Conscious and unconscious mind
Freud didn't
exactly invent the idea of the conscious versus unconscious mind, but he
certainly was responsible for making it popular. The conscious mind is
what you are aware of at any particular moment, your present perceptions,
memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you. Working closely with
the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious, what we might
today call "available memory:" anything that can easily be made
conscious, the memories you are not at the moment thinking about but can
readily bring to mind. Now no-one has a problem with these two layers of mind.
But Freud suggested that these are the smallest parts!
The largest part by
far is the unconscious. It includes all the things that are not easily
available to awareness, including many things that have their origins there,
such as our drives or instincts, and things that are put there because we can't
bear to look at them, such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.
According to Freud,
the unconscious is the source of our motivations, whether they be simple
desires for food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or the motives of an artist or
scientist. And yet, we are often driven to deny or resist becoming conscious of
these motives, and they are often available to us only in disguised form.
Id
Freudian
psychological reality begins with the world, full of objects. Among them is a very
special object, the organism. The organism is special in that it acts to
survive and reproduce, and it is guided toward those ends by its needs --
hunger, thirst, the avoidance of pain, and sex.
A part of the
organism is the nervous system, which has as one of its characteristics - a
sensitivity to the organism's needs. At birth, that nervous system is little
more than that of any other animal, an "it" or id. The nervous
system, as id, translates the organism's needs into motivational forces called,
in German, Triebe, which has been translated as instincts or drives.
Freud also called them wishes. This translation from need to wish is
called the primary process.
As the baby emerges
from the womb into the reality of life, he wants only to eat, drink, urinate,
defecate, be warm, and gain sexual pleasure. These urges are the demands of the
id, the most primitive motivational force. In pursuit of these ends, the id
demands immediate gratification: it is ruled by the pleasure principle, demanding satisfaction now, regardless of
circumstances and possible undesirable effects. If a young child was ruled
entirely by his id, he would steal and eat a piece of chocolate from a store
regardless of the menacing owner watching above him or even his parents
scolding beside him.
Just picture the
hungry infant, screaming itself blue. It doesn't "know" what it wants
in any adult sense; it just knows that it wants it and it wants it now. The
infant, in the Freudian view, is pure or nearly pure id. And the id is nothing
if not the psychic representative of biology.
The id will not
stand for a delay in gratification. For some urges, such as urination, this is
easily satisfied. However, if the urge is not immediately discharged, the id
will form a memory of the end of the motivation: the thirsty infant will form
an image of the mother's breast. This act of wish-fulfillment satisfies
the id's desire for the moment, though obviously it does not reduce the tension
of the unfulfilled urge.
Unfortunately,
although a wish for food, such as the image of a juicy steak, might be enough
to satisfy the id, it isn't enough to satisfy the organism. The need only gets
stronger, and the wishes just keep coming. You may have noticed that, when you
haven't satisfied some need, such as the need for food, it begins to demand
more and more of your attention, until there comes a point where you can't
think of anything else. This is the wish or drive breaking into consciousness.
The id consists
of all the inherited (i.e. biological) components of personality, including the
sex (life) instinct – Eros (which contains the libido), and aggressive
(death) instinct - Thanatos. The id is the impulsive (and unconscious)
part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts. The
id demands immediate satisfaction and when this happens we experience pleasure,
when it is denied we experience “unpleasure” or pain. The id is not affected by
reality, logic or the everyday world.
"It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we
know of it we have learned from our study of the Dreamwork and of the
construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character
and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with
analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is
filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization,
produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the
satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure
principle” (Freud).
Ego
Initially the ego
is “that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the
external world” (Freud). The ego develops in order to mediate between the
unrealistic id and the external real world. Ideally the ego works by reason
whereas the id is chaotic and totally unreasonable.
The eventual
understanding that immediate gratification is usually impossible (and often
unwise) comes with the ego formation, which is ruled by the reality principle. The ego acts as a
go-between in the id's relations with reality, often suppressing the id's urges
until an appropriate situation arises. This repression of inappropriate desires
and urges represents the greatest strain on, and the most important function
of, the mind. The ego often utilizes defense mechanisms to achieve and aid this
repression. Where the id may have an urge and form a picture which satisfies this
urge, the ego engages in a strategy to actually fulfill the urge.
So, like the id,
the ego seeks pleasure and avoids pain but unlike the id the ego is
concerned with devising a realistic strategy to obtain pleasure. Freud
made the analogy of the id being the horse while the ego is the rider.
Often the ego is weak relative to the head-strong id and the best the ego can
do is stay on, pointing the id in the right direction and claiming some credit
at the end as if the action were its own. The ego has no concept of right
or wrong; something is good simply if it achieves its end of satisfying without
causing harm to itself or to the id.
The thirsty
five-year-old now not only identifies water as the satisfaction of his urge,
but forms a plan to obtain water, perhaps by finding a drinking fountain. While
the ego is still in the service of the id, it borrows some of its psychic
energy in an effort to control the urge until it is feasibly satisfied. The
ego's efforts at pragmatic satisfaction of urges eventually build a great
number of skills and memories and become aware of itself as an entity. With the
formation of the ego, the individual becomes a self, instead of an amalgamation
of urges and needs.
This
problem-solving activity is called the secondary process. Therefore as
said, ego, unlike the id, functions according to the reality principle,
which says "take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is
found." It represents reality and, to a considerable extent, reason.
Superego
However, as the ego
struggles to keep the id (and, ultimately, the organism) happy, it meets with
obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets with objects that actually assist
it in attaining its goals. And it keeps a record of these obstacles and aides.
In particular, it keeps track of the rewards and punishments meted out by two
of the most influential objects in the world of the child -- mom and dad. This
record of things to avoid and strategies to take becomes the superego.
It is not completed until about seven years of age. In some people, it never is
completed.
So, the child will
not steal the chocolate, even unwatched, because he has taken punishment,
right, and wrong into himself. The superego uses guilt and self-reproach as its
primary means of enforcement for these rules. But if a person does something
which is acceptable to the superego, he experiences pride and
self-satisfaction.
There are two
aspects to the superego: One is the conscience, which is an
internalization of punishments and warnings. . Conscience tells what is right
and wrong, and forces the ego to inhibit the id in pursuit of morally
acceptable, not pleasurable or even realistic, goals.
The other is called
the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented to
the child. In other words, the ego ideal aims the individual's path of life
toward the ideal, perfect goals instilled by society. In the pursuit, the mind
attempts to make up for the loss of the perfect life experienced as a baby. The
conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with
feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.
Behavior which
falls short of the ego ideal may be punished by the superego through guilt. The
super-ego can also reward us through the ego ideal when we behave “properly” by
making us feel proud. If a person’s ego ideal is too high a standard,
then whatever the person does will represent failure. The ego ideal and
conscience are largely determined in childhood from parental values and you
were brought up.
Therefore, in
childhood, we are developing a new set of needs and accompanying wishes, this
time of social rather than biological origins. Unfortunately, these new wishes
can easily conflict with the ones from the id. You see, the superego represents
society, and society often wants nothing better than to have you never satisfy
your needs at all!
The Interaction of the Id, Ego and Superego
With so many competing forces, it is easy to see how conflict might
arise between the id, ego and superego. Freud used the term ego strength to
refer to the ego's ability to function despite these dueling forces. A person
with good ego strength is able to effectively manage these pressures, while
those with too much or too little ego strength can become too unyielding or too
disrupting.
According to Freud, the key to a healthy personality is a balance
between the id, the ego, and the superego.
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