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S H A P I N G S O C I E T Y

HUMAN PERSONALITYPart 2

Haslinda Sutan Ahmad Nawi Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology

Universiti Selangor, Selangor, Malaysia

Who is Sigmund Freud?• Born 1856 in Freidberg, Moravia

(now in Czech Republic)• Spent most his life in Vienna, Austria• Very ambitious • Neurologist turned psychologist• ‘discovered’ the unconscious mind• Very close to his mother, althoughquite estranged to his father

• His psychological theories are filled with sexual connotations – rebuffed by most academicians and physicians

• Died 1938 in London


The Topographic Model

• Freud maintained that there are 3 divisions in human personality• Conscious• Preconscious• Unconscious


Conscious

• Contains the thoughts you are currently aware of• The material changes as new thoughts enter your mind and others pass out of awareness

• This is when you say “something is on my mind”• Dealing with only a tiny percentage of all the information stored in your mind

• You can verbalize about your conscious experiences and you can think about it in a logical fashion


Preconscious

• You could bring an uncountable number of thoughts into your consciousness fairly easily if you wanted to

• Example:– What did you had for breakfast?– What did you do last Saturday?– Who taught you Programming Methodology?

• This large body of retrievable information makes up the preconscious

• Ordinary memory, thing stored here can be readily brought into conscious


Unconscious• The vast majority of thoughts• The most important from a psychoanalytic viewpoint• Materials to which you have no immediate access• Cannot bring unconscious material into consciousness except

under certain extreme situations• Responsible for much of your everyday behavior• Freud saw it as a dump box for urges, feelings and ideas that

are tied to anxiety, conflict and pain• According to Freud, these feelings and thoughts have not

disappeared, they are there. This is where most of the work of the Id, Ego and Superego take place.


The Structural Model• Freud discovered the

topographic model provided a limited description of human personality

• He added the Structural Model that divides personality into 3 additional structures:• Id• Ego• Superego

• These 3 elements of personality work together to create complex human behaviors.


Id• The only personality structure a human possesses at birth• The selfish part of you, concerned only with satisfying your

personal desires• Actions taken by the id are based on pleasure principle

• Concerned only with what brings immediate personal satisfaction (desires, wants and needs) regardless of any physical or social limitations

• If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension

• Eg: An increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink

• Eg: Like babies who don’t care for the world by throwing tantrums anywhere if they don’t get what they want or when they just take something that they want but don’t belong to them or that thing could be harmful


Id (cont..)

• This reflexive action doesn’t go away as adults• Id impulses are ever present, by the other parts of adult personality

• Pleasure impulses would be frustrated most of the time if the id were to rely on reflexive action to get what it wants

• Id uses wish fulfillment to satisfy its needs• If the desired object is not available,

id will imagine what it wants• Freud argues that in adulthood,

our dreams are a type of wish fulfillment


Ego• As children interact with environment during the first 2 years of life, the second part of personality structure gradually develops

• Actions of ego is reality principle• Primary job is to satisfy id impulses, but takes into account the

realities of the situation

• Ego develops from the Id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world

• Ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious and unconscious minds


Ego (cont..)

• Ego’s function is not simply to frustrate the aims of id• Human behavior is directed toward reducing tension• Very young children might be allowed to take food off parents’ plates thus to reduce tension• As they grow and mature, they learn the physical and social

limits on what they can and cannot do• The impulse is to grab food off someone’s plate when hungry

but the ego understands that it is wrong to do it• The ego tries to satisfy the wants of the id to lessen tension, but

in a way it considers the consequences of the action


Superego• It appears by the time children are about 5 years old• The aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents & society – our sense of right & wrong

• The superego provides guidelines for making judgments• Superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior• Doing something which is in a society unacceptable or morally decadent is a violation of society’s moral code, even if you don’t get caught doing it


Superego (cont..)

• Primary weapon of superego is guilt• Does not merely punish us for moral violation

• Provides the ideals the ego uses to determine if a behavior is virtuous and therefore worthy of praise

• Some children with poor early childhood lessons might fail to develop their superego and have little inward restraints about stealing or lying• But some could be their superego overly developed and can

become too powerful or supermoral• making the ego overburden with impossible standards of

perfection, leading to moral anxiety, an ever‐present feeling of shame and guilt in failing to reach high standard of life

What the three do to you…• The id, ego and superego complement and contradict each other

• A strong ego does not allow the id or the superego too much control over the personality

• Never ending battle

• In each of us, there exists an eternal state of tension between a desire for self‐indulgence, a concern for reality and the enforcement of a strict moral code


Defense Mechanisms• Classic psychoanalytic cases involve some deeply embarrassing parts of life that can be threatening for own awareness

• Ego attempts to reduce or avoid anxiety by keeping those materials out of consciousness

• Among many strategies that ego has is defense mechanisms which include repression, sublimation, displacement, denial, reaction formation, intellectualization and projection


Defense Mechanisms: Repression

• Freud called it “the cornerstone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests”

• The most important of all defense mechanisms• An active effort by the ego to push threatening material out of consciousness or to keep such material from ever reaching consciousness• To exclude (painful or disturbing memories, for example)

automatically or unconsciously from the conscious mind.


Defense Mechanisms: Sublimation

• Repression will drain our ability to function• Sublimation on the contrary, will make us more productive

• Psychoanalysts often refer sublimation as the only truly successful defense mechanism

• When using sublimation, ego channels threatening unconscious impulses into socially acceptable actions– Example, sportsmen involved in combat sports – the more aggressive you are, the more you are rewarded, loved, and famous


Defense Mechanisms: Displacement

• Also involve channeling our impulses to nonthreatening objects

• Do not lead to social reward (unlike sublimation)• A defense mechanism that transfers affect or reaction from the original object to some more acceptable one• Example: you may be angry at me, but because I’m your

lecturer, you are afraid that if you do something bad to me, you might fail this course. Therefore, instead of showing your anger to me, you ‘transfer’ your anger to your cat, your friend or others that is ‘less’ detrimental to you


Defense Mechanisms: Denial

• Refuse to accept that certain facts exist• This is more than saying we do not remember (as in repression), but in this case we insist that something is not true despite all evidence to the contrary• An unconscious defense mechanism characterized by refusal to

acknowledge painful realities, thoughts, or feelings• Example: your beloved cat died, but for certain reason, you do

not want to accept that reality, so everyday you go to the kitchen and still prepare the kitty litter, the food for your dead cat


Defense Mechanisms: Denial (cont..)

• An extreme form of defense because the more we use it, the less in touch with reality we are, thus we could function with much difficulty

• In some cases, ego will resort to denial rather than allow certain thoughts to reach consciousness


Defense Mechanisms: Reaction Formation

• Hiding from a threatening unconscious idea or urge by action in a manner opposite to our unconscious desire• Example: someone who ticks off his friend for

watching pornography is actually himself secretly (unconsciously) harbors deep interest in pornography

• It is as if the thought is so unacceptable that the ego must prove how incorrect the notion is


Defense Mechanisms: Intellectualization

• Removing the emotional content from the thought before allowing it into awareness

• A defense mechanism that uses reasoning to block out emotional stress and conflict• Eg.‐ A person told they have cancer asks for details on the probability

of survival and the success rates of various drugs. The doctor may join in, using 'carcinoma' instead of 'cancer' and 'terminal' instead of 'fatal'.

• Eg.‐ A woman who has been raped seeks out information on other cases and the psychology of rapists and victims. She takes self‐defense classes in order to feel better (rather than more directly addressing the psychological and emotional issues).

• Eg. ‐ A person who is in heavily debt builds a complex spreadsheet of how long it would take to repay using different payment options and interest rates.


Defense Mechanisms: Projection

• Sometimes we attribute an unconscious impulse to other people instead of to ourselves

• By projecting the impulse onto another person, we free ourselves from the perception that we the one who actually holds this thought– Example: someone who tells that everyone in his house like to steal something from the neighbors, could be the one who is actually stealing from everybody else

Neo‐Freudian • “Neo‐Freudians” psychologists were a group of thinkers who agreed with the basic of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, but changed and adapted the theory to incorporate

their own beliefs, ideas and theories

• Neo‐Freudians includes Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Karen Horney & Erik Erikson


Neo-Freudian Theories: Anxiety & Coping Strategies

• Have we changed too much lately?• Do we need to spend our hours working and keep on working and leaving the time relaxing elsewhere in our mind?

• Are we becoming too anxious by pushing ourselves to the limit?

• By research done, we HAVE entered into the age of anxiety• What is anxiety?

• a relatively permanent state of worry and nervousness occurring in a variety of mental disorders, usually accompanied by compulsive behavior or attacks of panic


Neo-Freudian Theories: Anxiety & Coping Strategies (cont..)

• An unpleasant emotional experience• Feelings of worry, panic, fear and dread• Example: your diary that keeps your deep dark secret has been uncovered by a friend and most likely it is going to be passed around among friends


Neo-Freudian Theories: Anxiety & Coping Strategies (cont..)

• Freud said anxiety has 3 types:• Reality anxiety (objective anxiety)

– A response to a perceived threat in the real world or fear of real world event

– Aware of the source of emotional reaction– Example: followed by a stranger; escaped a serious auto accident

• Neurotic anxiety– the unconscious fear that we will lose control of the id’s urges– Type of anxiety that leads to ego using the defense mechanisms.– Eg: hitting someone for upsetting you.

• Moral anxiety– Fear of doing something that violates our moral code.– Generally experienced as guilt– An example would be having an affair

Coping with Anxiety• What do you do when faced with a potentially stressful situation? For example:– Dentist started to drill your mouth?

– Getting ready for a job interview?

– Putting yourself in a kayak?

– Completely submerged in the water upon capsizing?

– First time driving on the highway?

• Chances are, you reject the idea of fear or pain; it is just part of life!

• Typically a person would respond to stress‐provoking situations with calculated efforts to reduce the anxiety


Neo-Freudian Theories: Types of Coping Strategies

• Basically, there are three:• Problem‐Focused Strategies

– Directed at taking care of the problem and thereby overcoming the anxiety

– Simply making plans to deal with the problem makes them feel better than doing nothing at all

– If problem is financial, look for ways to earn more money or reduce expenses

– If struggling in class?

• Emotion‐Focused Strategies– Designed to reduce the emotional distress that accompanies the

problem – A divorced couple just would go to classes to help them do better in a

next relationship


Neo-Freudian Theories: Types of Coping Strategies (cont..)

• Avoidance Strategies– Pushing the provocation out of awareness– If a friend is really sick, someone might just stop thinking about it



• Problem‐Focused Strategies • I obtained as much information as I could about the situation• I made a plan of action• I considered alternatives and weighed the pros and cons• I talked with people who have had similar experiences• I tried harder to make things work• I sought out help from someone who knew more than I did• I set aside time to work on the problem



• Emotion‐Focused Strategies • I discussed my feelings with friends• I thought about how I could learn from the experience• I accepted what had happened and moved on• I tried to put things in perspective• I looked for the silver lining• I found comfort in my religion• I talked about my feelings with a professional counselor



• Avoidance Strategies • I tried not to think about the problem• I pretended the problem didn’t exist• I used alcohol or drugs to feel better• I tried to distract myself with other activities• I avoided people and situations that reminded me of the

problem• I slept more than usual• I refused to acknowledge the scope of the problem

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