Freud: Personality and Conflict

A number of theories about personality have grown out of the psychodynamic or

psychoanalytic approach to personality development. These theories are based on what
psychoanalysts observed in working with patients. The theories focus on the part of
personality that lies beneath observed behaviours, rather than the surface acts themselves.
In locating the sources of personality traits, psychoanalytic theory stresses the importance
of early childhood experiences.
The person who first investigated these deeper inner feelings systematically was
psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. His theory of the unconscious revolutionized the study of
personality. He believed that our personalities are built around elements that cannot be
directly observed. He felt that our daily lives are influenced by past experiences we cant
really recall. According to Freud, we are aware of only a small part of our feelings and
thoughts. The part of our mind that deals with things we are aware of is conscious mind.
Yet another part of human mind made up of motives, needs and feelings we are
unaware of is much larger. He called this unconscious. Freud compared the mind to an
iceberg, nine-tenth of that is underwater. The submerged part represents the unconscious
self. According to Freud the unconscious controls the deeper, irrational forces that lie
below the level of mental awareness.

Id, Ego and Superego:

Freud describes three elements as working within the human mind. He called them the id,
the ego and the superego. These elements are not parts of the mind in a physical sense.
They are elements in a dynamic process of thinking and feeling that Freud believed was
behind all human activities.
The Id: In Freuds view, the id represents the primitive part of out personality. It
is unconscious and is the powerhouse of all our selfish, natural urges. Traditional
psychoanalytic theory states that all human beings are born with instinctual drives that
are constantly active even though the person usually is not conscious of being thus

driven. Two drives-one for sexual pleasure called libido; the other called aggressionmotivate and propel most behaviour. The id drives us to satisfy the libido, our sexual
energy or desire and all other physical pleasure drive. It speaks for our biological self.
The id is said to operate on the pleasure principle.
The id insists on what it wants immediately. It knows no restrictions. But not
every id impulse can be gratified. You might be hungry when no food is available. Urges
that can not be satisfied directly are said to be partially satisfied by creating a mental
image of the thing desired. You might imagine yourself eating a good meal. More often,
this kind of wish fulfillment is expressed in dreams, which Freud saw as revealing our
innermost needs and anxieties.
The Ego: Some id instincts cant be satisfied either directly or by wish
fulfillment. Some must be dealt with consciously. Satisfying the biological drives may
involve learning to be patient, seeking alternative solutions, or directing such instincts in
to other channels. Conscious management of needs and drives is a task performed by the
ego, the visible part of the iceberg. The ego represents the purposeful mind. As the id is
said to operate on pleasure principle, the ego is said to function on reality principle. For
instance, the ego might put you to work obtaining food rather than imagining it.
Part of egos job is to choose actions to fulfill id impulses without bad results.
Suppose you have an urge to spend school morning at home in bed. Your ego tells you to
get up and get going if you dont want to fail a class. Or the ego might substitute an
acceptable urge for a dangerous one. If your id comes up with a wild impulse to fly by
leaping from the mountain, your ego suggests skydiving instead. An important part of the
egos function is to settle disputes between the blind desires of the id and the real worldwhatever makes sense in a given culture at a given time. The ego comes between the id
and the superego.
The Superego: The ego works in the persons self-interest. But behaviour in our
own interest often conflicts with the self-interest of the others. Freud saw that a third
dimension of consciousness was needed to hold the id and the ego in check. Ha called
this the superego. Unlike the id and the ego, superego is not present at birth. It develops
as a child and learns which actions are socially acceptable and which are not. The
superego holds societys values and moral attitudes.

The superego includes what we mean by conscience. It tells us right from the
wrong. A growing child internalizes the rules made by parents and other adults. Gradually
this right-wrong response enters a childs own system of behaviour, independent of its
original source.
The superego does more than just distinguish right from the wrong. It also
compares the egos view of itself with an ego ideal of perfection. This ego ideal is our
view of the sort of person we feel we should strive to become. We base it on our own
hopes and on the kind of person other think we should be.
The superego combines conscience that tells us right from the wrong, with the ego
ideal that inspires us to make things better for all. In the Freudian view, conflict between
the id and the superego is inevitable. A person can deal with these conflicts by directly
suppressing unacceptable urges, saying no to them, or by hiding them deep inside. Hiding
unacceptable urges means repressing full awareness of them by keeping them in the
unconscious.
Childhood Experiences and Adult Behaviour:
Freuds theory emphasizes the experiences of childhood. Freus believed
childhood events determine in large measure the type of the people we become as adults.
He saw infants as pleasure-seeking creatures, whose existence centers on satisfying the
biological urges and drives he called the id.
Because of the id, feud believed that all of us ,as children, pass through a series of
psychosexual stages. During these stageswe get sensual satisfactions through stimulation
of various zones of the body-first the mouth, then the anus, and finally the genitals. The
many ways an individual gets satisfaction from body stimulation are called libido. The
libido or the sexual energy changes as the child matures. When the libido receives too
little or too much gratification, conflicts take place, which stall the psychological
development of the child in a fixation at that stage. The term fixation means that a person
who did not receive enough gratification at a particular stage of development, or who
receives too much, will attempt to compensate for the imbalance throughout his life. The
person will not be able to proceed to the next level of functioning. There are four stages
during which fixations can occur: oral, anal, phallic and genital.

The oral stage begins at birth and continues for about one year. During this
period mouth is the main source of pleasure and contact with the environment. Infants get
pleasure by sucking. They should outgrow this stage and failure to do so results in oral
fixation, which may show up later in excessive enjoyment of food, gum chewing,
smoking or sucking at the ends of the pencils.
The anal stage, according to Freud, occurs during the second and third years of
life. It centers on bowel movements, first eliminating the waste and then not letting it go.
A child gets pleasure from the process of going to the bathroom and at the same time
does not want to give up the interesting thing produced. How toilet training is handled is
crucial. Too early or too rigid training may result in lifelong anal fixation. This may
include stinginess, extreme neatness or rigid compulsive behaviour.
The third period of the erotic satisfaction is the phallic stage. Beginning at about
age three, children learn that they can derive pleasure from exploring and stimulating
their own bodies. But such pleasure is usually forbidden by adults. Freud believed that
suppression of phallic urge can lead to unnecessary guilt feeling in later life.
During the phallic stage a boy feels jealous of his father. He wants his mother to
himself, and may even say that he wants to marry her. Girls go through a similar feeling
for the father and rejection of the mother. The situation is resolved, says Freud, by
identification with the parent of the same sex.
Following the phallic stage, there is period of latency, when sexuality goes
underground for a few years. The final genital stage begins at puberty. Sensual pleasure
then begins to be associated with the opposite sex. As adolescence progresses, pleasure
focuses less on a persons own body (self-love) and more on others (unselfish, romantic
love).
Each of these four stages, in Freudian theory, plays a distinct role in the
development of the personality. A persons adjustment to others, feelings about himself
and individual behaviour pattern as all depend, to some extent, on the outcome of these
earlier conflicts.
This sketch provides a brief outline of Freuds theory of personality development.
Freudians believe that an individual ability to adjust in later life is determined by early
childhood experiences. When painful childhood conflicts are repressed, hidden but not

resolved, they do not just go away. They continue in adulthood-through the unconsciousto influence an individuals thought feelings and behaviour.