RationalizationSublimationReaction FormationRegressionAccording to Freud, the mind can be divided into three different levels:1. The conscious mind includes everything that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about rationally. A part of this includes our memory, which is not always part of consciousness but can be retrieved easily at any time and brought into our awareness. Freud called this the preconscious.2. The preconscious mind is the part of the mind that represents ordinary memory. While we are not consciously aware of this information at any given time, we can retrieve it and pull it into consciousness when needed.3. The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of ourconscious awareness. Most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings of pain, anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the unconscious continues to influence our behavior and experience, even though we are unaware of these underlying influences.Freud likened these three levels of mind to an iceberg. The top of the iceberg that you can see above the water represents the conscious mind. The part of the iceberg that is submerged below the water but is still visible is the preconscious. The bulk of the iceberg lies unseen beneath the waterline and represents the unconscious. Figure 12.1The Conscious and UnconsciousMind: The Iceberg Analogy The iceberg analogy illustrateshow much of the mind is unconscious in Freud’s theory. Theconscious mind is the part of the iceberg above water; theunconscious mind, the part below water. Notice that the id istotally unconscious, whereas the ego and the superego canoperate at either the conscious or the unconscious level.Th e conflicts that erupt among the demands of the id, the superego, and reality createa great deal of anxiety for the ego. The ego has strategies for dealing with this anxiety,called defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are tactics the ego uses to reduceanxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. For example, imagine that Jason’s id is pressingto express an unconscious desire to have sex with his mother. Clearly, acting on thisimpulse would not please the superego or society at large. If he became aware of thisimpulse, Jason might recoil in horror. Instead, Jason’s ego might use the defense mechanismof displacement, and he might develop a relationship with a girlfriend who looksand acts like his mother.Mechanism Repression The master defense mechanism; the ego pushes unacceptable impulses out of awareness, back into the unconscious mind.Example: A young girl was sexually abused by her uncle. As an adult, she can’t remember anything about the traumatic experience.RationalizationThe ego replaces a less acceptable motive with a more acceptable one.A college student does not get into the fraternity of his choice. He tells himself that thefraternity is very exclusive and that a lot of students could not get in.Displacement The ego shifts feelings toward an unacceptable object to another, more acceptable object.A woman can’t take her anger out on her boss, so she goes home and takes it out on her husband.SublimationThe ego replaces an unacceptable impulse with a socially acceptable one.A man with strong sexual urges becomes an artist who paints nudes.Projection The ego attributes personal shortcomings,problems, and faults to others.A man who has a strong desire to have an extramarital affair accuses his wife of flirting with other men.Reaction FormationThe ego transforms an unacceptable motive into its opposite.A woman who fears her sexual urges becomes a religious zealot.Denial The ego refuses to acknowledge anxiety-producing realities.A man won’t acknowledge that he has cancer even though a team of doctors has diagnosed his cancer.RegressionThe ego seeks the security of an earlier developmental period in the face of stress.A woman returns home to mother every time she and her husband have a big argument.Pscyhosexual stagesFreud believed that human beings go through universal stages of personality development and that at each developmental stage we experience sexual pleasure in one part of the body more than in others. Each stage is named for the location of sexualpleasure at that stage. Erogenous zones are parts of the body that have especially strong pleasuregiving qualities at particular stages of development. Freud thought that our adult personality is determined by the way we resolve confl icts between these earlysources of pleasure—the mouth, the anus, and then the genitals—and the demands of reality.■ Oral stage (fi rst 18 months): Th e infant’s pleasure centers on the mouth. Chewing, sucking, and biting are the chief sources of pleasure that reduce tension in the infant.■ Anal stage (18 to 36 months): During a time when most children are experiencing toilet training, the child’s greatest pleasure involves the anus and urethra and their functions. Freud recognized that there is pleasure in “going” and “holding it” as well as in the experience of control over one’s parents in deciding when to do either.■ Phallic stage (3 to 6 years): Th e name of Freud’s third stage comes from the Latin word phallus, which means “penis.” Pleasure focuses on the genitals as the child discovers that self-stimulation is enjoyable.Genital stage (adolescence and adulthood): Th e genital stage is the time of sexual reawakening, a point when the source of sexual pleasure shifts to someone outside the family. Freud believed that in adulthood the individual becomes capable of the two hallmarks of maturity: love and work. However,Freud felt that human beings are inevitably subject to intense confl ict, reasoning that everyone, no matter how healthy or well adjusted, still has an id pressing for expression.Adulthood, even in the best of circumstances, still involves reliving the unconscious confl icts of childhood.According to trait theories , personality consists of broad, enduring dispositions (traits)that tend to lead to characteristic responses. In other words, we can describe people interms of the ways they behave, such as whether they are outgoing, friendly, private, orhostile.Big FiveIndividuals high in extraversion are more likely than others to engage in social activities (Emmons & Diener, 1986) and to experience