Freud's Personality Theory

What is commonly referred to as the structural hypothesis belongs to Freud's formulation of a theory of personality that constructs it out of three principal and one ancillary component: the ego, superego, and id, plus the libido. Freud defines each component operationally. That is, he explains how each component functions to build the individual personality not only intrinsically but also in relation to other individual personalities in the external world. That world, in turn, may be formulated as configured as society, family, or culture. To that extent, Freud's theory of personality can be considered psychosocial, not merely psychological.

Freud, trained as a physician, first articulated his personality theory as an outgrowth of his clinical practice as a neuropsychologist, with many of his patients being treated for hysteria. He abstracted from clinical experience to describe the decisive role of the unconscious mind in shaping manifest human experience and suppressing conflicts going on between the ego, id, libido, and superego, as

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mplies that dream experience = neurotic experience; and just as the neurotic patient is driven by unconscious mental activities, so is any dreamer. Once the manifest content of the dream is interpreted or decoded and the latent content or actual meaning is discovered, then the implications of such content can be known. This does not mean, however, that dream formation = psychosis. Rather: "There is no doubt that it is really [day residues] that disturb our sleep, and not our dreams which, on the contrary, strive to guard our sleep" (Freud, 1978, p. 418). Furthermore, the Ucs, Cs, and Pcs formulation is meant to be scientific and systematic in its uncovering of mental and emotional processes that shape core psychology and that give a satisfactory account of the constant push-pull of body, mind, and action that constitutes human experience. Freud's distinction between the ego, id, and superego surfaces in his description of mental processes, which, he says, can be attributed to "the interplay of forces, which assist or inhibit one another, combine with one another, enter into compromises with one another" (2000). These forces are instinctive (hence associated with the Ucs), says Freud, and he identifies two major groups that may be
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Approximate Word count = 2686
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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