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Psychology of Communication: personality
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Psychology of Communication: personality
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Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg: we only see a little bit of it (the conscious) peeking out above the vast depths of the unconscious. Freud endeavoured to explore the unconscious by means of free association - a method which involves allowing the subject to talk about whatever comes into their conscious mind, however silly or trivial it may appear. Through the analysis of free associations, dreams and early childhood memories, Freud tried to figure out the basic elements of personality.
He considered personality to be composed of three parts: the id, the ego and the superego.
The id consists of all the inherited components of personality, including sex drives and aggression. The id seeks immediate gratification of primitive impulses. It operates on the pleasure principle, seeking to avoid pain and maximise gratification.
If tangible gratification of the primitive impulses are unavailable, then the id may form a mental image or hallucination to reduce the tension of ungratified desire - for example, a starving man may form a mental image of a delicious meal. That is an example of what Freud termed wish fulfilment.
The starving man might form an image of a meal, but that won't satisfy his needs. The ego emerges out of the id because we need to deal with the real world. Thus, the ego can be said to obey the reality principle, for example controlling the sex drive until conditions are right in the real world for its gratification. You can think of the ego as being the id's controller. Freud likens the ego to a man on the horseback of the id. The horse is stronger than the rider, but the rider controls it. Inevitably, however, the horse's strength will predominate and the rider will sometimes lose control or will sometimes have to content himself with guiding the horse to where it wants to go.
The superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are learnt from one's parents and others. It develops as a result of rewards and punishments as one grows up. The superego's function is to control the id's impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression. It also has the function of persuading the ego to turn to moralistic goals rather than simply realistic ones and to strive for perfection.
The superego consists of conscience - all those actions the child is reproved for doing - and the ego-ideal - all those things the child is praised for doing. The conscience makes the individual feel guilty and the ego-ideal makes the individual feel proud, thus directing the striving for perfection. Anxiety and defence mechanisms
Somehow we need to satisfy the id's desires. It's all very well for the superego to control them, but that doesn't get rid of them; they are still powerfully present. When we have an urge to do something reprehensible for which we will be punished (if only by our own conscience), then we become anxious - a state of tension that we need to reduce. One way to do that is by expressing the impulse in a disguised form that society does approve of - for example becoming a racing car driver or boxer as an outlet for aggression.
Another method of reducing tension is to adopt methods of reduction called defence mechanisms, investigated more by Freud's daughter, Anna, than by Freud himself. These include:
We can force the uncomfortable desires, the painful feelings and memories into the unconscious. However, they remain there affecting our behaviour and mental states without our knowledge, perhaps sometimes emerging as 'Freudian slips'.
At present, much attention is centred on the so-called 'repressed memory syndrome' of people who have been sexually abused as children. They have repressed those awful memories and have then rediscovered them through psychoanalysis and counselling. There is currently much controversy over the extent to which they constitute genuine memories or may, at least in some cases, constitute 'false memory syndrome' - memories of events that never took place.
To avoid anxiety we might attribute our unacceptable thoughts and feelings to others. You might hate someone, but your superego tells you that such hatred is unacceptable. You can 'solve' the problem by believing that they hate you.
External threats to the ego are simply cut off from consciousness. 'Assignment? What assignment?' is a fairly common example of denial. More seriously, the denial of a serious illness by a patient has just been informed of it is not uncommon.
You redirect your unacceptable urges on to a substitute. The photocopier breaks down; you'd really love to hit the boss for being too mean to buy a decent one; instead you kick the office cat.
You turn the forbidden impulses into socially acceptable behaviours. The aggressive man becomes a boxer or soldier.
Often, the defence mechanism takes the form of 'splitting'. We don't have to go so far as clinical cases of 'split personality' to find examples of splitting. The hangman, the ruthless boss, the professional torturer may all be caring fathers and give to charity. A striking example of such splitting is provided by Charles-Henri Sanson, the chief executioner during the period of the 'Terror' which followed the French Revolution. He recounts how one fine day he went for a walk in the countryside near Paris with his two grand-daughters. Being tired, he sat down in the sun while the two girls picked wild roses. After a while along came a dapper, well dressed man in a powdered wig. Sanson recognized him as Robespierre, the chief architect of the bloody Terror and responsible for the guillotining of hundreds of so-called enemies of the Revolution. He picked some flowers which the girls couldn't quite reach and handed them down to them. They gave him a kiss and the two girls ran over to their grandfather with Robespierre following with a smile on his face. He came over and chatted to the grandfather about the two girls, one of whom presented him with a bunch of the flowers she had picked. Robespierre asked her her name. Besides just telling him her first name, the little girl told him her surname too. Robespierre 'leapt up as if he had trodden on a snake'. His face fell, he went pale, he turned to Sanson and said 'you are ...', but could not manage to finish the sentence. 'He was obviously struggling with a revulsion which he couldn't quite contain.' Here was the person responsible for the bloodbath that befell France in the Terror, but he could not bring himself to utter the name of the man who was carrying out the consequences of his decisions. (Sanson (1988)). Similarly, consider the remarks of Heinrich Himmler (head of the Nazi SS) in conversation with his masseur: 'How can you take any pleasure in creeping up on and shooting the poor animals grazing so innocently, defenceless and unsuspecting at the edge of the woods? Considered objectively, that is pure murder ... Nature is so beautiful and after all every animal has a right to life.' (Enzensberger (1968))
When considering pyschoanlaytic personality theories, it is worth bearing in mind that Freud and psychoanalysis generally normally seem to be treated with great respect in cultural and communication studies, in part no doubt because of the recent influence of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and, for some reason, being French and incomprehensible is the height of cool in cultural studies. Nevertheless, you should be aware that there has in recent years been increasingly hostile criticism of Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis, generally from outside the field of cultural studies, as far as I am aware.
As the author of a website on communication and cultural studies, I suppose I ought to feel obligated to research Freud, but my first contact with his theories many years ago led me to decide fairly rapidly that I had better things to do with my time. The little I know of Freud is therefore largely through other, more interesting (and possibly saner) people he has influenced. That, as Steven Pinker puts it, 'the idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard' (1998 : 460), that they might envy me my penis seems to strike most women as utterly absurd, that the claim that my dreams reveal something about my psyche, intriguing though it may be, seems no more convincing than that they might be the word of God, a glimpse of the future or simply (as I am inclined to believe until someone comes along with a better account) mere random noise - none of these, I suppose, is much of an argument for rejection of one of the most influential thinkers of the century. From a Freudian point of view, of course, my rejection is no doubt itself worthy of analysis, my hostility doubtless a symptom of my repressed desire to have sex with my mother (oh, yes - and kill my father, of course). As Peter Medawar says, 'psychoanalysis has now achieved a complete intellectual closure: it explains even why some people disbelieve in it' (1996 : 127). To other psychoanalysts, of course, it explains that, to me it explains nothing. The irritating 'Olympian glibness' that Medawar complains of in psychoanalysis claims to be able to explain everything: 'A lava flow of ad hoc explanation pours over and around all difficulties, leaving only a few smoothly rounded prominences to mark where they might have lain' (1996 : 126)
If Freud had actually cured one of his patients, I might be inclined to be more interested in his theories, but there is little evidence that any were ever cured and quite convincing evidence that many of the cures he claimed were not cures at all. We now know a great deal more about the brain than Freud, who did not have the benefit of brain scans, and we therefore can explain many of his patients' symptoms in terms of organic causes, such as brain tumours, strokes, blows to the head and so on; we know now, as Freud did not, about hormones, Mendel's laws of inheritance, chromosomes. The lack of such knowledge in Freud's day may excuse him, but I don't see how it excuses us for treating such egregious nonsense with respect. Indeed, I'm not even convinced that it excuses him, since he seems to have claimed scientific status for ideas he probably made up off the top of his head and to have claimed cures where none were effected. What is interesting about Freud is his enormous influence on intellectuals and that they continue to take him seriously today despite the fact that
Freud made no substantial intellectual discoveries. He was the creator of a complex pseudo-science which should be recognized as one of the great follies of Western civilization. In creating his particular pseudo-science, Freud developed an autocratic, anti-empirical intellectual style which has contributed immeasurably to the intellectual ills of our own era.
Webster (1995 : 438)
Or again Medawar:
... considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won't do. It is an end-product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.
(1996 : 130)
So much for psychoanalyis, then, at least as far as I'm concerned. As for Freud's personality theory, well that's up to you.
Humanistic theories
Kelly's personal construct theory
Social learning theory
Trait theories
Personality measurement
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