Sunday, September 9, 2012

Parts of Personality

The three parts of the personality are the id, ego, and superego. The id works on the pleasure principle and the ego works on the reality principle.

Superego is the moral center of personality, containing the ego ideal and conscience, and is the source of moral anxiety. The conflict between the demands of the id and the rules and restrictions of the superego leads to anxiety for the ego, which uses defense mechanism to deal with that anxiety.

Stages of Personality Development

The personality develops in a series of psycho sexual stages:

Oral (id dominated), Anal (ego develops), Phallic (superego develops), Latency (period of sexual repression), and Genital (sexual feelings reawaken with appropriate targets).

The Oedipus and Electra complexes (sexual "crushes" on the opposite-sex parent) create anxiety in the phallic stage, which is resolved through identification with the same-sex parent. Fixation occurs when conflicts are not fully resolved during a stage, resulting in adult personality characteristic reflecting childhood inadequacies.

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