Psychology

Topic: Freud’s Theory of Personality

Submitted By: Shashank Patel

A-51, 1st Semester, 2018
LL.B (Hons) Integrated

Under the Guidance of – Prof. M. R. Rastogi

Faculty of Law
University of Lucknow
 Table of Contents
1) Introduction
2) Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
3) Structure of Personality
a) The id
b) The ego
c) The super ego
4) Personality Dynamics
a) Conscious Mind
b) Subconscious Mind
c) Unconscious Mind
5) Psychosexual Stages of Development
a) Oral Stage
b) Anal Stage
c) Phallic Stage
d) Latency Stage
e) Genital Stage
6) Conclusion
7) Bibliography
 INTRODUCTION
Personality: Personality refers to individual’s unique and relatively consistent
patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.
The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual
differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability.

Theories of Personality:
1) Type Theories of Personality
(i) Eysenck’s Hierarchical Theory
(ii) Jung’s Analytical Theory
2) Trait Theories of Personality
(i) Allport’s Theory
(ii) Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

SIGMUND FREUD

MAY 6, 1856 — SIGMUND FREUD WAS BORN IN FREYBERG TOWN,

CRECH REPUBLIC
1881 — HE GRADUATED FROM MEDICAL FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF
VIENNA
1896 — SIGMUND FREUD WAS OFFICIALLY RECOGNIZED
1900 — HE RELEASED ‘INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS’
SEPTEMBER 23, 1939 —FREUD PASSED AWAY INHAMPSTEAD
HOUSE
 Freud’s Theory of Personality
(Psychoanalytic Theory)

Psychoanalysis is both an approach to therapy and a theory of personality.

Psychoanalysis emphasizes unconscious motivation- the main cause of behavior lie
buried in the unconscious mind.

Psychoanalytic theory has three major parts:

i. A theory of the structure of personality, in which the id, ego, and superego are
the principal parts.
ii. A theory of personality dynamics, in which conscious and unconscious
motivation and ego-defense mechanisms play a major role.
iii. A theory of psychosexual development, in which different stages of growth, with
effects persisting in the form of adult personality traits.

Structure of Personality:
According to Sigmund Freud, human personality is complex and has more than a single
component. In his famous psychoanalytic theory of personality, he said personality is
composed of three elements. These three elements of personality—known as the id, the
ego, and the superego—work together to create complex human behaviors.

Each component not only adds its own unique contribution to personality, but all three
elements interact in ways that have a powerful influence on each individual. Each of
these three elements of personality emerges at different points in life .

 The id
 The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth.
 This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes the instinctive and
primitive behaviors.
  According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary
component of personality.
 The sexual energy that underlies urges to be sexually stimulated is called the
libido.

The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all
desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a
state anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an
immediate attempt to eat or drink.

The id is very important early in life, because it ensures that an infant's needs are met. If
the infant is hungry or uncomfortable, he or she will cry until the demands of the id are
satisfied. Because young infants are ruled entirely by the id, there is no reasoning with
them when these needs demand satisfaction. Imagine trying to convince a baby to wait
until lunchtime to eat his meal. Instead, the id requires immediate satisfaction, and
because the other components of personality are not yet present, the infant will cry until
these needs are fulfilled.

However, immediately fulfilling these needs is not always realistic or even possible. If we
were ruled entirely by the pleasure principle, we might find ourselves grabbing the things
that we want out of other people's hands to satisfy our own cravings.

This sort of behavior would be both disruptive and socially unacceptable.

 The ego
 The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with
reality.
 According to Freud, the ego tries to satisfy the id’s urge for pleasure but only in
realistic ways that take account of what is possible in the real world.
 The ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.

The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id's desires in
realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits
of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. In many cases, the id's
impulses can be satisfied through a process of delayed gratification—the ego will
eventually allow the behavior, but only in the appropriate time and place.

Freud compared the id to a horse and the ego to the horse's rider. The horse provides
the power and motion, yet the rider provides the direction and guidance. Without its
rider, the horse may simply wander wherever it wished and do whatever it pleased.
The rider instead gives the horse directions and commands to guide it in the direction he
or she wishes to go.

For example, imagine that you are stuck in a long meeting at work. You find yourself
growing increasingly hungry as the meeting drags on. While the id might compel you to
jump up from your seat and rush to the break room for a snack, the ego guides you to sit
quietly and wait for the meeting to end. Instead of acting upon the primal urges of the id,
you spend the rest of the meeting imagining yourself eating a cheeseburger. Once the
meeting is finally over, you can seek out the object you were imagining and satisfy the
demands of the id in a realistic and appropriate manner.

 The Superego
 The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral
standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society—our sense of
right and wrong.
 The superego provides guidelines for making judgments.
 According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five.

There are two parts of the superego:

1. The ego ideal - It includes the rules and standards for good behaviors. These
behaviors include those which are approved of by parental and other authority
figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value, and accomplishment.
2. The conscience - It includes information about things that are viewed as bad by
parents and society. These behaviors are often forbidden and lead to bad
consequences, punishments, or feelings of guilt and remorse .

The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all
unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards
rather that upon realistic principles. The superego is present in the conscious,
preconscious, and unconscious.
 Conflict within the Mind:- According to Freud, the job of the ego is to balance the
aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of the Id with the Moral of the Superego.

Id Superego
“I want to do that now!” “It’s not right to do that”

Ego
“Maybe we can compromise”

Personality Dynamics:
Freud proposed the three levels of Consciousness of Mind-

1) Conscious Mind
In Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the conscious mind consists
of everything inside of our awareness. This is the aspect of our mental processing
that we can think and talk about in a rational way.

The conscious mind includes such things as the sensations, perceptions, memories,
feeling and fantasies inside of our current awareness.

 For example, the beauty and pleasance of the smell of a red tulip,while having
your breakfast, your mind might be thinking about the recipe or taste of the dish.
2) Subconscious Mind
Subconscious Mind defines all reactions and automatic actions we can become aware
of if we think about them. The Subconscious Mind is also known as Preconscious Mind.

Every experience we’ve ever had, every thought, every impression of loss or
gain,which are not presently active but resides in the subconscious mind and
determines our patterns of thought and behavior far more than we realize.

 For example, our ability to drive a car: once we get skilled we stop thinking which
gears to use, which pedals to press, or which mirror to look at, yet can always
become aware of what was done once we think about it.

3) Unconscious Mind
In Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the unconscious mind is a reservoir of
all the past events, memories, feelings, thoughts, and urges, outside of
our conscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable
or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the
unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are
unaware of these underlying influences.

 For example; Ravi‘s family has recently shifted to new place .There he makes some
new friends in his neighborhood. While playing, he calls one of his playmate with
his old friend’s name. This is due to the thoughts or feelings of old days which still
plays in his unconscious mind.

Psychosexual Stages of Development:

Freud (1905) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a
series of fixed psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
He believed that children are born with a libido – a sexual (pleasure) urge. There are a
number of stages of childhood, during which the child seeks pleasure from a different
‘object.’ Freud called each step in this process a Psychosexual Stage.
Freud believed that if a child’s needs at one of the psychosexual stages were either
unsatisfied or oversatisfied, fixation would take place.
1) Oral Stage (0-1 year)
In the first stage of personality development, the libido is centered in a baby's
mouth. It gets much satisfaction from putting all sorts of things in its mouth to satisfy
the libido, and thus its id demands. Which at this stage in life are oral, or mouth
orientated, such as sucking, biting, and breastfeeding.
Freud said oral stimulation could lead to an oral fixation in later life. We see oral
personalities all around us such as smokers, nail-biters, finger-chewers, and thumb
suckers. Oral personalities engage in such oral behaviors, particularly when under
stress.

2) Anal Stage (1-3 years)

The libido now becomes focused on the anus, and the child derives great pleasure
from defecating. The child is now fully aware that they are a person in their own
right and that their wishes can bring them into conflict with the demands of the
outside world (i.e., their ego has developed).
Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to a head in potty training, in
which adults impose restrictions on when and where the child can defecate. The
nature of this first conflict with authority can determine the child's future
relationship with all forms of authority.
Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an anal-retentive
personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy, punctual and respectful of authority.
They can be stubborn and tight-fisted with their cash and possessions. This is all
related to pleasure got from holding on to their faces when toddlers, and their
mum's then insisting that they get rid of it by placing them on the potty until they
perform!
Not as daft as it sounds. The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal
toilet-training regime during the anal stage. In adulthood, the anal expulsive is the
person who wants to share things with you. They like giving things away. An anal-
expulsive personality is also messy, disorganized and rebellious.
3) Phallic Stage (3 to 5 or 6 years)
Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals and masturbation (in both sexes)
becomes a new source of pleasure. The child becomes aware of anatomical sex
differences, which sets in motion the conflict between erotic attraction, resentment,
rivalry, jealousy and fear which Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and
the Electra complex (in girls).
This is resolved through the process of identification, which involves the child adopting
the characteristics of the same sex parent.

 Oedipus complex
The most important aspect of the phallic stage is the Oedipus complex. This is one of
Freud's most controversial ideas and one that many people reject outright.
The name of the Oedipus complex derives from the Greek myth where Oedipus, a
young man, kills his father and marries his mother. Upon discovering this, he pokes
his eyes out and becomes blind. This Oedipal is the generic (i.e., general) term for
both Oedipus and Electra complexes.
In the young boy, the Oedipus complex or more correctly, conflict, arises because the
boy develops sexual (pleasurable) desires for his mother. He wants to possess his
mother exclusively and get rid of his father to enable him to do so. Irrationally, the
boy thinks that if his father were to find out about all this, his father would take away
what he loves the most. During the phallic stage what the boy loves most is his
penis. Hence the boy develops castration anxiety.
The little boy then sets out to resolve this problem by imitating, copying and joining
in masculine dad-type behaviors. This is called identification, and is how the three-
to-five year old boy resolves his Oedipus complex. Identification means internally
adopting the values, attitudes, and behaviors of another person. The consequence
of this is that the boy takes on the male gender role, and adopts an ego ideal and
values that become the superego.

 Electra complex
For girls, the Oedipus or Electra complex is less than satisfactory. Briefly, the girl
desires the father, but realizes that she does not have a penis. This leads to the
development of penis envy and the wish to be a boy.
 The girl resolves this by repressing her desire for her father and substituting the wish
for a penis with the wish for a baby. The girl blames her mother for her 'castrated
state,' and this creates great tension. The girl then represses her feelings (to remove
the tension) and identifies with the mother to take on the female gender role.

4) Latency Stage (5 or 6 to puberty)

No further psychosexual development takes place during this stage (latent means
hidden). The libido is dormant. Freud thought that most sexual impulses are repressed
during the latent stage, and sexual energy can be sublimated towards school work,
hobbies, and friendships.
Much of the child's energy is channeled into developing new skills and acquiring new
knowledge, and play becomes largely confined to other children of the same gender.

5) Genital Stage (puberty to adult)

This is the last stage of Freud's psychosexual theory of personality development and
begins in puberty. It is a time of adolescent sexual experimentation, the successful
resolution of which is settling down in a loving one-to-one relationship with another
person in our 20's. Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self-
pleasure like during the phallic stage.
For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was through heterosexual
intercourse. Fixation and conflict may prevent this with the consequence that sexual
perversions may develop.
For example, fixation at the oral stage may result in a person gaining sexual pleasure
primarily from kissing and oral sex, rather than sexual intercourse.

Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development is one of the most complex and
controversial theories of development. Although his theory has been the subject of much
criticism, we cannot discount the important ideas that Freud has contributed to the field
of psychology and human development.
 Conclusion
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) proposed the Psychoanalytic theory based upon the
Psychoanalysis which is the approach of both therapy and a theory of personality.
Psychoanalysis emphasizes unconscious motivation- the main cause of behavior lie
buried in the unconscious mind. He defined the personality as the “individual’s
unique and relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving”.
Psychoanalytic Theory is defined in three different parts of theories ‘Structure of
Personality’, ‘Personality dynamics’, & ‘Psychosexual development’.
Under ‘Structure of Personality’ he proposed three elements of personality (Id, Ego
& Super ego) work together to create complex human behaviors.
Under ‘Personality Dynamics’ he proposed three levels (Conscious, Unconscious &
Subconscious) of Consciousness of mind.
Under ‘Psychosexual Stages of Development’ he proposed five stages (Oral, Anal,
Phallic, Latency & Genital Stage) of human development.
Importance of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is the emphasis on early experiences in
the development of personality and as an influence on later behavior. The
relationships that a child cultivates, her views about self and others, and her level of
adjustment and well-being as an adult are all influenced by the quality of
experiences that she has had in each psychosexual stage.
 Bibliography
Books Referred
 Morgans, “Introduction to Psychology”
 R. A. Baron, “Social Psychology”
 J. R. Gnow, “Psychology”
 Richard M. Ryckman, “Theory of Personality”
 Wiley, “Personality: Theory and Research”

Internet Sources
 https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/freud-psychosexual-
 https://www.apa.org/topics/personality/
 https://www.managementstudyguide/freudspsychoanalytic
 https://www.simplypsychology.org/Sigmund-Freud.html
 https://en.wikipedia.org/Freud-psychoanalytic/theories