Psychoanalysis

In Freud's theory, consciousness is the surface of the mental apparatus. The deeper a mental function lies below the surface, the less accessible it is to consciousness.

There are three interacting psychic agencies that differ in cognitive style, goal, and function:

• The ego (I or autobiographical self) is the executive agency, and it has both a
  • conscious component in direct contact with the external world through the sensory apparatus for sight, sound, and touch. It is concerned with perception, reasoning, the planning of action, and the experiencing of pleasure and pain. It operates logically and is guided by the reality principle
  • unconscious component is concerned with psychological defenses (repression, denial, sublimation), the mechanisms whereby the ego inhibits, channels, and redirects both the sexual and the aggressive instinctual drives of the id
• The id (it) is totally unconscious. It is not governed by logic or by reality but by the hedonistic principle of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. It represents the primitive mind of the infant, and is the only mental structure present at birth.
• The superego is the unconscious moral agency, the embodiment of our aspirations