Psychoanalytic Model

A psychoanalytic model, stemming from Freud,
emphasizes the role of parental influences, unconscious conflicts, guilt,
frustration, and an array of defense mechanisms that people use, unconsciously,
to ward off anxiety. According to this view, people develop psychological
problems because they have inner conflicts intense enough to overwhelm
their normal defenses.

Freud thought that all people have some aspects of their personality that
are innate and self-preserving (the id), some aspects of their personality that
are learned rules or conscience (the superego), and some aspects of their
personality that are realistic (the ego). For example, the id of a person who is
hungry wants to eat immediately, in any manner, regardless of the time or social
conventions. However, it may be time to meet with the supervisor for an
important review. The superego insists on meeting with the supervisor right
now, for as long as necessary. The ego may be able to balance personal needs
and society’s requirements by, for example, bringing bagels for everyone to
the meeting with the supervisor. People must somehow harmonize the instinctual
and unreasoning desires of the id, the moral and restrictive demands
of the superego, and the rational and realistic requirements of the ego.

Conflicts between the id, ego, and superego may lead to unpleasant and
anxious feelings. People develop defense mechanisms to handle these feelings.
Defense mechanisms can alleviate anxiety by staving off the conscious
awareness of conflicts that would be too painful to acknowledge. A psychoanalytic
view is that everyone uses defense mechanisms, and abnormality is
simply the result of overblown defense mechanisms.

Some of the most prominent defense mechanisms are repression, regression,
displacement, reaction formation, sublimation, and projection. In repression,
a person forgets something that causes anxiety. For example, a student
who genuinely forgets her meeting with her professor about a make-up test has repressed the appointment. In regression, a person reverts back to
activities and feelings of a younger age. For example, a toddler who reclaims
his old discarded bottle when a new baby sister comes on the scene is regressing.
In displacement, a person has very strong feelings toward one person
but feels for some reason unable to express them. Subsequently, she
finds herself expressing these feelings toward a safer person. For example, a
person who is extremely angry with her boss at work may keep these feelings
to herself until she gets home but then find herself very angry with her husband,
children, and pets. In reaction formation, people have very strong
feelings that are somehow unacceptable, and they react in the opposite way.
For example, a person who is campaigning against adult bookstores in the
community may be secretly fascinated with pornography. In sublimation, a
person rechannels energy, typically sexual energy, into socially acceptable
outlets. For example, a woman who is attracted to the young men in
swimsuits at the pool may decide to swim one hundred laps. In projection,
people notice in others traits or behaviors that are too painful to admit in
themselves. For example, a person who is very irritated by his friend’s whining
may have whining tendencies himself that he cannot admit. All defense
mechanisms are unconscious ways to handle anxiety.


The psychoanalytic model opened up areas for discussion that were previously
taboo and helped people to understand that some of their motivations
are outside their own awareness. For example, dissociative disorders
occur when a person’s thoughts and feelings are dissociated, or separated,
from conscious awareness by memory loss or a change in identity. In
dissociative identity disorder, formerly termed multiple personality, the individual
alternates between an original or primary personality and one or
more secondary or subordinate personalities. A psychoanalytic model would
see dissociative identity disorder as stemming from massive repression to
ward off unacceptable impulses, particularly those of a sexual nature. These
yearnings increase during adolescence and adulthood, until the person finally
expresses them, often in a guilt-inducing sexual act. Then, normal
forms of repression are ineffective in blocking out this guilt, so the person
blocks the acts and related thoughts entirely from consciousness by developing
a new identity for the dissociated bad part of self.

The psychoanalytic model views all human behavior as a product of mental
or psychological causes, though the cause may not be obvious to an outside
observer or even to the person performing the behavior. Psychoanalytic
influence on the modern perspective of abnormality has been enormous.
Freudian concepts, such as Freudian slips and unconscious motivation, are
so well known that they are now part of ordinary language and culture. However,
the psychoanalytic model has been criticized because it is not verifiable,
because it gives complex explanations when simple and straightforward
ones are sufficient, because it cannot be proven wrong (lacks
disconfirmability), and because it was based mainly on a relatively small
number of upper-middle-class European patients and on Freud himself.