0.2 Sigmund freud  (Page 18/37)

In a similar way, moral anxiety arises from conflict between our ego and the constraints imposed on it by the superego. Since the superego arises from the internalization of our parent’s teaching us what is or is not appropriate behavior, we again have an association between the internal threat of the superego and the real, external threat of being punished by our parents. Therefore, as with neurotic anxiety, the precursor to our moral anxiety is realistic anxiety, even if our fears are based on our psychological impressions of a situation as opposed to an actual danger (e.g., the fear of castration; Freud, 1926/1959, 1933/1965). Freud (1933/1965) described the relationships this way:

Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it; and we can understand how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry: ‘Life is not easy!’ If the ego is obliged to admit its weakness, it breaks out in anxiety – realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super-ego and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of the passions in the id. (pgs. 97-98)

Freud also described an overall pattern to the development and expression of anxiety and its useful role in life. In early childhood we experience traumatic situations in which we are helpless. Remember that Freud believed that psychic reality is every bit as significant as actual reality (Freud, 1900/1995), so the nature of these traumatic events is subject to individual perception. As the child’s capacity for self-preservation develops, the child learns to recognize dangerous situations. Rather than waiting passively to be threatened or harmed, an older child or an adult will respond actively. The initial response is anxiety, but anxiety is a warning of danger in anticipation of experiencing helplessness once again. In a sense, the ego is recreating to the helplessness of infancy, but it does so in the hope that now the ego will have at its command some means of dealing with the situation. Therefore, anxiety has hopefully transformed from a passive response in infancy to an active and protective response in later childhood and/or adulthood (Freud, 1926/1959).

Discussion Question: What makes you anxious, and how do you respond to those feelings?

Defense Mechanisms

We will cover defense mechanisms only briefly in this chapter. Although Freud talked about a wide variety of defense mechanisms during his career, he left it to his daughter Anna to literally write the book on The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (Anna Freud, 1936/1966). Freud himself discussed primarily two defense mechanisms: repression and regression . The recognition of these defense mechanisms was essential to the development of psychoanalysis, and they are the only two defenses mentioned by Freud in The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (1914/1995). The purpose of these defense mechanisms is to protect the ego during the early years of life, when the ego has not adequately developed in its ability to control the libidinal impulses of the id. Thus, defense mechanisms serve a useful function at first, but later prove inadequate when the re-animation of the sexual life is reinforced following puberty (Freud, 1938/1949). Similarly, in adult life, defense mechanisms are useful in the short-term, but since they do not deal with problems directly they must eventually prove inadequate.