Assignment on

Psychoanalysis
Theory
 Introduction to Psychology (PSY101)

Section- 02

Spring2019

Submitted to:

Safina Binte Enayet

Psychosocial Counselor and Lecturer, Counseling Unit

BRAC University

Submitted by:

Munira Tanzim - 15304010

Afia Anjum Preety - 15301046

Saiyara Mahzarin - 15105024

Md. Rakib Uddin - 17101254

Date of submission: 18th March, 2019

BRAC University
 In my kindergarten’s sports day, our class teachers always used to choose the
prettiest girl in the section to represent in front of the chief guest. No amount of academic
success like being class captain consecutively, cultural achievements have not lead me to
represent my section ever. Since then I started believing I’m not beautiful enough. No
matter how much my beloved persons complement me - I won’t believe them but if
someone tells something negative, I’ll definitely grasp it. By analyzing such situations,
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology has founded Psychoanalytic theory.

Psychoanalysis says that things that happen to people during

childhood can contribute to the way they later function as adults.
Because the unconscious mind of a person is a reservoir of
feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of person’s
consciousness.

More examples of psychoanalytic theory include:

 Kids brought up in broken families or forcefully had to live somewhere else away
from their parents due to circumstances may suffer from trust issues at adult ages.
 The violent behavior of criminals is often reflecting the way they have seen their
beloved person to be treated violently in childhood.
 Women who have been sexually harassed in any stage of their lives may panic
even if some else touches them with pure intensions.

Freud believed that the mind is made of following three stages:

The conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of
which we are aware. This also includes our memory, which is not always part of
consciousness but can be retrieved easily and brought into awareness.

The preconscious consists of anything that could potentially be brought into the
conscious mind.
The unconscious is the part of the mind of which a person is not aware. Most of the
contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain,
anxiety, or conflict.

Freud compared the three stages of mind to an iceberg. The top of the iceberg that you
can see above the water represents the conscious mind. The part of the iceberg that is
submerged below the water but is still visible is the preconscious. The bulk of the
iceberg that lies unseen beneath the waterline represents the unconscious.

Psychoanalysis proposes that the human psyche the mind that is comprised of three parts

- ID

- EGO

- SUPEREGO
ID:
Your little sibling has done a minor mistake, but you end up shouting at her disgracefully.
You have done a very negligible error however your boss left no stone unturned to insult
you abruptly. Have you ever thought what kind of system might be responsible for
driving people’s minds in such a way that they end up behaving like that? Perhaps,
according to Freud, it is the most inborn and initial part of the mind, that consists of
sexual and aggressive drive, unconscious memories which is known as “Id”. Id is the part
of the personality which influences a person to behave in a way based on the most basic
urges without thinking about the consequences. Moreover, it is the only part of the
personality that is present since our birth. This very aspect of the personality drives on the
“pleasure principle” seeking to attain immediate gratification. In other words, if we can
satisfy the demand of id, we gain instant pleasure and if we fail to meet it’s demand, we
experience tension. In the above examples, without thinking about any outcomes, you
end up shouting at your sibling following your instinct and so did your boss. Later you or
your boss might have regretted about the matter, however, on the spot, it was pure
pleasure that was attained. Reality, logic or our day to day lives do not alter id. It remains
infantile throughout the life.

EGO:
Ego essentially the judge, it hears both sides, makes sense of all the information and
gives a final decision about how we should behave. Ego operates on the reality principle.
It mainly focuses on the reality and then tries
to satisfy the id’s desire in a realistic way that
eventually bring pleasure. Ego works in
between id and superego, balances both of its
activities. For an example, the ego
personality allows you to sleep extra five
minutes in the morning whereas your
superego doesn’t because that may make you late for your morning classes, id personality
doesn’t think about anything and just sleeps more. It is said that, more or less our
personality is developed in the childhood. Those of us were free of doing anything at a
certain limit in the childhood, we have ego personality structure in us. Those of us always
analyzes the reality and then takes action according to that, which is addressed as delayed
gratification. Like, a child wants a ball to play but he doesn’t have money to buy the ball
right now. The ego will say that let’s go to home and ask for money from parents and
then buy the ball whereas id and superego says something else.

SUPEREGO:
Superego, in the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, is the final component of the
three agencies (with id and ego) of the human personality. The superego is the ethical
component of the personality and provides the moral standards by which the ego
operates. The superego’s criticisms, prohibitions, and inhibitions form a person’s
conscience, and its positive aspirations and ideals represent one’s idealized self-image, or
“ego ideal.” For example, Sakib knew he could steal blank A4 papers from the BRACU
OCA office and no one would know about it. However, he knew that stealing was wrong,
so he decided not to take them even though he would probably never get caught. Here,
Sakib’s impulse of stealing A4 papers was suppressed by his moral judgements aka his
‘superego’. The superego develops around the age of 3–5 during the ‘phallic stage’ of
psychosexual development in response to parental punishment and approval. This
development occurs as a result of the child’s internalization of his parents’ moral
standards, a process greatly aided by a tendency to identify with the parents. The
developing superego absorbs the traditions of the family and the surrounding society and
serves to control aggressive or other socially unacceptable impulses. Violation of the
superego’s standards results in feelings of guilt or anxiety and a need to atone for one’s
actions. The superego continues to develop into young adulthood as a person encounters
other admired role models and copes with the rules and regulations of the larger society.