The structure of human personality according to Freud. Personality psychotype: classification and description

Freud believed that the psyche consists of three layers - conscious, preconscious and unconscious, in which the basic structures of personality are located. Moreover, the content of the unconscious, according to Freud, is not accessible to awareness under almost any conditions. The content of the preconscious layer can be realized by a person, although this requires significant effort from him.

They also identified three parts in the personality structure: Id, Ego, Super-Ego.

ID (“IT”) = UNCONSCIOUS

- INSTINCTS, PRINCIPLE OF PLEASURE

- NO CONTROL

The unconscious layer contains the personality structure Eid- the energetic basis of mental development. It contains innate unconscious drives who strive for their own satisfaction.

Freud believed that there are two basic innate unconscious drives - life instinct and death instinct, which are in an antagonistic relationship with each other, creating a biological internal conflict. Human behavior is caused by the simultaneous action of both of these forces.

Freud notes that innate drives are channels, through which the energy passes, shaping our activities. Mental energy strives for discharge, which is why frustration (negative mental state, in a situation where desires do not correspond to available opportunities) drive leads to neurosis, since discharge is impossible. Based on these provisions, both the idea of ​​discharge in a psychoanalysis session and the idea of ​​transfer were developed, i.e. transference, exchange of energy between patient and psychoanalyst. Researchers call this process “cathartic cleansing.”

He also believed that the content of the unconscious is constantly expanding, since those aspirations and desires that a person could not, for one reason or another, realize in his activities, are forced out by him into the unconscious, filling its content.

EGO "I" = PRECONSCIOUS

- MIND, REASON, REALITY PRINCIPLE

- EXTERNAL CONTROL

Ego- The term “Ego” comes from the Latin word “ego”, which means “I”. The ego is a component of the mental apparatus responsible for human decision making. Also is congenital and is located both in the conscious layer and in the preconscious. In this way we can always be aware of our I, although this may not be easy for us.

If the content of the Id expands during the life of a child, then the content of the Ego, on the contrary, narrows, since the child is born, as Freud put it, with an “oceanic sense of Self,” including the entire surrounding world. Over time, he begins to realize the boundary between himself and the world around him, begins to localize his I to your body, thus narrowing the volume of the Ego.

Ego uses perceptual and cognitive processes in his quest to satisfy needs and desires Eid .

SUPER-EGO (“SUPER-EGO”) = SUPERCONSCIOUS

- VALUES, MORALITY, SPIRITUALITY

- SELF-CONTROL

The third personality structure - the Super-Ego - is not innate, it is formed during the life of the child. The mechanism of its formation is identification with a close adult of the same sex, whose traits and qualities become the content of the Super-Ego. During the process of identification, children also develop an Oedipus complex (in boys) or an Electra complex (in girls), i.e. a complex of ambivalent feelings that a child experiences towards the object of identification.

Freud emphasized that there is an unstable balance between these three personality structures, since not only them, but also the directions of their development are opposite to each other. The drives contained in the Id strive for their own satisfaction, dictating to a person such desires that are practically impossible to fulfill in any society. The super-ego, which includes a person’s conscience, introspection and ideals, warns him about the impossibility of realizing these desires and stands for compliance with the norms accepted in a given society. Thus, the Ego becomes an arena for the struggle of contradictory tendencies, which are dictated by the Id and Super-Ego. The state of internal conflict in which a person constantly finds himself always keeps him in tension, reducing his resistance to neuroses. Therefore, Freud emphasized that there is no clear line between normality and pathology, and the tension people experience makes them potential neurotics.

The ability to maintain one’s mental health depends on psychological defense mechanisms that help a person, if not prevent (since this is virtually impossible), then at least mitigate the conflict between the Id and the Super-Ego. Freud identified several defense mechanisms, the main ones being repression, regression, rationalization, projection and sublimation.

Repression is the most ineffective mechanism, since in this case the energy of the repressed and unfulfilled motive (desire) is not realized in activity, but remains in the person, causing an increase in tension. Since desire is repressed into the unconscious, a person completely forgets about it, but the remaining tension, penetrating through the unconscious, makes itself felt in the form of symbols that fill our dreams, in the form of errors, slips, and slips of the tongue. Moreover, a symbol, according to Freud, is not a direct reflection of a repressed desire, but its transformation. Therefore, he attached such importance to the “psychopathology of everyday life,” i.e. interpretation of such phenomena as mistakes and dreams of a person, his associations. Freud's attitude towards symbolism was one of the reasons for his divergence from Jung, who believed that there was a direct and close connection between the symbol and the human drive, and objected to the interpretations invented by Freud.

Regression and rationalization are more successful types of defense, since they provide an opportunity for at least partial discharge of the energy contained in a person’s desires. At the same time, regression is a more primitive way of realizing aspirations and getting out of a conflict situation. A person may begin to grease his nails, spoil things, chew gum or tobacco, believe in good spirits, strive for risky situations, etc. and many of these regressions are so generally accepted that

With projection, a person attributes to others the desires and feelings that he himself experiences. In the case when the subject to whom any feeling has been attributed confirms the projection made by his behavior, this protective mechanism operates quite successfully, since a person can recognize these feelings as real, valid, but external to him, and not be afraid their. It must be emphasized that the introduction of this protective mechanism made it possible to further develop projective methods for studying personality. These methods of asking people to complete unfinished sentences or stories or to compose a story based on undefined plots have become a significant contribution to the experimental study of personality.

The most effective defense mechanism is sublimation, since it helps to direct the energy that is associated with sexual or aggressive aspirations in a different direction and to realize it, in particular, in creative activity. In principle, Freud considered culture to be a product of sublimation and from this point of view viewed works of art, scientific discoveries. This activity is most successful because it involves the complete realization of accumulated energy, catharsis or cleansing of a person from it. Based on this approach to sublimation, the foundations of art therapy were later developed in psychoanalysis - art therapy.

energy, which is associated with the instinct of life, is also the basis for the development of personality, human character, and, based on the patterns of its development, Freud created his periodization, which was discussed in Chapter. 4.

Freud considered libidinal energy to be the basis not only for the development of the individual person, but also for human society. He wrote that the leader of the tribe is a kind of his father, towards whom men experience an Oedipus complex, trying to take his place. However, with the murder of the leader, enmity, blood and civil strife comes to the tribe, it weakens, and such negative experience leads to the creation of the first laws, taboos, which begin to regulate human social behavior.

Later, Freud's followers created a system of ethnopsychological concepts, which describes the characteristics of the psyche of various peoples through the main stages in the development of libido. It was written, in particular, that the methods of caring for a baby, fixed in the culture of society, are the basis of both the individual psyche and the mentality of a given nation.

However, further research did not confirm this part of Freud’s theory, revealing more complex and ambiguous reasons for the formation of the child’s personality and the development of culture and society as a whole.

It is safe to say that the origins of modern psychology are the views of the outstanding Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He is rightly called the “father” of modern psychology. Central to the early description of personality in the views of S. Freud was the concept of unconscious mental processes. However, in the early 1920s, Freud revised his conceptual model of mental life and introduced three structures into the anatomy of personality: id, ego and superego.

Eid

ID. The word “id” comes from the Latin “it” and, according to Freud, refers exclusively to the primitive, instinctual and innate aspects of the personality. The id functions entirely in the unconscious and is closely related to the primary needs (food, sleep, defecation) that energize our behavior. According to Freud, the id is something dark, biological, chaotic, lawless, and not subject to rules. The id remains central to the individual throughout his life. Being the oldest original structure of the psyche, the id expresses the primary principle of all human life - the immediate outburst of psychic energy produced by biologically determined impulses (especially sexual and aggressive). The immediate release of tension is called pleasure principle. The id follows from this principle by expressing itself in an impulsive, selfish manner, without regard for consequences to others and contrary to self-preservation. In other words, the id can be compared to a blind king, whose brutal power and authority forces one to obey, but in order to exercise power, he is forced to rely on his subjects.

Freud described two mechanisms by which the id relieves the personality of tension: reflex actions and primary processes. In the first case, the id responds automatically to excitation signals and, thus, immediately relieves the tension caused by the stimulus. Examples of such innate reflex mechanisms are coughing in response to irritation of the upper respiratory tract and tears when a speck gets into the eye. However, it must be recognized that reflex actions do not always reduce the level of irritation or tension. Thus, not a single reflexive movement will allow a hungry child to get food. When reflex action fails to reduce tension, another function of the id, called the primary representational process, comes into play. The id forms a mental image of an object initially associated with the satisfaction of a basic need. In the example of a hungry child, this process may evoke an image of a mother's breast or a bottle of milk. Other examples of the primary process of representation are found in dreams, hallucinations, or psychoses.

Primary processes- an illogical, irrational and fantasy form of human ideas, characterized by the inability to suppress impulses and distinguish between the real and the unreal, “oneself” and “not oneself”. The difficulty of behavior in accordance with the primary process lies in the fact that the individual cannot distinguish between the actual object capable of satisfying the need and its image. For example, between water and the mirage of water for a person wandering through the desert. Therefore, Freud argued, it is an impossible task for the infant to learn to postpone the gratification of his primary needs. The capacity for delayed gratification first emerges when young children realize that there is an outside world beyond their own needs and desires. With the advent of this knowledge, a second personality structure, the ego, arises.

Ego

The ego (from the Latin “ego” - “I”) is a component of the mental apparatus responsible for decision making. The ego seeks to express and satisfy the desires of the id according to the restrictions imposed by outside world. The ego receives its structure and function from the id, evolves from it, and borrows part of the energy of the id for its needs to meet the demands of social reality. Thus, the ego helps ensure the safety and self-preservation of the organism. For example, a hungry person in search of food must distinguish between the image of food that appears in the imagination and the image of food in reality. That is, a person must learn to obtain and consume food before the tension decreases. This goal makes a person learn, think, reason, perceive, decide, remember, etc. Accordingly, the ego uses cognitive and perceptual processes in its effort to satisfy the desires and needs of the id. Unlike the id, whose nature is expressed in the search for pleasure, the ego obeys reality principle, the purpose of which is to preserve the integrity of the organism by delaying the gratification of instincts until the moment when the opportunity to achieve discharge in a suitable way is found or appropriate conditions are found in the external environment.

Superego

In order for a person to function effectively in society, he must have a system of values, norms and ethics that are reasonably compatible with those accepted in his environment. All this is acquired through the process of “socialization”; in the language of the structural model of psychoanalysis - through the formation of the superego (from the Latin “super” - “super” and “ego” - “I”).

The superego is the last component of the developing personality. From Freud's point of view, the organism is not born with a superego. Rather, children must acquire it through interactions with parents, teachers, and other “formative” figures. Being a moral and ethical force, the superego is a consequence of the child's prolonged dependence on his parents. It begins to appear when the child begins to distinguish between “right” and “wrong” (around the ages of 3 to 5 years).

Freud divided the superego into two subsystems: conscience and ego-ideal. Conscience is acquired through parental discipline. It involves behavior that parents call “disobedient behavior” and for which the child is reprimanded. Conscience includes the ability for critical self-evaluation, the presence of moral prohibitions and the emergence of feelings of guilt. The rewarding aspect of the superego is the ego ideal. It is formed from what significant people approve or highly value. And, if the goal is achieved, it evokes a feeling of self-respect and pride.

The superego is considered fully formed when parental control gives way to self-control. The superego, trying to completely inhibit any socially condemned impulses from the id, tries to direct a person to absolute perfection in thoughts, words and actions. That is, it tries to convince the ego of the superiority of idealistic goals over realistic ones.

Psychosexual stages of personality development

Psychoanalytic developmental theory is based on two premises. First, or genetic premise, emphasizes that early childhood experiences play a critical role in the formation of adult personality. Freud was convinced that the basic foundation of an individual's personality is laid in very early age, up to five years. The second premise is that a person is born with a certain amount of sexual energy (libido), which then goes through several stages of development. psychosexual stage, rooted in the instinctive processes of the body.

Freud has a hypothesis about four successive stages of personality development: oral, anal, phallic and genital. In the general scheme of development, Freud also included the latent period, which occurs between approximately 6-7 years of a child’s life and the onset of puberty. But, strictly speaking, the latent period is not a stage. The first three stages of development span ages from birth to five years and are called pregenital stages, since the genital area has not yet acquired a dominant role in the development of personality. The fourth stage coincides with the beginning of puberty. The names of the stages are based on the names of the areas of the body whose stimulation leads to a discharge of libidinal energy. The table describes the stages of psychosexual development according to Freud.

Since Freud emphasized biological factors, all stages are closely related to erogenous zones, that is, sensitive areas of the body that function as loci of expression of libidinal impulses. Erogenous zones include the ears, eyes, mouth (lips), breasts, anus and genitals.

The term “psychosexual” emphasizes that the main factor determining personality development is sexual instinct, progressing from one erogenous zone to another throughout a person’s life. According to Freud's theory, at each stage of development, a certain area of ​​the body strives for a certain object or action in order to produce pleasant tension. The social experience of an individual, as a rule, brings to each stage a certain long-term contribution in the form of acquired attitudes, traits and values.

The logic of Freud's theoretical constructions is based on two factors: frustration and overprotectiveness. In cases of frustration, the child's psychosexual needs (for example, sucking, biting and chewing) are suppressed by parents or caregivers and therefore are not optimally satisfied. If parents are overprotective, the child is given few opportunities (or none at all) to manage his own internal functions (for example, to exercise control over excretory functions). For this reason, the child develops a feeling of dependence and incompetence. In any case, as Freud believed, the result is an excessive accumulation of libido, which subsequently, in adulthood, can be expressed in the form of “residual” behavior (character traits, values, attitudes) associated with the psychosexual stage at which frustration or overprotectiveness occurred .

Basic instincts of human behavior

Psychoanalytic theory is based on the idea that people are complex energy systems. In accordance with the achievements of physics and physiology of the 19th century, Freud believed that human behavior is activated by a single energy, according to the law of conservation of energy (that is, it can move from one state to another, but its quality remains the same). Freud took this one general principle nature, translated it into the language of psychological terms and concluded that the source of psychic energy is the neurophysiological state of excitation. He further postulated: each person has a certain limited amount of energy that fuels mental activity. According to Freud, mental images bodily needs expressed as desires are called instincts. Freud argued that all human activity (thinking, perception, memory and imagination) is determined by instincts.

Although the number of instincts may be unlimited, Freud recognized the existence of two main groups: instincts of life and death. The first group (under the general name Eros) includes all forces that serve the purpose of maintaining vital processes and ensuring reproduction human race. Recognizing great value life instincts, Freud considered sexual instincts to be the most essential for personality development. The energy of sexual instincts is called libido (from the Latin “to want” or “to desire”).

Libido- this is a certain amount of mental energy that finds release exclusively in sexual behavior.

The second group is the death instincts, called Thanatos, - underlies all manifestations of cruelty, aggression, suicide and murder. Unlike the energy of libido, as the energy of the life instincts, the energy of the death instincts has not received a special name. He believed that the death instincts obey the principle of entropy (that is, the law of thermodynamics, according to which any energy system strives to maintain dynamic equilibrium). Referring to Schopenhauer, Freud stated: “The goal of life is death.”

According to the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of development, every person is born with innate sexual instincts. The internal psychic authority - the It - is a hereditary factor, and the influence of the external environment and society determines the emergence of consciousness and the Super-Ego. It and the Super-ego, heredity and external environment put pressure on the I, and the influences of the environment displace sexual desires, being in an antagonistic, contradictory relationship with them. Society acts as a source of all kinds of trauma.

From such conclusions a theory of development emerges as a theory of childhood trauma. Personality development is viewed by Freud as coinciding with psychosexual development. Features of the stages of the latter in a child (oral, anal, phallic, genital) determine life destiny, type of character and personality, as well as the type of mental disorders (pathologies, neuroses), life problems and difficulties in an adult.

Each stage of psychosexual development is characterized by a certain way of expressing sexual energy (libido) through erogenous zones characteristic of a given age. If libido is not adequately satisfied, a person risks stopping at this stage and certain personality traits are fixed in him.

According to Freud, psychosexual activity begins during breastfeeding, when the baby's mouth becomes an erogenous zone - a zone of pleasure ( oral stage). It remains this way throughout a person’s life; even in adulthood, residual manifestations of oral behavior are observed: chewing gum, nail biting, smoking, kissing, overeating, drinking alcohol, oral sex, etc.

All infants experience certain difficulties associated with weaning from the mother's breast, nipple, horn, because this deprives them of the corresponding pleasure, and the greater these difficulties, the greater the concentration of libido at the oral stage. If a child received over- or under-stimulation in infancy and became fixated on the oral stage, he would, according to Freud, develop oral-passive personality type. He will expect from the world around him " maternal attitude» to oneself, constantly seek support and approval, will turn out to be overly dependent and trusting.

In the second half of the first year of life, the second phase of the oral stage begins - oral-aggressive, or oral-sadistic, when the child develops teeth and biting becomes a means of expressing dissatisfaction and frustration caused by the mother's absence or delay of gratification. Fixation at this stage is expressed in adults in such personality traits as a love of argument, pessimism, critical “biting,” cynicism, and a tendency to exploit and dominate others in order to satisfy one’s own needs.

When fixated at the oral stage, the following features personalities: gluttony, greed, dissatisfaction with everything offered, the desire to enjoy the habit of smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating, being verbally aggressive, engaging in oral sex, etc. Already at this stage, according to Freud’s ideas, people are divided into optimists and pessimists.

With toilet training, the focus shifts first to sensations related to defecation ( anal stage), and later on those associated with urination ( urethral phase). During this period, children enjoy holding and pushing out feces.

Freud showed that the way parents toilet train a child influences his later personality development. If they behave inflexibly, insisting: “Go to the potty now,” the child develops a protest, a tendency to “hold on,” constipation begins, and may develop anal-retentive personality type, which is characterized by stubbornness, stinginess, punctuality, methodicalness, inability to tolerate disorder and uncertainty.

Parental strictness in this aspect also leads to the emergence of anal-thrust type, which is characterized by a tendency to destruction, restlessness, impulsiveness, even sadistic cruelty. If parents encourage their children to have bowel movements regularly and praise them for doing so, then, according to Freud, the ability to self-control develops, positive self-esteem is fostered and even creativity develops.

Finally, at about the age of 4 years, these private drives unite, and interest in the genitals begins to predominate ( phallic phase). Children can look at their genitals, masturbate, show interest in issues of birth and sexual relations, and spy on sexual relations parents, experience sexual urges. At the same time, the Oedipus complex (or Electra in girls) develops, the essence of which is a predominantly positive attitude towards the parent of the opposite sex and aggressive behavior towards the parent of the same sex.

According to Freud, children give up these tendencies later because of the fear of castration. At the age of 5-7 years, a boy suppresses, displaces from consciousness his sexual desires in relation to his mother and begins to identify himself with his father (adopts his traits): he masters the norms and models of male role behavior, assimilates basic moral norms, i.e., he develops a super- I am a consequence of overcoming the Oedipus complex. In the case of excessive love, guardianship of the boy by his mother, or an incomplete family, or in the case of maternal coldness, alienation, the boy experiences difficulties in overcoming the Oedipus complex. In his later life, psychological difficulties may then appear (the “mama’s boy” syndrome, the boy’s increased dependence on his mother, as a result of which the man is not even able to start his own family or meet his love) or deviations (the “Don Juan” syndrome, a tendency towards homosexuality , incest).

The girls overcome the Electra complex (according to Greek myth, Electra persuades her brother to kill their mother and her lover and avenge the death of their father), suppress their attraction to their father and identify with their mother.

Adult men with fixation at the phallic stage behave impudently, boastfully, recklessly, strive to achieve success, to prove their masculinity, that “they are real men”, through the conquest of women, as Don Juan did (show phallic-narcissistic character). In women, phallic fixation leads to a manner of flirting, seduction, promiscuity, the desire to dominate a man, to be assertive and self-confident. Phallic fixation causes the formation of a hysterical character in women.

Unresolved problems of the Oedipus complex were regarded by Freud as the main source of subsequent neurotic behavior patterns, especially those associated with impotence, frigidity, homosexuality, incest, and the search for a partner who would be a “replacement” for parents. According to this psychologist, the most important periods in a child’s life end before the age of 5: then the main personality structures are formed (the structures of the ego and superego are already formed). The phallic stage corresponds to the emergence of such traits as introspection, prudence, rational thinking, exaggeration of social manifestations of behavior characteristic of one or another sex.

Latent stage(5-12 years) is characterized by a decrease in sexual interest, the psychic authority I completely controls the needs of the It, a person’s energy is directed towards schooling, mastering universal human experience and culture, various forms behavior characteristic of a given gender, to establish friendly relationships with peers and adults outside the family environment.

During this period, the child begins to enjoy achieving success in one or another type of activity (study, sports, creativity, etc.). Excessive fixation at this stage causes an increased tendency towards ambition, achieving success at any cost, towards careerism, and forms the character of a “workaholic”, for whom interests, success in work, career, business become the main content of life, and love, family, children, friends and etc. are shifted to the background, hidden, insignificant plan. Fixation at the latent stage also causes the formation of a schizoid character.

With the onset of puberty begins genital stage sexual development, when sexual desires and interests intensify and concentrate on certain members of the opposite sex. According to Freud, all adolescents in early adolescence go through a “homosexual period”, preferring the company of peers of the same sex and even occasional homosexual games. However, gradually the partner of the opposite sex becomes the object of libido energy and courtship begins. The hobbies of youth usually lead to the choice of a marriage partner and the creation of a family.

Genital stage(12-18 years old) is characterized by the return of childhood sexual desires, all former erogenous zones unite, and a desire for normal sexual communication appears. However, its implementation may be difficult, and then regressions and returns to previous stages of development are possible: strengthening of the aggressive aspirations of the id, the Oedipus complex and desires for homosexuality.

Normal development, according to Freud, occurs through the mechanism of sublimation, and development occurring through the mechanisms of repression, regression or fixation gives rise to pathological characters. The two most striking types of character that form at this stage are described: mental homosexuality and narcissism.

People with mental homosexuality do not manifest it as a sexual perversion, but build their lives by preferring friends and close connections in the company of people of the same sex to family, giving priority to friendship and activities in the circle of people of the same sex.

The second type of sexual nature is narcissism, when all libidinal energy is directed by a person to himself. Attention is concentrated on oneself, one’s actions and experiences. The main thing is self-satisfaction and complacency.

Under favorable circumstances, development ends with the onset psychological maturity, the main features of which are:

• a person’s ability to love another for its own sake, and not for the sake of satisfying one’s sexual needs;
• a person’s desire to prove himself in productive work, in creating something new and useful for people.

But not every person reaches this stage; Many people, for various reasons, seem to be “stuck” in the previous stages. Fixation on them represents an inability to move from one psychosexual stage to another. It leads to excessive expression of needs characteristic of the stage at which the stop occurred, forming the character and type of personality, specific problems of adult life.

Thus, early childhood experiences play a critical role in the formation of adult personality.

Fixation can occur both as a result of frustration (when the child’s psychosexual needs are suppressed by the parents and do not find optimal satisfaction), and as a result of over-care on the part of the parents, when they do not allow the child to manage himself. In any case, according to Freud, an excessive accumulation of libido occurs, which subsequently, in adulthood, can be expressed in the form of “residual behavior”, a specific character and specific deviations.

Freud and his followers developed a detailed, dynamic system in which various emotional and psychosomatic disorders are correlated with specific features of libidinal development and maturation.

Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, studied the patterns of child development and noted that in parallel with the sexual (oral, anal, phallic, latent, pubertal stages) there is a corresponding development of aggressiveness (biting, spitting, grasping with the hand as oral aggressiveness, then destruction and cruelty, sadism - at the anal stage, then - lust for power, boasting, arrogance at the phallic stage, and everything ends with dissocial manifestations in adolescents at the puberty stage).

Each phase of a child’s development, according to A. Freud, is the result of resolving the conflict between internal instinctual drives and the restrictive requirements of the external social environment. Normal childhood development occurs in leaps, not gradually step by step, but forward and back again, with progressive and regressive processes in their constant alternation. In their development, children take, as it were, two steps forward and one step back. It is considered as a process of gradual socialization of the child, subject to the law of transition from pleasure to reality. If the search for the first is the child’s internal principle, then the satisfaction of desires depends on the external world, and in childhood, largely on the mother. Therefore, the mother acts as the first legislator for her children, and her mood, her likes and dislikes significantly influence their development. “What develops most quickly is what the mother likes most and is welcomed by her” (A. Freud).

The child remains immature as long as his desires dominate him, and the decision to satisfy them or refuse them belongs to the outside world, parents and other people. The desire to satisfy his desires at any cost based on the principle of pleasure can determine his antisocial behavior. Only when a child is able to act according to the principle of reality, take into account the requirements of the social environment, analyze and control his intentions and independently decide whether this or that impulse needs to be rejected or turned into action, is his transition to adulthood possible, but it should be borne in mind that progress towards the principle reality in itself does not guarantee that a person will follow social requirements,

According to A. Freud, almost all normal elements of a child’s life, such as greed, jealousy, self-interest, push the child in the direction of asociality, and with the help of the protective mechanisms of the psyche, some instinctive desires, not approved in society, are forced out of consciousness, others transform into their opposite (reactionary formations), are directed to other goals (sublimation), and are redirected to other people (projection). The socialization of a child and his inclusion in the life of society is so difficult and painful.

Organization of the protective process- this is an important and necessary component of the development of the self. The development of memory, speech, thinking is a necessary condition for the development of the personality and socialization of the child. Thus, rational thinking promotes understanding of the relationship between cause and effect, and adaptation to the demands of society and the surrounding world ceases to be simple submission: it becomes conscious and adequate. The formation of the principle of reality and the maturation of thought processes are necessary components of socialization, which opens the way for its new mechanisms (such as imitation, identification, introjection), for the child to leave the family for school, and from school for social life, when a person gradually gives up personal advantages and takes into account the interests of other people, moral standards and laws of society.

Freud recognized the existence of two basic instincts - life and death. The first of them, or Eros, includes all the forces that serve to maintain life and procreate. The most important are sexual instincts and sexual energy (libido). The death instinct, or Thanatos, underlies all manifestations of cruelty, aggression, murder and suicide, all harmful forms of behavior that destroy human health and life (drunkenness, drugs). It obeys the principle of entropy and is associated with the desire to maintain dynamic balance! as a result of which all living beings have an inherent desire to return to the uncertain state from which they came, and people unconsciously strive for death. This position of Freud is controversial and is not recognized by many psychologists.

Thus, from the position of psychoanalysis, a person is a contradictory, tormented, suffering creature, whose behavior is predominantly determined by unconscious factors, despite the opposition and control of consciousness. As a result of this, a person is often also a neurotic and conflicted creature. Freud's merit lies in the fact that he attracted the attention of scientists to the serious study of the unconscious in the psyche, and for the first time identified and began to study internal conflicts of the individual.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory is an example of a psychodynamic approach to the study of human behavior, where unconscious psychological conflicts are believed to control this behavior.

Table 5.4.

Character

Freud's concept of character is no less important than the concepts of the unconscious, repression and resistance. Here Freud viewed man as a whole, and not just individual “complexes” and mechanisms, such as the Oedipus complex, castration fear, penis envy. Of course, the concept of character was not new, but Freud's consideration of it from a dynamic point of view was a new word in psychology. By dynamic approach he understood the concept of character as relatively permanent structure feelings. In Freud's time, psychologists applied a purely descriptive method to character, as is still often done today; a person could be described as disciplined, ambitious, enterprising, honest, and so on, but this was only about individual traits that can be found in a person, and not about an organized system of feelings. Only the great playwrights, such as Shakespeare, and the great writers, such as Dostoevsky and Balzac, showed character in a dynamic sense; Balzac, for example, sought to analyze the character of representatives of the various classes of French society of his time.

Freud was the first to analyze character from a scientific rather than an artistic perspective, as his novelist predecessors did. The results, enriched by some of his students, most notably K. Abraham, were amazing. Freud and representatives of his school proposed four types of character structure: oral-receptive, oral-sadistic, anal-sadistic and genital. According to Freud, every normally developing person goes through all these stages of character structure formation, but many get stuck at some stage of evolution and in adulthood retain the features of the stages preceding adulthood.

By the owner of an oral-receptive character, Freud understood a person who expects to be nourished materially, emotionally and intellectually. This is an open-mouthed creature, essentially passive and dependent, waiting for all its needs to be satisfied, either because it is so good and obedient, or because of an extremely developed narcissism that makes a person consider himself so wonderful, that he can claim to be cared for by others. A person with this type of character expects that everything he needs will be offered to him, and does not assume any reciprocal actions on his part.

A person with an oral-sadistic character also believes that everything he needs should come from outside, and not be the result of his own efforts. Unlike the owner of an oral-receptive character, such a person does not expect that others will satisfy his needs voluntarily, and tries to achieve this by force; such a character is predatory, exploitative.

The third type of character is anal-sadistic. This is the character structure of a person who believes that nothing new can be created, that the only way to have something is to preserve what it has. He views himself as a kind of fortress that nothing should leave. His safety lies in isolation. Freud discovered three traits in such people: accuracy, thrift and stubbornness.

A fully developed, mature character is a genital character. While the three "neurotic" character orientations can be easily identified, the genital character is very vague. Freud describes it as the basis of the ability to love and work. After we have looked at Freud's concept of love, we know that he could only have in mind a distorted form of love in a profit-seeking society. By the possessor of a genital character, Freud simply means the bourgeois man, a man whose ability to love is very limited and whose “work” is the organization and use of the labor of others, the activity of a manager, not a worker.

Three neurotic, or in Freud's terminology, “pregenital” character orientations are the key to understanding human character precisely because they describe not individual personality traits, but an entire system. In general, it is not difficult to determine what type of character a person belongs to, even if one has only a few indications. In an uncommunicative, withdrawn person, concerned exclusively with getting everything done neatly and correctly, never acting spontaneously, whose skin has a sickly color, it is easy to recognize the anal character; this is confirmed if he is also petty, stingy, and distant. It is also easy to identify those with exploitative and receptive characters. Undoubtedly, a person tries to hide his true face, if, of course, he knows that he is showing traits that he would prefer not to show. Therefore, facial expression is not at all the most important indicator of character structure. Much more significant are those manifestations that are more difficult to control: movements, voice, gait, gestures and everything that appears in our field of vision when we look at a person.

Those who know the meaning of the qualities typical of the three pregenital characters have no difficulty in understanding each other when they speak of a person as having an anal character, a mixture of anal-oral traits, or pronounced oral-sadistic traits. It took Freud's genius to include in these character orientations all possible ways, with which a person can contact the world in the “process of assimilation” - in other words, in the process of receiving from nature or from other people what he needs to survive. The problem is not that we all need something from outside: even a saint could not survive without food; the real problem is the way we get what we need: we are given it, we take it away, we store it, or we produce it.

Since Freud and his students proposed this typology of characters, our understanding of man and various cultures has expanded significantly. I say "cultures" because societies can be characterized by the same structures, since the corresponding social characters (the core of character common to most members of a given society) also belong to one of the listed types. For example, the character of the French middle class in the 19th century exhibited an anal structure; the nature of the entrepreneur of that time was exploitative.

The foundations of character typology laid by Freud led to the discovery of other forms of character orientation. One can speak of an authoritarian character as opposed to an egalitarian character, a destructive character as opposed to a loving one, and thus point to the most prominent trait that defines character structure.

The study of character has only just begun, and the potential of Freud's discovery is far from being exhausted. However, admiration for Freud's theory should not interfere with seeing that he narrowed the significance of his discovery by tying it to sexuality. He made this very clear already in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality: “What we call character person, in to a large extent is based on the material of sexual activation; it consists of impulses established from childhood and overcome with the help of sublimation, and such structures that are aimed at effectively suppressing these perverted feelings, recognized as useless. Freud's names for character orientations show this quite clearly. The first two owe their energy to oral libido, the third to anal libido, the fourth to the so-called genital libido, i.e., the sexuality of an adult man or woman. Freud's most important contribution to character typology is found in his work Character and Anal Eroticism. All three traits of the owner of an anal character - neatness, thrift, stubbornness - can be considered as a direct expression of libido, a reaction to its formation or its sublimation. The same is true for other character structures in terms of oral or genital libido.

Freud attributed many of the great passions - love, hatred, ambition, lust for power, greed, cruelty, as well as the desire for independence and freedom - to different types of libido. In Freud's updated theory of the life and death instincts, love and hate were considered to be essentially biological in nature. Constructing the theory of the instincts of life and death, orthodox psychoanalysts believed that aggression is as innate a human impulse as love. The thirst for power has been classified as a manifestation of an anal-sadistic nature, although it should be recognized that it, being perhaps the most important impulse of modern man, has not received due reflection in psychoanalytic literature. Dependency was viewed in terms of submission, related in various ways to the Oedipus complex. For Freud, the reduction of the great passions to various types of libido was a theoretical necessity, since, with the exception of the desire for survival, all types of energy in man were considered to be of a sexual nature.

If someone does not consider himself obliged to count everything human passions rooted in sexuality, he cannot be forced to accept Freud's explanations; a simpler and, it seems to me, more accurate analysis of a person’s feelings is possible. One can distinguish between biologically determined needs, the satisfaction of hunger and sex, which serve the survival of the individual and the race, and passions determined socially and historically. Whether people experience predominantly love or hatred, submit or fight for freedom, are tight-fisted or generous, cruel or soft, depends on the social structure responsible for the formation of all needs, with the exception of biological ones (see). There are cultures in which, due to their social nature, the desire for cooperation and harmony prevails - for example, the culture North American Indians Zuni, and others, characterized by extreme possessiveness and destructiveness, like the Dobu (see detailed discussion of societies that are characterized by aggressiveness or mutual aid, in the work). Understanding how economic, geographic, historical, and genetic conditions lead to the formation of different types of social character requires a detailed analysis of the social character typical of any given society. Here's an example: a tribe that has too little fertile land and not enough food from hunting and fishing is likely to develop a warlike, aggressive nature because its only hope of survival lies in robbing or stealing from other tribes. On the other hand, in a tribe that does not produce noticeable surpluses, but provides all its members with sufficient means of subsistence, there is a chance to develop a spirit of peace and mutual assistance. This example is, of course, too simplistic; the question of what conditions lead to the emergence of a particular type of social character is difficult and requires a careful analysis of all relevant and even seemingly relevant factors. This is the area of ​​social and historical research, which, I am sure, have a great future, although so far only the foundations of this branch of analytical social psychology have been laid.

Historically conditioned feelings can be so intense that they can be stronger than those biologically necessary for survival - satisfying hunger, thirst and the desire to procreate. This may not be true for the average person, whose passions are mainly related to the satisfaction of physiological needs, but it is true for a significant number of people in any historical period: They risk their lives for the sake of honor, love, dignity - or hatred. The Bible puts it very simply: “Man cannot live by bread alone” (Gospel of Matthew 4:4). Let us imagine that Shakespeare wrote his dramas about the sexual failures of the hero or the desire of the heroine to satisfy her hunger; they would turn out to be as banal as some of modern plays, presented on Broadway. The dramatic element of human life is rooted in non-biological passions: not hunger or sexual desire. Hardly anyone will commit suicide due to unsatisfaction of their sexual desires, but many are ready to commit suicide if their ambition or hatred is not satisfied.

Freud never saw the individual as an isolated being, but always in his relationships with others. He wrote: “Individual psychology undoubtedly deals with the individual and also studies the ways in which he tries to satisfy his instinctual drives. However, only rarely and in specific exceptional conditions can it abstract from the relationships of a given individual with others. In the mental life of an individual, other people are usually considered as models, objects, helpers or opponents. Thus, from the very beginning, individual psychology turns out to be both social psychology- in this expanded, but valid sense." However, this core of social psychology was not further developed because for Freud the primary formation - the family - was considered to play a role in the development of the child decisive role. Freud did not see that a person exists in different circles from early childhood; the closest of them is the family, the next is his class, the third is the society in which he lives, the fourth is the biological conditions of human existence in which he participates; finally, he is part of a larger circle, about which we know almost nothing, but which consists at least of our solar system. Only the narrowest circle - the family - mattered to Freud; therefore he greatly underestimated all the others of which man is a part. Namely, he did not understand that the family itself is determined by class and social structure and is an “instrument of society,” the function of which is to introduce the child to the character of society even before the child comes into contact with society. This is carried out both in the process of early upbringing and education, and through the character of the parents, which, in turn, is a social product (see).

Freud viewed the bourgeois family as the prototype of all families and ignored the existence of very different forms of family structure and even the complete absence of "family" in other cultures. An example of this is the enormous importance that Freud attached to the so-called “primal scene,” when a child witnesses a sexual act between parents. Obviously, the significance of such an event increases sharply due to the fact that in bourgeois families, children and parents live in different rooms. Be Freud familiar with family life of the poorer classes, when for children living in the same room with their parents, adult sexual intercourse was a familiar sight, these early impressions would not have seemed so important to him. Freud also did not consider many so-called primitive societies in which sexuality was not taboo and neither children nor parents hid their sexual acts and games.

Based on his premise that all feelings were of a sexual nature, and that the bourgeois family was the prototype of all families, Freud did not see that it is not the family that is primary, but the structure of society that creates the character it needs for its successful functioning and survival. Freud did not come to the concept of “social character” because such a concept could not develop on such a narrow basis as sex. As I showed in the note to the work, social character is the structure of character common to the majority of members of society; its content depends on the needs of a given society, giving it such a form that people want to do what they have to do to ensure the proper functioning of society. What they want to do depends on the dominant feelings in their character, which have been shaped by the needs and demands of a particular social system. The differences caused by differences in family situations are insignificant compared with the differentiation created by the different structures of society and present in the respective classes. A member of the feudal class had to develop a character that would enable the feudal lord to rule over others and would make him insensitive to their suffering. The bourgeois class XIX century an anal character had to develop, determined by the desire to save and store rather than spend. In the 20th century, a member of the same class no longer considered saving to be a major virtue, but rather a vice compared to behaviors such as spending and consumption. Such development was caused by fundamental economic needs: during the period of primary accumulation of capital, frugality was necessary; During the period of mass production, instead of frugality, spending took on the greatest economic importance. If suddenly a 20th-century man were to acquire the character of the 19th century, the economy would face a severe crisis, if not collapse. So far I have described in a very simplified way the problem of the relationship between individuals and social psychology. More full analysis this issue, which would go beyond the scope of this book, would require distinguishing between needs or passions rooted in human existence, and those that are determined primarily not by society, but by human nature itself, and the absence of which should be considered as a result of suppression or serious social pathology. These are aspirations for freedom, solidarity, love.

If Freud's system is freed from the limiting influence of libido theory, then the concept of character acquires even greater significance than Freud himself gave it. This requires transforming individual psychology into social psychology and limiting individual psychology to knowledge of only the small variations caused by individual specific circumstances affecting the basic socially determined structure of character. Despite the criticism of Freud's concept of character, it should be emphasized again that Freud's discovery of the dynamic concept of character provides the key to understanding the motivation of the individual and social behavior and to a certain extent allows us to predict it.