Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Qualities of good counselor

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Qualities of good counselor

The Counselor as a Therapeutic Person

shed stereotypes and be an authentic person

         If we hide behind the safety of our professional role, our clients will likely keep themselves hidden from us.

         If we become merely technical experts and leave our own reactions, values, and self out of our work, the result is likely to be sterile counseling 

        It is through our own genuineness and our aliveness that we can significantly touch our clients. If we make life-oriented choices, radiate a joy for life, and are real in our relationships with our clients, we can motivate them to develop these same life-enhancing qualities.

 

 

          In short, as Counselors we serve as models for our clients. If we model incongruent behavior, low-risk activity, and remain distant, we can expect our clients to imitate this behavior

          I do not expect any therapist to fully exemplify all the traits described here.

          Rather, for me the willingness to struggle to become a more therapeutic person is the crucial quality. This list is intended to stimulate you to examine your ideas of what kind of person can make a significant difference in the lives of others.

 

 

 

          Effective Counselors have an identity. They know who they are, what they are capable of becoming, what they want out of life, and what is essential.

          Effective Counselors respect and appreciate themselves. They can give and receive help and love out of their own sense of self-worth and strength. They feel adequate with others and allow others to feel powerful with them.

          Effective Counselors are open to change. They exhibit a willingness and courage to leave the security of the known if they are not satisfied with the way they are. They make decisions about how they would like to change, and they work toward becoming the person they want to become.

         

 

          Effective Counselors make choices that are life oriented. They are aware of early decisions they made about themselves, others, and the world. They are not the victims of these early decisions, and they are willing to revise them if necessary. They are committed to living fully rather than settling for mere existence.

          Effective Counselors are authentic, sincere, and honest. They do not hide behind masks, defenses, sterile roles, or facades.

          Effective therapists have a sense of humor. They are able to put the events of life in perspective. They have not forgotten how to laugh, especially at their own foibles and contradictions.

          Effective therapists make mistakes and are willing to admit them. They do not dismiss their errors lightly, yet they do not choose to dwell on misery.

 

          Effective therapists generally live in the present. They are not riveted to the past, nor are they fixated on the future. They are able to experience and be present with others in the “now.”

          Effective therapists appreciate the influence of culture. They are aware of the ways in which their own culture affects them, and they respect the diversity of values espoused by other cultures. They are also sensitive to the unique differences arising out of social class, race, sexual orientation, and gender.

          Effective therapists have a sincere interest in the welfare of others. This concern is based on respect, care, trust, and a real valuing of others.

          Effective therapists possess effective interpersonal skills. They are capable of entering the world of others without getting lost in this world, and they strive to create collaborative relationships with others. They do not present themselves as polished salespersons, yet they have the capacity to take another person’s position and work together toward consensual goals (Norcross, 2002b).

 

         Effective therapists become deeply involved in their work and derive meaning from it. They can accept the rewards fl owing from their work, yet they are not slaves to their work.

         Effective therapists are passionate. They have the courage to pursue their passions, and they are passionate about life and their work.

         Effective therapists are able to maintain healthy boundaries. Although they strive to be fully present for their clients, they don’t carry the problems of their clients around with them during leisure hours. They know how to say no, which enables them to maintain balance in their lives.

 

          Effective therapists are not value neutral but take critical distancing from biases:  Counseling is not a value-free exercise. But positive values can come in.

          Effective therapists are sensitive to multicultural and gender differences

           

 

Beginners need to

          Dealing With Our Anxieties

          Being Ourselves and Disclosing Our Experience: level of genuineness and presence that enables us to connect with our clients and to establish an effective therapeutic relationship with them.

          Avoiding Perfectionism

          Being Honest About Our Limitations

          Understanding Silence

          Dealing With Demands from Clients: One way of heading off these demands is to make your expectations and boundaries clear during the initial counseling sessions or in the disclosure statement.

Beginners need to

          Dealing With Clients Who Lack Commitment

          Tolerating Ambiguity

          Avoiding Losing Ourselves in Our Clients

          Developing a Sense of Humor

          Sharing Responsibility With the Client

          Declining to Give Advice

          Defi ning Your Role as a Counselor

          Learning to Use Techniques Appropriately

          Developing Your Own Counseling Style

          Staying Vital as a Person and as a Professional

ethical principles and issues

          Putting Clients’ Needs Before Your Own: ask yourself is this: “Whose needs are being met in this relationship, my client’s or my own?”. It is crucial that we avoid exploiting or harming clients for fulfilling our personal needs such as the need for control and power; the need to be nurturing and helpful; the need to change others in the direction of our own values; the need for feeling adequate, particularly when it becomes overly important that the client confirm our competence; and the need to be respected and appreciated.

          Ethical Decision Making

          The Right of Informed Consent

          Dimensions of Confidentiality, however, it can be broken in the event when

        the therapist believes a client under the age of 16 is the victim of incest, rape, child abuse, or some other crime.

        the therapist determines that the client needs hospitalization

        information is made an issue in a court action•

        clients request that their records be released to them or to a third party

Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development

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Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development                                                                  
Freud believed that all behaviors are defensive but that not everyone uses the same defenses in the same way. All of us are driven by the same id impulses, but there is not the same universality in the nature of the ego and superego. Although these structures of the personality perform the same functions for everyone, their content varies from one person to another. They differ because they are formed through experience, and no two people have precisely the same experiences, not even siblings reared in the same house. Thus, part of our personality is formed on the basis of the unique relationships we have as children with various people and objects. We develop a personal set of character attributes, a consistent pattern of behavior that defines each of us as an individual.

A person’s unique character type develops in childhood largely from parent–child interactions. The child tries to maximize pleasure by satisfying the id demands, while parents, as representatives of society, try to impose the demands of reality and morality. So important did Freud consider childhood experiences that he said the adult personality was firmly shaped and crystallized by the fifth year of life. What persuaded him that these early years are crucial were his own childhood memories and the memories revealed by his adult patients. Invariably, as his patients lay on his psychoanalytic couch, they reached far back into childhood. Increasingly, Freud perceived that the adult neurosis had been formed in the early years of life.

Freud sensed strong sexual conflicts in the infant and young child, conflicts that seemed to revolve around specific regions of the body. He noted that each body region with gratification received from defecation.

Sometimes a person is reluctant or unable to move from one stage to the next because the conflict has not been resolved or because the needs have been so supremely satisfied by an indulgent parent that the child doesn’t want to move on. In either case, the individual is said to be fixated at this stage of development. In fixation, a portion of libido or psychic energy remains invested in that developmental stage, leaving less energy for the following stages.

Central to the psychosexual theory is the infant’s sex drive. Freud shocked his colleagues and the general public when he argued that babies are motivated by sexual impulses. Recall, however, that Freud did not define sex in a narrow way. He believed that the infant is driven to obtain a diffuse form of bodily pleasure deriving from the mouth, anus, and genitals, the erogenous zones that define the stages of development during the first 5 years of life.


The Oral Stage

The oral stage, the first stage of psychosexual development, lasts from birth until some time during the second year of life. During this period the infant’s principal source of pleasure is the mouth. The infant derives pleasure from sucking, biting, and swallowing. Of course, the mouth is used for survival (for the ingestion of food and water), but Freud placed a greater emphasis on the erotic satisfactions derived from oral activities.

The infant is in a state of dependence on the mother or caregiver. She or he becomes the primary object of the child’s libido. In more familiar terms, we might say the infant is learning, in a primitive way, to love the mother. How the mother responds to the infant’s demands, which at this time are solely id demands, determines the nature of the baby’s small world. The infant learns from the mother to perceive the world as good or bad, satisfying or frustrating, safe or perilous.

There are two ways of behaving during this stage: oral incorporative behavior (taking in) and oral aggressive or oral sadistic behavior (biting or spitting out). The oral incorporative mode occurs first and involves the pleasurable stimulation of the mouth by other people and by food. Adults fixated at the oral incorporative stage are excessively concerned with oral activities, such as eating, drinking, smoking, and kissing. If, as infants, they were excessively gratified, their adult oral personality will be predisposed to unusual optimism and dependency. Because they were overindulged in infancy, they continue to depend on others to gratify their needs. As a consequence, they are overly gullible, swallow or believe anything they are told, and trust other people inordinately. Such people are labeled oral passive personality types.

The second oral behavior, oral aggressive or oral sadistic, occurs during the painful, frustrating eruption of teeth. As a result of this experience, infants come to view the mother with hatred as well as love. Persons fixated at this level are prone to excessive pessimism, hostility, and aggressiveness. They are likely to be argumentative and sarcastic, making so-called biting remarks and displaying cruelty toward others. They tend to be envious of other people and try to exploit and manipulate them in an effort to dominate.

The oral stage concludes at the time of weaning, although some libido remains if fixation has occurred. Then the infant’s focus shifts to the other end.




The Anal Stage

Society, in the form of parents, tends to defer to the infant’s needs during the first year of life, adjusting to its demands and expecting relatively little adjustment in return. This situation changes dramatically around the age of 18 months, when a new demand, toilet training, is made of the child. Freud believed that the experience of toilet training during the anal stage had a significant effect on personality development. Defecation produces erotic pleasure for the child, but with the onset of toilet training, the child must learn to postpone or delay this pleasure. For the first time, gratification of an instinctual impulse is interfered with as parents attempt to regulate the time and place for defecation.
As any parent can attest, this is a time of conflict for all concerned. The child learns that he or she has (or is) a weapon that can be used against the parents. The child has control over something and can choose to comply or not with the parents’ demands. If the toilet training is not going well—for example, if the child has difficulty learning or the parents are excessively demanding—the child may react in one of two ways. One way is to defecate when and where the parents disapprove, thus defying their attempts at regulation. If the child finds this a satisfactory technique for reducing frustration and uses it frequently, he or she may develop an anal aggressive personality. To Freud, this was the basis for many forms of hostile and sadistic behavior in adult life, including cruelty, destructiveness, and temper tantrums. Such a person is likely to be disorderly and to view other people as objects to be possessed.

A second way the child may react to the frustration of toilet training is to hold back or retain the feces. This produces a feeling of erotic pleasure (derived from a full lower intestine) and can be another successful technique for manipulating the parents. They may become concerned if the child goes several days without a bowel movement. Thus, the child discovers a new method for securing parental attention and affection. This behavior is the basis for the development of an anal retentive personality. Stubborn and stingy, such a person hoards or retains things because feelings of security depend on what is saved and possessed and on the order in which possessions and other aspects of life are maintained. The person is likely to be rigid, compulsively neat, obstinate, and overly conscientious.


The Phallic Stage

A new set of problems arises around the fourth to fifth year, when the focus of pleasure shifts from the anus to the genitals. Again the child faces a battle between an id impulse and the demands of society, as reflected in parental expectations.

Children at the phallic stage display considerable interest in exploring and manipulating the genitals, their own and those of their playmates. Pleasure is derived from the genital region not only through behaviors such as masturbation, but also through fantasies. The child becomes curious about birth and about why boys have penises and girls do not. The child may talk about wanting to marry the parent of the opposite sex.

The phallic stage is the last of the pre-genital or childhood stages, and phallic conflicts are the most complex ones to resolve. They are difficult for many people to accept because they involve the notion of incest, a taboo in many cultures. Between incestuous desires and masturbation we can see the seeds of shock, anger, and suppression being sown in the parents of the typical 4-year-old. Reality and morality come to grips with the evil id once again.

The Oedipus complex in boys. The basic conflict of the phallic stage centers on the unconscious desire of the child for the parent of the opposite sex. Accompanying this is the unconscious desire to replace or destroy the parent of the same sex. Out of Freud’s identification of this conflict came one of his best-known concepts: the Oedipus complex. Its name comes from the Greek myth described in the play Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles in the fifth century B.C. In this story, young Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, not knowing who they are.

The Oedipus complex operates differently for boys and girls; Freud developed the male part of the complex more fully. In the Oedipus complex, the mother becomes a love object for the young boy. Through fantasy and overt behavior, he displays his sexual longings for her. However, the boy sees the father as an obstacle in his path and regards him as a rival and a threat. He perceives that the father has a special relationship with the mother in which he, the boy, is not allowed to participate. As a result, he becomes jealous of and hostile toward the father. Freud drew his formulation of the Oedipus complex from his childhood experiences. He wrote, “I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case, too” (Freud, 1954, p. 223).

Accompanying the boy’s desire to replace his father is the fear that the father will retaliate and harm him. He interprets his fear of his father in genital terms, becoming fearful that his father will cut off the offending organ (the boy’s penis), which is the source of the boy’s pleasure and sexual longings. And so castration anxiety, as Freud called it, comes to play a role, as it may have done in Freud’s childhood. “There are a number of indications that [Freud’s father] enjoined little Sigmund not to play with his genitals, and even threatened him with castration if he did” (Krüll, 1986, p. 110).


Additional evidence to support this contention comes from Freud’s later writings on masturbation, in which he saw such threats from fathers as common. Freud also reported that his adult dreams contained material relating to the fear of castration by his father.


Two other childhood events may have reinforced Freud’s fear of castration. At around the age of 3, he and his nephew engaged in some rough sex play with his niece and discovered she did not have a penis. For a 3-year-old boy, this may have been sufficient evidence that penises can be cut off. In the opinion of one Freud biographer, “the threat of castration is particularly realistic to a Jewish boy, since it is easy to establish a connection between ritual circumcision and castration” (Krüll,
1986, p. 110). Freud confirmed this in his later writings.

So strong is the boy’s fear of castration that he is forced to repress his sexual desire for his mother. To Freud, this was a way of resolving the Oedipal conflict. The boy replaces the sexual longing for the mother with a more acceptable affection and develops a strong identification with the father. In so doing, the boy experiences a degree of vicarious sexual satisfaction. To enhance the identification, he attempts to become more like his father by adopting his mannerisms, behaviors, attitudes, and superego standards.

The Oedipus complex in girls. Freud was less clear about the female phallic conflict, which some of his followers termed the Electra complex. Like the boy’s, the girl’s first object of love is the mother, because she is the primary source of food, affection, and security in infancy. During the phallic stage, however, the father becomes the girl’s new love object. Why does this shift from mother to father take place? Freud said it was because of the girl’s reaction to her discovery that boys have a penis and girls do not.


The girl blames her mother for her supposedly inferior condition and consequently comes to love her mother less. She may even hate the mother for what she imagines the mother did to her. She comes to envy her father and transfers her love to him because he possesses the highly valued sex organ. Freud wrote: “girls feel deeply their lack of a sexual organ that is equal in value to the male one; they regard themselves on that account as inferior and this envy for the penis is the origin of a whole number of characteristic feminine reactions” (Freud, 1925, p. 212). Thus, a girl develops penis envy, a counterpart to a boy’s castration anxiety. She believes she has lost her penis; he fears he will lose his.


This female Oedipus complex, Freud suggested, can never be totally resolved, a situation he believed led to poorly developed superegos in women. Freud wrote that an adult woman’s love for a man is always tinged with penis envy, for which she can partially compensate by having a male child. The girl comes to identify with the mother and repress her love for her father, but Freud was not specific about how this occurs.


The phallic personality. Phallic conflicts and their degree of resolution are of major importance in determining adult relations with and attitudes toward the opposite sex. Poorly resolved conflicts can cause lingering forms of castration anxiety and penis envy. The so-called phallic character or personality type evidences strong narcissism.

Although continually acting to attract the opposite sex, these persons have difficulty establishing mature heterosexual relationships. They need continual recognition and appreciation of their attractive and unique qualities. As long as they receive such support they function well, but when it is lacking they feel inadequate and inferior.

Freud described the male phallic personality as brash, vain, and self-assured. Men with this personality try to assert or express their masculinity through activities such as repeated sexual conquests. The female phallic personality, motivated by penis envy, exaggerates her femininity and uses her talents and charms to overwhelm and conquer men.
The tense drama of the phallic stage is repressed in all of us. Its effects motivate us as adults at the unconscious level, and we recall little, if anything, of the conflict.

The Latency Period

The storms and stresses of the oral, anal, and phallic stages of psychosexual development are the amalgam out of which most of the adult personality is shaped. The three major structures of the personality—the id, ego, and superego—have been formed by approximately the age of 5, and the relationships among them are being solidified.

Fortunately, because the child and parents certainly could use some rest, the next 5 or 6 years are quiet. The latency period is not a psychosexual stage of development. The sex instinct is dormant, temporarily sublimated in school activities, hobbies, and sports and in developing friendships with members of the same sex.


The Genital Stage

The genital stage, the final psychosexual stage of development, begins at puberty. The body is becoming physiologically mature, and if no major fixations have occurred at an earlier stage of development, the individual may be able to lead a normal life. Freud believed that the conflict during this period is less intense than in the other stages. The adolescent must conform to societal sanctions and taboos that exist concerning sexual expression, but conflict is minimized through sublimation. The sexual energy pressing for expression in the teenage years can be at least partially satisfied through the pursuit of socially acceptable substitutes and, later, through a committed adult relationship with a person of the opposite sex. The genital personality type is able to find satisfaction in love and work, the latter being an acceptable outlet for sublimation of the id impulses.

Freud emphasized the importance of the early childhood years in determining the adult personality. According to Freud, the first 5 years are the crucial ones. His personality theory pays less attention to later childhood and adolescence, and he was little concerned with personality development in adulthood. To Freud, what we are as adults—how we behave, think, and feel—is determined by the conflicts to which we are exposed and with which we must cope before many of us have even learned to read.

Defense Mechanisms

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Defense Mechanisms                                                                                     


Anxiety is a signal that impending danger, a threat to the ego, must be counteracted or avoided. The ego must reduce the conflict between the demands of the id and the strictures of society or the superego. According to Freud, this conflict is ever present because the instincts are always pressing for satisfaction, and the taboos of society are always working to limit such satisfaction. Freud believed that the defenses must,to some extent, always be in operation. Just as all behaviors are motivated by instincts, so all behavior is defensive in the sense of defending against anxiety. The intensity of the battle within the personality may fluctuate, but it never ceases.


Freud postulated several defense mechanisms and noted that we rarely use just one; we typically defend ourselves against anxiety by using several at the same time. Also, some overlap exists among the mechanisms. Although defense mechanisms vary in their specifics, they share two characteristics: (1) they are denials or distortions of reality—necessary ones, but distortions nonetheless, and, (2) they operate unconsciously. We are unaware of them, which means that on the conscious level we hold distorted or unreal images of our world and ourselves.

 
Repression
                                                                                                                                                      
Repression is an involuntary removal of something from conscious awareness. It is an unconscious type of forgetting of the existence of something that brings us discomfort or pain and is the most fundamental and frequently used defense mechanism. Repression can operate on memories of situations or people, on our perception of the present (so that we may fail to see some obviously disturbing event), and even on the body’s physiological functioning. For example, a man can so strongly repress the sex drive that he becomes impotent.
Once repression is operating, it is difficult to eliminate. Because we use repression to protect ourselves from danger, in order to remove it, we would have to know that the idea or memory is no longer dangerous. But how can we find out that the danger no longer exists unless we release the repression? The concept of repression is basic to much of Freud’s personality theory and is involved in all neurotic behavior.
Denial

The defense mechanism of denial is related to repression and involves denying the existence of some external threat or traumatic event that has occurred. For example, a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death. Parents of a child who has died may continue to deny the loss by keeping the child’s room unchanged.


Reaction Formation

One defense against a disturbing impulse is to actively express the opposite impulse. This is called reaction formation. A person who is strongly driven by threatening sexual impulses may repress those impulses and replace them with more socially acceptable behaviors. For example, a person threatened by sexual longings may reverse them and become a rabid crusader against pornography. Another person, disturbed by extreme aggressive impulses, may become overly solicitous and friendly. Thus, lust becomes virtue and hatred becomes love, in the unconscious mind of the person using this mechanism.


Projection

Another way of defending against disturbing impulses is to attribute them to someone else. This defense mechanism is called projection. Lustful, aggressive, and other unacceptable impulses are seen as being possessed by other people, not by oneself. The person says, in effect, “I don’t hate him. He hates me.” Or a mother may ascribe her sex drive to her adolescent daughter. The impulse is still manifested, but in a way that is less threatening to the individual.


Regression

In regression, the person retreats or regresses to an earlier period of life that was more pleasant and free of frustration and anxiety. Regression usually involves a return to one of the psychosexual stages of childhood development (see pages 61–68). The individual returns to this more secure time of life by manifesting behaviors displayed at that time, such as childish and dependent behaviors.


Rationalization

Rationalization is a defense mechanism that involves reinterpreting our behavior to make it seem more rational and acceptable to us. We excuse or justify a threatening thought or action by persuading ourselves there is a rational explanation for it. The person who is fired from a job may rationalize by saying that the job wasn’t a good one anyway. The loved one who turns you down now appears to have many faults. It is less threatening to blame someone or something else for our failures than to blame ourselves.


Displacement

If an object that satisfies an id impulse is not available, the person may shift the impulse to another object. This is known as displacement. For example, children who hate their parents or adults who hate their bosses, but are afraid to express their hostility for fear of being punished, may displace the aggression onto someone else. The child may hit a younger brother or sister, or the adult may shout at the dog. In these examples, the original object of the aggressive impulse has been replaced by an object that is not a threat. However, the substitute object will not reduce the tension as satisfactorily as the original object. If you are involved in a number of displacements, a reservoir of undischarged tension accumulates, and you will be driven to find new ways of reducing that tension.


Sublimation

Whereas displacement involves finding a substitute object to satisfy id impulses, sublimation involves altering the id impulses. The instinctual energy is diverted into other channels of expression, ones that society considers acceptable and admirable. Sexual energy, for example, can be diverted or sublimated into artistically creative behaviors. Freud believed that a variety of human activities, particularly those of an artistic nature, are manifestations of id impulses that have been redirected into socially acceptable outlets. As with displacement (of which sublimation is a form), sublimation is a compromise. As such, it does not bring total satisfaction but leads to a buildup of undischarged tension.


As we noted, Freud suggested that defense mechanisms are unconscious denials or distortions of reality. We are, in a sense, lying to ourselves when we use these defenses, but we are not aware of doing so. If we knew we were lying to ourselves, the defenses would not be so effective. If the defenses are working well, they keep threatening or disturbing material out of our conscious awareness. As a result, we may not know the truth about ourselves. We may have a distorted picture of our needs, fears, and desires.


Our rational cognitive processes, such as problem solving, decision making, and logical thinking, may then be based on an inaccurate self-image. To Freud, we are driven and controlled by internal and external forces of which we are unaware and over which we can exercise little rational control.


There are situations in which the truth about ourselves emerges, when the defenses break down and fail to protect us. This occurs in times of unusual stress or when undergoing psychoanalysis. When the defenses fail, we are stricken with overwhelming anxiety. We feel dismal, worthless, and depressed. Unless the defenses are restored or new ones form to take their place we are likely to develop neurotic or psychotic symptoms. Thus, defenses are necessary to our mental health. We could not survive long without them.

Psycho-Analytic Approach to Personality - The structure of the personality

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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.
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.