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Subject PSYCHOLOGY

Paper No and Title Paper No 5: Personality Theories

Module No and Title Module No 8: : Sigmund Part-I

Module Tag PSY_P5_M8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes 2. Introduction 3. Biographical Sketch 4. Influential figures in Freud’s life 4.1 Ernst Brucke 4.2 Jean Martin Charcot 4.3 Josef Breuer 4.4 5. Instincts and Psychic Energy 5.1 The sexual/life instinct 5.2 The death instinct 5.3 Ego instinct 5.4Psychic energy 6. The Levels of Consciousness 7. The Structure of Personality 7.1 The Id 7.2 The Ego PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Part-I

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7.3 The Superego 8. Summary

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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1. Learning Outcomes

After studying this module, you shall be able to

 Get a glimpse into the life of Sigmund Freud, around which the realm of psychoanalysis is built.  Understand Freud’s concept of instincts and learn about the life and death instincts.  Study the three levels of consciousness.  Understand Freud’s structure of personality and the interaction between the id, ego and the superego.

2. Introduction

One of the most comprehensive approaches to personality and its development was formulated by Sigmund Freud (1920, 38, 40, 49). His insistence that behaviour is determined by the interplay of events and conflicts within the inner life (intrapsychic events) of the individual is central to his approach and to that of other dynamic theories. For Freud, all behaviour is motivated. No chance or accidental happenings cause behaviour; all acts are determined by motives. Every human action has a cause and a purpose that can be discovered through psychoanalysis of thought associations, dreams, errors and other behavioural clues to inner passions.

Freud developed theories of personality based upon clinical observations and in-depth case studies of individual patients in therapy. His ideas were complex and touched many different issues. With respect to personality, however, the following topics are most central:

. Instincts and psychic energy– Instincts represent a dynamic, or motivational principle postulated by Freud to explain the driving forces behind people’s actions. The motivation to seek pleasure and to reduce tension is derived from the psychic energy that springs from their basic instincts. . Levels of consciousness– Levels of consciousness describe Freud’s earliest attempt to map out the nature of human mind in terms of the unconscious, , and conscious (the topographic model). . Structure of personality – Freud’s structural model divides personality into three major systems –id, ego and superego that interact to govern human behaviour. . Anxiety and ego-defense mechanisms –Anxiety and ego-defense mechanisms are an important part of Freud’s personality theory, as they are fundamental to the development of neurotic and psychotic behavior. . Psychosexual stages of development – Psychosexual stages are an innate sequence of developmental stages that strongly shape the nature of our personality. Each stage is characterized by a particular erotogenic zone that serves as the primary source of pleasure.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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3. Biographical Sketch

Sigmund Freud was born to Jacob and Amalia Freud at the end of the romantic age in 1856, in the town of Moravia of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Freud was born, his father was 40 years old and his mother (the elder Freud’s third wife) only 20. The father was strict and authoritarian. As an adult, Freud recalled his childhood hostility, hatred, and rage toward his father. He wrote that he felt superior to his father as early as the age of 2.

He spent majority of his life in , where, being a Jew faced much hostility and this climate has had a profound effect on his thought. After matriculating from the University of Vienna he dabbled in medicine, philosophy, physiology, marine biology, psychiatry and neuropathology. Interested in neurology, he studied further under the famous neurologist Jean Charcot in France. His educational background explains Freud’s scientific tendencies and empiricism. He set up his practice in 1886, in Vienna. The same year he married Martha Barnays and the couple had 6 children.

Although he began with neurology, he gradually began developing his own methods of treatment like free association and dream interpretation. As a practicing psychiatrist, he became interested in hysteria and neurosis. Around 1990 he began developing the psychoanalytic theory. In the following years Freud modified his theories and broadened it. His correspondence and involvement with other thinkers of his time like Franz Brentano, Ernst Brucke, Joseph Breuer, and Wilhelm Fliess greatly impacted his theories and his convictions. He was also influenced by Nietzsche, Darwin, Lamarck, Haeckel and Spencer, among many others.

The term psychoanalysis appears ten years after he began his practice. The Wednesday psychological society meetings that began in 1902 marked the beginnings of the psychoanalytic movement. In 1908 it was renamed the Vienna psychoanalytic society. Due to the persecution by the Nazis, Freud had to leave Vienna for London. He was a chronic smoker and succumbed to buccal cancer in 1939. Although he did not originally intend it, he developed a full-fledged psychological system of thought and has come to be known as the father of psychoanalysis.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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4. Influential figures in Freud’s life

Apart from the influence of the setting of the period he was born into, i.e., the highly aristocratic, extremely suppressive and anti-Semitic space and time at the end of the romantic age, Freud and his theory-development was influenced by several personalities and the kind of educational experience he got. The most important influences are as follows:

4.1 Ernst Brucke Freud’s inclination towards science, materialism and mechanism comes from his studying under Brucke at the University of Vienna. Brucke argued that all natural phenomena must be explained in physical and chemical terms and that no spiritual or other-worldly forces could be invoked to account for the real world (McAdams, 1994). “And being a mechanist, he preferred scientific explanations based on machine models. A machine is a complex system that uses energy through work” (McAdams, 1994). And this is clearly reflected in Freud’s presentation of the human mind as an energy system and its working according to the law of conservation of energy.

4.2 Jean Martin Charcot Freud studied hysteria under this famous neuropathologist in France. Charcot treated hysteria through hypnosis and documented how physical symptoms resulted not from physical abnormalities but mental ideas and thoughts. Working with Charcot was a turning point in Freud’s career, taking him into the mental realm.

4.3 Josef Breuer Breuer was a physician and helped Freud get settled with his practice. They worked together on patients with hysteria; the case of Anna O is particularly famous. Freud credited Breuer for the psychoanalytic treatment method of “the talking cure” which Breuer used in this case. They collaboratively published the work Studies in Hysteria in 1895. Later they had a fall out due to some disagreements on the role of sexuality.

4.4 Wilhelm Fliess During the late 1890s and early 1990s, when Freud worked in isolation and through self-analysis perfected his major ideas, he developed a close friendship with Fliess who was a nose-throat specialist. They would exchange letters and ideas but parted as enemies. The contribution of Fliess’s ideas to psychoanalysis is a debated issue but Freud himself acknowledges that Fliess was more responsible for the psychoanalytic idea that all human beings are, at some level, bisexual (McAdams, 1994).

5.Instincts and Psychic Energy

According to Freud, personality is a complex energy system and the ultimate cause of all activity is the drive or instinct. The source of the instincts is the chemo-physical state of the organism and they represent the bridge between the physical and the mental realms. The source might be an excitation within the body caused due to some deficiency or any other disturbance of the inner balance. The aim of any instinct is to remove the excitation and restore the inner equilibrium by discharge of energy.

Two primary instincts: Eros (life instincts) and Thanatos (death instincts). The form of energy by which life instincts perform their work is called ‘’. PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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5.1 The sexual/life instinct:

Eros is a set of drives that deal with survival, reproduction, and pleasure. Despite the label Eros, not all life instincts deal with erotic urges per se (Carver &Scheier, 1996). Hunger and pain avoidance are also life instincts. According to Freud, sexual drives are many in number and each is associated with a different area of the body called an erogenous zone. The three erogenous zones identified by Freud are the mouth, the anus and the genitals. These zones are potential sources of tension. Manipulating these areas relieves the tension and produces pleasure. Thus sucking produces oral pleasure, emptying of bowels produces anal pleasure and fondling of genitals produces genital pleasure.

5.2 The death instinct:

Freud remarked “the goal of all life is death”.

He believed that people unconsciously desire death and to return to the inanimate state from which they came. Since the expression of death instincts is usually held in check by the life instincts, the effects of the death instincts aren’t visible (Carver &Scheier, 1996).

Another aspect of the destructive instinct is that of aggression. Freud believed that aggression is not a basic drive but that it stems from the thwarting of the death instincts. i.e. if the Eros thwarts the expression of Thanatos, tension remains and energy is left unspent. This energy can be dissipated in the form of aggression towards others. Thus aggression is an expression of self- destructive urges turned towards others (Carver &Scheier, 1996).

5.3 Ego-instinct

There is also the ego-instinct or the self-preservation instinct. This instinct, like the sexual instinct, follows the pleasure principle and works to procure pleasure and avoid pain. But the task of avoiding pain may force them to postpone or sometimes even renounce pleasure. This ability to compromise with reality and to consider what could be done and what price has to be paid for pleasure is the (Wolman, 2011). The sexual instinct is in accordance with the purpose of preservation of the species and is more flexible than the self-preservation instinct.

5.4 Psychic energy

Just as overt actions are powered by physical energy, mental activity involves constant expenditures of psychic energy. Psychic energy is unobservable and has no known physical correlates, despite Freud’s belief that underlying neurological functions would ultimately be discovered. The form of energy by which life instincts perform their work is called the libido. Libido is wholly intrapsychic, and never flows out of the mind into the outside world. It performs its work by following a law of conservation of energy, i.e. if a forbidden act or impulse is suppressed, its energy will seek an outlet somewhere else in the system, possibly in a disguised form.

The libido can be attached to or invested in mental representations of external objects that will satisfy instinctual needs, a process known as cathexis (plural, cathexes). If you like your PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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roommate, for example, Freud would say that your libido is cathected to him or her. The object cathected upon may be a person, an idea or a thing and is referred to as the object choice. The more important the object is, the more is the amount of energy cathected. The libido that has been cathected is no longer mobile and cannot move to new objects. It is rooted to whatever part of the psyche has attracted and held it (Frager& Fadiman, 2005). They explain the concept as follows “if you imagine your store of libido as a given amount of money, cathexis is the process of investing it. Once a portion has been invested or cathected, it remains there, leaving you with that much less to invest elsewhere”.

6. The Levels of Consciousness

Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg. The small part that shows above the surface of the water is the conscious which includes all those thoughts and feelings that are being experienced at a given moment. Beneath the conscious realm, is the much larger preconscious which contains information that is not currently “on our mind” but we could bring into consciousness if called upon to do so. For example, you may not have been aware about what you got your mother for her last birthday as you were reading the previous sentence but now you are able to recall it. Finally, beneath the preconscious and forming the bulk of the iceberg below the water is the unconscious which is a storehouse of desires, impulses and inaccessible memories that affect our thought and behaviour.

Since we are aware of their contents, we are likely to see the conscious and preconscious realms of the mind as the most prominent ones. However, Freud believed that the unconscious mind was more in size and importance. He wrote, “The conscious mind is an iceberg – it floats with only one-seventh of its bulk above water” (see Fig.1).

The unconscious is a vast reservoir of impulses, fears and hopes that lie beyond awareness. They are kept there by a censoring process (called repression) that protects the person from unacceptable wishes or threatening impulses. Although the unconscious could not be directly examined, its presence could be inferred from dreams, humor, forgetting, slips of the tongue () and through hypnosis and free association process of psychoanalysis. Freud was convinced that the unconscious played the dominant role in shaping personality and in determining human thought, feeling and action.

This topographic model was Freud’s earliest attempt to map out the nature of human mind.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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Fig.1 7. The Structure of Personality

Freud discovered that his topographic model was too simple to describe the human personality and so he went on to develop his structural model, which divided personality into 3 major systems –id, ego and superego that interact to govern human behaviour. These three systems correspond, roughly, to desire, reason and conscience.

7.1 The Id:

“Id”, derived from the Latin word meaning it, encompasses all the inherited, instinctive and primitive aspects of personality. It functions entirely in the unconscious and is closely tied to PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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instinctual biological processes, from which it draws it energy (Carver &Scheier, 1996). The newborn child has only the id, the other two parts of the personality emerge later in life. Like a young child, the id operates on the pleasure principle: the unregulated search for gratification to be experienced here and now without concern for consequences; acting always to procure pleasure and avoid displeasure. It knows no right and wrong, no moral standards or values. It is carefree and takes no precautions to ensure survival; it has no thoughts of keeping itself alive or of protecting itself from danger. In fact an immediate and unconditioned gratification of instinctual demand, forcefully pursued by the id, may lead to dangerous clash with the external world and to the death of the organism (Wolman, 2011).

Fig 2.

Id is the source of all psychic energy for the Eros and Thanatos. It has been called the ‘engine of personality’. Freud described id as a “cauldron of seething excitement”. The energy in the id is unbound, undirected and uncontrolled resource of an individual’s vitality (Wolman, 2011). The id leads the individual to the most irresponsible kind of actions resembling that of a neonate.

7.2 The Ego:

This is the part of the psyche that is in touch with the external reality. It exists at all levels of consciousness. The ego develops out of the id as the infant starts becoming aware of its own identity. It draws energy from the id and serves to pacify the untamed desires of the id.

The ego has the task of ensuring the health, safety and sanity of the personality (Frager& Fadiman, 2005). It has the function of satisfying the urges of the psyche in relation to the external reality. The ego can be aptly called the mediator. Ego works towards self-preservation keeping tabs on reality. It becomes aware of the external events, relates them to past events, and then either avoids the condition, adapts to it or modifies the external world to make it safer. The ego is able to postpone the satisfaction or instant gratification, as pushed by the id, to times and circumstances that are favorable in the external world i.e. delay of gratification.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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The activities of ego are to regulate the level of tension produced by internal or external stimuli. A rise in tension is felt as discomfort while a lowering of tension is felt as pleasure. So the ego pursues pleasure and seeks to avoid or minimize pain as well. However, it works on the reality principle. It know that urges need to be fulfilled, but in a controlled manner. Hence the ego modulates the impulses of the id so that the individual can pursue a more realistic approach to life.

7.3 The Superego:

Till about five years of age, the child is governed by the ego, mediating between the id and the external world. There is a sort of modified pleasure principle at work here, with the ego allowing the demands of the id whenever the external reality allows for it. The id still has a lot of say over the ego, and as a result of the weakness of the infantile ego, the superego emerges. The superego develops as a child comes to accept the prohibitions of parents and other adults against socially undesirable actions, as his or her own values. In its initial stages, the superego is characterized by the fear of punishment and the conformity to parental demands (Wolman, 2011).

The development of superego completes in the , where the issue of is resolved and the child identifies with the same sex parent. Identification with parents and idealizing them results in the child wanting to live up to their expectations and adopting their notions of morality. The superego hence strives for perfection and works on the morality principle.

Over time the superego develops further and the adult superego differs from the superego established by means of identification with parents (Wolman, 2011). In well-adjusted adults, the superego plays the role of a self-observer and represents conscience and moral standards. It is the social and moral frame of reference of the individual. The id and the superego can be thought of as arch enemies, the former hedonistic and impulsive, while the latter is the uncompromising disciplinarian.

Id Ego Superego

It is biological in nature. It is psychological in nature. It is social in nature.

It is present at birth. It is not present at birth but It develops around the age of develops out of the id during 4-5 when moral standards are infancy. internalized.

It is instinctual, irrational, It is rational, mediating and It is moralistic, judgmental and impulsive and the source realistic. It compromises perfectionist. It consists of of all psychic energy. between the id and the superego conscience and ego-ideal. and acts as the executive of personality. It exists totally within the It exists at all levels of It exists at all levels of unconscious. consciousness. consciousness.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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It is driven by the pleasure It is driven by the reality It operates on the morality principle. Its dictum is principle. Its dictum is principle. Its dictum is “Don’t “Want…take!” “Wait…the conditions aren’t you dare take it! That would appropriate. Take it later.” be evil.”

Its primary function is to Its primary function is to Its function is to inhibit seek immediate mediate among the id, the impulses of the id, persuade gratification of realities of the world and the ego to substitute moralistic biologically based urges. superego. goals for realistic ones and strive for perfection. It uses reflex actions and It uses secondary processes. It uses guilt to punish primary processes. (conscience) and pride to reward (ego-ideal).

Table 1: Comparison of the Id, Ego and Superego

The three components of personality are often in opposition: the ego postpones the gratification that the id wants immediately, and the superego battles with both the id and the ego because behaviour often falls short of the moral code it represents. In the well- integrated personality, the ego remains in firm but flexible control; the reality principle governs. However, as the id and superego pressures intensify, it becomes difficult for the ego to work out optimal compromises between the id and the superego. Freud felt that this constant struggle among id, ego and superego plays a key role in personality and in many psychological disorders.

In terms of his earlier topographic model, Freud proposed that all of the id and most of the ego and superego are submerged in the unconscious; small parts of the ego and superego are in either the conscious or preconscious.

8. Summary

 Freud’s theory is at least partly autobiographical in that he based some of his major concepts on his childhood experiences.  People are motivated by innate instincts that convert bodily needs into psychological tensions. We seek to gain pleasure by reducing these drives and to avoid displeasure.  Life instincts serve the purpose of survival and are manifested in the form of psychic energy called libido. Death instincts are an unconscious drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression.  The libido can be attached to or invested in mental representations of external objects that will satisfy instinctual needs, a process known as cathexis. The more important the object is, the more is the amount of energy cathected.  Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg. The small part that shows above the surface of the water is the conscious which includes all those thoughts and feelings that are being experienced at a given moment. Beneath this conscious realm, is the much larger preconscious which contains information that is not currently “on our mind” but we could bring into consciousness if called upon to do so. Finally, beneath the preconscious and forming the bulk of the iceberg below the water is the unconscious which is a storehouse of desires, impulses and inaccessible memories that affect our PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I

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thought and behaviour. Unconscious experiences cannot be called to mind without the aid of such psychoanalytic techniques as free association and dream interpretation.  The three structures of the personality are the id, ego, and superego. The id, the biological component of personality, is the storehouse of instincts and libido. Id operates in accordance with the pleasure principle. The ego, the rational component of personality, operates in accordance with the reality principle. The superego, the moral side of personality, consists of the conscience (behaviors for which the child is punished) and the ego-ideal (behaviors for which the child is praised). The ego mediates among the demands of the id, the pressures of reality, and the dictates of the superego.

PSYCHOLOGY PAPER No. 5: Personality Theories MODULE No. 8: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-I