PSYCHOLOGY – SSC 210

Lahore School of Economics

Hirra Rana
Personality refers to individual differences in
characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.

 Personality is the pattern of enduring

characteristics that
produce consistency and individuality in a given person.
Personality contains the behaviors that makes each of us
unique and differentiate us from others.
Psychodynamic approaches to
personality are based on the idea that
personality : is motivated by inner forces and
conflicts about which people have little
awareness and over which they have no control.

 The most important pioneer of the

psychodynamic approach was Sigmund Freud.
STRUCTURING PERSONALITY: ID, EGO,
AND SUPEREGO

• To describe the structure of personality, Freud

developed a comprehensive theory that held that
personality consists of three separate but
interacting components:

• the id, the ego, and the superego

1. id : The raw, unorganized, inborn part of
personality whose sole purpose is to reduce tension
created by primitive drives related to hunger,
aggression, and irrational impulses.

• The id (Latin for "it") 

• Id is the only component of personality that is

present from birth.

• It is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires,

and impulses
2. Ego: The part of the personality that
provides a buffer between the id and the outside
world.

• Strives to balance the desires of the id and the

realities of the objective, outside world.

• In contrast to the pleasure seeking id, the ego

operates according to the reality principle.
3.Superego: According to Freud, the final
personality structure: it represents the rights
and wrongs of society as handed down by a
person’s parents, teachers, and other important
figures.

• The superego includes the conscience.

• Prevents us from behaving in a morally

improper way by making us feel guilty if we do
wrong.
DEFENSE MECHANISMS:
Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce
anxiety by concealing the source of it from
themselves and others(Freud)
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