Works of Sigmund Freud:

Ego psychology
OUTLINE

• Biography of Sigmund Freud

• Highlight of topographical model
• Structural model
• Other Ego psychologists
• Defense Mechanism
• Comparison with modern works
• Clinical application of ego psychology

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Biography

• Freud was born in 1856 present-day Czech Republic

• German-speaking Jewish families ; a bit the cultural outsiders
• Firstborn, had seven siblings, Favorite of his young, indulgent mother
• Played with his half-brother’s son Johann , Freud wrote about their r/ship
“An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable
requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them
anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely
approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person ’’
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Biography Cont..

• Did not have a close friendship with any of his younger siblings.

• His younger brother died at 6 months of age, which he felt guilty about.

• Moved at age 3, family lived in straitened circumstances .

• Studied medicine, expecting to face less prejudice. Did his residency in

Neurology. Learnt hypnosis and catharsis.

• Freud’s depression following the illness and death of his father in 1896 led
him to conduct an experimental self-analysis. He felt guilty over a repressed
wish that his father would die.
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Biography Cont..

• Imprisoned b/c of his race, changed his Jewish name and didn’t give his
children such a name , Identified as an atheist .

• He believed one might understand religion as a defense against guilt over

patricidal impulses.

• We worship an all-powerful but invisible “father figure” in order to atone for

our wish to kill our actual father and also to reassure ourselves about facing life
without the protection of a father, reinterpreting religion as an intrapsychic
phenomenon
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Biography Cont..
• “original sin” as mankind’s collective guilt over patricidal impulses.

• Many ruptures between Freud and his collaborators ; in Freud’s mind, this
conflict replicated the pattern of his early relationship with Johann

• Wrote Multiple books, Formed the Wednesday Psychological Society,

International Psychoanalytic Association

• Died on September 23, 1939, oral cancer

• Freud, much insight was achieved via his self-analysis and through his
psychoanalytic practice.
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Topographic model
Two useful observations after hypnosis of patient

• First, he learned that memories can be repressed and then later recalled with
effort.

• Second, he came to understand that people might act because of motivations

of which they were unaware and subsequently offer incorrect explanations
for their behavior.

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Topographic model

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Topographic model
• For nearly 2 decades used topographic model, soon began to fail.

• Freud repeatedly encountered resistances in his patients to his therapeutic

maneuvers.

• Some memories could not be brought back into consciousness.

• The defense mechanisms responsible for this resistance were themselves

unconscious and therefore inaccessible.

• These observations led Freud to conclude that the ego has both conscious and
unconscious components.
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Provinces of the Mind
• During the 1920s, he introduced three-part structural model.
• Helped Freud explain mental images according to their functions or purposes
• das Es, “it,” id =most primitive part of the mind

• das Ich, “I,” ego

• das Uber-Ich, “over-I,” superego

• Hypothetical constructs with no territorial existence
• They interact with the three levels of mental life, ego cuts across the various
topographic levels
• Whereas the superego is both preconscious and unconscious and the id is
completely unconscious.
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Structural model.

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Structural Vs Topographical models

• Problems and patterns can be linked to unconscious conflict of, conscious

part and the unconscious part in the topographic model
• Problems arise when unconscious thoughts and feelings are prevented from
reaching consciousness, generally because they are deemed too painful to be
tolerated.
• From structural model though that conflict could exist between two parts of
the mind that are both unconscious, these parts of the mind are in constant
conflict with one another and with reality.
• Unconscious conflict affects the individual’s conscious life ; conflict between
or among these structures causes anxiety, which the ego tries to protect the
person from experiencing by defense

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The ID
• Core of personality and completely unconscious

• Has no contact with reality, yet it strives constantly to reduce tension by

satisfying basic desires. Serves the pleasure principle.

• Unrealistic and pleasure seeking, the id is illogical , merely amoral.

• Is primitive, chaotic, inaccessible to consciousness, unchangeable,

unorganized, and filled with energy received from basic drives and
discharged for the satisfaction of the pleasure principle operates through the
primary process.
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The ID
• Not altered by the passage of time or by the experiences ,Childhood wish impulses
remain unchanged

• Can simultaneously entertain incompatible ideas

• It cannot make value judgments or distinguish between good and evil

• Id’s energy is spent for one purpose—to seek pleasure

• Survival is dependent on the development of a secondary process(function through

ego) to bring it into contact with the external world.

• Newborn infant is the analogy; seeks gratification of needs without regard for what is
possible or what is proper. 15
The Superego
• Represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality

• Superego grows at the age of 5 or 6 out of the ego and it has no energy of its
own.

• It has no contact with the outside world and therefore is unrealistic in its
demands for perfection. like the id in that it is completely ignorant &
unconcerned with, the practicability of its requirements.

• Control sexual and aggressive impulses through repression

• Watches closely over the ego, judging its actions and intentions causing guilt ,
feeling of inferiority 16
The Superego
• Has two subsystems, the conscience and the ego-ideal which Freud did not
clearly distinguish
• The conscience results from experiences with punishments for improper
behavior and tells us what we should not do.
• the Ego-ideal develops from experiences with rewards for proper behavior
and tells us what we should do.
• Primitive conscience comes into existence when a child conforms to parental
standards out of fear of loss of love or approval.
• Later, during the Oedipal phase of development, these ideals are internalized
through identification. 17
The Ego
• The ego, or I, is the only region of the mind in contact with reality.

• It grows out of the Id during infancy and becomes a person’s sole source of
communication with the external world.

• The ego has no strength of its own but borrows energy from the id

• Governed by the reality principle

• The decision-making or executive branch of personality.

• The ego can make decisions on each three levels world.

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The Ego
• Uses repression and other defense mechanisms to defend itself against this
anxiety (Freud)

• Constantly tries to reconcile the blind, irrational claims of the id and the
superego with the realistic demands of the external world.

• Ego can control the powerful, pleasure-seeking id, but at other times it loses
control. (horseback)

• young age, pleasure and pain are ego functions because children have not yet
developed a conscience and ego-ideal.
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The Ego
• Universal drive to explain everything and make us feel safe, important, and
to belong.” it’s the meaning making machine.

• Early on, Freud believed that the ego was a small appendage to the id and
was not present at birth.

• By the end of his life, however, he acknowledged that a rudimentary ego

existed at birth, and he had come to appreciate the centrality of the ego in
regulating mental life.

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Functions of Ego
1,Control and regulation of instinctual drives
• Delay immediate discharge of urgent wishes and impulses to maintain
individuals integrity, mediating between the id and the outside world

2, Relation to reality
✓ The sense of reality
✓ Reality testing
✓ Adaptation of reality

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Functions of Ego Cont ……..
Relation to reality
✓Sense of reality
• Originates simultaneously with the development of the ego.
• Infants develop the capacity to distinguish a reality outside of their own
bodies gradually.
✓Reality testing
• Ego's capacity for objective evaluation and judgment of the external world,
which depends first on primary autonomous functions of the ego, such as
memory and perception, but then also on the relative integrity of the
internal structure of secondary autonomy.
✓Adaptation to reality
• To set the individual's resource to form adequate solution based on
previously tested judgments of reality.
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Functions of Ego Cont ……..
3. Object relationships
• Object relationships and their disturbance have important role for normal
psychological development and a variety of psychopathological states

4.Synthetic function
• Capacity to unite, organize, and bind together various drives, motives,
tendencies, and functions within the personality, enabling the individual
to think, feel, and act in an organized and directed manner
• Overall organization and function of ego
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Functions of Ego Cont ……..

5 Judgment

• Ability to anticipate the consequences of actions.

• Judgment develops in parallel with the growth of secondary process thinking

• Ability to think logically allows assessment of how contemplated behavior

may affect others.

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Functions of Ego Cont ……..

6. Defensive functions of the ego

• Mediate the individual's reaction to emotional conflict and to internal
and external stressor
• Tactics ego develop to help deal with the id and superego
• All defense mechanisms share 2 common properties
✓ Unconscious
✓ Distort, transform or falsify reality

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Defense mechanisms
• Defenses are the unconscious and automatic ways the mind adapts to stress .

• They are the coping mechanisms and internal compromises that limit a
person’s awareness of painful affects like anxiety, depression, and envy, and
that resolve emotional conflicts .

• All people have their unique, characteristic ways of adapting to internal and
external pressures
✓Defenses
✓ Managing emotion
✓Impulse control
✓Stimulus regulation 28
Defense mechanisms cont…..
• Defenses function the way our sense of balance operates, automatically and
continuously making tiny adjustments without our awareness

• We tend to use certain defenses on a regular basis. We can describe a

person’s characteristic defenses according to how adaptive , flexible and
connected to thoughts and feelings.

• At each phase of libidinal development, specific drive components evoke

characteristic ego defense

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Defense mechanisms cont…..
• Anxiety is the center of Freudian dynamic theory

• Which is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation

that warns the person against impending danger

• Only the ego can produce or feel anxiety,

• Neurotic anxiety is defined as apprehension about an unknown danger
• Moral anxiety, stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego
• Realistic anxiety, is closely related to fear.

• Defense mechanisms protect ego from anxiety

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Defense mechanisms cont…..

• There are 4 types of defense mechanisms

✓Narcissistic defenses

✓Immature defenses

✓Neurotic defenses

✓Mature defenses

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Narcissistic defenses
• Most primitive

• Frequently appear irrational or insane to others

• Are the "psychotic" defenses

• Common in overt psychosis

• Found in children, adult dreams or fantasies

• They share the common note of avoiding, negating, or distorting reality

• Projection, denial, distortions

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Immature defenses
• Common in preadolescent years and in adult character disorders

• Due to anxieties related to intimacy or loss

• Seen as socially undesirable in that they are immature

• Difficult to deal with and seriously out of touch with reality

• Always leads to serious problems in a person's ability to cope effectively

• Often seen in severe depression and personality disorders

• Acting out, blocking, hypochondriasis, introjection, passive aggressive

behavior, regression, schizoid fantasy, somatization 33
Neurotic defenses
• Fairly common in adults under stress

• Short- term advantages in coping

• Can often cause long- term problems in relationships, work and enjoying life

• Encountered in obsessive compulsive and hysterical patients

• Depending on circumstances, they can also have an adaptive or socially

acceptable aspect

• Controlling, displacement, dissociation, externalization, inhibition, reaction

formation, intellectualization, rationalization, sexualization
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Mature defenses

• Commonly found among emotionally healthy adults

• Enhances pleasure and feelings of control

• Help us to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts while still remaining

effective

• Those who use these mechanisms are usually considered as having virtues

• Altruism, anticipation, humor, sublimation, thought suppression

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Defense mechanisms cont…..

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Defense mechanisms cont…..

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Defense mechanisms cont…..

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Other Ego psychologists
• Contributions of two important theorists in this area: Anna Freud and
Erik H. Erikson
• Anna Freud: focused and further elaborated on defenses.
• Her most important contribution Understanding and recognizing ego
defense mechanisms, how it improves our ability to understand the
underlying motivation for behaviors.
• Erikson’s tripartite model of human development differs from Freud’s,
and it includes somatic, ego, and cultural-historical aspects.
• Ego development is dependent on somatic experiences (feeding,
elimination, etc.) and family responses to any crisis that might develop.
• People pass through eight stages of ego development, and the conflict
implicit in each stage reaches a crisis point at a specific time
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Other Ego psychologists
• Erikson was able to tie together physical maturation, family/cultural
influences, and ego development.

• Heinz Hartmann established himself as one of the foremost contributors to

contemporary ego psychology by focusing on the non defensive aspects of the
ego: added a detailed analysis of the ego's operations and the surface behavior
of the patient. Certain autonomous ego functions present at birth.

• Margaret Mahler and Rene Spitz: focused on developmental ego psychology

✓Deepened the interest in issues of the environment
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Primary autonomous ego functions.
• Heinz Hartmann described as rudimentary apparatuses present at birth that
develop independently of intrapsychic conflict between drives and defenses.

• These functions include perception, learning, intelligence, intuition, language,

thinking, comprehension, and motility.

• They will develop normally if the infant is raised in what Hartmann referred
to as an average expectable environment.

• In the course of development, some of these conflict-free aspects of the ego

may eventually become involved in a conflict.
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Secondary autonomous ego functions
• Arise in the defense against drives; Once the sphere where primary
autonomous function develops becomes involved with conflict.

• For example, a child may develop caretaking functions as a reaction

formation against murderous wishes during the first few years. Later, the
defensive functions may be neutralized or deinstinctualized when the child
grows up to be a social worker and cares for homeless persons. (Adaptive)

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