Psychoanalysis

V

Personality: the Genetic Viewpoint

By understanding the crucial events and fantasy wishes of childhood, psychoanalysis sheds understanding on later adult character development, with its attendant conflicts and neurotic symptoms. Freud conceptualized how development might occur in terms of the drives and their satisfaction, according to the pleasure principle.

At first, the drives are centred on the self, and are referred to as narcissism. According to Freud, adult sexuality is an end product of a complex process of development that begins in childhood, involves a variety of body functions or areas (oral, anal, and genital zones), and corresponds to various stages in the relation of the child to adults, especially to his or her parents. The oral phase is said to extend from birth to 18 months. At this age the libidinal drive centres around feeding and is satisfied by suckling—bringing about a reduction in tension and inducing sleep. This process is said to protect against the danger of “loss of the (mother) object”, that is, the danger that the mother might not be there. The anal phase is said to last from 18 months to 3 years, during which time the main gratification to the libidinal drive is said to come from the retention and passing of faeces. By now the mother is recognized as an independent entity and the danger is perceived as “losing the mother’s love”. As other people come to be appreciated as a source of gratification, the libidinal drive is vested on these other “love objects”. From the age of three, the main area of libidinal gratification changes to the genitals. Children by this age are said to have become aware of sex differences; they want to be loved, and to possess those who bring them pleasure—and hate and destroy those who stand in their way. The danger now is “fear of castration”, a term used originally (in classical psychoanalytical theory) to refer to males only.

When a drive cannot be satisfied, gratification may occur by children stimulating certain areas of their bodies. This is Freud’s concept of auto-erotism. When there is a strong and enduring attachment to libidinal gratification from infancy, it is described as fixation. Sometimes adults return to an earlier form of gratification, a process referred to as regression.

The drives of childhood are never completely gratified, the result being conflict. Relationships with important objects contain a mixture of love and hate. According to Freud, in the Oedipal period, said to occur between the ages of three and six, the child is said to develop erotic feelings for the parent of the opposite sex, while feeling competitive and hostile to the parent of the same sex. Normally in time these feelings are repressed back into the unconscious.

With the resolution of the “Oedipal complex”, development is said to be relatively quiescent until the advent of puberty. Then, as the individual seeks adult identity, psychological and physiological changes occur that require the conflicts of childhood to be revisited. The young person’s awareness of a conscious need to keep a rein on the free expression of drives develops—failure to do so being felt as guilt. Masturbation fantasies and guilt come into conscious appreciation. An equilibrium develops between drives, conflicts, and reality. Conflicts repressed into the unconscious are retained, but remain dynamic. From time to time they may overcome repression and re-emerge into conscious appreciation, precipitating anxiety or panic. To counteract this, the individual has to make various compromises by using defence mechanisms that become part of that person’s character. Many examples of defence mechanisms have been described, two of which are known as projection and reaction formation. In projection, the individual ascribes his or her own unconscious desires to another person. In reaction formation, the individual adopts a pattern of behaviour directly opposed to a strong unconscious drive.

VI

The Structural Model

In 1923 Freud reformulated his ideas in a structural model of the mind. This model postulated the existence of the id, the ego, and the superego; mental functions were grouped according to their role in conflict.

The id represents the basic libidinal and aggressive drives, and is the true unconscious. It seeks immediate satisfaction (obeys the pleasure principle), and represents primary process thinking which is irrational, instinctive, and illogical.

How the conditions for satisfaction are brought about is the task of the second system, the ego. This functions as an intermediary between the inner world of the id and external reality, being part unconscious and part preconscious. It acts as an executive, tempering the effects of the person’s drives, postponing gratification by use of defence mechanisms to resolve conflict. Such defence mechanisms are put into operation whenever anxiety signals a danger that the original unacceptable impulses may re-emerge. The ego is the domain of thinking, perception, and motor control, all of which are used to assess situations. It represents secondary process thinking that is logical, discriminating, attuned to past experience, and realistic, and obeys the reality principle.

The superego represents the individual’s internalization of social mores that have usually been instilled by the parents. It is the system that deals with conscience, morals, and ethics, and with punishment for transgressions. It is in part unconscious and part conscious and incorporates both primary and secondary process thinking in its cognitive style.

The task of the ego is to reconcile the id and the superego and reality, which it aims to do by way of the defence mechanisms. Failure to satisfy the id or superego, or to cope with reality, leads to neurotic anxiety, guilt, or “reality anxiety”. Usually, the failure of the ego does not lead to complete collapse of the personality. Its success ultimately is measured by the relative absence of personality collapse.

Symptoms, impulse, and character disorders can be seen to represent different adaptations by the ego in an effort to reconcile the different conflicting forces in the mind.

VII

Anxiety

A cornerstone of modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the concept of anxiety, which institutes appropriate mechanisms of defence against certain danger situations. As described by Freud, these are the fear of abandonment by, or the loss of, the loved one (the object); the risk of losing the object’s love; the danger of retaliation and punishment; and the hazard of reproach by the superego. Therefore, the symptoms, character and impulse disorders, all represent compromise—different forms of adaptation that the ego tries to achieve through more or less successfully reconciling the different conflicting forces in the mind.

VIII

Post-Freudian Psychoanalysts

Adaptations and changes to Freud’s original theories have led to the development of several schools of psychoanalysis.

A

Carl Jung

An early pupil of Freud, Carl Gustav Jung created the school of analytic psychology. His concept of drives included all forms of creative instinct. He divided the unconscious into personal and collective: the personal unconscious refers to the individual’s experience, the latter, to the experience of that individual’s culture, or even the entire human race. He suggested that, in the collective unconscious there exist archetypes—primordial images of bits of intuitive knowledge or apprehension that are common to all individuals in a given country or historical era. Jung rejected Freud’s distinction between ego and superego, instead describing the persona. In some ways that are similar to the superego, the persona is what an individual presents to others.