Question

Freud maintained that personality develops in a series of psychosexual stages. Name each of the stages in the order in which it appears and explain how a fixation at each stage might be manifest in an individual's personality.

Answer 1

Personality is defined as an individual's unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Sigmund Frud, who is an Austrian neurologist founded the psychoanalysis. He emphasized the role of unconscious determinants of behavior and early childhood experiences in the development of personality and psychological problems. The key ideas of his theory includes the id, ego, and superego. They are explaine das follows:

ID:

• In Freud's theory, the completely unconscious, irrational component of personality that seeks immediate satisfaction of instinctual urges and drives;
• ruled by the pleasure principle
• It is the most primitive part of the personality, is entirely unconscious and present at birth.
• It is completely immune to logic, values, morality, danger, and the demands of the external world.

Ego:

• In Freud's theory, the partly conscious rational component of personality that regulates thoughts and behavior, and is most in touch with the demands of the external world
• It is partly conscious, the ego represents the organized, rational, and planning dimensions of personality.
• The ego is the pragmatic part of the personality that learns various compromises to reduce the tension of the id's instinctual urges.
• If the ego can't identify an acceptable compromise to satisfy an instinctual urge, such as a sexual urge, it can repress the impulse, or remove it from conscious awareness
• In early childhood, the ego must deal with external parental demands and limitations. Implicit in those demands are the parents' values and morals, their ideas of the right and wrong ways to think, act, and feel. Eventually, the child encounters other advocates of society's values, such as teachers and religious and legal authorities. Gradually, these social values move from being externally imposed demands to being internalized rules and values.

Superego:

• In Freud's theory, the partly conscious, self-evaluative, moralistic component of personality that is formed through the internalization of parental and societal rules
• By about age 5 or 6, the young child has developed an internal, parental voice that is partly conscious, which is the superego.
• The superego evaluates the acceptability of behavior and thoughts, then praises or admonishes.