it makes children afraid of their own fantasies. The extent to which the

child overcomes these emotional upheavals and to which these attachments,

fears, and fantasies continue to live on in the unconscious greatly

influences later life, especially love relationships.

The conflicts occurring in the earlier developmental stages are no less

significant as a formative influence, because these problems represent the

earliest prototypes of such basic human situations as dependency on others

and relationship to authority. Also basic in molding the personality of the

individual is the behavior of the parents toward the child during these

stages of development. The fact that the child reacts, not only to

objective reality, but also to fantasy distortions of reality, however,

greatly complicates even the best-intentioned educational efforts.

Id, Ego, and Superego

The effort to clarify the bewildering number of interrelated observations

uncovered by psychoanalytic exploration led to the development of a model

of the structure of the psychic system. Three functional systems are

distinguished that are conveniently designated as the id, ego, and

superego.

The first system refers to the sexual and aggressive tendencies that arise

from the body, as distinguished from the mind. Freud called these

tendencies Triebe, which literally means “drives,” but which is often

inaccurately translated as “instincts” to indicate their innate character.

These inherent drives claim immediate satisfaction, which is experienced as

pleasurable; the id thus is dominated by the pleasure principle. In his

later writings, Freud tended more toward psychological rather than

biological conceptualization of the drives.

How the conditions for satisfaction are to be brought about is the task of

the second system, the ego, which is the domain of such functions as

perception, thinking, and motor control that can accurately assess

environmental conditions. In order to fulfill its function of adaptation,

or reality testing, the ego must be capable of enforcing the postponement

of satisfaction of the instinctual impulses originating in the id. To

defend itself against unacceptable impulses, the ego develops specific

psychic means, known as defense mechanisms. These include repression, the

exclusion of impulses from conscious awareness; projection, the process of

ascribing to others one’s own unacknowledged desires; and reaction

formation, the establishment of a pattern of behavior directly opposed to a

strong unconscious need. Such defense mechanisms are put into operation

whenever anxiety signals a danger that the original unacceptable impulses

may reemerge.

An id impulse becomes unacceptable, not only as a result of a temporary

need for postponing its satisfaction until suitable reality conditions can

be found, but more often because of a prohibition imposed on the individual

by others, originally the parents. The totality of these demands and

prohibitions constitutes the major content of the third system, the

superego, the function of which is to control the ego in accordance with

the internalized standards of parental figures. If the demands of the

superego are not fulfilled, the person may feel shame or guilt. Because the

superego, in Freudian theory, originates in the struggle to overcome the

Oedipal conflict, it has a power akin to an instinctual drive, is in part

unconscious, and can give rise to feelings of guilt not justified by any

conscious transgression. The ego, having to mediate among the demands of

the id, the superego, and the outside world, may not be strong enough to

reconcile these conflicting forces. The more the ego is impeded in its

development because of being enmeshed in its earlier conflicts, called

fixations or complexes, or the more it reverts to earlier satisfactions and

archaic modes of functioning, known as regression, the greater is the

likelihood of succumbing to these pressures. Unable to function normally,

it can maintain its limited control and integrity only at the price of

symptom formation, in which the tensions are expressed in neurotic

symptoms.

Anxiety

A cornerstone of modern psychoanalytic theory and practice is the concept

of anxiety, which institutes appropriate mechanisms of defense against

certain danger situations. These danger situations, as described by Freud,

are the fear of abandonment by or the loss of the loved one (the object),

the risk of losing the object’s love, the danger of retaliation and

punishment, and, finally, the hazard of reproach by the superego. Thus,

symptom formation, character and impulse disorders, and perversions, as

well as sublimations, represent compromise formations—different forms of an

adaptive integration that the ego tries to achieve through more or less

successfully reconciling the different conflicting forces in the mind.

Psychoanalytic Schools

Various psychoanalytic schools have adopted other names for their doctrines

to indicate deviations from Freudian theory.

Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung, one of the earliest pupils of Freud, eventually created a

school that he preferred to call analytical psychology. Like Freud, Jung

used the concept of the libido; however, to him it meant not only sexual

drives, but a composite of all creative instincts and impulses and the

entire motivating force of human conduct. According to his theories, the

unconscious is composed of two parts; the personal unconscious, which

contains the results of the individual’s entire experience, and the

collective unconscious, the reservoir of the experience of the human race.

In the collective unconscious exist a number of primordial images, or

archetypes, common to all individuals of a given country or historical era.

Archetypes take the form of bits of intuitive knowledge or apprehension and

normally exist only in the collective unconscious of the individual. When

the conscious mind contains no images, however, as in sleep, or when the

consciousness is caught off guard, the archetypes commence to function.

Archetypes are primitive modes of thought and tend to personify natural

processes in terms of such mythological concepts as good and evil spirits,

fairies, and dragons. The mother and the father also serve as prominent

archetypes.

An important concept in Jung’s theory is the existence of two basically

different types of personality, mental attitude, and function. When the

libido and the individual’s general interest are turned outward toward

people and objects of the external world, he or she is said to be

extroverted. When the reverse is true, and libido and interest are centered

on the individual, he or she is said to be introverted. In a completely

normal individual these two tendencies alternate, neither dominating, but

usually the libido is directed mainly in one direction or the other; as a

result, two personality types are recognizable.

Jung rejected Freud’s distinction between the ego and superego and

recognized a portion of the personality, somewhat similar to the superego,

that he called the persona. The persona consists of what a person appears

to be to others, in contrast to what he or she actually is. The persona is

the role the individual chooses to play in life, the total impression he or

she wishes to make on the outside world.

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler, another of Freud’s pupils, differed from both Freud and Jung

in stressing that the motivating force in human life is the sense of

inferiority, which begins as soon as an infant is able to comprehend the

existence of other people who are better able to care for themselves and

cope with their environment. From the moment the feeling of inferiority is

established, the child strives to overcome it. Because inferiority is

intolerable, the compensatory mechanisms set up by the mind may get out of

hand, resulting in self-centered neurotic attitudes, overcompensations, and

a retreat from the real world and its problems.

Adler laid particular stress on inferiority feelings arising from what he

regarded as the three most important relationships: those between the

individual and work, friends, and loved ones. The avoidance of inferiority

feelings in these relationships leads the individual to adopt a life goal

that is often not realistic and frequently is expressed as an unreasoning

will to power and dominance, leading to every type of antisocial behavior

from bullying and boasting to political tyranny. Adler believed that

analysis can foster a sane and rational “community feeling” that is

constructive rather than destructive.

Otto Rank

Another student of Freud, Otto Rank, introduced a new theory of neurosis,

attributing all neurotic disturbances to the primary trauma of birth. In

his later writings he described individual development as a progression

from complete dependence on the mother and family, to a physical

independence coupled with intellectual dependence on society, and finally

to complete intellectual and psychological emancipation. Rank also laid

great importance on the will, defined as “a positive guiding organization

and integration of self, which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and

controls the instinctual drives.”

Other Psychoanalytic Schools

Later noteworthy modifications of psychoanalytic theory include those of

the American psychoanalysts Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack

Sullivan. The theories of Fromm lay particular emphasis on the concept that

society and the individual are not separate and opposing forces, that the

nature of society is determined by its historic background, and that the

needs and desires of individuals are largely formed by their society. As a

result, Fromm believed, the fundamental problem of psychoanalysis and

psychology is not to resolve conflicts between fixed and unchanging

instinctive drives in the individual and the fixed demands and laws of

society, but to bring about harmony and an understanding of the

relationship between the individual and society. Fromm also stressed the

importance to the individual of developing the ability to fully use his or

her mental, emotional, and sensory powers.

Horney worked primarily in the field of therapy and the nature of neuroses,

which she defined as of two types: situation neuroses and character

neuroses. Situation neuroses arise from the anxiety attendant on a single

conflict, such as being faced with a difficult decision. Although they may

paralyze the individual temporarily, making it impossible to think or act

efficiently, such neuroses are not deeply rooted. Character neuroses are

characterized by a basic anxiety and a basic hostility resulting from a

lack of love and affection in childhood.

Sullivan believed that all development can be described exclusively in

terms of interpersonal relations. Character types as well as neurotic

symptoms are explained as results of the struggle against anxiety arising

from the individual’s relations with others and are a security system,

maintained for the purpose of allaying anxiety.

Melanie Klein

An important school of thought is based on the teachings of the British

psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Because most of Klein’s followers worked with

her in England, this has come to be known as the English school. Its

influence, nevertheless, is very strong throughout the European continent

and in South America. Its principal theories were derived from observations

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