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Sigmund Freud's Ego Defense Theory

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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) explored the human mind more deeply than any other psychologist before him. He has contributed a huge amount to psychology. He founded what is known as the psychodynamic approach. This theoretical framework developed through Freud 's interpretations of his own patients whom many had experienced psychiatric disorders, has had a serious effect on many areas within psychology such as human development. For Freud , humans consist of drive and impulses. Freud believed that the human psyche has more than one aspect. Freud (1923) saw that the psyche structure was actually in three parts, the id, ego and superego. The ‘id’ is the first part of the personality to develop.It is focused on the persons wants and needs. The …show more content…

Freud’s daughter Anna developed these ideas more elaborate adding her own five defense mechanisms to her father’s original ideas. Freud once said “life is not easy! The ego--the “I”-- sits at the center of some pretty powerful forces: reality, society, as represented by the superego, biology, as represented by the id”.When these make conflicting demands upon the ego, it is as if you feel overwhelmed, threatened, feel as if you were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This is what we called anxiety, it is used as a signal to the ego that its survival and with the survival of the ego comes the survival of the whole organism which is also in jeopardy. Freud says” In order to deal with problems and conflict in life ,the ego consumes a variety of different defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms work at an unconscious level and make good things feel better for the person. A few examples of defense mechanisms are Repression which is burying something like a horrible feeling from your awareness this can sometimes be considered as a basis of other defense mechanisms, Denial is another defense mechanism which would be not accepting reality because it is too painful to come to terms with it and a final example would be Regression this would be like regressing back to an earlier age in life, a less mature way of dealing with certain feelings or

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