

Unconscious influences on feelings and behavior, attitude formation, judgment, and decision-making represent huge research lines of inquiry within psychology. Identification of the unconscious or conscious mechanism at work is significantly important in treating individuals seeking help.įreud’s influence has had long-reaching influence within social cognition as well. Such defense mechanisms include, but are not limited to denial, repression, sublimation, anxiety, resistance, and projection (Friedman & Schustack, 2012 Trevithick, 2011). In addition, Freud’s conceptions of defensive mechanisms arising out of struggles between unconscious and conscious mechanisms to protect the mind are referred to and utilized in both social work and psychotherapy treatments (Trevithick, 2011).
#ID SUPEREGO EGO FREE#
Psychotherapy continues to utilize tools such as free association to allow patients opportunity to reveal unconscious desires, patterns, feelings, or ideas they may not be consciously aware are negatively influencing their day-to-day functioning. The ego is driven by the reality principle focusing on actual possibilities and/or problems, often finding balance between instant self-gratification and delayed satisfaction, selfishness and selflessness.įreud’s perspective regarding the id, ego, and superego has had long reaching influence in psychology. The ego, however, was characterized as the conscious decision-making aspect of personality, the mediator between the id and the superego. The id and superego often function unconsciously, with incomplete awareness of the individual.

The superego was characterized as the internalized, socialized, moral, ethical part of personality developed in response to cultural and social norms, internalized to guide behavior towards an ideal (Trevithick, 2011). The id was characterized as the unsocialized, instinctual part of personality driven primarily by the pleasure principle, perpetually seeking to fulfill basic drives and impulses. In the early 1920s, Freud posited that personality is composed of three separate components: id, ego, and superego (Friedman & Schustack, 2012).
