3 Basic Structures of Personality according to Freud

Structures of Personality constitute the fundamental purpose of this article. Personality is the distinctive patterns of actions, thoughts, and feelings that are shaped by biological and environmental causes, and which can be altered through time. To state clearly the struggles that the mind goes through at the different levels in one’s life, Freud used a description of the three structures of personality, which we shall discuss in this article.

 

THE ID:

The Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. It is a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy which is constantly striving to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce and aggress. It is the primitive, self-serving, irrational, impulsive and entirely unconscious. The id is also a source of all biological drives like the urge to eat. It is the only structure that is present from birth and it controlled by the two dominant instincts called Eros which is for sexual drives and Thanatos for death instincts. It functions according to the pleasure principle to satisfy urges and to bring pleasure. 

Not only that, it is also a source of psychic energy called the libido which is a sexual motivation for all aspects of personality. At any given time, it can be released to different parts of the body through socialisation for politics, education and many more. The demands of this portion of personality are more pronounced during infancy where a child wants to get what it wants there and then. Therefore, the Id is selfish in nature and this led Freud to come up with the psychosexual stages of personality which will be discussed later in this essay.

THE EGO

Within the next three years, as a child interacts more and more with the world, the second part of personality develops. Freud called this part the Ego, which is believed to be a rational and coping part of personality though it is not entirely conscious. It delays actions until they are appropriate. It is the brain which tries to sort out what the Id is advocating for and will always try to objectively arrive at a decision because its main task is to think, solve a problem and make a decision. For instance if there is an urge to eat from the Id, the Ego will do the planning aspect of either going buy or just cooking food. 

It operates according to the reality principle and brings about the unity of personality. It is always in touch with the real world. That means it can accurately understand reality and can adapt itself to the constraints of the real world. It can accurately understand reality and can adapt itself to the constraints of the real world. Not only that, it is also concerned with devising a realistic strategy to derive pleasure. It has no concept of right or wrong. Something it is considered good if it achieves its end of satisfying without causing harm to itself or the Id.

 

The function of the three Psychic instances

THE SUPEREGO

This is a system in personality that contains the values and rules that are evaluative in nature (concerning matters relating to good or bad.) The basis of this moral side of personality is usually learnt at the age of five to six. It also holds the internalisation of moral standards and ideas that are acquired from both parents and the community through praise or punishment.

Those behaviours for which children are punished form the conscience, one part of the superego. The second part of the superego is the ego-ideal, which consists of good, or correct, behaviours for which children have been praised. In this way, children learn a set of rules that earn acceptance or rejection from their parents and with time, parental control gets replaced by self-control.

However, at times the superego strives neither for pleasure (as does the id) nor for attainment of realistic goals (as does the ego). It strives solely for moral perfection. The id presses for satisfaction, the ego tries to delay it while the superego urges morality above all. Like the id, the superego admits no compromise with its demands. For this reason, the ego is caught in the middle, pressured by these insistent and opposing forces. Thus, the ego has a third master, the superego and is usually pressured on three sides being the id, reality, and the superego. 

To familiarise this, it could be likened to someone pouring some castle or mosi beer which usually does not withstand the pressure in the glass due to the carbon dioxide in it. Therefore, the latent carbon in the beer causes it to form bubbles and spill from the glass. Similarly, the id behaves in the same manner due to the latent energy in the form of Libido (id) which a child is born with, that causes it to demand what it wants at any time without caring of the situation or the outcome. 

Effects of these Structures of Personality

Coming back to our example, the foam in this case represents the ego which receives the pressure from the same id. In the same illustration, the spilling of the beer would probably be controlled by a human being so that it does not spill any further. This then would represent the action of the superego as it tries to perfect the situation. Similarly, according to Freud, a human being is faced with such frictions among the id, ego and the superego. The inevitable result of this friction is what is known as anxiety.

According Freud anxiety is described as an objectless fear where a person cannot point either its source or a specific object that induced it. He made anxiety an important part of his personality theory and ranked them in three types known as anxiety: reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety. These types are described as follows:

(1)    The first type of anxiety called is reality or objective anxiety. This involves a fear of tangible dangers in the real world. For instance, justifiably fear for fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and similar disasters. This kind of anxiety serves the positive purpose of guiding our behaviour to escape or protect ourselves from actual dangers for example running away from speeding cars, wild animals, speeding cars and many such kind of danger.

(2)    The other type is known as Neurotic anxiety and has its basis in childhood where there is a conflict between instinctual gratification and reality. Children are often punished for overtly expressing sexual or aggressive impulses. Therefore, the wish to gratify certain id impulses generates anxiety. This neurotic anxiety is an unconscious fear of being punished for impulsively displaying id-dominated behaviour.

(3)    The third type is Moral anxiety which results from a conflict between the id and the superego. It is actually the fear of one’s conscience. For example, when one is motivated to express an instinctual impulse that is contrary to his or her moral code, the superego retaliates by causing one to feel shame or guilt. Moral anxiety is a function of how well developed the superego is.

A person with a strong inhibiting conscience will experience greater conflict than a person with a less stringent set of moral guidelines. Like neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety has some basis in reality. Children are punished for violating their parents’ moral codes while adults are punished for violating society’s moral code. The shame and guilt feelings in moral anxiety arise from within our conscience and hence cause the fear and the anxiety.

These kind of anxieties are very beneficial in that they alert an individual that the ego is being threatened and that unless action is taken, the ego might be overthrown. When such an alert is done, a self-defence will come in a form of running away from the threatening situation, inhibiting the impulsive need that is the source of the danger, or obeying the dictates of the conscience. If none of these rational techniques works, the person may resort to defence mechanisms, which are non-rational strategies designed to defend the ego.