The Psychology and Organizational Behavior course invited Fredrick Dermawan Purba, a lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology, Padjadjaran University, as a guest lecturer presenting Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Theory) on Thursday (30/6/2022).
Psychoanalysis is the most difficult theories from the School of Psychology. There are also Cognitive Psychology, Humanistic Psychology, Behaviorism, and Gestalt Psychology. Psychoanalysis is considered sophisticated because it studies the psychology of the unconscious mind.
“Human personalities are mostly determined in the first 5-10 years of life,” said Fredrick.
It depends on the parenting style of the child’s parents or guardians. The things that happened at that time would later embed in the human’s unconscious mind.
Among psychological theorists, Sigmund Freud was the one who initiated the psychoanalytic theory. In addition, Fredrick also discussed the complementary, namely Defense Mechanism. Defense Mechanism was initiated by Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud. In short, the three concepts discussed are the topographic model of the mind, the structure psyche, and the defense mechanism.
“According to Freud, what we can see from an overall personality is only about 10 percent. The rest is in the unconscious mind,” said Fredrick.
It shows the difficulty of understanding personalities in the unconscious area. In the topographical model of the mind, there is also a section between the conscious and the subconscious. For example, memory and knowledge are somewhere in between. Some tend to be at a conscious level, and others tend to be at a subconscious level.
The second concept that Fredrick discusses is The Three Egos. The Three Egos of the human personality consist of the id, ego, and superego. The id is in the unconscious. The superego is primarily in the unconscious. However, some are between the unconscious and conscious (preconscious) and a little in the conscious. The ego is present in all parts and is the most visible in the conscious realm. The ego connects humans with the outside world.
The id, which is all unconscious, is a pleasure principle (the principle of satisfaction). For example, a baby cries because he is hungry. Babies have not built an ego; they only have the id. A sane adult human will not weep because he is a little hungry because they had established his superego and ego.
The superego begins to form at the age of five and acts as the individual’s moral standard. The superego has two parts, conscience and ego ideal (adjusting to the ego that the individual wants to achieve). Then the ego is formed from the id and superego simultaneously and acts as a component of personality that faces reality.