- Human behaviour is often governed by unconscious factors.
- Early childhood development has a profound effect on adult functioning.
- This theory has provided a meaningful framework for understanding the ways in which an individual attempts to cope with anxiety by postulating mechanisms to avoid becoming engulfed in anxiety.
- The psychoanalytic approach offers ways of tapping the unconscious through the analysis of dreams, resistances and transferences.
History of Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud was born in Moravia on 6th May, 1856, and died in London on 23rd September, 1939.
Freud was a brilliant, young Viennese physician who at first specialized in neurology. Freud went to Paris in 1885 to study under Jean Charcot, who was using hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria, but was not impressed with it's efficiency. Later he became acquainted with.Liebeault, a French physician and Bernheim, a professor of medicine at "the Nancy School". He. was impressed by their use of hypnosis on hysterical patients and came away convinced that powerful mental processes might remain hidden from consciousness.
On his return to Vienna, Freud worked in collaboration with Joseph Breuer, whohad introduced an interesting innovation in the use of hypnosis on his neurotic patients, chiefly women. He let the patient under hypnosis talk about her problems. The patient usually spoke freely, displayed considerable emotion, and on awakening from the hypnotic state felt considerably relieved. Thus, made the discovery of "unconscious" and the important role it played in the determination of behaviour.
Freud soon dispensed with the hypnotic state entirely, and encouraged the patient to say freely whatever came into her mind. This new method was called "free association",and the term "psychoanalysis" was given to the principles involved in analyzing and interpreting what the patient said and did.
Freud spent the rest of his long and energetic life to the development and elaboration of the Psychoanalytic model.
View of Human Nature
The Freudian view of human nature is essentially pessimistic,deterministic mechanistic and reductionistic. According to Freud, irrational forces, unconscious motivations, biological instructional needs and drives,and psychosexual events. during the first five years of life determine human nature.
Humans are viewed as energy systems. The dynamics of personality consists of the way in which psychic energy is distributed to the Id, Ego.and Superego, Since the amount of energy is limited, one system gains control over the available energy at the expense of the other two systems. Behaviour is determined by this psychic energy.
Freud also emphasized the role of instincts. All instincts are innate and biological. Freud stressed the Sexual instincts and the aggressive impulses.He saw all human behaviour as determined by the desire to gain pleasure and avoid pain. Humans have both life instincts and death instincts. According to Freud, the goal of all life is death.
The Structure of Personality
The structure of personality consists of three systems: Id, Ego and Superego. These are the names of psychological processes and should not be thought of as those that separately operate the personality. Personality functions as a whole, and not as three different segments. The human behaviour is an outcome of the interaction of these three systems within the personality.
The ID is the biological component, the Ego is the psychological component and the Superego is the social component. Each of these systems has it's own functions, properties, components, operating principles, dynamics and mechanisms. And it is difficult to disentangle their effects and weigh their relative contribution to human behaviour.
The ID
The ID is the original system of personality. The ID is the primary source of psychic energy and the seat of instincts. It is a reservoir of psychic energy and furnishes all the power for the operation of the other two systems. It is in close touch with the bodily processes from which it derives its energy. Freud called the Id, the "true psychic reality", because it represents the inner world of subjective experience and has no knowledge of objective reality.
The Id cannot tolerate increases of energy that are experienced as uncomfortable states of tension. Consequently, when the tension level of the organism is raised, as a result of either external stimulation or internally produced excitation, the Id functions in such a manner as to discharge the tension immediately and return the organism to a comfortably constant and low level of energy. This principle of tension reductions by which the Id operates-is called the pleasure principle.
Ruled by this pleasure principle, which is aimed at reducing tension, avoiding pain, and gaining pleasure, the Id is illogical, amoral, and completely selfish, concerned only with the immediate gratification of instinctual needs without reference to reality or moral consideration.
To accomplish its aim of avoiding pain and obtaining pleasure, the Id has at its command two processes. These are reflex actions and the primary process.
Reflex actions are inborn and automatic reactions like sneezing and blinking; they usually reduce tension immediately. The organism is equipped with a number of such reflexes for dealing with relatively simple forms of excitations.
The primary process involves a more complicated psychological reaction. It attempts to discharge tension by forming an image of an object that will remove the tension, i.e., it generates mental images and wish fulfilling fantasies. For example, a hungry person visualizes mental pictures of food. This hallucinatory experience in which the desired object is present in the form of a memory image is called wish fulfillment. The best example of the primary process in normal people are the dreams that people have,which Freud believed always represents the fulfillment or attempted fulfillment of a wish The hallucinations and vision of psychotic thinking is also an example of primary process. These wish fulfilling mental images are only reality that the Id knows.
The primary process by itself is not capable of reducing tension. The hungry person cannot eat mental images of food; consequently, the Ego begins to take form.
The
id also the source of instinctual drives, which are considered to be of two
types:
- Constructive drives, primarily of a sexual nature, which contributes the libido, or basic energy of life.
- Destructive drives, which tend toward aggression, destruction and eventual death.
Life or constructive instincts are opposed to death or destructive instincts. Freud used the term sex in a broad sense to refer to almost anything pleasurable, from eating to creativity.
The Ego
The Ego comes into existence because the needs of the organism require appropriate transactions with the objective world of reality. The hungry person has to seek, find and eat food before the tension of hunger can be eliminated. This means that the person has to learn to differentiate between a memory image of food and an actual perception of food, as it exists in the outer world. Having made this crucial differentiation, it is then necessary to convert the image into perception, which is accomplished by locating food in the environment. That is, the person, the person matches the memory images of food with the sight or smell of food as they come to the person through the senses. The basic distinction between the Id and the Ego is that the Id knows only the subjective reality of the mind whereas the Ego distinguishes between things in the mind and things in the external world.
The basic purpose of the Ego is tom meet the demands of the Id, but in such a way as to ensure the well being and survival of the individual. This requires the use of reason and other intellectual resources in dealing with the external world, as well as the exercise of control over Id demands.
The Ego is said to operate in terms of the reality principle. The adaptive measure of the Ego, in fulfilling the demands of the Id, is referred to as secondary process.
The aim of the reality principle is to prevent the discharge of tension until an object that is appropriate for the satisfaction of the need has been discovered. The reality principle, suspends the pleasure principle temporarily, but the pleasure principle is eventually served when the needed object is found and the tension is thereby reduced.
The secondary process is realistic thinking. By means of the secondary process the ego formulates a plan for the satisfaction of the need and then tests this plan, usually by some kind of action, to see whether or not it will work. The hungry person thinks where he or she may find food and then proceed to look in that place. This is called reality testing. In order to perform the role efficiently, the ego has control over all the cognitive and intellectual functions. These higher mental processes are placed at the service of the secondary process.
The Ego is said to be the executive because it controls the gateways of actions, selects the features of the environment to which it will respond, and decides what instincts will be satisfied and in what manner. In performing these highly important executive functions, the Ego has to try to integrate the often-conflicting demands of the Id, the Superego and the external world. This is not an easy task and often places a great strain upon the Ego.
The Ego is the organized portion of the Id. It comes into existence in order to forward the aims of the lD and not to frustrate them: All of its power' is derived from the Id. It has no existence apart from the Id, and it never becomes completely independent of the ld. lts principle role is to mediate between the instinctual requirements of the organism and the conditions of the surrounding environment. Its super ordinate objectives are to maintain the life of the individual and to see that the species is reproduced.
The Superego
The third and the last system of personality to develop is Superego. It is the internal representative of the traditional values and ideals of society as interpreted to the child by us parents, and enforced by means of a system of rewards and punishments imposed upon the child.
The main functions of the Superego are:
- To inhibit the impulses of the Id, particularly those of a sexual or aggressive nature since these are the impulses, whose expression is most highly condemned by society.
- To persuade the Ego to subtitute moralistic goals for realistic ones.
- To strive for perfection.
Summary
The Psychoanalytic theory of personality was modeled by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He developed this model over a period of five decades of observation and writing. The major principles of his model are based on the clinical study of individual patients-mostly neurotic-who were undergoing treatment for their problems.
The major contributions of the Psychoanalytic model are:
- An understanding of the individual's mental life.
- Deep insight into human nature.
- Discovery of the unconscious factors governing the human behaviour.
- Linking the present behaviour to childhood experiences.
- Stages of development of personality.
The structure of personality is a combination of the three systems, which Freud called the Id, the Ego and the Superego. Behaviour is the product of an interaction among these three systems. The dynamics of personality consists of interplay of instincts of the Id, and the forwarding and restraining forces of the Ego and the Superego.It consists of the way in which, the psychic energy is distributed and used by the Id, Ego and Superego. Psychic energy is that energy which a person uses to perform the various psychological activities such as thinking, reasoning, remembering and perceiving.Instincts are the driving force of the Id, through the process of identification, the Ego and Superego develop, to control and gratifying or frustrate the aims of the instinct.
