Personality: Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behaviour is the result of the interactions among 3 components of the mind: the id, ego, and the superego.

This structural theory of personality places great importance on how conflicts among the parts of the mind shape behaviour and personality. These conflicts are mainly unconscious.

According to Freud, personality develops during childhood and is critically shaped through a series of 5 psychosexual stages

During each stage, a child is presented with a conflict between biological drives and social expectations; successful navigation of these internal conflicts will lead to mastery of each developmental stage, and ultimately to a fully mature personality

According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among what he proposed as the 3 fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego and superego.

Conflicts among these 3 structures, and our efforts to find balance among what each of them desires, determines how we behave and appraoch the world. What balance we strike in any given situation determines how we will resolve the conflict between 2 overarching behavioural tendencies: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives (the id) vs. our socialised internal control over those drives (superego and ego)

The id is the most primitive of the 3 structures. It's concerned with immediate gratification, and operates entirely on the unconscious level. For example, if the id walked past a stranger eating a chocolate bar, it would take the chocolate bar for itself. It doesn't know or care that it's not right to take other people's things; all it is concerned with is its own desire for the candy.

The superego is concerned with social rules and morals, and could be called the conscience, or one's "moral compass". It begins to develop as a child learns what is right and wrong in their culture. The superego would say it is wrong to take a stranger's chocolate.

The ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. It is partly conscious and partly unconscious. Freud considered the ego to be the "self", and the role of it is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the practical context of reality. In the candy situation, it would mediate "i want the chocolate right now" and "it's wrong to take the chocolate", and the conflict could be resolved by going to by your own chocolate bar.

Freud believed that the nature of the conflicts between the id, ego and supergo change over time as a person grows from child to adult. Specifically, he maintained that these conflicts progress through a series of 5 basic stages, each with a different focus: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. He called the theory the psychosexual theory of development, with each psychosexual stage directly related to a different physical centre of pleasure

Across the 5 stages, the child is presented with different conflicts between their biological drives (id) and their social and moral conscience (superego) because their biological pleasure-seeking urges focus on different areas of the body.

The child's ability to resolve these internal conflicts determines their future ability to cope and function as an adult. Failure to resolve a stage can lead to one being fixated in that stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits. For example, someone stuck in the anal stage may be excessively neat and tidy. Successful resolution of the stages leads to a healthy adult, and a healthy personality.

It is argued that Freud's theories are narrowly focused. In his singular emphasis on the structure of the human mind, Freud paid little to no attention to the impact of environment, sociology, or culture. His theories were highly focused on pathology, and largely ignored normal or healthy functioning. He has also been criticised for his myopic view of human sexuality to the exclusion of other important factors.

Freud's theories have no scientific basis; they are not supported by any empirical data. In order for a theory to be scientifically valid, it must be possible to disprove (falsify) it with experimental evidence, and many of Freud's notions aren't falsifiable. When tested, results do not support hypotheses; attempts to link adult personality to psychosexual events in childhood have generally failed. As well as this, his sample was very small and biased - it contained upper middle class neurotic adults in Victorian Vienna.

Feminists and modern critics have been particularly critical of how male-dominated, anti-feminist, and misogynistic his theories are, e.g penis envy.