Understanding The Most Conceptually Rich Personality Perspective, Psychodynamic

BlogPostImage
Image Source

Of all the classical perspectives on personality, the psychoanalytic is maybe the most conceptually rich but then the most widely misunderstood. Sigmund Freud pulled in to science influenced by Darwin, he settled on a medical career and invested a period of time involved in pure study. Eventually, practical necessity intervened, and Freud started a more applied course, specializing in neurology and psychiatry.

In 1885, he made a trip to France and witnessed Jean Charcot cure a case of hysterical paralysis using hypnosis. Since the psychiatric medications of the times were highly ineffective, Freud was impressed and started to experiment with the technique all alone, eventually developing the foundational ideas of psychoanalysis.

Foundational Ideas of Psychoanalysis

Topographic Model
Structural Model

The Topographic Model

By the early 1890s, Freud and his friend Josef Breuer had started to investigate the utilization of hypnosis together. Breuer had officially discovered that when subjects with hysterical symptoms discussed their issues during a hypnotic state, they regularly experienced a feeling of catharsis, or emotional discharge. Eventually, the two formed the theory that hysterical symptoms came about because of early sexual molestation, leaving memories so distressing that they were intentionally overlooked and must be completely recollected under hypnosis.

BlogPostImage
Image Source

Afterward, Freud discovered that when these memories were totally recalled to consciousness in an emotional discharge, the symptoms disappeared. This turned into Freud's first theory of neuroses, the idea that behind each neurotic conflict lies an overlooked childhood trauma. Such memories are said to be quelled. Motivated to overlook what it knows, the mind protects against the painful experiences by actively excluding them from conscious awareness. The past can't be rewritten, however its impact can be contained.

Truth be told, massive repression is one of the significant coping strategies utilized by the histrionic personality, the contemporary parallel to the turn-of-the-century hysterical syndromes through which the basic principles of psychoanalysis were discovered.

Freud expounded his insights into what is known as the topographic model, the idea that the mind has an organization or architecture that floods consciousness and can be described as far as different levels. At the foundation lies the unconscious, a mysterious domain consisting of everything that we can't wind up noticeably mindful of by simple reflection alone. According to classical psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious is the main part of the mind that exists at birth. Simply over the unconscious lies the preconscious, which consists of everything that can be summoned to consciousness on order, for instance, your telephone number.

Lastly, there is the part of the mind that forms our waking lives, which we call conscious awareness. According to Freud, the desire to bring satisfaction to our unconscious instincts continues to be the main motivator in human behavior for the duration of the life traverse. By declaring the unconscious and its drives to be the origin and focal point of psychological existence, Freud affected a Copernican revolution against the Enlightenment rationalism that dominated the times.

Behavior was not fundamentally rational, it was irrational. Similarly as the earth is not the focal point of the universe, conscious awareness is yet a backwater that disguises the main streams of mental life. Consequently, the idea of making the unconscious conscious, the objective Freud and Breuer had in mind with hypnosis, is a noteworthy objective of numerous contemporary psychotherapies.

BlogPostImage
Image Source

The Structural Model

Despite his original enthusiasm for hypnosis, Freud built up additional techniques that allowed him to map the substance of the unconscious, for example, free association. In doing along these lines, he discovered an additional organizing principle, the structural model of ego, id, and superego. The id consists of the basic survival instincts and the two dominant drives of personality: sex and aggression. At birth, infant behavior is motivated by the desire for immediate instinctual gratification, which Freud alluded to as the pleasure principle: I want what I want, and I want it now! The id is like a dictator that knows just how to more than once declare its own desires, something that makes the world an extremely frustrating place.

To relieve this frustration and guarantee more noteworthy adaptability in the organism, a second part of the personality, the ego, creates to mediate between the requests of the id and the constraints of external reality. Though the id is fundamentally irrational, the ego is fundamentally rational and planful, operating on the reality principle. To be effective, the ego must perform sophisticated intellectual activities, for example, risk-benefit and means-closes analysis, projecting the results of various courses of action into the future, judging the scope of possible results and their respective cost and reward, all the while modifying plans and embracing alternatives as fundamental.

Only one out of every odd course of action that the ego might imagine is satisfactory. Eventually, a third part of the personality rises that internalizes the social values of caretakers, the superego. The procedure by which the superego forms is called introjection, which literally signifies "a putting inside." The superego consists of two parts, the conscience and the ego ideal: what you shouldn't do and what you ought to do and ought to turn into.

The conscience is worried about the morality principle, the right and wrong of behavior. Conversely, the ego ideal pulls each of us toward the realization of our unique human potentials. Breaking moral codes brings about feelings of guilt, satisfying the ego ideal outcomes in feelings of pride and sense of pride.

BlogPostImage
Image Source

For Freud, personality is viewed as a war of attrition battled by three generals. As the executive branch of the personality, the ego must adjust and mediate between constraints on all sides. The id, upwelling from below, is continually percolating, yearning for gratification. The prohibitions of the superego keep its desires from being directly satisfied. Thus, the psychoanalytic perspective is frequently viewed as intrinsically pessimistic: Human beings are said to exist in a state of ceaseless conflict between the needs and constraints of various parts of the personality. We can continue, however we can't get away.

A large number of the personality disorders are in precisely this situation. Avoidant personalities, for instance, profoundly desire close connectedness to others, yet additionally feel a feeling of disgrace about themselves so significant that not very many such relationships are possible. Instead, avoidants withdraw into a shell where they can in any event be distant from everyone else with their humiliating defects and deficiencies. Compulsive and negativistic personalities grapple with issues identified with the obedience versus defiance of authority.

Compulsives express this conflict passively by overconforming to internalized superego requests, at first glance, they seem normal and in control, yet underneath, they are tight, anxious, and ever circumspect of their own direct. Conversely, the negativistic personality, formerly called the passive-aggressive, communicates conflict actively by vacillating amongst loyalty and insubordinate damage. Knowing the results that others look for, they work unobtrusively within the system to bring the plans of others to ruin or if nothing else cause them incredible frustration.

Just a subset of the antisocial personality, the psychopath, escapes conflict. Given their hindered superego improvement, psychopaths have no compelling reason to assess their actions according to some standard of right or wrong, instead, their ego is free to choose any pathway to gratification that appears to be realistically possible, regardless of the possibility that it includes deceitfulness, misconduct, or irreparable harm to the lives of others. Accordingly, they stop just when selfconscious of the raw punishment society might inflict on them on account of their transgressions.

BlogPostImage
Image Source