Structure of personality,
Identity
Meaning, Narrativity
Psychoanalysis
 Sigmund Freud – mental life is devided into two levels:
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Unconsciousness and consciousness.
Unconsciousness contains all drives, instincts and urges,
that are beyond our awarness, but motivates most of our
actions, feelings and actions.
We are aware of our overtly behaviour, but we has no
insight into the origins of certain compulsive or
compensatory behaviour.
We can prove it indirectly through dreams, imaginations,
artifacts, projections, somatic symptoms etc.
Consciousness – those mental elements, that are directly
available in any given point in time. They can be reflected
by an individual.
Structure of personality
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Id - core of personality, completely unconscious. Strives constantly to
reduce tension, to satisfy instinctual desires. Lack of morality. Life instinct is
called Libido – source of energy for ego
Ego – it decides what is possible – what fits in with reality. Through
communication with external world, we get to contact with reality. We
estimate our limits and possibilities. Ego makes wishes of Id and Superego
compatible with reality. Balances two enemies, subsequently becomes
anxious. Then it uses defense meachanisms. Id impulses are not appropriate
for civilized society, so society try (with social norms) to modify the pleasure
principle in favour of the reality principle; that is, the requirements of the
external world.
Superego – moral, or ethical sphere of personality. It serves toward
perfection according internalized social norms. We have clear consciousness
when we fulfill expectancies of people from our group of reference. The
superego consists of two structures: the conscience, which stores
information about what is "bad" and what has been punished and the ego
ideal, which stores information about what is "good" and what one "should"
do or be.
Sturcture of psyche
Object relations theory
 Ego-self exists only in relation to other objects, which may be
external or internal. The internal objects are internalized versions
of external objects, primarily formed from early interactions with
the parents.
 There are three fundamental "affects" that can exist between the
self and the other:
 Attachment
 Frustration
 Rejection
These affects are universal emotional states that are major building
blocks of the personality
This area is rooted in Attachment theory, which was developed by Sir
John Bowlby and which remains the primary theory of infant mental
health. Studies have shown that children who are raised by abusive
parents are at risk to abuse their children in some way when they
grow up. Children who grow up in abusive families tend to have poor
quality attachments to their parents.
Defense mechanisms
 defence mechanisms are psychological strategies
brought into play by individuals, groups and even
nations to cope with reality and to maintain selfimage.
 Healthy persons normally use different defences
throughout life.
 An ego defence mechanism becomes pathological only
when its persistent use leads to maladaptive behavior
such that the physical and/or mental health of the
individual is adversely affected.
The purpose of the Ego
Defence Mechanisms
 To protect the mind/self/ego from anxiety, social sanctions or
to provide a refuge from a situation with which you cannot
currently cope.
 When anxiety becomes too overwhelming it is then the place
of the ego to employ defence mechanisms to protect the
individual.
 The term "defence mechanism" is often thought to refers to a
to several types of reactions following loss or traumatic
experiences.
Types of Defence mechanisms
 Level 1:
 The mechanisms on this level, when predominating, almost
always are pathological. We loose contact with
realityHowever, they are found in dreams and throughout
childhood as healthy mechanism.
 Denial: Refusal to accept external reality because it is too
threatening; arguing against an anxiety provoking stimuli by
stating it doesn't exist; resolution of emotional conflict and
reduce anxiety by refusing to perceive or counsciously
acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality.
 Distortion: A gross reshaping of external reality to meet
internal needs.
 Delusional Projection: delusions about external reality,
usually of a persecutory nature
Level 2 Defence Mechanisms
 These mechanisms are often present in adults and more
commonly present in adolescence. These mechanism lessen
distress and anxiety provoked by threatening people or by
uncomfortale reality. People who excessively use such defences
are seen as socially undesirable in that they are immature,
difficult to deal with and seriously out of touch with reality.
These are the so-called "immature" defences and overuse
almost always lead to serious problems in a person's ability to
cope effectively. In adolescence, the occurrence of all of these
defences is normal.
 Fantasy: Tendency to retreat into fantasy in order to resolve
inner and outer conflicts
 Passive aggression: Aggression towards others expressed
indirectly or passively
 Projection: Projection is a primitive form of paranoia.
Projection also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of
the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming
consciously aware of them; attributing one's own
unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and
emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe
jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice
collecting". It is shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings
and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that
those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations as
perceived as being possessed by the other.
 Hypochondriasis: The transformation of negative feelings
towards others into negative feelings toward self, pain, illness
 Acting out: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or
impulse without conscious awareness of the emotion that
drives that expressive behavior.
Level 3 Defence Mechanisms
These mechanisms are considered neurotic, but fairly common
in adults. Such defences have short-term advantages in
coping, but can often cause long-term problems in
relationships, work and in enjoying life when used as one's
primary style of coping with the world.
 Displacement: Defence mechanism that shifts sexual or
aggressive impulses to a more acceptable or less threatening
target; redirecting emotion to a safer outlet; separation of
emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense
emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or
threatening in order to avoid dealing directly with what is
frightening or threatening
 Dissociation: Temporary drastic modification of one's
personal identity or character to avoid emotional distress;
separation or postponement of a feeling that normally would
accompany a situation or thought.
 Intellectualization: A form of isolation; concentrating on the
intellectual components of a situations so as to distance oneself
from the associated anxiety-provoking emotions; separation of
emotion from ideas; thinking about wishes in formal,
affectively bland terms and not acting on them; avoiding
unacceptable emotions by focusing on the intellectual aspects
 Repression: Process of pulling thoughts into the unconscious
and preventing painful or dangerous thoughts from entering
consciousness; seemingly unexplainable naivete, memory lapse
or lack of awareness of one's own situation and condition; the
emotion is conscious, but the idea behind it is absent
Level 4 Defence Mechanisms
These are commonly found among emotionally healthy adults
and are considered the most mature. These defences help the
users to integrate conflicting emotions and thoughts while
still remaining effective. Persons are viewed as having virtues.
 Altruism: Constructive service to others that brings pleasure
and personal satisfaction and is not compensatory
 Anticipation: Realistic planning for future discomfort – hope
and faith that world is a good place to be in.
 Identification with someone else´s values: The unconscious
modelling of one's self upon another person's character and
behavior
 Suppression: The conscious process of pushing thoughts into
the preconscious; the conscious decision to delay paying
attention to an emotion or need in order to cope with the
present reality; able to later access uncomfortable or distressing
emotions and accept them
Only succesfull DM – accept
reality as it is
 Sublimation: Transformation of negative emotions or
instincts into positive actions, behavior, or emotion;
acting out unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable
way; refocusing of psychic energy away from negative
outlets to more positive ones; sublimation is the process
funneling the unacceptable into social useful
achievements. Sublimation is instrumental to
developing culture and civilization.
Self
 Repressed pain divides the self in two and each side wars
with the other. One is the real self, loaded with needs and
pain that are submerged; the other is the unreal self that
attempts to deal with the outside world by trying to fulfill
unmet needs with neurotic habits or behaviors such as
obsessions or addictions. The split of the self is the
essence of neurosis and neurosis can kill.
Self
 That pain is the result of needs and feelings that have
gone unfulfilled in early life. Those early unmet needs
create what I call Primal Pain. Coming close to death
at birth or feeling unloved as a child are examples of
such Pain. The Pain goes unfelt at the time because the
body is not equipped to experience it fully and deal
with it. When the Pain is too much, it is repressed and
stored away. When enough unresolved Pain has
occurred, you lose access to your feelings and become
neurotic.
Personality
 The sum of total of the typical ways of thinking, acting
and feeling that makes each person unique – different
from each other. (some people are typicaly shy, or
extraverted)
 Axis of life – we are similar and we are different
according to morfogenetic principle of Rupert
Sheldrake