Personality Structure Psychoanalysis Theory
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As the region that houses basic drives primary motivates, the id
operates through the primary process. Because it blindly seeks to satisfy the
pleasure principle, its survival is dependent on the development of a
secondary process to bring it into contact with the external world. This
secondary process functions through the ego Feist and Feist 35. b. Ego Das Ich
Ego caught between two opposite forces and guarded and abide by the principle of reality by trying to fulfill the individual pleasure that limited by
reality Minderop 21. As Halonen and Santrock 380 said that the ego is called the executive branch of personality because it makes rational decisions.
Whereas the id is completely unconscious, the ego is partly conscious. It is useful to raising a man’s mental function-reasoning, problem-solving, and
decision making Halonen and Santrock 380. Beside serve the id to fulfil its desire, Feist and Feist noted that the ego
must take into consideration in controlling equally of the id and the superego when a man wants to show their intellectual. It means that the ego also must
serve the superego with its realistic of the external world Feist and Feist 35. But this service does not consider the morality as superego did because the
ego has no morality and ego always try to find the way for id to fulfil without risking a man’s safety. Feist and Feist described that when the ego surrounded
by the certain condition that can harm a man, the ego reacts becomes anxious. It then triggers a man to uses repression and other defense mechanisms to
keep himself from this anxiety Feist and Feist 35.
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c. Superego Das Ueber Ich According to Halonen and Santrock, superego is the last structure of
personality. The superego considers something that is right or wrong. That is what we often call as the “conscience” Halonen and Santrock 380. The
conscience is recognizing the value of good and bad Minderop 22. “The superego [...] creates feelings of pride and guilt according to the beliefs that
have been learned within the family and the culture” Boeree 284. The superego led by moralistic and idealistic principle as the opposite
of the id with its pleasure principle and the ego with its realistic principle. Those principles made superego has its duties to judge right or wrong of an
action and determines what we should do and should not do. From its duties, superego arises some feeling as the value of one action such as guilty feeling
and fear of punishment after someone doing something wrong or satisfy and proud feeling after doing something right.