The preconscious level is that which is “capable of becoming conscious”; for example, this is information which is not repressed and is available, but is not retrieved as quickly as information in the conscious. The preconscious will store information we don’t often refer to. At the final level, resembling the bottom 90% of the iceberg is the unconscious. The unconscious contains fully submerged thoughts that have been repressed and are “not capable of becoming conscious in ‘the ordinary way”. Our conscious mind works to keep control of the unconscious. Freud believed this occurred as painful thoughts and memories can be hidden by the unconscious as a way to protect the conscious mind.
Psychosexual stages of development
In 1905, Freud wrote Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905, [2020]) in which he analyses how sexuality is present in early developmental stages, and how this impacts adulthood. These are known as the psychosexual stages as each phase represents a fixation of the libido. Freud depicted several stages of a person’s personality forming through a series of psycho-sexual developments in childhood, meaning in each stage a child develops aspects of the sexual pleasure that will manifest later in their life. If a child becomes “fixated” on any particular stage, it will become a defining personality trait.
These are as follows:
- The oral stage (ages 0-1)
- Anal stage (ages 1–3)
- The phallic stage (ages 3–5)
- Latency period (6 years–puberty)
- Genital stage (puberty–adulthood)
The “oral stage” entails the fixation on the mouth such as breastfeeding or sucking the thumb. Freud argued that children who retain this “are habitual kissers as adults and show a tendency to perverse kissing, or as men they have a marked desire for drinking and smoking” (1905 [2020]). Conversely, if this stage is repressed, the person will “experience disgust for eating and evince hysterical vomiting” (1905, [2020]).
The “anal stage” is the period of learning control over the bowels and bladder. This stage and the experience of withholding and releasing stools become a source of pleasure. The expulsion of the bowels, Freud writes, constitutes the child’s first “donation” (1905, [2020]). Freud goes on to state that “the disposal of which expresses the pliability while the retention of it can express the spite of the little being towards its environment” (1905, [2020]). Children who are “anally expulsive”, and carry this into adulthood, tend to give things away, be messy and disorganised and overshare personal information. On the other hand, repression in this stage will result in the development of an “anal-retentive” personality, characterised by being withholding and secretive.
The “phallic stage” is the stage of recognising sexual differences, where sensual experience is focused on the genital areas through activities of washing or urinating. The most important aspect of this stage is the Oedipus complex. Freud theorises that the male child will develop an unconscious sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent and, as a result, feel a sense of envy and rivalry towards the same-sex parent. However, the child worries the father will realise this and punish him through castration, known as “castration anxiety”. Freud argued girls go through a different phase (the Electra complex) and develop an attraction to their fathers. This originates from resentment towards the mother who they feel has “castrated” them, resulting in “penis envy”.
In the fourth stage, “the latency period”, the libido is dormant and there are no further psychosexual developments. All sexual urges are repressed at this stage.
The final stage, “the genital stage” defines the exploration of sexual relationships and effectively produces an outcome of the previous stages.
Id, ego & superego
In The Ego and the Id, Freud revised his theory of forces of the psyche with his structural model. This new structural model contained the id, the ego and the superego:
- The id — the primitive and instinctual part of the mind
- The ego — mediates the desires of both the id and the superego. It is worth looking at each of these components in further depth.
- The super-ego — develops through social norms and our interactions with the world and acts as a moral compass
The id is our instinctual and primitive life. The id is dominated by what Freud refers to as the “pleasure principle” in his work Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920 [2014]). The pleasure principle is what guides us towards instant gratification. As we develop, the “reality principle” emerges, allowing us to delay gratification and control these impulses. The id, guided by the pleasure principle, contains our sexual and aggressive drives. Our id, in some capacity, exists before we do. We are born with urges, in-built desires and traits which define our behaviour.
The ego is our outward appearance of personality, and very simply the way we see and understand reality. It is tied to our instincts and acts as the basis of our conscious mind. It develops itself through our contact with reality. The ego is the negotiator between the three drives. In psychoanalytic theory, our ego strives to protect us from unbearable and traumatic thoughts. This is defined by what Freud called “the reality principle” where the ego seeks stability. Freud saw the ego as having the most demands placed upon it, stating that,
