Psychology Tidbits: Id, Ego, And Super Ego

Sigmund Freuds Psychoanalytic Model Of Personality
According the Sigmund Freuds psychoanalytic model of personality, personality itself is composed of three elements that work together, the Id, Ego, and Super Ego. These three elements of personality work together and are responsible for the complex human behaviour, and are found in the adolescent to adult years.

The Id
The Id is the only unorganized part of the personality structure and contains the basic drives (sex, anger, and hunger), and acts according to the pleasure principle, which is seeking to avoid pain or displeasure and to acquire pleasure in order to satisfy both biological and psychological means. The Id doesn't really care about reality, only it's own satisfaction, and will conjure up images to reduce tension associated with the the need. An example being conjuring up an image of food to temporarily reduce the tension associated with the need for food.

The Ego
This part is governed by the reality principle and seeks to fulfill the Id's drive through realistic ways that will bring benefit in the long term rather then grief. It will attempt to match the images of the Id with objects/events in the real world. For example, if the Id demands food and brings up an image of something fulfilling, the ego will find the appropriate object in reality to satisfy the Id, like a nice piece of tasty cake. However, if all we had were the Id and Ego, we'd be hedonistic, animal-like person, who would seek immediate gratification of needs through the appropriate objects, regardless of moral values, hence the next part of the psychoanalytic model of personality.

The Super Ego
The moral muscle of the psychoanalytic model of personality. Every person has internalized values and would experience anxiety and guilt if something threatened or broke that value. For example, a child may get scorned repeatably by his/her parents for doing something "naughty". When the child engages or thinks about engaging in the "naughty" activity, the child experiences anxiety and guilt, as that threatens the internalized value the child learned at youth. Society around a person can influence a person's internalized value too. A Western society in general would frown upon public nudity, so that makes one of the internalized values of a person not to be naked in public. Basically, any experience that that violates a person's internalized value will not be tolerated by the Super Ego.

How This All Fit Together
The Id demands something to fulfill it's need. The Ego sets out to carry out that need through the appropriate objects/events, while not violating the Super Ego. Two examples are below in order to help.

"A madam called "Frodo Anderson" walks into a cake shop. She becomes hungry and wants something sweet and tasty (Id). She then scanes the room and what do you know, finds a cake, which she can consume to satisfy her hunger. She goes over to the cake and wants to eat it (Ego). However, because she is a good person who is kind, and was taught not to randomly ninjer people for cake, she buys the cake, as not to conflict with her internal values (Super Ego)."

"A gentlemen who's name is FOD, leaves in the morning to do parkour. Since it is cold, he bundles up, wearing an extra sweater. Later, it gets warm, and FOD get's hot. FOD doesn't want to be hot, he want's to be cool (Id). He then associates the fact that no clothing will result in coolness (Ego). He then is about to strip off all his clothes but then realizes that the people around him would frown upon such scandalous behavior, and since FOD's believes is that he must be a gentlemen who must never make feces jokes, he just takes of his sweater, resulting in satisfaction (Super Ego)."

*Note* Names and places above that match a real person/place are purely coincidental and are purely fiction.

That's about it. Please note that I'm in no such way a professional, so if I have a mistake or something disapproves of what I have talked about, I apologize. I do however welcome any criticism/advice.

~Seventh


Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html

Hergenhahn, B.R, and Matthew H. Olson. An Introduction To Theories Of Personality. Seventh Edition. Upper Saddle Rive, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc., 2007. Print.

 

Bumpity Bump.

 

*runs through the thread wearing only a sweater*

you realize my first thought was "you totally just got taught this in high school", yes?

interesting stuff though, but the info in the OP does not really provide any usable info as regarding what to do with the three concepts

 

Lol

Nah, I can't take psychology till Grade 12, unless I want to take it a year early and take the Advanced Placement Psychology in the first term of Grade 12.

This is just me being completely bored. I'll do things when I don't get enough stimulation.

I agree though that this doesn't really help in everyday life, except for the fact that we now know there is a psychological basis for why baby's are so demanding and do nothing, whereas adults are demanding but do something

 

And then there are adults who don't grow out of the baby stage and strive to become middle and micro managers. Beware this crowd.

 

There are major problems with Freud's theory. The main one being that it is empirically unverifiable. You cannot test the id, ego, and superego which Freud also talked about as though they had individual lives of their own.
Also his theories were constructed based on anecdotal evidence based on working with his patients. However the time period he was working in was critical. In turn of the century Vienna sexuality was highly repressed on a cultural level so it's not unexpected that he received so many patient's with sexual focuses. His clients were also a very small sample of the population being mostly affluent, educated Viennese.

However Freud did make a few important contributions the most important bits from his theory being that
-there are unconscious processes and conscious processes
-childhood experiences help shape adult personality
-people use defence mechanisms to control anxiety or stress

No one wholeheartedly believes everything Freud says anymore. The idea that all you problems stem from the fact that you wanted to get it on with your mother/father as a child is just ludicrous. And penis envy? Come on.

 

Yeah, I read that part. Turns out he had to retract and drop several theories. I'm not even going to mention the Cocaine incident.

Yep, Something about Neurotic, Morality, and (Reality?) anxiety, and how they lead into several defense mechanisms. Will have to check up on that later.

 

Freud was something of a git, all told. Supposedly, one of his patients had a quite badly damaged nose and he diagnosed the bleeding as seeking his attention. His high-handed approach also caused a serious breach with Jung. Still, he deserves a huge amount of credit for being willing to think about issues that were 'outré' at the time. Emil Kraepelin seems to have had more impact on clinical psychiatry as such though, even if he was substantially wrong about, for example, the chances of recovery from schizophrenia.