Freuds Structural Tripartite Model - Essay Example

168550 This is strange repose, to be asleep With eyes wide open. Shakespeare, The Tempest According to Freud's structural tripartite model, weare born with our id, ego and super-ego. Id is based on our pleasure principles such as sex, anger, avoidance of pain, hunger, comfort etc. and when id needs something, that something becomes a matter of paramount importance. It neither cares about reality, nor others' discomfort. Id is the childish part of an individual that remains with him all his life. When the personality of the child grows further, it attains ego which is based on the reality principle. It could be impulsive and selfish, but it understands others' needs and comforts. It considers the reality of the situation; but its main function is satisfying id. At the end of the phallic stage of development, when the child attains the age of approximately 5 years, super-ego develops due to the moral and ethical constraints placed on the individual by the parents or caregivers. Super-ego is the budding morality or the human conscience that dictates right and wrong and makes the individual hesitate from hurting others. Super-ego is the careful side of the growing child which will stand by it all its life and makes the child more responsible and sociable. Freud said that in a healthy person, ego remains the strongest, because it has to satisfy id, but it will not override super-ego and that makes the individual judgemental, moral, self-righteous, caring and considerate. He believed that at a conscious level, we experience feelings, emotions, desires, impulses and beliefs. He said most of what drives an individual is buried in the unconscious and the unconscious would keep affecting the individual all his life. The impact of the unconscious can never be ruled out and most of the individual's decisions are based on the unconscious. But the unconscious is buried and inaccessible meaning the individual knows only a small portion of his personality because most of it is not accessible. We are mainly aware of the conscious and not much of unconscious. Here, we are confronted with pre-conscious or subconscious or available memory. This is not actively conscious, but an individual can have an access to it whenever he wants, but to a limited extent, though he has to search for it. Sigmund Freud's theory is likened to an iceberg, because the conscious is a small part that shows above the surface, while the biggest unconscious cunningly stays below the surface and does not become visible at all. "Freud suggested that all our behavior is motivated by the desire to feel pleasure. That motivation is organized and directed by two instincts: sexuality (Eros), and aggression (Thanatos). Freud conceptualized both these instincts as being powered by a form of internal psychic energy that he called libido" http://intropsych.mcmaster.ca/intropsych/1aa3/Person/lec2-1.htm Allpsychonline - http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html Dr. Freud presented the best known theories of personality that have remained equally controversial. His stages of Psycho-Sexual development consisting of the Oral Stage (birth to 18 months), the Anal Stage (18 months to three years), the Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years), the Latency period (6 to puberty) and the Genital stage (puberty on) shocked the prudish late Victorian and other European societies. He said throughout life, a person tries hard to overcome and control many conflicts, mainly all psychological. ""For Freud life is principally concerned with the management of these conflicts with individuals attempting to maximise instinctual gratification while minimising guilt and punishment. Freud's approach has therefore, been described as a conflict management model of the inner world," Pearce (2003, p.2). According to him, instincts are the driving forces of personality and basic conflicts are individual instincts versus society's needs. He said all human behaviour is motivated by life instincts, and he called this motivational energy libido and called sex the most social of needs. Here he was not referring to only the actual act of sex, but included much more into that word and later he added death instinct as one of the unconscious desires. This was criticised by his own students, though a large number of later psychologists agreed with him. Freud likened the death instinct to the Buddhist Nirvana principle. He also said personality deals with moral, neurotic anxieties and defence mechanisms like denial, fantasy, repression (motivated forgetting), displacement, projection, reaction formation, rationalization, intellectualisation, undoing and compromise formation. "There is also a strong element of misogyny in Freud's theories which often results in a male-centred view of sexuality. Nevertheless, while Freud can be justifiably criticised for developing a male-orientated psychoanalysis, his theories are also a reflection of social reality: the domination of masculinity and the subjection of women which existed in Europe at the turn of the century when he was beginning to articulate his conceptions of sexual desire". Tratchel (Freud and the liberation of sexual pleasure) - http://www.petertatchell.net/psychiatry/freud.htm Famous Psychologist, Erich Fromm (1955, Remarks on the problem of free association1) said that according to Freud every one of us is two persons and there is a little child in us. Every individual is a blend of many personalities. "Now as to the method, I would say again that it is one of the great achievements of Freud to have overcome the seemingly unanswerable logical objection to a method of discovering the unconscious. The logical objection being: If something is unconscious, we cannot become aware of it, therefore there is no method by which we can arrive with any degree of certainty at a picture of that which is dissociated; by its very nature, it is not open to inspection". He had created an interesting and provocative theory; but the empirical validity of such a theory was questioned and critics said there was no support for the phallic character (Kline, 1972, p.44). His dream analysis, which he said 'are disguised attempts at wish fulfilment' were not initially accepted by psychoanalysts. His obsession with the sexual side of personality made him thoroughly unpopular. His continuous raging psychic battle regarding unacceptable wishes was questioned. Every stage of human development being connected with sexual gratification was questioned for generations. Neo Freudian psychology belongs to psychologists (Adler, Erickson, Fromm, Jung, Sullivan, Horney, Thompson, Anna Freud etc.) who accept Freudian principles in basic tenets, but have altered it in some ways. Freudian scientific bluntness went unappreciated and evoked tremendous criticism and New Freudians tried to develop milder and less aggressive theories while keeping Freudian theories untouched. They based their thoughts on Freudian principles, but simplified many of his theories and tried to explain the theories in acceptable language. All their theories are based on the same id, ego and super-ego and they are more acceptable forms of Freudian theory of personality. "There were, however, some men in the city who felt that Freud's analysis of the unconscious and its effects on conscious behaviour were not only not ridiculous, but sheer genius. One of these men, Alfred Adler, would become Freud's strongest supporter and eventually the father of his own school of psychoanalysis". http://psychology.hypnoticworld.com/freud/neo-freud.php Still, there are differences. Freud made anxiety-avoidance a central motivator and Neo-Freudians were indifferent to it. There were also criticisms of over-simplification of Freudian theories of personality. Though criticism comes pouring in even today, Freud's position as the father of personality theory and psycho-analysis cannot be questioned. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Fromm, Erich, Remarks on the problem of free association, Psychiatric Research Reports - 2, December 1955. 2. Mischel, Walter (1993), Introduction to Personality, 5th edn., Harcourt Brace publishers, New York. 3. Ryckman, Richard>M. (1989), Theories of Personality, Cole Publishing Company, California. 4. Royce, Joseph R. and Powell, Arnold, Theory of Personality and Individual Differences, Prentice hall, New Jersey. 5. Simanowitz, #Valeries and Pearce, Peter (2003), Personality Development, Open University Press, Buckingham. - ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html 2. http://intropsych.mcmaster.ca/intropsych/1aa3/Person/lec2-1.htm 3. http://psychology.hypnoticworld.com/freud/neo-freud.php 4. http://www.petertatchell.net/psychiatry/freud.htm 5. Read More