The Topic I chose from unit one for my Reflective Journal is Rationalization which is based on Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory.
Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory of Personality emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences, unconscious or repressed thoughts that are not voluntarily accessed and conflicts between conscious and unconscious forces that influence our feelings. Freud’s theory was his belief that the mind is like an iceberg (mostly hidden).Our conscious awareness is the part of the iceberg that floats above the surface. Below the surface is a much larger, unconscious region containing thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories of which we are unaware.
Some of the thoughts that we store are temporarily in a preconscious area, and can be retrieved to the conscious area. He believed that there is a mass of unacceptable passions and thoughts that would be too repressed or forcefully blocked out of our unconscious because they were too unsettling to acknowledge.In Freud’s view, human personality, including emotions, arises from a conflict between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological impulses and the internal social restraints against them. He believed that personality is the result of our efforts to resolve basic conflict. To understand the mind’s dynamics during the conflict Freud proposed three interacting systems.
They are the id, ego and superego.The id contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy, which according to Freud, strives to satisfy the basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on a pleasure principle demanding immediate gratification.The ego is the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in a way that will realistically bring pleasure than pain.The superego is the part of the personality that represents internalized ideas and provides standards for judgement (the conscious) and for future aspirations.
Because the superego’s demands often oppose the id’s, the ego struggles to reconcile the two. It is the personality “executive” mediating the impulsive demands of the id restraining demands of the superego and real life demands of the external world. When the id and superego conflict, anxiety is created and it develops a defence mechanism.Anxiety occurs when the ego fears losing control of the inner wall (caused when impulses are not acted out) between the demands of the id and the superego leaving one unsettled but unsure why. Freud proposed that the ego protects itself with tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality (defence mechanisms).
The six examples of defence mechanisms are: repression, regression, reaction, formation, projection, rationalization and displacement. Rationalization occurs when we unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reason for our actions. More often times than none human beings are guilty of this type of defence mechanism. This is so because we can’t take the blame or handle the consequences of our own actions. When we receive a positive outcome from such actions we become proud, boastful and sometimes we even look down on others. If the outcome is negative however, we have the tendency to pinpoint the blame upon others or make up childish excuses.
I chose this topic because I have experienced it first hand and may too be guilty of such actions.Usually I would be very proud of the work I’ve done for whatever task taken but lately I’ve been on a lazy streak. So now I have taken the opportunity to stick my little sister with the blame of the things I have left undone. For instance, I could clean the drawing room but instead I say that Jamie is (my little sister) still sitting there and I can’t work around her even though she occupies a little space in the corner of the room.Freud was definitely correct when he studied and analyzed situations in which we would begin to rationalize everything that is done.
