The real engines of personality are forces of which we are largely unaware. So thought Sigmund Freud. And he and his followers represent the psychodynamic approach to personality. To Freud, every person possessed a dynamic unconscious, an active collection of a lifetime of hidden memories, a person's deepest instincts and desires, and the struggles to contain these forces.

Perhaps Freud's best known contribution was his theory that the mind is composed of the id, ego, and superego. Freud believed that most of what happens in the mind is hidden. The part of our personality that enables us to deal with reality, called the ego, is only the tip of the iceberg.

The parts of personality theory either are directly or indirectly in service of basic survival mechanisms of the organism.

The most basic system, the id, is the part of the mind containing our deepest instinctual drives— our bodily needs and desires, particularly our sexual and aggressive impulses. If it was up to the id alone, we would seek immediate gratification and act on any impulse.

Freud's id— an impulsive, sometimes angrily impulsive mechanism.

The ego is part of one's personality that, through contact with the outer world, allows us to deal with things practically. This helps us resist impulses, to live life according to reality more so than instant gratification.

And then a figure-it-out system, the ego that works with the constraints of society.

We find the final system of mind on the roof— the superego.

A voice of conscience, as we would say, or to Freud, the superego that incorporates rules of society that immediately says, no, you can't do that.

This aspect of personality provides us with a set of guidelines and internal standards by which to live our lives. Some call it the conscience. According to Freud, it is the dynamic when the id, ego, and superego interact that shapes personality.

So how does this system respond to inner conflict? Freed viewed each stage of a life as a process of dealing with specific types of inner conflict, which led to internal defense mechanisms on the part of the individual.

These little processes of either twisting the story or washing it away out of memory are what Freud called the defense mechanisms.

So what are these Freudian defense mechanisms? What's that all about?

For example, one of them is projection. The idea of projection is that you may recognize that you have certain qualities that you don't want. And it gets projected onto others.

Projection— that's like yesterday, when you were too scared to cross the stream on that log.

What? I crossed that log. You were too scared. Oh, come on, Val. This looks pretty sturdy. I bet you I could do it.

Didn't happen.

You kept making fun of me for not crossing it, but then I crossed it.

Come on, it's your turn. It's really easy. I just did it.

It's like a branch, Val. I don't think it's gonna hold my weight?

What? Yeah, sure it will.

Come on. Quit playing around. Let's go back.

Also, Freud proposes a defense mechanism that takes what you want and spins it around the opposite way— a reaction formation.

In reaction formation, we unconsciously replace threatening inner wishes we have with exaggerated versions of their opposite. If you have ever unconsciously pushed someone away when you were actually attracted to that person, you have experienced reaction formation.

Next, we have rationalization. This involves creating an explanation that sounds reasonable enough to explain unacceptable feelings or behavior, as we try to conceal the underlying motives or feelings.

Oh, like, when you were driving to the store and you were trying to convince me that it was a good idea for you to call Natasha.

Um, so you think I should call Natasha? I think she should be home by now.

No, I don't think you should call Natasha. Why would you want to call Natasha?

I think we ended things badly. And I don't know— she has my sweatshirt.

She has your stuff? What are you talking about?

I don't know.

Yeah, she has my stuff. All right. All right. Moving on. Regression.

In regression, we deal with inner conflict by stepping back down to an immature behavior or earlier stage of development.

Regression— that would probably be like when you were on the couch the other day for like five hours eating a jar of peanut butter, and wouldn't move, and you were all curled up.

Another defense mechanism is repression. According to Freud, repression underlies all other defense mechanisms.

Repression is a motivated forgetting. There's some information briefly in the content of mind that is so anxiety provoking that you stick it back down in the unconscious part of mind.

Nope. Not coming back to me.

It happened. I found you. You were almost comatose.

Any more cookies?

If you are threatened by someone, something, or your own wishes, and channel that conflict into a neutral or less threatening outlet, you're working with displacement.

The other day, when you were digging in the garden— like furiously digging up holes? You never garden.

Yeah. They say it's very soothing to garden. It's calming to garden.

These ideas about defense mechanisms still look really good. They may be the strongest insight of Freudian psychology.

One of Freud's most controversial ideas was his theory of the psychosexual stages of development.

Freud felt that there are desires that have a sexual nature that are present in childhood. Freud's idea was that psychological development is fundamentally biological. And Freud reasoned that there is a sensual gratification associated with these stages that become called psychosexual.

Freud identified five major stages of psychosexual development— oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

The psychologically interesting part of the Freudian analysis is not simply that he said there were these stages, but that the desires of those stages run into the constraints of reality. The young child wants to consume almost anything, even if it's a boy. And the parents, therefore, spend a lot of their time yanking away things that seem desirable.

Between two and three years of age, Freud defined an anal speech, associated between the training.

It's a conflict between some inner, wired in, natural biological desire, and a society that says, you can't do that.

Between three and five years of age, Freud saw a phallic stage, where feelings are defined by the pleasures and frustrations related to the genitals. It's here where Freud defined the Oedipus conflict, named after the Greek myth of Oedipus, in which a young man, who unknowingly killed his father, ends up marrying his mother.

Freud thought that around four or five, boys start to notice their mothers being affectionate with their fathers, leading to jealousy and frustration.

He's imagining the male child having a sexual attraction towards the mother, literally seeing that the father is in the way, and realizing one way for the father not to be in the way is to do away with the father.

Some of Freud's contemporaries referred to a young girl's parallel feelings about her father as the Electra complex. Freud's theory continues with the latency stage between the ages of five and 13, which mostly hinges on further development of knowledge and skills, and then the eventual genital stage, the coming together of the mature adult personality with all the impulses to love, work, and relate to others.

So a lot of things look funny. Yet, Freud, to many, had insights that were unique. And throwing it out completely would be a huge loss.

Freud's unique ideas undoubtedly laid the groundwork for much of modern research into personality.