DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY: SIGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH

Sometimes, the question of who we are and why we act differently from others in the same situation comes to our mind. Also, we might have noticed how drivers act and react differently when stuck in heavy traffic. Some may be tolerant and calm; others may be over cautious and thus worsen the congestion; whereas, others may react with impatience and anger and in the process causing an accident. The variation in reaction and action when drivers find themselves in heavy traffic projects some aspect of their personality.
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What is personality?
Personality is the unique characteristics and pattern of behavior of an individual that is consistent and enduring over time. The personality of an individual makes him/her unique and differentiates him/her from others. Another interesting aspect of personality is that it is like shadow that goes with a person wherever he or she goes. Unlike clothes we wear, we don't pull it off when going on transfer from one location to another or when leaving home for work. Therefore personality shows the psychological structure in an individual that makes him or her a person that can be described. There are four major approaches to the study of personality in psychology. These are Psychodynamic approach, trait approach, social cognitive approach, and humanistic approach. Although most scholars describe personality using the traits theory, however, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory under psychodynamic approach to personality, also provides some practical and real life explanation to the development of personality and why behave the way we do which is the main focus of this post.

Take a look at a scenario of a man trying to make a great first impression on an attractive woman he had spotted. As he walked to approach her he mumbled some words he heard in a movie: “I don’t think I’ve met you yet.” Unfortunately, when he met the woman he blurted out, “I don’t think I’ve sex you yet”

This error may seem to be embarrassing slip of tongue, however, according to psychodynamic theorists; such error is reinforced by inner forces that are beyond our awareness. Hence, Psychodynamic approaches to personality are based on the idea that personality are motivated by inner forces about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control. They argued that unconscious psychological processes interact to determine our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. An important pioneer of this approach is Sigmund Freud who developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality and a way of treating mental disorder. Other psychodynamic theorists include Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson and so on.

LEVEL OF MENTAL LIFE
To Freud, people are motivated primarily by drives of which they have little or no awareness. He divided the mental state of life into unconscious, preconscious and conscious.

Unconscious :The unconscious contains the drives, urges, instinct that is beyond our awareness but however motivates most of our words, feelings and actions. Like the unseen mass of floating iceberg, the content of the unconscious far surpass in quantity the information in our conscious awareness. Freud believed that the unconscious is responsible and the explanation for the meaning behind slips of tongue, explanation for meaning of dreams. For example, a childhood experience may appear in adult dreams even though the dreamer has no conscious recollection of these experiences. Sometimes, we may be aware of our overt behavior, nevertheless, we are often not aware of the mental processes that are behind them which occur in the unconscious. For example, a man may like a movie so much after seeing it at a cinema but he may not fully understand the reason behind it. However, his love for the movie may be as a result of past or childhood experience buried in the unconscious which make him relate better with the movie.
Do unconscious processes enter the consciousness? Yes, but in disguised or distorted form. Hence, unconscious drive may appear in consciousness but only after undergoing certain transformation. This is to prevent anxiety producing memories from entering the consciousness.

Preconscious :The preconscious level of the mind contains those elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite readily or with difficulty. The preconscious contains materials that is not threatening and easily brought to mind such as the knowledge of 1+1=2. The content of the preconscious comes from the conscious perception and unconscious. The conscious perception is what a person perceives is conscious for only a transitory period but quickly passes to the preconscious when the focus of attention shift to another thing. Some disguised drives from the unconscious move to the preconscious but may never become conscious if we recognize them as derivatives of the unconscious.

Conscious :This is the mental elements in awareness at any given point in time. It is the only level of mental available to us. Ideas reach the consciousness from the preconscious and the perceptual conscious (what we perceive through our sense organs). Freud believes the conscious plays role as most of our thoughts are predominantly influenced by the unconscious. Therefore, the conscious plays minor role the psychoanalytic theory.

STRUCTURES OF PERSONALITY

According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among what he proposed as the three fundamental structures of the human mind: the Id, ego and superego. Conflicts among these three structures and our efforts to find balance among what each of them desires determines how we behave and approach the world i.e. what balance we strike in any given situation determines how we will reduce the conflict between two overarching behavioral tendencies. That is, our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives versus our socialized internal control over those drives.

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ID
The Id is at the core of the personality and it is completely unconscious. It is the raw, inborn, unorganized, illogical part of personality. It is the pleasure seeking and also demand immediate gratification. Hence, it operates on the pleasure principle and has no contact with reality. Hence, if your Id walked past a stranger eating ice cream, the id would most likely want you to take the Ice cream for yourself. It doesn’t know or care, that it is not meant to take something belonging to something else; it would care only that you wanted the Ice cream. A good illustration of the Id is a new born infant. The infant seeks gratification of needs without regard for what is possible or what is proper.

EGO

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The ego is rational part of the personality. It is responsible for organizing ways to get what a person want in the real world. It serves as the moderator that strives to balance the desires of the Id and the superego on the practical context of reality. In other words, the ego is the executive of personality. It makes decisions, controls, actions and allow thinking and problem solving of a higher order than the Id’s capability permit. Hence the ego constantly tries to reconcile the blind, irrational and urges of the Id and superego with the realistic demand of the external world. For example, the ego would influence a hungry person to go to a mall to pick up some snacks or food rather than snatch another man’s snack. The conflict that arises in ego while managing the demands of Id and ego induces anxiety. The ego employs the defence mechanism to prevent these anxieties. As children begin to experience parental rewards and punishments, they begin to learn what they should do and should not do. This is the origin of superego.

SUPEREGO
The superego represents the morals, rights and wrongs of the society. The superego is guided by moralistic and idealistic principle. It includes the ego-ideal, which develops from experiences with rewards for proper behaviour and tells us what we should do. It also includes the conscience which prevents us from behaving in morally improper way by making us feel guilty if we do wrong. However, the superego is unrealistic in that it does not consider the practical realities imposed by society. Thus, if the superego is left to operate unrestrained, it would create perfectionist unable to make the compromises that life requires. A well-developed superego watches closely over the ego, judging its actions. Hence, guilt result the ego act or intent to act contrary to the moral standards of the superego. Feelings of inferiority arise when the ego is unable to meet the superego’s standards of perfection. Therefore, guilt is a function of the conscience, whereas, inferiority feelings arise from ego-ideal. A well-developed superego also acts to control sexual and aggressive impulses through the process of repression.

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DEFENCE MECHANISMS

There are inner clashes among the ego, Id and superego which Freud describes as intrapsychic conflict. He believed that each individual’s personality is shaped by the number, nature, and outcome of these conflicts. These conflicts result in unpleasant anxiety. Ego prevents the anxiety that may arise through defence mechanisms. Defence mechanisms are unconscious tactics and strategies that protect against anxiety and guilt by either preventing threatening material from surfacing or disguising it when it does. People unconsciously use it to reduce anxiety by concealing its source from themselves and others. The defence mechanisms include repression, reaction formation, displacement, projection, introjection, sublimation, rationalisation, denial.

Repression : This involves unconsciously pushing unpleasant, unacceptable, threatening memories, impulses, urges, or ideas from conscious awareness. For example, a student may repress his pass failure in a course. It is sometimes called motivated forgetting.

Reaction formation : This occurs when unconscious impulses are expressed as their opposite in consciousness. It involves defending against unacceptable impulses by acting opposite to them. For example, a young man who deeply resents and hates his father concentrate on the opposite of the impulse by expressing love and affection to the father. Although the love may not be genuine and a bit exaggerated, he clings to reaction formation to prevent anxiety that will arise for resenting his father.

Displacement : Displacement occurs when expression of an unwanted feeling or thought is redirected from a more threatening powerful person to a weaker one. It also involves deflecting an impulse from its original target to a less threatening one. People can redirect their unacceptable urges onto a variety of people or objects so that the original impulse is disguised or concealed. For example, a woman who is angry at her husband may displace her anger onto her employees or her pet.

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Projection : This occurs when an individual unconsciously attributes his/her own unacceptable thoughts or impulses to another person. For example, a man who is unfaithful to his wife and feels guilty suspects that his wife is unfaithful.

Introjection : introjection is a defence mechanism whereby people incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego. For example, a young man may adopt the mannerisms, values, or lifestyle of a mentor. This gives the adolescent an inflated sense of self-worth and keeps feelings of inferiority to a minimum.

Sublimation : This defence mechanism involves Converting unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable actions. A person with strong feelings of aggression becomes a boxer.

Rationalisation : This defence mechanism involves people providing self-justifying explanations for their unacceptable behaviour. source
For example, a mother stating he flogged her kid because it is for the good of the kid.

Denial : This involves simply discounting the existence of threatening impulses or when People refuse to accept or acknowledge an anxiety-producing piece of information. For example, a student refuses to believe he had failed a course.

STAGES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Sigmund Freud provided the view that personality develops during childhood through five psychosexual stages during which children encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges. Failure to resolve the conflicts that appear at any of these stages can leave a person fixated—that is, unconsciously preoccupied with the area of pleasure associated with that stage.

Oral Stage :
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This is the first stage of psychosexual development and it occurs in child’s first year. It is called the oral stage because the mouth is the point of pleasure. An infant uses the mouth to explore everything from toys to their own hands and feet. Personality problems arise, said Freud, when oral needs are either neglected or overindulged. For example, early or late weaning from breastfeeding or bottle feeding may leave a child fixated at the oral stage. The resulting adult characteristics may range from overeating, excessive talking, smoking or childlike dependence as a result of late weaning and the use of biting, sarcasm as a result of early weaning.

Anal Stage :
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From around age 12 to 18 months until 3 years of age, a child enters the anal stage. This is a period when the emphasis in Western cultures is on toilet training. At this point, the major source of pleasure changes from the mouth to the anal region, and children obtain considerable pleasure from both retention and expulsion of faeces. If toilet training is particularly demanding, fixation might occur. Fixation during the anal stage might result in unusual rigidity, orderliness, punctuality or extreme disorderliness or sloppiness in adulthood.

Phallic stage :

According to Freud, between the ages of three and five, the focus of pleasure shifts to the genital area. Freud called this period the phallic stage. It is during this stage, he claimed, that the boy experiences sexual feelings for his mother and a desire to eliminate, or even kill, his father, with whom the boy competes for the mother’s affection. Freud called this set of impulses the Oedipus complex. The boy’s fantasies create so much fear, however, that the ego represses his incestuous desires and leads him to “identify” with his father and try to be like him. In the process, the child’s superego begins to develop.
According to Freud, a girl begins the phallic stage with a strong attachment to her mother. However, when she realizes that boys have penises and girls don’t, she supposedly develops penis envy and transfers her love to the father. This sequence is called the Electra complex. To avoid her mother’s disapproval, the girl identifies with her and imitates her, thus forming the basis for her own superego. Freud believed that unresolved conflicts during the phallic stage create a fixation that is reflected in many kinds of adult problems. These problems can include difficulties with authority figures and an inability to maintain a stable love relationship.

Latency Stage : As the phallic stage draws to a close and its conflicts are coped with by the ego, there is an interval of psychological peace; this is the latency stage. The latency period lasts through childhood; sexual impulses stay in the background as the youngster focuses on education, same-sex peer play, and the development of social skills.

Genital Stage : This occurs during adolescence. At this stage, the sexual impulses reappear at the conscious level and the genitals again become the focus of pleasure. Individual seek after their opposite sex to derive pleasure with their genital. This stage lasts for the rest of the person’s life. The quality of relationships and the degree of fulfilment experienced during this final stage, he claimed, are influenced by how intrapsychic conflicts were resolved during the earlier stages.

The strengths of Freud’s psychoanalytic approach include its emphasis on the importance and the effect that past and childhood experiences have on the development of personality. Hence, psychodynamics believes that thoughts and actions are greatly influenced by experiences we do not remember or possibly, by emotions we do not consciously experience. Therefore, it provided a very valuable insight to how early experiences can affect adult personality. . In addition, some evidences support the existence of ego defence mechanisms such as repression. For example, an adult can forget traumatic child abuse experience. However, it is not very scientific. This is because most of the concepts such as Id, ego, super ego and the unconscious mind, which are central to Freudian’s theory, lack precision required for scientific measurement and testing. Taken together, these shortcomings have made the psychodynamic approach to personality less popular today than it was in past decades, nevertheless, it’s still widely used by psychiatrist and psychologist to treat mental and personality disorder.

Further reading and Text consulted:

Bernstein,I.N.(2008), Essentials of psychology(4th ed.) . Boston, MA:Houghton Mifflin co.

Feist,J and Feist, G.J(2008), Theories of peesonlity(7th ed.) . McGraw-Hill companies, Inc.

Feldman, R.S.(2011), Understanding psychology(10th ed.) . McGraw-Hill companies, Inc.