Kendra Cherry

The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors.
The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension.
The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality.
The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses.
The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society–our sense of right and wrong.
The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior.
The superego is present in the conscious, preconscious and unconscious.

2 thoughts on “Kendra Cherry

  1. shinichi Post author

    The Id, Ego and Superego

    The Structural Model of Personality

    By Kendra Cherry

    http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm

    According to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality, personality is composed of three elements. These three elements of personality–known as the id, the ego and the superego–work together to create complex human behaviors.

    The Id

    The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors. According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality.

    The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink. The id is very important early in life, because it ensures that an infant’s needs are met. If the infant is hungry or uncomfortable, he or she will cry until the demands of the id are met.

    However, immediately satisfying these needs is not always realistic or even possible. If we were ruled entirely by the pleasure principle, we might find ourselves grabbing things we want out of other people’s hands to satisfy our own cravings. This sort of behavior would be both disruptive and socially unacceptable. According to Freud, the id tries to resolve the tension created by the pleasure principle through the primary process, which involves forming a mental image of the desired object as a way of satisfying the need.

    The Ego

    The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. The ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.

    The ego operates based on the reality principle, which strives to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action before deciding to act upon or abandon impulses. In many cases, the id’s impulses can be satisfied through a process of delayed gratification–the ego will eventually allow the behavior, but only in the appropriate time and place.

    The ego also discharges tension created by unmet impulses through the secondary process, in which the ego tries to find an object in the real world that matches the mental image created by the id’s primary process.

    The Superego

    The last component of personality to develop is the superego. The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society–our sense of right and wrong. The superego provides guidelines for making judgments. According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five.

    There are two parts of the superego:

    The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for good behaviors. These behaviors include those which are approved of by parental and other authority figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value and accomplishment.

    The conscience includes information about things that are viewed as bad by parents and society. These behaviors are often forbidden and lead to bad consequences, punishments or feelings of guilt and remorse.
    The superego acts to perfect and civilize our behavior. It works to suppress all unacceptable urges of the id and struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles. The superego is present in the conscious, preconscious and unconscious.

    The Interaction of the Id, Ego and Superego

    With so many competing forces, it is easy to see how conflict might arise between the id, ego and superego. Freud used the term ego strength to refer to the ego’s ability to function despite these dueling forces. A person with good ego strength is able to effectively manage these pressures, while those with too much or too little ego strength can become too unyielding or too disrupting.

    According to Freud, the key to a healthy personality is a balance between the id, the ego, and the superego.

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  2. shinichi Post author

    Happiness Is Confusing Even Our Smartest Scientists

    by Jag Bhalla

    http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/happiness-is-confusing-even-our-smartest-scientists

    Happiness has gotten confusing. Despite its importance it’s puzzling even our smartest scientists. “Bentham’s bucket error” is to blame, but “Plato’s Pastry” parable and a rare case of reality in Freud can help.

    Daniel Kahneman (the “most important psychologist alive”) has spent a decade on “hedonimetric” experiments which assign “single happiness values” to each moments felt pleasure and pain. His conclusion? “The word happiness does not have a simple meaning and should not be used as if it does. Sometimes scientific progress leaves us more puzzled.” Despite eons of thinking, happiness has become a low-resolution word, unhelpful in seeing key distinctions.

    Happiness got its simpler meaning in the Enlightenment. Before then few considered it mainly a matter of feeling good by maximizing each moments pleasure. But thinkers like Hobbes, Locke and Bentham believed “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure…They govern us in all we do.” Gravitating towards Newton’s successes, they sought equivalent scientific certainties in human affairs. Bentham’s “greatest happiness of the greatest number” principle needed a calculable kind of happiness. So he declared happiness and pleasure and 54 other “synonyms” to all be forms of utility fit for the same calculation bucket. This stew of slippery synonyms is the source of Kahneman’s confusion and science’s “more puzzled” progress.

    Eons earlier Plato wrote: If a pastry baker and a nutritionist had to compete in front of children, or in front of men just as foolish as children… the nutritionist would die of starvation.” The rational mind’s task was to “govern the body” and not always choose to chase pleasures like a child.

    Even Freud understood that pursuing moment-to-moment gratification was unworkable. He said the Pleasure Principle drove the immature Id to react thoughtlessly to pleasure and pain. But the more mature Ego was ruled by the Reality Principle, enabling prioritization and delay of gratifications and the ability to endure necessary discomforts. Enlightenment “happiness” is closer to Id-centric and should become more Ego-centric.

    It’s time we rescued happiness from Bentham’s befuddling bucket (of dubious utility). Biological and rational realities require distinguishing happiness from momentary pleasure.

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