Rather than trying to understand personality in terms of broad theories for describing individual differences, Freud looked for personality in the details: the meanings and insights revealed by careful analysis of the tiniest blemishes in a person’s thought and behavior. Working with patients who came to him with disorders that did not seem to have any physical basis, he began by interpreting the origins of their everyday mistakes and memory lapses, errors that have come to be called Freudian slips.

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The theories of Freud and his followers (discussed in the Treatment chapter) are referred to as the psychodynamic approach, an approach that regards personality as formed by needs, strivings, and desires largely operating outside of awareness—motives that can also produce emotional disorders. The real engines of personality, in this view, are forces of which we are largely unaware.

To explain the emotional difficulties that beset his patients, Freud proposed that the mind consists of three independent, interacting, and often conflicting systems: the id, the superego, and the ego.

The most basic system, the id, is the part of the mind containing the drives present at birth; it is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates according to the pleasure principle, the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse. If governed by the id alone, you would never be able to tolerate the build-up of hunger while waiting to be served at a restaurant but would simply grab food from tables nearby.

Opposite the id is the superego, the mental system that reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly learned as parents exercise their authority. The superego acts as a kind of conscience, punishing us when it finds we are doing or thinking something wrong (by producing guilt or other painful feelings) and rewarding us (with feelings of pride or self-congratulation) for living up to ideal standards.

The final system of the mind, according to psychoanalytic theory, is the ego, the component of personality, developed through contact with the external world, that enables us to deal with life’s practical demands. The ego is a regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world. It is the mediator between the id and the superego. The ego helps you resist the impulse to snatch others’ food and also chooses the restaurant and pays the check.

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Freud believed that the relative strength of the interactions among the three systems of mind (i.e., which system is usually dominant) determines an individual’s basic personality structure. He believed that the dynamics among the id, superego, and ego are largely governed by anxiety, an unpleasant feeling that arises when unwanted thoughts or feelings occur, such as when the id seeks a gratification that the ego thinks will lead to real-world dangers or that the superego sees as leading to punishment. When the ego receives an “alert signal” in the form of anxiety, it launches into a defensive position in an attempt to ward off the anxiety. According to Freud, it does so using one of several different defense mechanisms, unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses (see TABLE 11.2). Psychodynamically oriented psychologists believe that defense mechanisms help us overcome anxiety and engage effectively with the outside world and that our characteristic style of defense becomes our signature in dealing with the world—and an essential aspect of our personality.

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Freud also proposed that a person’s basic personality is formed before 6 years of age during a series of sensitive periods, or life stages, when experiences influence all that will follow. Freud called these periods psychosexual stages, distinct early life stages through which personality is formed as children experience sexual pleasures from specific body areas and caregivers redirect or interfere with those pleasures.

Problems and conflicts encountered at any psychosexual stage, Freud believed, will influence personality in adulthood. Conflict resulting from a person’s being deprived or, paradoxically, overindulged at a given stage could result in fixation, a phenomenon in which a person’s pleasure-seeking drives become psychologically stuck, or arrested, at a particular psychosexual stage. Here’s how he explained each stage and the effects of fixation at each stage.

What should we make of all this? On the one hand, the psychoanalytic theory of psychosexual stages offers an intriguing picture of early family relationships and the extent to which they allow the child to satisfy basic needs and wishes. On the other hand, critics argue that psychodynamic explanations lack any real evidence and tend to focus on provocative after-the-fact interpretation rather than testable prediction. The psychosexual stage theory offers a compelling set of story plots for interpreting lives once they have unfolded, but it has not generated clear-cut predictions supported by research.

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