Personality Structure: Id, Ego, and Superego

The Structure of Personality

• Personality has three aspects: id, ego, and superego.
• Id is the original system of personality, present at birth, including instincts.
• Id is the reservoir of psychic energy, furnishing all the power for the operation of personality.
• Id is a cauldron of desires, completely out of touch with reality, making it illogical and irrational.
• The primary goal of id is to gratify desires, regardless of whether they are realistic or moral, to remove tension.

Id Characteristics

• Id operates according to the pleasure principle, seeking immediate and complete gratification.
• Id uses two processes to achieve its goals: reflex actions and primary process thinking.
• Reflex actions are inborn and automatic reactions, such as sneezing and blinking.
• Primary process thinking involves forming an image of the desired outcome, such as a hungry person having a mental picture of food.

Ego

• The ego is logical and reasonable, able to cope with the demands of reality.
• The ego comes into existence because id alone cannot fulfill the desires of the organism.
• The ego is responsible for dealing with the external world, whereas id is focused on internal desires.