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Psycho Analytic Theory ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Subject PSYCHOLOGY Paper No and Title Paper No 5: Personality Theories Module No and Title Module No 9: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-II Module Tag PSY_P5_M9 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Learning Outcomes 2. Introduction 3. Anxiety 4. Ego Defense Mechanisms 5. The Psychosexual Stages of Development 6. Summary PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 5: Personality Theories Module No 9: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-II ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Learning Outcomes After studying this module, you shall be able to Understand how anxiety is produced and the different kinds of anxiety Learn how the ego deals with the anxiety and employs various defense mechanisms. Learn about the psychosexual stages of development proposed by Freud. 2. Introduction Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Freud based on his clinical observations and in depth studies was convinced that intra-psychic events played an important role in motivating behavior. The psychoanalytic approach to personality assumes that a dynamic interplay of inner forces often conflict with each other and shape the personality of the individual. There is a focus on the unconscious determinants of behavior. Freud believed that every human action has a cause and is purposeful. His theories regarding the levels of consciousness, the structure of personality, the ego defense mechanisms and the psychosexual stages are very much important in the discussion of personality; how the inner forces, instinctual drives and the childhood development all have an impact on the personality of a person and its development. 3. Anxiety Freud gives emphasis on interplay of tensions between various components of personality, between competing drives, tensions from sources of suffering etc which lead to anxiety. According to him, anxiety is “a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation that warns the person against impending danger”. The unpleasantness is often vague and hard to pinpoint, but the anxiety is always felt (Feist & Feist, 2009). It is the ego which feels the anxiety but ego’s interaction with the id, superego and the external reality results in three different forms of anxiety: Objective/realistic anxiety: (reality vs. ego) this kind of anxiety is the one which is associated with the objective threats to our well-being. There is a generalized feeling of anxiety which may involve possible danger. For e.g. walking alone at night in a dangerous alleyway. The anxious feelings are justified here since there is a possibility of adverse events happening but it is different from fear, because the feeling is not regarding a specific object of fear. The objective anxiety arises when the ego is threatened by objective forces in the world. The force is a function of the strength of the ego in relation to the power or perceived power of the objective threat. Neurotic anxiety: (Id vs. ego) this arises when the ego is threatened by the irrational forces of the Id. Here the source of the anxiety is from within our own personality and hence there is no obvious escape from it. There is an apprehension about an unknown danger, which may be triggered by some elements in the environment like occurrence of certain events or presence of certain people. The person is not able to understand why PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 5: Personality Theories Module No 9: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-II ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ anxiety is being triggered since it stems from the unconscious. It is one manifestation of how powerful instinctual energy threatens to overcome the ego. Moral anxiety: (superego vs. ego) here it is the irrational demands of the superego that threaten to overcome the ego. And here also there is no escape as the threat is from within the personality. Moral anxiety is experienced as guilt over real or imagined departures from internalized values. The superego acts as a dictator here, chastising the person for yielding to morally incorrect temptations. 4. Ego-defense mechanisms As we saw, when the Ego confronts the impulse of the Id or the superego that threatens to go out of control or when it is faced with dangers from the environment, it results in anxiety. Ego then tries to reduce the anxiety through realistic strategies. But when these are ineffective it resorts to certain unconscious mental operations that deny or distort the reality. The anxiety would become intolerable if the ego can not resort to these defensive behaviors. These behaviors serve the function of protecting the ego against the pain of the anxiety (Feist & Feist, 2009). The employment of defense mechanisms is adaptive and normal. But when resorted to exceedingly, it may lead to compulsive, repetitive and neurotic behavior. According to Freud’s conception of expending the psychic energy, the employment of defense mechanisms also requires utilization of energy. This leaves lesser energy for the id to satisfy its impulses (Feist & Feist, 2009). Thereby fulfilling the ego’s purpose of avoiding dealing with the irrational impulses and defending itself against the anxiety that accompanies them. Freud initially identified certain principal defense mechanisms including repression, displacement, reaction formation, regression, projection, sublimation, introjections and fixation. Later his daughter Anna expanded his work in the area and identified further mechanisms. These are the various psychoanalytic Ego-defense mechanisms: Repression: it is the most basic of all defense mechanisms. It is an active defense process in which the Ego pushes away the anxiety-arousing impulses into the unconscious mind. For e.g. developing amnesia about a childhood sexual abuse episode that has been repressed. Often feelings and thoughts are so strongly repressed that they remain in the unconscious throughout the life. Repression may be complete or partial. In partial repression, the impulse may express itself in a disguised manner. The process of repression is result of socialization. No society permits a complete and uninhibited expression of sex and aggression. When children are punished for sexual or hostile behaviors, they learn to be anxious whenever they experience these impulses (Feist & Feist, 2009). Although this anxiety rarely leads to a complete repression of the drives, it often results in partial repression. According to Freud, several things might happen to the impulses once they are repressed into the unconscious. The first is that they remain there, unchanged. The second is that they could force their way into the conscious in an altered form. In this case the repressed PSYCHOLOGY Paper No 5: Personality Theories Module No 9: Psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud Part-II ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ content would be very powerful and the person experiences more anxiety than they can handle. The third and most common possibility is that they are expressed in displaced or disguised forms. This disguise must be clever enough to deceive the go. Feist and Feist give the example of sexual impotency in a man troubled by sexual guilt, for repressed drives being expressed as physical symptoms. The impotency prevents the man from having to deal with the guilt and anxiety that results when he pursues his impulses. Repressed material may be revealed through dreams, slips of tongues etc, and the purpose of psychoanalysis is to understand the meaning of this unconscious content and overcome the anxiety that results from it. Denial: refusing to acknowledge the anxiety-arousing aspects of the environment. The denial may involve either the emotions associated with an event or the event itself. Denial is a defense mechanism employed in the face of intense anxiety or when the person is overwhelmed by the threatening reality. It is re-construing the meaning of the event so that the threat is gone (Carver & Scheier, 1996). E.g. a patient diagnosed with cancer refuses to believe that he has cancer and totally negating such a possibility. Denial although helps relieve the ego about the anxiety arousing situation, it can be counterproductive when the threat posed by the reality is imminent and the ego refuses to take proactive measures. A real example of this is the fact that denial contributed to the inability of many victims of the Nazi persecution to flee when they still had time. Displacement: redirecting the repressed emotions onto an object less dangerous than the initial one which aroused the emotion. The redirection may be onto not only a single object alone but a variety of people or object such that the original impulse is disguised or concealed. For e.g. taking out your anger towards your boss onto your kids back home. It may also be displaced onto your spouse, at other drivers as you drive home, at the government policies and what not! Freud used the term displacement in several ways. He used it to refer to the replacement of one neurotic symptom for another; like the compulsive urge to masturbate may be replaced by the compulsive urge to wash hands. i.e. there is a displacement of libido from one activity to another. Displacement may occur in dreams where the expression is displaced from the latent content to the manifest content. For e.g. a girl who has a sibling rivalry with her younger sister and has aggressive impulses
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