Sigmund Freud: Defense Mechanisms

Pioneered by neurologist Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalysis is a method of psychological therapy in which “the talking cure” (having cathartic release through emotion in words). Major contributions of Freud include free association (freely talking about what ever comes to mind), dream interpretation (what the underlying meaning of dreams is), psychosexual stages, the unconscious (what we are not aware of), defense mechanisms, psychic structures (i.e. id, ego, and superego).

According to Freud, humans have three main components to their personality. The id, ego, and superego cause us to behave the way we do and make us who we are. The id ego and superego are like an iceberg; the ego sits at the top of the iceberg half in the conscious and half in the preconscious. The superego is barely conscious and mostly preconscious and the id is completely unconscious.

The first component is the Id. The id is guided by the pleasure principal and is the part of the human personality that is made up of inborn biological urges. The id seeks immediate gratification; it wants everything and it wants it now. The Id is like a new born baby; when it is hungry it wants to be fed that second; when it needs to be changed, it screams until it gets changed right away.

The Ego is the part of personality that helps us deal with reality by having the ego mediate between the id and the superego. The ego prevents us from acting on every urge we have (produced by the id) and being so morally driven that we can't function properly. The ego works according to the reality principle which helps us direct our unacceptable sexual and aggressive urges to more acceptable targets. The ego is like a person with a devil and an angel sitting on their shoulder. The id is telling that he is hungry and should steal the pizza from the guy sitting next to him. The superego is telling the ego that stealing is wrong and that he should starve to death before committing a sin. The ego has to deal with both urges from the id and superego and possibly decide to delay immediate gratification to the id and somewhat please the superego by traveling to a restaurant and purchasing a piece of pizza.

The Superego acts as our moral guide and mediates between the id and the ego. The superego contains the conscience, which makes us feel guilty for doing or thinking something wrong and good when we do something right. It tells us that we feel good when we hold a door open for a lady at Harper that has a back pack that rolls and that it is bad to kick it over as revenge when it almost trips us!

Freud believed there to be five stages of Psychosexual Development: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent and Genital. At each of these stages, pleasure is focused on a particular part of the body.

First, The Oral Stage is the psychosexual stage of development where pleasure is centered in and around the mouth. The oral stage is the initial stage of development. This stage is when infants will be found putting anything into their mouth including toys and thumbs. Next, The Anal Stage is one of the stages in Freud’s psychosexual theory of development, which occurs in the second year of life. During this stage, the anus becomes the focus of sexual gratification. This occurs because the child finds sexual pleasure in the sensations that come with having or withholding bowel movements. Then, The Phallic Stage of development is where pleasure is centered around the genital region. The third stage of development and usually is between ages three and seven. It is this stage where the child learns that there is a difference between girls and boys. Then, The Latency Stage is the fourth stage and it occurs from about age five or six until puberty. During The Latency Stage, a child's sexual impulses are repressed. The reason for this is that during the stage before latency (phallic stage) the child resolves the Oedipus or Electra Complex which are such traumatic events that the child then repress all of his or her sexual impulses. Interestingly, because this stage contains little or no psychosexual development. And lastly, The Genital Stage is the final stage in Freud's theory of psychosexual development and begins in puberty. During this stage, the teenager has overcome latency, made associations with one gender or the other, and now seeks out pleasure through sexual contact with others. The sexual contact is now focused on the opposite sex of similar age; the pleasure is now through actual physical stimulation of the genitals by the opposite sex. Too much or too little pleasure in any one of these stages caused a fixation which would lead to personality or psychological disorders.
When anxiety materializes, the mind first behaves by a surge in problem-solving thinking, searching for rational ways of eluding the situation. When / if this is not
beneficial, an assortment of Defense Mechanisms may be triggered.

Displacement whereby the mind redirects affect from an object felt to be dangerous to an object felt to be safe. For instance, if my boss yells at me at work, I will not punch him…instead I will displace my anger into something less dangerous like kicking my dog Zoey or punching a pillow.

Projection is one of the defense mechanisms identified by Freud and still acknowledged today. According to Freud, projection is when someone is threatened by or afraid of their own impulses so they attribute these impulses to someone else. Great example: my boyfriend Daniel is laziest person I know. He waits until the day before an exam to start studying, he scrambles at the last minute to get his homework done for Western History, and he is so unorganized, that even if he does complete his homework, he is lucky to find it and hand it in on time. Now, Daniel is not as bad as I am at procrastinating and organization but I always point out his flaws instead of my own.

Rationalization is a defense mechanism identified by Freud. According to Freud when people are not able to deal with the reasons they behave in particular ways, they protect themselves by creating self-justifying explanations for their behaviors. For instance, I know I forgot to call Sadie, but I only didn’t call because I thought she didn’t want me too…that is why I forgot.

Reaction Formation A defense mechanism where an individual acts in a manner opposite from his or her unconscious beliefs. If I was raised believing that homosexuality is wrong and one day I am walking and considering what it would be like to be homosexual I would find it repulsive and believe that gays should be shot.

Regression is another one of the defense mechanisms identified by Freud. According to Freud there are times when people are faced with situations that are so anxiety provoking that they can't deal with it and they protect themselves by retreating to an earlier stage of development. For example, if I am told by my mom to clean my room and I have had a bad day at school and I feel cleaning my room will evoke anxiety because I might stumble across more homework that I haven’t done even though I know I am behind in my work…I regress to how I behaved when I was little and told to clean my room like having a tantrum or throwing my remote against the wall.
Repression is when memories, impulses, desires, and thoughts that are too difficult or unacceptable to deal with are unconsciously excluding them from our consciousness. If a child was sexually molested by her grandfather, the thought might be too much for her mind to handle at this point in her life, so the situation and memories are repressed into a part of the mind that is not accessible until she is at a point in her life that is stable and she is mature enough to handle the repressed memories.