother’s lover in revenge for the death of their father).These patterns reflect forces that are similar in many ways, but the forces are displayed differently for boys and girls |
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| penis envy. Penis envy is the female coun- terpart of castration anxiety in boys. As do boys, girls resolve the conflict through identification. By becoming more like her mother, the girl gains vicarious access to her father. She also increases the chances that she will marry someone just like him. Fixations during the phallic stage result in personalities that reflect the Oedipal conflicts. For example, men may go to great lengths to demonstrate that they haven’t been castrated. |
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| Fixations that develop during the first three stages presumably form much of the basis of adult personality.At the close of the phallic stage, the child enters a period of rela- tive calm, termed the latency period.This period, from about age 6 to the early teens, is a time when sexual and aggressive drives are less active.The lessening of these urges results partly from the emergence of ego and superego. During this period, children turn their attention to other pursuits, often intellectual or social in nature. With the onset of puberty (toward the end of the latency period), sexual and aggressive urges again intensify.Adolescents have adult sexual desires, but sexual inter- course isn’t socially sanctioned for them.This is a time, then, when the ego’s coping skills are severely tested. |
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| In later adolescence and adulthood, the person moves into the genital stage. If ear- lier stages have been negotiated well, the person enters this stage with libido still organized around the genitals, and it remains focused there throughout life. Sexual gratification during this stage differs, however, from that of earlier stages. Earlier sex was narcissistic.The child cared only about his or her own sexual pleasure. In the geni- tal stage, a desire develops to share mutual sexual gratification with someone. Thus, the person becomes capable of loving others not just for selfish reasons.This ability to share with others in a warm, caring way and to be concerned with their welfare is the hallmark of the genital stage. |
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| The Psychopathology of Everyday Life |
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| Thus, memory lapses, slips of speech, and accidents, collectively termed parapraxes, provide insights into a person’s true desires (for a contrasting opinion, however, see Reason & Mycielska, 1982). Indeed, this idea has been so iden- tified with psychoanalysis that people use the term Freudian slip to refer to an error in speech that seems to suggest an unconscious feeling or desire. Asanotherexample,considerforgetting.Inthepsychoanalyticview,forgettingisan attempt to keep something from consciousness. Sometimes it’s easy to see why (e.g., the student who forgets to return an important book to someone she doesn’t like, thereby preventing herself from becoming aware of her hostility) |
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| Dreams (Manifest Content and Latent Content) |
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| Freud (1953/1900) believed the unconscious also reveals itself through dreams, which he called “the royal road to the unconscious.” Dreams have two kinds of content. Manifest content is the sensory images—what most of us think of as the dream. More interesting to Freud, though, was the latent content—the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and wishes behind the manifest content. Latent content tells why a dream takes the form it does. |
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| Assessment: Projective Techniques |
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| Collectively, they are called projective techniques.They confront people with ambiguous stimuli. Because there is no obvious response, responses are believed to reflect unconscious feelings, attitudes, desires, and needs. Using the defense mecha- nism of projection, people perceive aspects of themselves in the stimulus. What’s projected presumably reflects the unconscious. Example of inkblot similar to those used in the Rorschach test. |
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Problems have several possible origins. One origin is childhood experiences. As described earlier, Freud believed adult personality is determined by early psycho- sexual development. He considered it rare for a person to enter the later stages of
a lot of energy is invested in them. In a very strong fixation, the preoccupation (albeit unconscious) leaves the person with little energy for anything else.This is one source of problems: overinvestment of energy in a fixation.This pre- vents flexible adult functioning by depleting energy the ego needs |
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| Free Association (Behavior Change) |
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Definition
Freud stumbled on a procedure in which the person was simply to say aloud whatever came to mind—a procedure called free association. He discovered that this procedure enabled material hidden in the unconscious to gradually emerge.This procedure also helped convince
The goal of therapy is to uncover the conflicts and loose the restrained energy (see also Box 5). Free association is a first step, because it allows symbolic access to the problem. It rarely gets to the heart of the problem, though, because of the threat in the repressed material. |
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| Resistance (Behavior Change) |
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| Indeed, people in therapy sometimes actively fight against becoming aware of repressed conflicts and impulses.This struggle is called resistance. Resistance can be conscious or unconscious. In either case, it’s usually a sign that something important is nearby, that the person is close to revealing something sensitive. Resistance provides an illustration of how emotionally wrenching psychoanalytic therapy can be. |
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| Displacement (Behavior Change) |
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| An important element in psychoanalytic therapy is transference.Transference is a set of displacements. Specifically, feelings toward other people in the patient’s life are displaced (transferred) onto the therapist.The feelings can be love or hatred. |
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