Personality development is important in children because it refers to structured behavior and attitudes that separate one individual from another. Personality refers to a person’s dynamic system that includes psychophysical systems that impact their ideas and patterns of behavior. It comprises a wide range of human activities, as well as almost all elements of a person’s mental, emotional, social, and physical well-being. Freud’s theory is significant since it established the groundwork for many of the problems and questions that psychologists are still grappling with today. He offered a developmental sequence in the development of personality as well as a strategy for resolving internal conflicts. He suggested a framework for the essential aspects of personality and identified the key dynamic interactions between these parts. He observed that the mind has regions of which it is unaware. All of these notions are still being researched by modern psychologists. This essay relates the psychoanalytic approach to personality development by analyzing the Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality, which is one of the most contentious theories of personality development in children.
Sigmund Freud was the creator and proponent of psychoanalysis. His psychoanalytic theory is based on the idea that the development of personality is influenced largely by unconscious conflicts and events (Niaz et al., 2019). The primary principle underlying this theory is that the subconscious process drives much of what people believe and do. According to Niaz et al. (2019), the psychoanalytic approach to a child’s personality development posits that the structures of personality make children generally unaware of why they act in a particular way and are hence unconscious. Furthermore, Saracho and Evans (2021), state that the continuing battle and conflict between the person’s instincts, unconscious desires, experiences, and cultural norms sometimes greatly influence conduct. Freud believed that personality is motivated by two primary instincts: survival and death instinct (Saracho & Evans, 2021). Libido is the mental energy derived from the instinct of life, which feeds people’s need for survival and growth while also ensuring reproduction. The death instinct, on the other hand, reflects people’s unconscious desire to die, and therefore the destructive power of human nature.
The psychoanalytic approach to personality development is divided into three layers: the conscious, the pre-conscious, and the unconscious. As per Freud, the personality structure is founded on three characteristics: the id, ego, and superego conceptions. Each of these personality qualities is connected to the other two (Lester, 2019). The Id, Ego, and Super-Ego are three levels of personality (Lester, 2019). The Id is fully unconscious, the Ego is half-conscious, and the Super Ego is completely conscious. According to Freud, the interplay between these three components results in personality development. Waugh et al. (2021) argue that the conflicts between these three structures, as well as people’s efforts to establish a balance between the wants of each of the three structures, impact human behavior and how they approach it. In a certain environment, the balance people achieve determines how they deal with the conflict between two underlying behavioral trends: their aggressive biological urges and their socialized internal control over those drives.
The most significant component of the ego, according to Freud, is that it balances the id, the superego, and reality so that the person’s conscious state stays healthy. It shields one from pressures by reacting in a way that distorts reality, and it also shields the individual’s awareness from the unconscious ideas that frequently threaten to penetrate it (Waugh et al., 2021). The id, which includes impulses and libido, is wholly unconscious. It operates on the pleasure principle and employs fundamental cognitive processes. The ego is realistic and founded on the necessities of reality (the reality principles) besides employing the concept of a secondary process.
The superego houses the awareness (the inner moral code) and the id ego. The ego is under pressure from the id, super-ego, and reality, and it serves as a crossroads for all of these forces. Anxiety arises when the ego is unable to satisfy these needs (Carveth, 2021). In essence, the ego’s purpose is to serve as a balancing mechanism. Additionally, protection can take many forms, including response, repression, denial, projecting, removal, sublimation, regression, and rationalization (Carveth, 2021). According to Freud’s theory, repression is one of the most effective strategies of resistance against illogical urges from the unconscious mind (Carveth, 2021). Defense systems play a critical role in driving concepts from the conscious mind (Sandler & Sandler, 2018). Stressful ideas that jeopardize an individual’s existence should be repressed in the unconscious mind to alleviate anxiety.
Freud’s psychoanalytic Theory of Personality consists of four phases that a child must go through and complete to develop a whole personality. Freud believed that the struggle that occurs between the four phases changes as the child grows into an adult. He referred to these stages of personality development as the psychosexual stages since he believed that sexual instinct was the most important factor behind human growth (Spielman et al., 2021). The four phases include the oral, anal, phallic, and genital. According to Freud, each stage of psychosexual development is associated with an erogenous zone. Furthermore, the conflicts and tasks associated with each level must be resolved before the prospect of progression to the next stage is considered (Spielman et al., 2021). Failure to resolve the issues and tasks of each stage keeps the individual locked and fixated on that stage. In essence, libidinal energy is used in this step, leaving less energy for subsequent stages (Swartz et al., 2016). Freud believed that the roots of diverse and varied adult personalities are tied to unresolved psychosexual stages of development (Roberts & Yoon, 2022). Each of these stages is thus important to a child’s development.
For example, a person trapped in the oral stage may be overly worried or obsessed with tasks involving the use of the mouth, including eating and drinking. These children develop either dependent or sadistic dispositions that are oral-passive or oral-aggressive. They are easily duped and frequently rely on others for fulfillment, and individuals on the oral-aggressive spectrum become extremely gloomy, angry, aggressive, and may be manipulative or violent (Traylor et al., 2021). Those trapped in the second stage, the anal, frequently lack self-control, and those with an anal-retentive mentality are parsimonious and generally obstinate. Men who are preoccupied with the phallic stage are frequently arrogant, conceited, and ambitious, whereas females are flirty, attractive, and innocent. Furthermore, Freud argues that the genital stage, necessitates the formation of personal connections, learning to work, and deferring gratification and that children who complete this stage will have mature and responsible social-sexual relationships.
In conclusion, personality can be described as a set of qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis theory is based on the key tenant that personality development is largely influenced by unconscious conflicts and events. Regarding a child’s development, the theory argues that the structure of personality makes children generally unaware of how they behave and are therefore unconscious. Freud’s theory has been divided into three main layers including the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. Furthermore, the personality structure is founded on three main characteristics the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego which are linked together. Finally, the theory argues that children undergo four phases to develop a whole personality, which is the root cause of diverse and varied adult personalities.
References
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