Personality: Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

When looking in to the Intrapsychic domain on psychology, the structure of personality developed by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalysis theory comes to mind. Freud, a medical doctor born in Moravia, who started out in neurological research developed theories that portions of the human mind works outside the conscious awareness. In this domain, it is believed that we have 2 levels of personality, they are;

1. Unconscious - The major driving forces in which people are unable to control

2. Conscious - Awareness of everyday meanings

Freud termed this as instinct and where we draw our basic psychic energy that motivates all human activity. The unconscious parts of the mind lies unacceptable information, hidden from conscious view; these are memories, feelings, thoughts, or urges that are troubling and distasteful. These feelings dwells in the unconscious mind and is controlled by the conscious plane. Memories that are extremely distressing and painful is being pushed into the subconcious plane.

According to Freud, human basic structure of personality looks something like this;

For the benefit of understanding better, here's a brief description of ID, EGO, and Super Ego;

ID - defined as our inner child and the reservoir of psychich enery. ID oftens demands instant gratification to all our wants. It functions on primal urges and according to pleasure principles.

SUPEREGO - the upholder of societal values and ideals, the superego internalized ideals of society, moral and values that we have been brought up with. This is the part where functions to make us feel guilty, ashamed, and embarrassed when we do something wrong or pride when we do something right. Like ID, SUPEREGO practices instant gratification for high virtues and constantly pounding for the highest values into our subconscious. It's like an angel constantly whispering into your ears.

EGO - the executive of personality, which functions as the regulator that works to redirect pressure produced by IT and SUPEREGO instincts into acceptable or least problematic outcomes. For example, teasing someone is more acceptable than hitting them and it perhaps fulfill some aggressive urges but it's not all that simple as some urges are simply unacceptable in society.

More often, we tend to have a conflict within ourselves in everyday events. For instance, dissatisfaction with our bosses or colleagues. This creates a conflict between our ID and SUPEREGO and this causes us to develop anxiety. From anxiety and stressful events, we come up with what is known as defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms help us to cope with these anxiety situations and defends us from severe conflicts that evokes anxiety. This is where the EGO function comes to play, to balance out the id and superego and ultimately reduces anxiety in a situation that is threatening and poses danger to us. We can say that defense mechanisms serves 2 functions, which is to protect the ego and to minimize distress and anxiety.