3. LEVELS /STRUCTURES OF THE HUMAN MIND

As analysis by Sigmund Freud in 1949, the mind of the man has three basic levels. Freud delineated the mind in distinct levels, each with their own roles and functions.The three levels of the mind are:


1.  Conscious mind contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. This also includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily and brought into awareness.

2. The preconscious consists of anything that could potentially be brought into the conscious mind.


3. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. The unconscious contains contents that are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict.

It consists of information about painful memories and feelings which are very hard and always impossible to bring back into the conscious awareness.

Sigmund Freud belief that behavior is primarily motivated by the unconscious and it is affected by emotion.  The repressed desires, thought and feelings that are in unconscious part of the mind influence behavior, the existence of the unconscious  is revealed through dream and slip of tongue/pen.

STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY

According to Sigmund Freud psychoanalytic theory of personality, personality is composed of three element or structures. They are:

1.The id: it’s the only structure of personality that is present from birth. It is entirely unconscious and include the instinctive and primitive behavior. The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strive for immediate gratification of all desires, want and need. It does not have direct contact with reality.

2. Ego: It operates base on the reality principle, which strive to satisfy the id’s desire in realistic and social appropriate ways. It weighs cost and benefit of an action before deciding to act or abandon impulses. It has direct contact with reality or real situation of life. It act as a mediator, negotiating a compromise among the pleasures of id, the counter-pleasure of superego and the demand of the reality.

3. Super-ego: It holds all our internalized moral standard and ideals that are acquired from both parents and society. Its our sense of right and wrong.