For Freud, human personality arises from a conflict between aggressive and pleasure-oriented biological impulses and the social limits that the person has internalized. He thought that the result of efforts to resolve this basic conflict resulted in personality.
Freud theorized that conflict centered on 3 systems that interact with each other: id, ego, and superego. These abstract psychological concepts helped him understand the dynamics of the mind.
He defined It as a reserve of unconscious psychic energy that fights all the time to satisfy basic impulses of aggression, survival and reproduction. That is to say, the It operates according to the pleasure principle: if it is not restricted by reality, it seeks immediate gratification. For example, a newborn baby (governed by the id) cries to have its needs met quickly without caring about what is happening in the environment.
When the I As it develops, the little child learns to deal with the real world. The Ego is managed on the principle of reality: it seeks the satisfaction of the It but in a more realistic way, which will give it pleasure in the longer term and avoid pain and destruction. The Self contains partially conscious thoughts, memories and judgments.
In his theory, Freud postulated that around the age of 4 or 5, the ego recognizes the demands of the superego that is beginning to form and that makes it consider what is real but also what is ideal (that is, how our behavior should be). This instance of the personality seeks perfection, producing feelings of pride (positive) or guilt (negative).
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If the demands of the Superego oppose those of the Id, it is the Ego that is in charge of dealing with both.
Fountain: Myers, D. (2006), Psychology 7th edition. Panamericana Medical Editorial: Madrid.
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