04 Aug According to Sigmund Freud, the mind is made up of three basic parts
1.According to Sigmund Freud, the mind is made up of three basic parts—the id, the ego, and the superego. If each of these parts of the mind could be represented as people, what would they look like? What would they say? What might be their goals in life, and how would they achieve them?
2. Erik Erikson, a founder of ego psychology, emphasized the ego as a powerful and independent part of personality. Erikson noted that the ego is involved in mastering the environment, achieving one’s goals, and hence establishing one’s identity. Discuss what “identity” means for you. According to ego psychologists such as Erikson, identity is an inner sense of who we are, of what makes us unique, and a sense of continuity over time and a feeling of wholeness.
3. Psychologists Hazan and Shaver (1987) argued that there are patterns of adult relationships that parallel childhood attachment styles. Consider whether you find merit in the possibility that early childhood attachment can “spill over” to later adult romantic relationships.
4. Although Henry Murray has proposed several dozen types of motives, researchers have focused most of their attention on three of these motives—achievement, power, and intimacy. Discuss each of these motives. Why do you think most of this research on Murray’s motives has focused on these three motives? What is special about these motives? Might they be particularly important motives for human nature and human personality? Why?
