Sigmund Freud’s structure of personality is a psychodynamic model in that it supports the contention that human behavior and personality are largely the manifestation of underlying psychological forces of which the individual remains unaware. Freud’s structural model of personality has three main components: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. If we were to outline Freud’s structural model of personality, it would look like the following:
Instinctual needs, drives, and impulses
According to Freud, we are born with the Id. When we are an infant the Id serves a very useful role in that it is the enabler of our basic needs. To Freud, the Id was something akin to the pleasure principle. The Id seeks out whatever feels good at the time, but it never considers the reality of a situation. When an infant is hungry, the Id seeks food, so the child cries. If the child is in pain or has wet himself or herself, the Id cries out for assistance. We see the lack of consideration of reality by the Id most perfectly in the example of an infant child. Many of us are intimately familiar with parents complaining they got no sleep because of a crying infant. In other words, the Id is not considerate of a parent’s needs and is only focused on its own needs to feel good.
As the infant becomes more capable of interaction with the real world, Freud posited the theory that another part of the personality begins to manifest. He labeled this component of human personality the Ego. The Ego is not based on the pleasure principle, instead it functions according to the reality principle. The Ego exhibits more ration and reality in its influence on behavior. Unlike the unconscious Id, the Ego understands that impulsive or insensitive acts can injure us in the long term. The Ego still occupies the role of maintaining the needs of the Id, but the Ego tries to balance those impulsive needs with the external reality of the situation...