SIGMUND FREUD

STAGES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

So the id exists at birth, but the other two parts of the personality develop later - how much later? when is personality finished?

For Freud, the three parts of the personality develop in a series of stages. Because he focused heavily on the sex drive, he believed that the stages were determined by the developing sexuality of the child. At each stage, a different erogenous zone, or area of the body that produces pleasurable feelings, becomes important and can become the source of conflicts. Conflicts that are not fully resolved can result in fixation, or getting "stuck" to some degree in a stage of development. The child may grow into an adult but will still carry emotional and psychological "baggage" from the earlier fixated stage.

Because the personality, or psyche, develop as a result of sexual development, Freud called these the psychosexual stages of personality development.

ORAL STAGE: Weaning and Oral Fixation

The first stage is called the ORAL STAGE because the erogenous zone is the mouth. This stage occurs from the birth of the infant to about 1 or 1 1/2 years and is dominated by the id. The conflict that can arise here, according to Freud, will be over weaning (taking the mother's breast away from the child, who will now drink from a cup). Weaning that occurs too soon or too late can result in too little or too much satisfaction of the child's oral needs, resulting in the activities and personality traits associated  with an orally fixated adult personality:overeating, drinking too much, chain smocking, talking too much, nail biting, gum chewing, and a tendency to be either too dependent and optimistic (when the oral needs are overindulged) or too aggressive and pessimistic (when the oral needs are under indulged).

SIGMUND FREUD

ID, EGO, SUPEREGO


ID : If It Feels Good, Do It

The first and most primitive part of the personality, present in the infant, is the id. Id is a Latin word that means "it". The id is a completely unconscious, pleasure-seeking, amoral part of the personality that exists at birth, containing all of the basic biological drives: hunger, thirst, self-preservation, and sex, for example.

By "sex drive" he really meant  "pleasure drive," the need to seek out pleasurable sensations. People do seem to be pleasure-seeking creatures, and even infants seek pleasure from sucking and chewing on anything they can get into their mouths. In fact, thinking about what infants are like when they are just born provides a good picture of the id. Infants are demanding, irrational, illogical,and impulsive. They want their needs satisfied immediately, and they don't care about anyone else's needs or desires.

EGO: The Executive Director

People normally try to satisfy an infant's needs as quickly as possible. Infants are fed when hungry, changed when wet, and tended to whenever they cry. but as infants begin to grow, adults start denying them their every wish. there will be things they cannot touch or hold, and they must learn to wait for certain things, such as food. Freud would say that reality has reared its ugly head, and the id simply cannot deal with the reality of having to wait or not getting what it wants. Worse still would be the possibility of punishment as a result of the id's unrestrained actions.

According to Freud, to deal with reality, a second part of the personality develops called the ego. The ego, from the Latin word for "I", is mostly conscious and is far more rational, logical, and cunning than the id. The  ego works on the reality principle, which is the need to satisfy the demands of the id only in ways that will not lead to negative consequences. This means that sometimes the ego decides to deny the id its desires because the consequences would be painful or too unpleasant.

For example, while an infant might reach out and take an object despite a parent's protests, a toddler with the developing ego will avoid taking the object when the parents says. "No!" to avoid punishment- but may go back for the object when the parent is not looking. A simpler way of stating the reality principle, then, is "if it feels good, do it, but only if you can get away with it."

SUPEREGO: The Moral Watchdog

If everyone acted on the pleasure principle, the world would be pretty scary. How does knowing right from wrong come into Freud's theory? Freud called the third and final part of the personality, the moral center of personality, the superego. The superego (also Latin meaning "over the self") develops as a preschool-aged child learns the rules, customs, and expectations of society. The super ego contains the conscience, the part of personality that makes people feel pride when they do the right thing and guilt, or moral anxiety, when they do the wrong thing. It is not until the conscience develops that children have a sense of wright and wrong. 

SIGMUND FREUD

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Freud believed that the mind was divided into three parts: THE PRECONSCIOUS, CONSCIOUS, and UNCONSCIOUS MINDS (Freud,1904). While no one really disagreed with the idea of a conscious mind in which one's current awareness exist, or even of a preconscious mind containing memories, information, and events of which one can easily become aware, the unconscious mind (also called "the unconscious") was the real departure for professionals of Freud's day. Freud theorized that there is a part of the mind that remains hidden at all times, surfacing only in symbolic form in dreams and in some of the behavior people engage in without knowing why they have done so. Even when a person makes a determined effort to bring a memory out of the unconscious mind, it will not appear directly, according to Freud. Freud believed that the unconscious mind was the most important determining factor in human behavior and personality.

This iceberg represents the three levels of the mind. The part of the iceberg visible above the surface is the conscious mind. Just below the surface is the preconscious mind, everything that is not yet part of the conscious mind. Hidden deep below the surface is the unconscious mind, feelings, memories, thought, and urges that cannot be easily brought into consciousness. While two of the three parts of the personality (ego and superego) exist at all three levels of awareness, the id is completely in the unconscious mind.

THE DIVISIONS OF THE PERSONALITY

Freud believed, based on observations of his patients, that personality itself could be divided into three parts, each existing at one or more levels of conscious awareness. The way these three parts of the personality develop and interact with one another became the heart of his theory.

SIGMUND FREUD

The Man and The Couch : SIGMUND FREUD and THE PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

FREUD'S CULTURAL BACKGROUND

It's hard to understand how Freud developed his ideas about personality without knowledge of the world in which he and his patients lived. Born in the Austro Hungarian Empire in 1856, Freud's family moved to Vienna when he was only 4 years old. He lived there until 1938, when Germany occupied Austria, and Freud, of Jewish background, moved to England to escape the Nazis. During this time period, Europe was in what commonly known as the Victorian Age, named for Queen Victoria of Great Britain. The Victorian Age, was a time of sexual repression. People growing up in this period were told by their church that sex should take place only in the context of marriage and then only to make babies. To enjoy sexual intercourse was considered a sin.

Men were understood to be unable to control their 'animal' desires at times, and a good Victorian husband would father several children with his wife and then turn to a mistress for sexual comfort, leaving his virtuous wife untouched. Women, especially those of the upper classes, were not supposed to have sexual urges. It is no wonder that many of Freud's patients were wealthy women with problems stemming from unfulfilled sexual desires or sexual repression. Freud "obsession" with sexual explanations for abnormal behavior seems more understandable in light of his cultural background and that of his patients.

Freud came to believe that there were layers of consciousness in the mind. His belief in the influences of the unconscious mind on conscious behavior.   

Theories of Personality

WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

Personality is the unique way in which each individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life. Personality should not be confused with character, which refers to value judgments made about a person's morals or ethical behavior; nor should it be confused with temperament, the enduring characteristics with which each person is born, such as irritability or adaptability. Temperament is based in one's biology, either through genetic influences, prenatal influences, or a combination of those influences, and forms the basis upon which one's larger personality is built. Both character and temperament are vital parts of personality, however.

Personality is an area of the still relatively young field of psychology in which there are several ways in which the characteristic behavior of human beings can be explained. One reason that there is not yet one single explanation of personality that all can agree on is that personality is still difficult to measure precisely and scientifically. At present, there are four main perspectives, or viewpoints, in personality theory:

• The psychodynamic perspective had its beginnings in the work of Sigmund Freud and still exists today. It focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality. This perspective is also heavily focused on biological causes of personality differences.
• The behaviorist perspective is based on the theories of learning. This approach focuses on the effect of the environment on behavior.
• The humanistic perspective first arose as a reaction against the psychoanalytic and behaviorist perspectives and focuses on the role of each person's conscious life experiences and choices in personality development.
• The trait perspective differs from the other three in its basic goals : The psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and humanistic perspectives all seek to explain the process that causes personality to form into its unique characteristics, where as trait theories are more concerned with the end result- the characteristics themselves. Although some trait theorist assume that traits are biologically determined, others make no assumption.

Why Study Personality???

Personality is the sum total of who you are- your attitudes and reactions, both physical and emotional. It's what makes each person different from every other person in the world. How can any study of human behavior not include the study of who we are and how we got to be that way???

THIS IS WHY WE STUDY PERSONALITY..!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to personally thank :

Our classmates for the Theories of Personality class, for their patience and loving support throughout this assignment.

Our lecturer Assoc Pro Dr Ssekamanya Siraje Abdallah, for his support, advice, and for being such a great lecturer and for his enthusiasm and guidance.

Everyone who has worked so hard on updating and revising all the theories, notes about the theories of personality.

MUHAMMAD SYAHMI BIN MOHD JAMIL 1017433

NORHANANI BT YAAKUP 1018752

SHARIFAH MAIMUNAH BT SYED ZAID 1010094

NORHAYATI PAWANTEH  1013068