Personality Case

Introdution

As we all know, Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic approach to psychology. Many of Freud's observations and theories were based on clinical cases and case studies, though this making the findings difficult to generalize to a larger population. Regardless, Freud's theories still influenced how we think about the human mind and behavior and left a lasting mark on psychology and culture.

In my point of view, most interesting about the Freud's theories is the functions of "defense mechanisms" and why it was developed to protect person from anxious feelings. Am I always using these mechanisms when facing some situation? Is it useful? For normal people, the anxiety plays a very important role. It is a warning in making people alert to the upcoming imminent danger, and allowing people to assess whether they have the ability to deal with this threat. However, according to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid, it acts as a signal to the "ego" that things are not going right (Edelson, 1988).

Thus, in this review paper, I will try to have a brief explanation of psychoanalytic theories and focus on talking about "defense mechanisms", trying to discover more about the types of defenses and how they work to protect the ego in a person's life. In the final part of the paper, I will try to have a critical review towards the theories of "defense mechanisms".

Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality

Freud's theory of personality can be divided into two parts: 1).The personality of the internal structure, and 2).The development of personality in individuals.

Personality structure says that the manifestation of personality is the result of the interaction of the internal psychological motivations. We are supposed cannot aware of this interaction process, it is unconscious and preconscious. Freud believed that the personality structures are three mental systems, the id, ego and superego. These three components are constantly mutual influence. When one of the components got changes, it will inevitably lead to the change of the other parts, in order to constitute the whole personality. However, when this balance situations was being destroyed, the mental illness or psychopathic will be caused.

Structural model of the mind

Level of conscious

According to Freud's early theory (The General Psychology historians called Freud's 1905 to 1913 systems perspective as the early theory), he firstly belief of the unconscious processes. He believes that human psychology can be divided into two parts: "Conscious" and "unconscious". Consciousness included the part of individual consciousness and preconscious. Conscious means the part of the mind comprising psychic material of which the individual is aware. Preconscious mind is something that cannot be aware now, but can recall when paying attention on it. The unconscious mind means the part that under one's conscious level. It includes the instinct impulse and some motives and desires that had been repressed after birth. According to Freud, the unconscious mental contents are socially unacceptable and traumatic, they are the disturbing thoughts including traumatic memory, sexual desires and anger and these thoughts are inducing anxiety. He also believed that, even a normal slip of the tongue, slip of the pen, and accidental events are also caused by some kind of hidden desire. Freud also stressed the importance of the subconscious part; he thought that the conscious part is only appendage in the whole psycho-life of the people.

Freud conceived of a censor between the unconscious and the preconscious systems that was capable of holding back unconscious mental activity through repression. Tonnesmann (2005) mentioned Freud's view that, only if the censor allowed thought processes to pass could they become potentially conscious by being recorded in the preconscious area.

The id, ego, and superego

In 1923, Freud introduced one more assumption to make his theory more comprehensive, he believed that the human mind was composed of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego:

Id: It is the unconscious reservoir of the libido, which is driven by the pleasure principle,

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