Describe the Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory.

Structure of Personality: (Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory)

According to Freud, personality consists of three separate but interacting parts: the Id, ego and superego. What a person thinks, feels and does, is a function of the interactions of these three hypothetical structures.

The Id
Freud held that at birth the child’s personality consists solely of unconscious drives for pleasure. The name he gave to the hypothetical mental structure in which these drives resided was the Id. The Id strives to for immediate satisfaction of its drives for pleasure. According to Freud, when the Id’s tensions accumulate, satisfaction is achieved by a reduction in tension levels. Freud specified two ways in which the Id tries to achieve the reduction of tension. One mechanism is simply responding reflexively to stimuli in the environment. For instance, a child’s sucking on a nipple is reflex action. This reflex action reduces tension and quiets an aroused and unhappy child. A second mechanism the Id uses is primary process thinking. This involves creating fantasy about the object or behavior that serves to reduce tension.

The Ego
Primary process thinking alone cannot ensure the survival of the child. Imagining feeding is pleasurable but it does not satisfy nutritional requirements. For this reason, another mental structure develops. This structure comprises the information that the child perceives, remembers and of the cognitive processes that develop to process this information, such as thinking, reasoning, and planning. Freud called this mental structure the ego. The ego, unlike the Id is largely conscious. The ego develops in order to help the Id obtain real, rather than imaginary satisfaction.
It uses secondary process thinking or realistic thinking rather than simply fantasy or primary process thinking.

The Super Ego
The ego has to consider more than reality in obtaining satisfaction for the Id. The superego contains moral principles and values, which have been acquired from the parents and society. It actually consists of two sub-parts. One part is the conscience, which contains moral prohibitions against certain behaviors, especially those expressing the sexual and aggressive drives of the Id. The other part of the superego is the ego-ideal. This is the image of what one ideally can be and how one ought to behave. We can think of the conscience as containing dictates about what is immoral or about what one should not do and the ego ideal as containing models about what is moral or about what one should do.

The Role of the Ego
It is this rational, reality oriented portion of the personality that directs behavior. Unless it is overwhelmed by Id tensions or superego dictates, the ego determines final decisions and actions. In doing so, it must however provide some gratification for the Id’s drives and must also act within the moral constraints of the superego. Furthermore, it must choose behavior that fits the constraints of reality. It is the executive of the personality but it must serve three masters: the Id, the superego, and external reality.

---

Kavungya answered the question on May 8, 2019 at 11:24