In_the_Middle_of_No_Where

Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Understanding how the human mind works is one complex job, understanding why one act a certain way, how one act, and the process that goes through one person’s mind before, during and after. Quoting the famous saying, “There is more than what meets the eye”, which explains sometimes what we see people do, is a result of what went on inside their mind that is beyond their conscious awareness. The forefather of Psychologists, Sigmund Freud, defined and developed the Psychoanalytic theory of personality which consisted of three component elements. He believed that people have three levels of awareness, which he believed are unconscious. They are the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. And from this emerges, Freud broke the human personality into three components: Id, Ego, and Superego. Each component explains how it affects a person’s personality and behavior. The Id, operates according to the pleasure principle which is present at birth. It’s impulses toward survival, sex and aggressions, in another words, operates as a wild animal. The Id can be irrational and illogical. The Ego uses rational and realistic thoughts that operates in reality and which plays a role in preventing the Id from inappropriate impulses. The Superego, operates at all level of awareness, it serves as the moral referee for Id and Ego. It convinces the Id and Ego to work more towards moral aspects than realistic and desires. These three components are always in constant conflict especially when it came to sexual urges and anything that violates the rules of the society. If you think about it, it make sense. Although Sigmund Freud defined and developed the psychoanalysis theory, psychologist Jung and Adler also developed personality theories similar to Freud’s. During these theories, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, used Freud’s theory as their guidelines to expand the psychoanalysis dynamics of personality. Adler focused on the individual psychology while Jung focused on Analytical psychology. Jung believed that other than our thoughts we also port accumulated memories based on our past experiences, he called it collective unconscious. He was interested in an opposite, who also was interested in the concepts of introversion and extraversions. For Jung, he believed that a person can successfully bring the two elements together in a situation. He also proposed the eight personality types and the four psychological functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, and tasting). While Adler, believes in inferiority, that we have little control over our life in childhood. He’s theory discussed the battle of overcoming the feeling of inferiority which in the long term process developed an inferiority complex for a person. Freud, Adler, and Jung contributed theories on heredity that later on used for understanding personality. I personally like the theory of Freud and Jung, I believed that I do possess those introvert and extrovert personalities at times especially when I am around my friends and family. Between the theories, I find that I do not agree with Adler’s theory of inferiority. He believes that the disposition of a child at birth affects his or her status in life and behavior. In my case, I am the oldest and the only girl of the family but I am not superior and I am not spoiled. I find myself that the middle brother seek more attention and far more dependent to the parents than I was. The society has come a long way about disposition, and these days your birth order is not as important as it was long time ago. In Freud’s theory, he also developed and proposed few of the defense mechanisms, he found through the ego. It was described as mediation of the ego. Freud believed that we have ways that we protect ourselves from things that we don’t think about or deal with. The ego according to his studies, learned to cope with the conflicting demands of the id and the superego. When a person finds themselves in a situation where there are conflicts, his/her moral values are challenged and that is people exercise his or her defense mechanisms. There are different defense mechanisms in Freud’s theory that a person deals with in a daily basis of his or her life. When something is not going well in someone’s life, one would experience anxiety. Depending on the situation, a person shows signs of these defenses to protect themselves. Some of the common defense mechanisms that we are familiar with are Repression, Reaction formation, Projection, Denial, Displacement, Sublimation, Regression, and Rationalization. One of the common defense mechanisms that I use or find myself in is displacement. When I am mad at my husband and we argue about things, I would take myself to the gym and go on a treadmill and run for hours, or I would go run on our neighborhood with my ipod on and just run for miles and miles. I would take out my anger on running instead of my husband. Another instance where I have express my defense mechanism in denial was when my cousin who was only 16 years old died from an accident from kayaking, due to the high and strong current, he and his friend got stuck in a cove and drowned. His family was in denial at first because couple of hours before the incident, he was talking to his mother about going out to the sea. I was also in denial because I have not seen him for a long time and when I got back in the island, I spoke to him. So I was still in denial about it. I also find myself rationalizing because when I was applying for an overseas job, and did not get accepted and saw that some of the people I knew back where I used to work who had no experience was accepted, and who did not skills and knowledge about the job was hired. I rationalized it and until to this point I still think of that incident and made me wonder. One thing that I noticed about my girl friend’s husband is when he is upset and he does not accept that he is wrong; he tells his wife that she is stupid or blames her for everything wrong that happened to his life. He is demonstrating projection towards his wife.