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The structure of the personality
Levels of consciousness
The structure of the personality
Levels of consciousness
When Freud began theorising, there was a strong tradition within intellectual circles of regarding human beings as basically rational creatures whose behaviour is determined by will or the seeking of goals in a conscious manner. Human beings were conceptualised as being in control of their lives and exercising free will in their behaviour to the extent their social circumstances allowed. Freud did not create the idea of unconscious mind. Philosophers had been discussing the idea of unconscious mind for hundreds of years. However, the predominant view as popularised by the German philosopher Johann Friedrich (1776–1841) in his two-volume book, Psychology as Knowledge Newly Founded on Experience, Metaphysics and Mathematics (1824–1825), was that unconscious ideas were weaker ideas that had been pushed from consciousness by the stronger conscious ideas. Freud (1940/1969) disagreed strongly both with the rational view of human beings and with the suggestion that unconscious ideas were weaker than conscious ones. Instead, Freud (1940/1969) suggested that there were levels of consciousness and unconsciousness.
Firstly, there is the level of conscious thought. This consists of material that we are actively aware of at any given time. For example, as I am writing this I am aware of trying to think of an example of conscious thought, indeed what to write next is my conscious thought at this moment. Next to this is what Freud termed preconscious mind. This consists of thoughts that are unconscious at this instant, but which can be easily recalled into our conscious mind. An example might be the colour of your car or what you did last evening. Preconscious material can easily be brought to mind when required. The final level is the unconscious mind. It consists of thoughts, memories, feelings, urges or fantasies that we are unaware of because they are being actively kept in our unconscious. Freud argued that they were kept in our unconscious due to their unacceptable nature. It may be sexual urges that we would find unacceptable, or aggressive instincts that frighten us, so they are kept repressed in our unconscious. The term he used for this process of keeping material unconscious was repression. He saw it as an active, continuous process and described repressed material as being dynamically unconscious to reflect this sense of activity.
Although three levels of thought are described, there are no clear-cut divisions between conscious, preconscious and unconscious thought; rather, there are different degrees or levels within each. For example, at times repression may weaken, so that previously unconscious material becomes conscious. This unconscious material is usually in a modified form, such as in dreams when we are asleep, at stressful times in symptoms of illness or psychological disturbance, or in the emergence of apparently alien impulses under the influence of drugs or alcohol. An example might be the quiet student who appears easygoing and unassertive, but under the influence of alcohol becomes ready to argue with her shadow and is loud and quite aggressive. Drugs like alcohol are disinhibitors, and unconscious urges are more likely to emerge into our consciousness. Freud compared the content of mind to an iceberg, describing conscious and preconscious thought as the small sections above the surface.
Related to these levels of consciousness, Freud suggested that different thought processes are at work within the various levels. Dreams exemplify this well. Freud (1901/1953) suggested that the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing wishes as fulfilled. Worries that we have may disappear in the dream, or problems may be represented as solved. Or desires that are unacceptable to our conscious mind may find expression in our dreams. Freud argued that representing these desires as fulfilled in our dreams helps to preserve sleep, as we are no longer trying to solve our problems or worrying about a situation as it is fixed in the dream.
Freud believed that dreams were a direct route into the patient’s unconscious. He considered that there were two important elements to dreams – the manifest content and the latent content. The manifest content is the description of the dream as recalled by the dreamer. However, he felt that this was not a true representation of the unconscious mind, as the dreamer unconsciously censors some of the true meaning of the dream or uses symbols to represent key elements to avoid becoming too disturbed by their recall of the dream. The task of the analyst was to identify what Freud called the latent content of the dream. He felt that skilled interpretation was often necessary to get at the real meaning of the dream. In line with the thrust of his theory, as we shall see later, he suggested that much of the unconscious content of dreams was sexual in nature. While most symbols used in dreams have a personal meaning for the dreamer, Freud (1901/1953) identified some commonly occurring dream symbols. He suggested that snakes and knives symbolise the penis; a staircase or ladder, sexual intercourse; baldness or tooth extraction, castration fears; robbers, a father figure and so on. Hence, a dream with a latent content of climbing a ladder is actually about sexual intercourse (latent content). Freud used dreams as a way to explore the patient’s unconscious conflicts. He would get patients to keep dream diaries. During treatment sessions, the patient would report the manifest content of the dream, and Freud would analyse this material to uncover the latent content. In this way, he could access the patient’s unconscious mind.
Freud (1940/1969) claimed that different styles of thinking were associated with different levels of consciousness. Dreams, for example, represented what he called primary process thinking. This is essentially irrational mental activity. Dreams exemplify this activity by the way in which events are often oblivious to the categories of time and space, extreme contradiction is tolerated and events are displaced and condensed in impossible ways. The logically impossible becomes possible in our dreams. Freud claimed that it was a result of our being governed partly by what he called the pleasure principle – an urge to have our drives met. This is not a desire to actively seek pleasure, but rather an instinct to avoid displeasure, pain and upset. It is about preserving equilibrium within the organism in the face of internal and/or external attacks. Thus, the irrational thinking of dreams (primary process thinking) serves the function of keeping us asleep by presenting our unconscious desires as being fulfilled (pleasure principle).
Primary process thinking is contrasted with secondary process thinking. This is rational thought, which is logical and organised. Secondary process thinking is governed by the reality principle. This means that we operate according to the actual situation in the external world and the facts as we see them. Secondary process thinking is characteristic of conscious and preconscious thought. Freud suggests that the pleasure principle is an innate, primitive instinct driving our behaviour while the reality principle is learnt as we grow up. Daydreaming, imaginative thought, creative activities, and emotional thinking are claimed to involve a mixture of both primary and secondary process thinking (Freud, 1940/1969).
Freud’s theory includes a concept of a mental apparatus consisting of three basic structures of personality that assist us in gratifying our instincts. This apparatus can be thought of as the anatomy of the personality and consists of the id, the ego, and the superego (Freud, 1901/1965; 1923/1960). They develop in the order stated, and we shall discuss each one in turn.
Firstly, there is the level of conscious thought. This consists of material that we are actively aware of at any given time. For example, as I am writing this I am aware of trying to think of an example of conscious thought, indeed what to write next is my conscious thought at this moment. Next to this is what Freud termed preconscious mind. This consists of thoughts that are unconscious at this instant, but which can be easily recalled into our conscious mind. An example might be the colour of your car or what you did last evening. Preconscious material can easily be brought to mind when required. The final level is the unconscious mind. It consists of thoughts, memories, feelings, urges or fantasies that we are unaware of because they are being actively kept in our unconscious. Freud argued that they were kept in our unconscious due to their unacceptable nature. It may be sexual urges that we would find unacceptable, or aggressive instincts that frighten us, so they are kept repressed in our unconscious. The term he used for this process of keeping material unconscious was repression. He saw it as an active, continuous process and described repressed material as being dynamically unconscious to reflect this sense of activity.
Although three levels of thought are described, there are no clear-cut divisions between conscious, preconscious and unconscious thought; rather, there are different degrees or levels within each. For example, at times repression may weaken, so that previously unconscious material becomes conscious. This unconscious material is usually in a modified form, such as in dreams when we are asleep, at stressful times in symptoms of illness or psychological disturbance, or in the emergence of apparently alien impulses under the influence of drugs or alcohol. An example might be the quiet student who appears easygoing and unassertive, but under the influence of alcohol becomes ready to argue with her shadow and is loud and quite aggressive. Drugs like alcohol are disinhibitors, and unconscious urges are more likely to emerge into our consciousness. Freud compared the content of mind to an iceberg, describing conscious and preconscious thought as the small sections above the surface.
Related to these levels of consciousness, Freud suggested that different thought processes are at work within the various levels. Dreams exemplify this well. Freud (1901/1953) suggested that the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing wishes as fulfilled. Worries that we have may disappear in the dream, or problems may be represented as solved. Or desires that are unacceptable to our conscious mind may find expression in our dreams. Freud argued that representing these desires as fulfilled in our dreams helps to preserve sleep, as we are no longer trying to solve our problems or worrying about a situation as it is fixed in the dream.
Freud believed that dreams were a direct route into the patient’s unconscious. He considered that there were two important elements to dreams – the manifest content and the latent content. The manifest content is the description of the dream as recalled by the dreamer. However, he felt that this was not a true representation of the unconscious mind, as the dreamer unconsciously censors some of the true meaning of the dream or uses symbols to represent key elements to avoid becoming too disturbed by their recall of the dream. The task of the analyst was to identify what Freud called the latent content of the dream. He felt that skilled interpretation was often necessary to get at the real meaning of the dream. In line with the thrust of his theory, as we shall see later, he suggested that much of the unconscious content of dreams was sexual in nature. While most symbols used in dreams have a personal meaning for the dreamer, Freud (1901/1953) identified some commonly occurring dream symbols. He suggested that snakes and knives symbolise the penis; a staircase or ladder, sexual intercourse; baldness or tooth extraction, castration fears; robbers, a father figure and so on. Hence, a dream with a latent content of climbing a ladder is actually about sexual intercourse (latent content). Freud used dreams as a way to explore the patient’s unconscious conflicts. He would get patients to keep dream diaries. During treatment sessions, the patient would report the manifest content of the dream, and Freud would analyse this material to uncover the latent content. In this way, he could access the patient’s unconscious mind.
Freud (1940/1969) claimed that different styles of thinking were associated with different levels of consciousness. Dreams, for example, represented what he called primary process thinking. This is essentially irrational mental activity. Dreams exemplify this activity by the way in which events are often oblivious to the categories of time and space, extreme contradiction is tolerated and events are displaced and condensed in impossible ways. The logically impossible becomes possible in our dreams. Freud claimed that it was a result of our being governed partly by what he called the pleasure principle – an urge to have our drives met. This is not a desire to actively seek pleasure, but rather an instinct to avoid displeasure, pain and upset. It is about preserving equilibrium within the organism in the face of internal and/or external attacks. Thus, the irrational thinking of dreams (primary process thinking) serves the function of keeping us asleep by presenting our unconscious desires as being fulfilled (pleasure principle).
Primary process thinking is contrasted with secondary process thinking. This is rational thought, which is logical and organised. Secondary process thinking is governed by the reality principle. This means that we operate according to the actual situation in the external world and the facts as we see them. Secondary process thinking is characteristic of conscious and preconscious thought. Freud suggests that the pleasure principle is an innate, primitive instinct driving our behaviour while the reality principle is learnt as we grow up. Daydreaming, imaginative thought, creative activities, and emotional thinking are claimed to involve a mixture of both primary and secondary process thinking (Freud, 1940/1969).
Freud’s theory includes a concept of a mental apparatus consisting of three basic structures of personality that assist us in gratifying our instincts. This apparatus can be thought of as the anatomy of the personality and consists of the id, the ego, and the superego (Freud, 1901/1965; 1923/1960). They develop in the order stated, and we shall discuss each one in turn.
The id can be thought of as the basic storehouse of raw, uninhibited, instinctual energy. It is the source of all cravings, of all impulses and of all mental energy. All our survival drives for food, warmth and safety, plus our sexual drives for satisfaction and reproduction, our aggressive drives for domination and our self-destructive instincts originate in the id. Freud thought that only the id was present in the baby at birth and that because of this, infants try to gratify their needs very directly. The pleasure principle with related-primary process thinking operates in the id. Babies cry loudly when they are hungry, uncomfortable or in pain. They want to be seen to immediately. Any delay in feeding hungry babies, and they will simply cry more lustily. Infants have no sense of what is termed delayed gratification, that is, the notion that if you wait patiently your needs will be met. Delayed gratification is something that the child has to acquire as they develop.
These instinctual demands from the id become socialised during development as the expression of id impulses often runs counter to the wishes of the outside world. We also learn that gratification of our id impulses can frequently be achieved more successfully by planning, requesting, delaying gratification and other techniques.
As the child develops, libido energy transfers from the id; and the part of the personality called the ego develops. The ego can be thought of as the executive part of the personality. In Freud’s model, it is the planning, thinking, and organising part of the personality. The ego operates according to the reality principle with related secondary process thinking. The ego becomes the mediator between the child and the outside world. The child is still trying to get what they want, but now they are taking into account social realities in achieving this. Mummy will not give them a drink if they simply shout that they are thirsty; but if they ask nicely and remember to say please and add a smile, they are more likely to get it.
Finally, the third structure of personality develops, the superego. This can roughly be conceived of as being the conscience of the child. It helps the child make judgements about what is right or wrong and which behaviours are permissible. It is thought to be composed of internalised parental attitudes and evaluations. The superego acts in opposition to the id, helping the ego to rechannel immoral id impulses. Also, if the ego is seen to allow the expression of bad instinctual demands, the superego turns against the ego. As Freud describes it, these three parts of the personality can be seen as being in conflict with each other. The id says, ‘I want it now’. The ego says, ‘You can have it later; or do a, b and c, and then you can have it’. The superego says, ‘you can’t have it’ or ‘that way’s wrong, you must find another way’. There will be elements of social prescription contained within the superego, as what is internalised from parents will depend on the values of the family. Similarly, different societies will promote different values, as will religious and educational institutions.
These interactions between the three structures of personality create what is termed intra-psychic conflict (Freud, 1965). The outcome of this conflict can be observed as symptoms of mental upset or disturbance. The basic symptom, which we are all thought to experience, is anxiety. An example will help to clarify this. Suppose you really want to go to an old school friend’s party on Friday night, but the friend lives a two-hour train journey away. When you check the train times, you realise that you will have to miss a laboratory class on Friday afternoon to get there in time. You already missed a class this semester; and besides, the lab is on a topic that really interests you. You are really torn and don’t know what to do. The id instinct is saying, ‘Go to the party, have a good time’. The ego is saying, ‘Perhaps we can find a way round it, you can download the notes and get the results from a friend’. Your superego is saying, ‘That is wrong, you can’t go. You already skipped a practical for no good reason. You want to do well at this, and it is a topic that interests you’. The competing demands have made it difficult to decide; and whatever the decision, there will be some anxiety about the path you take. This is the basic anxiety that Freud talks about. If you do go, you will feel guilty about missing the practical; if you don’t go, you will feel guilty about disappointing your friend and so on. We will see later how we attempt to deal with this basic anxiety, but first we will look at how the personality develops.
Instincts: The Propelling Forces of the Personality
Instincts are the basic elements of the personality, the motivating forces that drive behavior and determine its direction. Freud’s German term for this concept is Trieb, which is best translated as a driving force or impulse (Bettelheim, 1984). Instincts are a form of energy—transformed physiological energy—that connects the body’s needs with the mind’s wishes.
The stimuli (hunger or thirst, for example) for instincts are internal. When a need such as hunger is aroused in the body, it generates a condition of physiological excitation or energy. The mind transforms this bodily energy into a wish. It is this wish—the mental representation of the physiological need—that is the instinct or driving force that motivates the person to behave in a way that satisfies the need. A hungry person, for example, will act to satisfy his or her need by looking for food. The instinct is not the bodily state; rather, it is the bodily need transformed into a mental state, a wish.
When the body is in a state of need, the person experiences a feeling of tension or pressure. The aim of an instinct is to satisfy the need and thereby reduce the tension. Freud’s theory can be called a homeostatic approach insofar as it suggests that we are motivated to restore and maintain a condition of physiological equilibrium, or balance, to keep the body free of tension.
Freud believed that we always experience a certain amount of instinctual tension and that we must continually act to reduce it. It is not possible to escape the pressure of our physiological needs as we might escape some annoying stimulus in our external environment. This means that instincts are always influencing our behavior, in a cycle of need leading to reduction of need.
People may take different paths to satisfy their needs. For example, the sex drive may be satisfied by heterosexual behavior, homosexual behavior, or autosexual behavior, or the sex drive may be channeled into some other form of activity. Freud thought that psychic energy could be displaced to substitute objects, and this displacement was of primary importance in determining an individual’s personality. Although the instincts are the exclusive source of energy for human behavior, the resulting energy can be invested in a variety of activities. This helps explain the diversity we see in human behavior. All the interests, preferences, and attitudes we display as adults were believed by Freud to be displacements of energy from the original objects that satisfied the instinctual needs.
Types of Instincts
Freud grouped the instincts into two categories: life instincts and death instincts. The life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual and the species by seeking to satisfy the needs for food, water, air, and sex. The life instincts are oriented toward growth and development. The psychic energy manifested by the life instincts is the libido. The libido can be attached to or invested in objects, a concept Freud called cathexis. If you like your roommate, for example, Freud would say that your libido is cathected to him or her.
The life instinct Freud considered most important for the personality is sex, which he defined in broad terms. He did not refer solely to the erotic but included almost all pleasurable behaviors and thoughts. He described his view as enlarging or extending the accepted concept of sexuality.
Freud regarded sex as our primary motivation. Erotic wishes arise from the body’s erogenous zones: the mouth, anus, and sex organs. He suggested that people are predominantly pleasure-seeking beings, and much of his personality theory revolves around the necessity of inhibiting or suppressing our sexual longings.
In opposition to the life instincts, Freud postulated the destructive or death instincts. Drawing from biology, he stated the obvious fact that all living things decay and die, returning to their original inanimate state, and he proposed that people have an unconscious wish to die. One component of the death instincts is the aggressive drive, described as the wish to die turned against objects other than the self. The aggressive drive compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill. Freud came to consider aggression as compelling a part of human nature as sex.
Freud developed the notion of the death instincts late in life, as a reflection of his own experiences. He endured the physiological and psychological debilitations of age, his cancer worsened, and he witnessed the carnage of World War I. One of his daughters died at the age of 26, leaving two young children. All these events affected him deeply, and, as a result, death and aggression became major themes in his theory. In his later years, Freud dreaded his own death, and exhibited hostility, hatred, and aggressiveness toward colleagues and disciples who disputed his views and left his psychoanalytic circle.
The concept of the death instincts achieved only limited acceptance, even among Freud’s most dedicated followers. One psychoanalyst wrote that the idea should be “relegated to the dustbin of history” (Sulloway, 1979, p. 394). Another suggested that if Freud were a genius, then the suggestion of the death instincts was an instance of a genius having a bad day (Eissler, 1971).
The Levels of Personality
Freud’s original conception divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious, as Freud defined the term, corresponds to its ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment. As you read these words, for example, you may be conscious of the feel of your pen, the sight of the page, the idea you are trying to grasp, and a dog barking in the distance.
Freud considered the conscious a limited aspect of personality because only a small portion of our thoughts, sensations, and memories exists in conscious awareness at any time. He likened the mind to an iceberg. The conscious is the portion above the surface of the water—merely the tip of the iceberg. More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control.
Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of memories, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. For example, if your mind strays from this page and you begin to think about a friend or about what you did last night, you would be summoning up material from your preconscious into your conscious. We often find our attention shifting back and forth from experiences of the moment to events and memories in the preconscious.
The Structure of Personality: Id, Ego, and Superego
The Id
Freud later revised this notion of three levels of personality and introduced three basic structures in the anatomy of the personality: the id, the ego, and the superego (see Figure 2.1). The id corresponds to Freud’s earlier notion of the unconscious (although the ego and superego have unconscious aspects as well). The id is the reservoir for the instincts and libido (the psychic energy manifested by the instincts). The id is a powerful structure of the personality because it supplies all the energy for the other two components.
Because the id is the reservoir of the instincts, it is vitally and directly related to the satisfaction of bodily needs. As we noted earlier, tension is produced when the body is in a state of need, and the person acts to reduce this tension by satisfying the need. The id operates in accordance with what Freud called the pleasure principle; through its concern with tension reduction, the id functions to increase pleasure and avoid pain. The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or postponement of satisfaction for any reason. It knows only instant gratification; it drives us to want what we want when we want it, without regard for what anyone else wants. The id is a selfish, pleasure-seeking structure, primitive, amoral, insistent, and rash.
The id has no awareness of reality. We might compare the id to a newborn baby who cries and waves its fists when its needs are not met but who has no knowledge of how to bring about satisfaction. The hungry infant cannot find food on his or her own. The only ways the id can attempt to satisfy its needs are through reflex action and wish-fulfilling hallucinatory or fantasy experience, which Freud labeled primary-process thought.
The Ego
Most children learn that they cannot take food from other people unless they are willing to face the consequences, that they must postpone the pleasure obtained from relieving anal tensions until they get to a bathroom, and that they cannot indiscriminately give vent to sexual and aggressive longings. The growing child is taught to deal intelligently and rationally with the outside world and to develop the powers of perception, recognition, judgment, and memory—the powers adults use to satisfy their needs. Freud called these abilities secondary-process thought.
We can sum up these characteristics as reason or rationality, and they are contained in Freud’s second structure of personality, the ego, which is the rational master of the personality. Its purpose is not to thwart the impulses of the id but to help the id obtain the tension reduction it craves. Because it is aware of reality, the ego decides when and how the id instincts can best be satisfied. It determines appropriate and socially acceptable times, places, and objects that will satisfy the id impulses.
The ego does not prevent id satisfaction. Rather, it tries to postpone, delay, or redirect it in terms of the demands of reality. It perceives and manipulates the environment in a practical and realistic manner and so is said to operate in accordance with the reality principle. (The reality principle stands in opposition to the pleasure principle, by which the id operates.) The ego thus exerts control over the id impulses. Freud compared the relationship of the ego and the id to that of a rider on a horse. The raw, brute power of the horse must be guided, checked, and reined in by the rider; otherwise the horse could bolt and run, throwing the rider to the ground.
The ego serves two masters—the id and reality—and is constantly mediating and striking compromises between their conflicting demands. Also, the ego is never independent of the id. It is always responsive to the id’s demands and derives its power and energy from the id.
It is the ego, the rational master, that keeps you working at a job you may dislike, if the alternative is the inability to provide food and shelter for your family. It is the ego that forces you to get along with people you dislike because reality demands such behavior from you as an appropriate way of satisfying id demands. The controlling and postponing function of the ego must be exercised constantly. If not, the id impulses might come to dominate and overthrow the rational ego. Freud argued that we must protect ourselves from being controlled by the id and proposed various unconscious mechanisms with which to defend the ego.
So far, we have a picture of the personality in battle, trying to restrain the id while at the same time serving it, perceiving and manipulating reality to relieve the tensions of the id impulses. Driven by instinctual biological forces, which we continually try to guide, the personality walks a tightrope between the demands of the id and the demands of reality, both of which require constant vigilance.
The Superego
The id and the ego do not represent Freud’s complete picture of human nature. There is a third set of forces—a powerful and largely unconscious set of dictates or beliefs—that we acquire in childhood: our ideas of right and wrong. In everyday language we call this internal morality a conscience. Freud called it the superego. The basis of this moral side of the personality is usually learned by the age of 5 or 6 and consists initially of the rules of conduct set down by our parents. Through praise, punishment, and example, children learn which behaviors their parents consider good or bad. Those behaviors for which children are punished form the conscience, one part of the superego. The second part of the superego is the ego-ideal, which consists of good, or correct, behaviors for which children have been praised.
In this way, children learn a set of rules that earn acceptance or rejection from their parents. In time, children internalize these teachings, and the rewards and punishments become self-administered. Parental control is replaced by self-control. We come to behave at least in partial conformity with these now largely unconscious moral guidelines. As a result of this internalization, we experience guilt or shame whenever we perform (or even think of performing) some action contrary to this moral code.
As the arbiter of morality, the superego is relentless, even cruel, in its quest for moral perfection. In terms of intensity, irrationality, and insistence on obedience, it is not unlike the id. Its purpose is not merely to postpone the pleasure-seeking demands of the id, as the ego does, but to inhibit them completely, particularly those demands concerned with sex and aggression. The superego strives neither for pleasure (as does the id) nor for attainment of realistic goals (as does the ego). It strives solely for moral perfection. The id presses for satisfaction, the ego tries to delay it, and the superego urges morality above all. Like the id, the superego admits no compromise with its demands.
The ego is caught in the middle, pressured by these insistent and opposing forces. Thus, the ego has a third master, the superego. To paraphrase Freud, the poor ego has a hard time of it, pressured on three sides, threatened by three dangers: the id, reality, and the superego. The inevitable result of this friction, when the ego is too severely strained, is the development of anxiety.
These instinctual demands from the id become socialised during development as the expression of id impulses often runs counter to the wishes of the outside world. We also learn that gratification of our id impulses can frequently be achieved more successfully by planning, requesting, delaying gratification and other techniques.
As the child develops, libido energy transfers from the id; and the part of the personality called the ego develops. The ego can be thought of as the executive part of the personality. In Freud’s model, it is the planning, thinking, and organising part of the personality. The ego operates according to the reality principle with related secondary process thinking. The ego becomes the mediator between the child and the outside world. The child is still trying to get what they want, but now they are taking into account social realities in achieving this. Mummy will not give them a drink if they simply shout that they are thirsty; but if they ask nicely and remember to say please and add a smile, they are more likely to get it.
Finally, the third structure of personality develops, the superego. This can roughly be conceived of as being the conscience of the child. It helps the child make judgements about what is right or wrong and which behaviours are permissible. It is thought to be composed of internalised parental attitudes and evaluations. The superego acts in opposition to the id, helping the ego to rechannel immoral id impulses. Also, if the ego is seen to allow the expression of bad instinctual demands, the superego turns against the ego. As Freud describes it, these three parts of the personality can be seen as being in conflict with each other. The id says, ‘I want it now’. The ego says, ‘You can have it later; or do a, b and c, and then you can have it’. The superego says, ‘you can’t have it’ or ‘that way’s wrong, you must find another way’. There will be elements of social prescription contained within the superego, as what is internalised from parents will depend on the values of the family. Similarly, different societies will promote different values, as will religious and educational institutions.
These interactions between the three structures of personality create what is termed intra-psychic conflict (Freud, 1965). The outcome of this conflict can be observed as symptoms of mental upset or disturbance. The basic symptom, which we are all thought to experience, is anxiety. An example will help to clarify this. Suppose you really want to go to an old school friend’s party on Friday night, but the friend lives a two-hour train journey away. When you check the train times, you realise that you will have to miss a laboratory class on Friday afternoon to get there in time. You already missed a class this semester; and besides, the lab is on a topic that really interests you. You are really torn and don’t know what to do. The id instinct is saying, ‘Go to the party, have a good time’. The ego is saying, ‘Perhaps we can find a way round it, you can download the notes and get the results from a friend’. Your superego is saying, ‘That is wrong, you can’t go. You already skipped a practical for no good reason. You want to do well at this, and it is a topic that interests you’. The competing demands have made it difficult to decide; and whatever the decision, there will be some anxiety about the path you take. This is the basic anxiety that Freud talks about. If you do go, you will feel guilty about missing the practical; if you don’t go, you will feel guilty about disappointing your friend and so on. We will see later how we attempt to deal with this basic anxiety, but first we will look at how the personality develops.
Instincts: The Propelling Forces of the Personality
Instincts are the basic elements of the personality, the motivating forces that drive behavior and determine its direction. Freud’s German term for this concept is Trieb, which is best translated as a driving force or impulse (Bettelheim, 1984). Instincts are a form of energy—transformed physiological energy—that connects the body’s needs with the mind’s wishes.
The stimuli (hunger or thirst, for example) for instincts are internal. When a need such as hunger is aroused in the body, it generates a condition of physiological excitation or energy. The mind transforms this bodily energy into a wish. It is this wish—the mental representation of the physiological need—that is the instinct or driving force that motivates the person to behave in a way that satisfies the need. A hungry person, for example, will act to satisfy his or her need by looking for food. The instinct is not the bodily state; rather, it is the bodily need transformed into a mental state, a wish.
When the body is in a state of need, the person experiences a feeling of tension or pressure. The aim of an instinct is to satisfy the need and thereby reduce the tension. Freud’s theory can be called a homeostatic approach insofar as it suggests that we are motivated to restore and maintain a condition of physiological equilibrium, or balance, to keep the body free of tension.
Freud believed that we always experience a certain amount of instinctual tension and that we must continually act to reduce it. It is not possible to escape the pressure of our physiological needs as we might escape some annoying stimulus in our external environment. This means that instincts are always influencing our behavior, in a cycle of need leading to reduction of need.
People may take different paths to satisfy their needs. For example, the sex drive may be satisfied by heterosexual behavior, homosexual behavior, or autosexual behavior, or the sex drive may be channeled into some other form of activity. Freud thought that psychic energy could be displaced to substitute objects, and this displacement was of primary importance in determining an individual’s personality. Although the instincts are the exclusive source of energy for human behavior, the resulting energy can be invested in a variety of activities. This helps explain the diversity we see in human behavior. All the interests, preferences, and attitudes we display as adults were believed by Freud to be displacements of energy from the original objects that satisfied the instinctual needs.
Types of Instincts
Freud grouped the instincts into two categories: life instincts and death instincts. The life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual and the species by seeking to satisfy the needs for food, water, air, and sex. The life instincts are oriented toward growth and development. The psychic energy manifested by the life instincts is the libido. The libido can be attached to or invested in objects, a concept Freud called cathexis. If you like your roommate, for example, Freud would say that your libido is cathected to him or her.
The life instinct Freud considered most important for the personality is sex, which he defined in broad terms. He did not refer solely to the erotic but included almost all pleasurable behaviors and thoughts. He described his view as enlarging or extending the accepted concept of sexuality.
Freud regarded sex as our primary motivation. Erotic wishes arise from the body’s erogenous zones: the mouth, anus, and sex organs. He suggested that people are predominantly pleasure-seeking beings, and much of his personality theory revolves around the necessity of inhibiting or suppressing our sexual longings.
In opposition to the life instincts, Freud postulated the destructive or death instincts. Drawing from biology, he stated the obvious fact that all living things decay and die, returning to their original inanimate state, and he proposed that people have an unconscious wish to die. One component of the death instincts is the aggressive drive, described as the wish to die turned against objects other than the self. The aggressive drive compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill. Freud came to consider aggression as compelling a part of human nature as sex.
Freud developed the notion of the death instincts late in life, as a reflection of his own experiences. He endured the physiological and psychological debilitations of age, his cancer worsened, and he witnessed the carnage of World War I. One of his daughters died at the age of 26, leaving two young children. All these events affected him deeply, and, as a result, death and aggression became major themes in his theory. In his later years, Freud dreaded his own death, and exhibited hostility, hatred, and aggressiveness toward colleagues and disciples who disputed his views and left his psychoanalytic circle.
The concept of the death instincts achieved only limited acceptance, even among Freud’s most dedicated followers. One psychoanalyst wrote that the idea should be “relegated to the dustbin of history” (Sulloway, 1979, p. 394). Another suggested that if Freud were a genius, then the suggestion of the death instincts was an instance of a genius having a bad day (Eissler, 1971).
The Levels of Personality
Freud’s original conception divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious, as Freud defined the term, corresponds to its ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment. As you read these words, for example, you may be conscious of the feel of your pen, the sight of the page, the idea you are trying to grasp, and a dog barking in the distance.
Freud considered the conscious a limited aspect of personality because only a small portion of our thoughts, sensations, and memories exists in conscious awareness at any time. He likened the mind to an iceberg. The conscious is the portion above the surface of the water—merely the tip of the iceberg. More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control.
Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of memories, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. For example, if your mind strays from this page and you begin to think about a friend or about what you did last night, you would be summoning up material from your preconscious into your conscious. We often find our attention shifting back and forth from experiences of the moment to events and memories in the preconscious.
The Structure of Personality: Id, Ego, and Superego
The Id
Freud later revised this notion of three levels of personality and introduced three basic structures in the anatomy of the personality: the id, the ego, and the superego (see Figure 2.1). The id corresponds to Freud’s earlier notion of the unconscious (although the ego and superego have unconscious aspects as well). The id is the reservoir for the instincts and libido (the psychic energy manifested by the instincts). The id is a powerful structure of the personality because it supplies all the energy for the other two components.
Because the id is the reservoir of the instincts, it is vitally and directly related to the satisfaction of bodily needs. As we noted earlier, tension is produced when the body is in a state of need, and the person acts to reduce this tension by satisfying the need. The id operates in accordance with what Freud called the pleasure principle; through its concern with tension reduction, the id functions to increase pleasure and avoid pain. The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or postponement of satisfaction for any reason. It knows only instant gratification; it drives us to want what we want when we want it, without regard for what anyone else wants. The id is a selfish, pleasure-seeking structure, primitive, amoral, insistent, and rash.
The id has no awareness of reality. We might compare the id to a newborn baby who cries and waves its fists when its needs are not met but who has no knowledge of how to bring about satisfaction. The hungry infant cannot find food on his or her own. The only ways the id can attempt to satisfy its needs are through reflex action and wish-fulfilling hallucinatory or fantasy experience, which Freud labeled primary-process thought.
The Ego
Most children learn that they cannot take food from other people unless they are willing to face the consequences, that they must postpone the pleasure obtained from relieving anal tensions until they get to a bathroom, and that they cannot indiscriminately give vent to sexual and aggressive longings. The growing child is taught to deal intelligently and rationally with the outside world and to develop the powers of perception, recognition, judgment, and memory—the powers adults use to satisfy their needs. Freud called these abilities secondary-process thought.
We can sum up these characteristics as reason or rationality, and they are contained in Freud’s second structure of personality, the ego, which is the rational master of the personality. Its purpose is not to thwart the impulses of the id but to help the id obtain the tension reduction it craves. Because it is aware of reality, the ego decides when and how the id instincts can best be satisfied. It determines appropriate and socially acceptable times, places, and objects that will satisfy the id impulses.
The ego does not prevent id satisfaction. Rather, it tries to postpone, delay, or redirect it in terms of the demands of reality. It perceives and manipulates the environment in a practical and realistic manner and so is said to operate in accordance with the reality principle. (The reality principle stands in opposition to the pleasure principle, by which the id operates.) The ego thus exerts control over the id impulses. Freud compared the relationship of the ego and the id to that of a rider on a horse. The raw, brute power of the horse must be guided, checked, and reined in by the rider; otherwise the horse could bolt and run, throwing the rider to the ground.
The ego serves two masters—the id and reality—and is constantly mediating and striking compromises between their conflicting demands. Also, the ego is never independent of the id. It is always responsive to the id’s demands and derives its power and energy from the id.
It is the ego, the rational master, that keeps you working at a job you may dislike, if the alternative is the inability to provide food and shelter for your family. It is the ego that forces you to get along with people you dislike because reality demands such behavior from you as an appropriate way of satisfying id demands. The controlling and postponing function of the ego must be exercised constantly. If not, the id impulses might come to dominate and overthrow the rational ego. Freud argued that we must protect ourselves from being controlled by the id and proposed various unconscious mechanisms with which to defend the ego.
So far, we have a picture of the personality in battle, trying to restrain the id while at the same time serving it, perceiving and manipulating reality to relieve the tensions of the id impulses. Driven by instinctual biological forces, which we continually try to guide, the personality walks a tightrope between the demands of the id and the demands of reality, both of which require constant vigilance.
The Superego
The id and the ego do not represent Freud’s complete picture of human nature. There is a third set of forces—a powerful and largely unconscious set of dictates or beliefs—that we acquire in childhood: our ideas of right and wrong. In everyday language we call this internal morality a conscience. Freud called it the superego. The basis of this moral side of the personality is usually learned by the age of 5 or 6 and consists initially of the rules of conduct set down by our parents. Through praise, punishment, and example, children learn which behaviors their parents consider good or bad. Those behaviors for which children are punished form the conscience, one part of the superego. The second part of the superego is the ego-ideal, which consists of good, or correct, behaviors for which children have been praised.
In this way, children learn a set of rules that earn acceptance or rejection from their parents. In time, children internalize these teachings, and the rewards and punishments become self-administered. Parental control is replaced by self-control. We come to behave at least in partial conformity with these now largely unconscious moral guidelines. As a result of this internalization, we experience guilt or shame whenever we perform (or even think of performing) some action contrary to this moral code.
As the arbiter of morality, the superego is relentless, even cruel, in its quest for moral perfection. In terms of intensity, irrationality, and insistence on obedience, it is not unlike the id. Its purpose is not merely to postpone the pleasure-seeking demands of the id, as the ego does, but to inhibit them completely, particularly those demands concerned with sex and aggression. The superego strives neither for pleasure (as does the id) nor for attainment of realistic goals (as does the ego). It strives solely for moral perfection. The id presses for satisfaction, the ego tries to delay it, and the superego urges morality above all. Like the id, the superego admits no compromise with its demands.
The ego is caught in the middle, pressured by these insistent and opposing forces. Thus, the ego has a third master, the superego. To paraphrase Freud, the poor ego has a hard time of it, pressured on three sides, threatened by three dangers: the id, reality, and the superego. The inevitable result of this friction, when the ego is too severely strained, is the development of anxiety.
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