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Read this article to learn about the Structure of Personality: Topographical and Dynamic Aspects of Mind !
The Structure of Personality:
Freud is the first clinical psychologist who attempted to give a scientific classification of the self. He has divided the structure of human personality into:
(a) Topographical aspects of mind.
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(b) Dynamic aspects of mind.
This concept of the development of human personality is based entirely on Freud’s view of human sexuality which is the result of development from birth to maturity. He does not agree that sexuality shows itself only at the time of puberty.
The layman’s conception is that the self or soul is one and remains unchanged after birth. But it is a fact that our personality or the self is not a total whole but has different aspects. In our day to day life the conflict between the two ideas and two forces indicate that the self is not united but divided into different parts. The conflict between actual desire and conscience, the conflict between two attractive goals, the conflict between getting pleasure and social disapproval may serve as examples.
(a) Topographical Aspect of Mind:
Freud has divided the structure of mind into three levels, such as the conscious, the preconscious or the subconscious and the unconscious.
Conscious:
By consciousness Freud meant that segment of the mind which is concerned with immediate awareness. Thus, consciousness may be described as the awareness of any stimulus, any object or any situation, the capacity of having experience or the relation of the self to the environment. It is also defined as the sumtotal of the individual’s experience at any given moment and the capacity of the individual to know external objects and influence them.
Consciousness always refers to the experience or awareness of an object at the present moment. While reading a book one is only aware of what has been written there and he is not aware of the sound coming from the time piece or moving fan.
Similarly, when one is witnessing a football match, he is only aware of the match. Mind, which consists of conscious, subconscious and unconscious aspects deals with the experiences of the whole life while consciousness only deals with the current experiences of which the individual is fully aware.
Freud has compared the human mind to an iceberg and stated that only one-tenth part of the mind deals with conscious experience. According to him most of our activities are usually guided by the unconscious mind.
Subconscious or Preconscious:
As pointed out by Brown (1940) that segment of the mind where the readily recallable is to be located is called by Freud the preconscious or subconscious. Thus, subconscious is a process of which the individual is not aware but which appears otherwise a keen to the process of conscious experience, i.e., deemly or marginally conscious. When a particular object is in the subconscious stage, the individual is not directly or immediately aware of it but it can come to his consciousness at any moment. The subconscious is the storehouse of surface memories and are readily recallable though are not conscious at the moment. The subconscious idea is weak and when it gets some force from the outside, it comes to the conscious part of the mind.
According to this process, we can bring into the consciousness a lot of things such as names, dates, arguments and several past experiences etc.
For instance, someone is reading a book and the time piece is kept in front of him. He is only aware of what he is reading. But when the time piece stops all of a sudden, one becomes immediately aware of it. This so happens because the sound of the time piece was in the margin and the book was in the centre of the reader’s conscious mind.
One who is attending to y of this Figure, is fully aware of y. But he is deemly or marginally conscious of the other letters such as m, a, b, f, z, am’ x. When one letter is taken away the x person is immediately conscious of its absence.
Unconscious:
Freud (1927) has done major work to popularise the term unconscious-ness. So much so that his whole system of psychoanalysis is based on unconscious and repression. Among the three topographical aspects of mind such as conscious, subconscious and unconscious, Freud has given maximum emphasis on the concept of unconscious. So much so that he views that about 9/10 part of the mind is unconscious.
Reviewing the historical background of the unconscious mental process, it is proved that long before Freud, the German philosopher and Mathematician Leibnitz (1816) used the idea of unconscious mental process. In the first quarter of the 19th century Herbart (1816) introduced a dynamic theory of unconscious mental functions.
Fechner, Hartman and Schopenhauer also recognized the importance of unconscious mental process long before Freud. Freud’s theory of unconscious was derived from experience in hypnotism and catharsis.
“The most spectacular phenomenon of amnesia and the restoration of memories, in therapy called for an assumption of a continuum in which memories, loss of memories, regaining of memories could be represented.” (Wolman 1970).
However, it remained for Freud to give a new dimension to the concept of unconscious mental process by predicting its tremendous impact on the development of human personality and its significant role in mental abnormality.
In fact, Freud gave it a new colour, new recognition and made the term unconscious popular as well as important in the world. Freud tried to explore the contents of unconscious mind through hypnosis, psychoanalysis and dream analysis.
He brought into surface the role of unconscious wishes which are dynamic and try all the while to come to the conscious mind. Through free
association and dream analysis techniques he tried to unveil the mystries of unconscious mind which is so much useful for treating mental patients. From various dream analysis, he noticed that all the unconscious wishes and urges of an individual are reflected in his dreams in disguise form and therefore he rightly pointed out that, ‘dream is the royal road to unconscious’.
Thus, Freud by and large has made the concept of unconscious more useful by relating it to his findings as well as to the findings of other psycho pathologists. The discovery of unconscious erazed the view that man is a rational animal which was the great pride of mankind.
It is therefore evident that Sigmund Freud is the first person who focussed the world’s attention on unconscious aspect of mind though it was dealt with other psychologists and philosophers of two decade back.
Brown (1940) has explained the process of unconscious in the following terms… “we all have experienced materials which we cannot recall at will but which may occur to us automatically and which we know is present in our minds through hypnosis and other experimental procedures.”
This segment of the mind is the Freudian unconscious. In it are to be found the ideas as wishes and strivings which were once in the conscious, but which have been forced into the unconscious.
Unconscious may be defined as the characteristics of an activity which occurs with no awareness of it on the part of the organism that executes the activity. It can also be defined as certain dynamic processes which do not reach consciousness inspite of their effectiveness and intensity and which cannot be brought into the consciousness by any effort of will or act of memory.
Analysis of normal activity can reveal what is unconsciousness and how it exists. Running away from a snake apprehending danger is a normal activity. But running away from a spider or a frog or a bunch of hair due to fear are signs of some complexes present in the individual. The underlying causes of such complexes lie in the unconscious and hence the individual is not aware of such causes. Similarly, the cause of crying at the sight of a flower being over shadowed by the idea of pessimism lies deep in the dark chamber of one’s unconscious mind.
A student who was under hypnotism was asked to open an umbrella and he immediately obliged. Next day when he was questioned about it, he could not recall the incident. Again, next day when an umbrella was kept in front of him he immediately ran and opened the same. When he was asked to explain this behaviour he could not give any reasonable explanation as it happened in his unconscious state.
Several day to day incidents along with these examples indicate that unconscious is something of which we are not directly aware.
The importance attached to unconscious in human personality by Freud is well evident when he compared the human mind to an ice berg and opined that 9/10th part of it is unconscious.
The process of unconscious is not static but remarkably dynamic and it always tries to come to the surface. It is extremely powerful and more dynamic than the conscious. The unconscious is just like a balloon on the water which persistently tries to come out the dynamicity of unconsciousness is proved in the psychopathology of everyday life such as careless actions like slip of tongue, common forgetting, slip of pen and inner conflicts. In dream we are mostly in the unconscious stage and sometimes in the subconscious stage.
So the ‘Id’ tries to satisfy many of the repressed and unsatisfied wishes through dreams which all the time remain dynamic in the unconscious and try to came out. It has therefore been rightly remarked that dreams are the royal road to unconsciousness and no dream can be explained without referring to the unconscious state of an individual.
Characteristics of Uconscious:
There are several forces in the society which force back the irrational, elemental, sexual antisocial and animalistic desires to the dark chamber of unconscious. Such desires which never get a chance to be satisfied remain there in a dynamic form.
The unconscious mental process of an individual is full of raw instinctive urges and irrational desires which are not recognized by the reality and the ego and hence not satisfied. The ego tries to suppress or sink below the unconscious desires which are responsible to create all sorts of illness and irregularities in personality.
Freud in this connection remarks “The contents of unconscious come from two sources. A portion consists of primitive pleasure dominated by somewhat brutal ideas that have never been considered. They are part of the individual inheritance.”
The second source consists of thoughts, meanings and wishes that were once conscious (the desire of sex or aggression) but have been repressed or pushed back to the hinterland of mind because they were too shocking, painful and shameful to tolerate in the society.”
The return of these unconscious desires to the conscious is strongly avoided by the ego, but they always try to come out. A student may forget to bring his notebook to the class because in his unconscious state he does not want to show this note book to the teacher.
A person may forget to post a letter containing objectionable elements. This is due to the operation of unconscious state of mind. The unconscious is the storehouse of buried thoughts, emotions, impulses and irrational desires. It is timeless, chaotic, infantile, primitive and illogical. It is full of forces of vigour and dynamics. But in-spite of the force and vigour of unconscious wishes and desires to act, every unconscious activity need not necessarily be conscious.
The antisocial and the ‘Id’ tendencies of the unconscious plot against the ego and try to get pleasure by coming out. The id, which is full of unconscious desires, tries to predominate the ego and hence there is conflict between the id and the ego.
Once the id defeats the ego, there is supreme reign of the unconsciousness and ultimately develops a disorganised personality due to lack of touch with the reality. The more is the unconscious desire, the more is the personality unbalanced. But when there is a balance or compromise between the two, the personality is stable, organised and the individual leads a normal life. On the contrary, if there is no compromise but conflict between the conscious and the unconscious, it results in physical pain and psychological tension.
In the unconscious aspect of mind we find those ideas and wishes which were once conscious but pressed back to the unconscious due to the resistance and restrictions of the society. There are also certain desires in the unconscious which have their origin in the energy of the id and have never been conscious.
Therefore, the best way for the ego to develop a well balanced personality is to throw light on the dark chamber of unconscious, recognize its existence and to make more compromise. Then only, the unconscious urges become powerless. Hence, the unconscious urges must be given some chance to be satisfied which may not do any harm to the society.
Our day to day activity, dream, unconscious urges and repression etc. cannot be explained without the unconscious mind. The manifestations of the mind cannot be understood unless the conscious ego knows some of the unconscious tendencies and urges.
(b) Dynamic Aspects of Mind:
Freud (1927) is the first modern psychologist who made an attempt to give a scientific description of the different parts of human personality. He introduced the three basic divisions of personality into id, ego and superego into his psychoanalytic theory. Freud has managed to make this complex division of personality from the observation of various patients and the analysis of their case histories.
Id, Ego and Superego come under the dynamic aspects of personality. The dynamic aspects of self according to Freud refer to the agents through which conflicts arising in the instincts are resolved. The adult develops ego and superego out of id through conflicts in the earlier periods of life.
Freud maintained that the infant at birth and soon after remains a biological organism and his behaviour is guided by biological needs. In the beginning the child is only guided by the principle of getting pleasure and avoiding pain which is mainly said to be id desires. But gradually ego and superego develop out of id. Thus, the child grows with his ego and superego.
At birth the infant is neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. A child acquires the moral and social principles from the society as he grows up through the process of socialisation and thus developed his ego and superego. The id has been described as the source of psychic energy containing purely unconscious ideas.
Id:
The id, otherwise known as the pleasure principle stands for all the antisocial and immoral wishes, desires, motives and strivings. According to Freud, “the id stands for untamed passions, and is a storehouse of seething excitement.” It acts as a reservoir for libido which refers to the energy of sexual impulses.
The id is completely dominated by the operation of the pleasure principle. Unconscious, sexual and aggressive ideas originate in the id. The id is the representative of the unconscious and the store house of instinctual desires. Such desires are mainly sexual and aggressive in nature and most of them are not satisfied because generally they are antisocial in nature. The id has no idea of time, reality and social restrictions either.
The id which is mostly unconscious always wants to get pleasure and immediate satisfaction by fulfilling the illogical, irrational and antisocial desires. The id is entirely guided by the principle of pleasure and avoidance of pain and corresponds roughly to the popular conception of beast in man.
Further, the id according to Freud is the main reservoir of both the life and death instincts and the receptacle of unorganised excitements and desires. It wants that some of its illogical, irrational and antisocial desires and strivings must be satisfied and there is no question of rejecting it. If such desires and wishes are not accepted by the society, say marrying a girl of another religion or committing the murder of an enemy or killing one’s own dear ones, they do not die or perish, but continue to exist for their gratification.
The desires of the id are mainly unconscious and at the same time largely repressed because repression mostly takes place in the childhood. At birth, the child is totally id and he has no further desire except to get pleasure. Thus, the id is the treasure house of such desires and buried thoughts which are guided by the pleasure principle. It is devoid of morality, conscience and social value.
Ego:
The ego according to Freud (1927) is the self, the I or the conscious intelligence. It is the executive division of personality. It deals with all the psychological processes like thinking, perception, memory, judgement, reasoning and action. It controls the satisfaction of illogical and antisocial desires and strivings by maintaining a balance between the id and the superego desires. The ego in short, means the ‘I’ that thinks, feels, considers, wills and decides.
As the administrative officer of the personality, the ego is mainly conscious and partly unconscious and it can function at any of the three levels of consciousness. It is the only part of the personality which has the closest contact with the physical reality, and external world.
In the earliest stage, the child is totally id and is only interested in getting pleasure. But as the child grows up with the growth of personality the ego develops out of the id. According to William James, the ego is one that develops as a result of environmental influence and stress. It stands for sanity, reason and judgement in opposition to the sexual libido even though it arose as a differentiation from the original sensual mass. Kempt views that it is a socialised portion of the personality.
In the earlier stage of development, the ego desires are but slightly different from those of the id. But as the development proceeds, the id and the ego go in opposite directions. The ego permits the satisfaction of only those desires and urges which are not antisocial but are consistent with the knowledge of the physical and social reality. It makes an adjustment between the wishes of the id and the demands of the physical reality and establishes a balance between the environment and the organism.
The ego thus distinguishes between rights and wrongs, dos and donts and tries to satisfy the id desires as far as practicable. It is said while the ego stands for reason, the id stands for passion.
The ego perceives the existence of outside reality and is only a part of the id which becomes modified because of its proximity to the external world. Thus, it tries to bring a harmony between id and super ego desires being the mediator. It is therefore viewed that the ego stands for reason and circumspection while the id stands for untrained passions.