Evaluating the Main Theories of Counselling Essay

1 The book, A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle, has brought back many memories of my childhood and has reminded me of many things that have shaped my reality. I have seen the world, but the words I use to describe the world have made me pay attention to the parts of the world that are described. When I see the orange cat, London, a few times a week, I notice that the cat is orange, and I notice this because I was taught about colors when I was a young girl, which shapes my reality. This is important because I am better off knowing colors and words for colors. The ego helps me understand the world. When I am confronted with an emotion, which the ego and I process by wanting to be understood by someone to commiserate with that shapes my emotions. The ego guides me through emotions. When I think of getting a job later in life, I think about what would make me happy, and what will act as security in the long run, which shapes my identity. The ego is a part of the self that experiences and reacts to the outside world and thus mediates between primitive drives of the id and the demands of the social and physical environment. The ego is a processor of the outer world and inner world, and it shapes our identity, reality, and emotions, and it betters our well being.

Sigmund Freud was a Viennese physician who developed the psychoanalytic theory or psychoanalytic perspective. He believed that human behavior was the result of interactions between three parts of a person's personality which are the id, ego, and superego. This theory places considerable significance on the role of unconscious psychological conflicts in forming one's personality and behavior. Spirited interactions between these fundamental parts of the personality are believed to develop through five psychosexual stages of development.

The psychodynamic model was formulated by Sigmund Freud during the early 1900’s; this model is based on three basic assumptions namely the unconscious mind, psychic energies and early childhood experiences. The majority of the mind functions unconsciously and these unconscious activities reflect features of personality.

As indicated by Freud, the Ego is the piece of identity that offers us some assistance with mediating so as to deal with reality between the requests of the id, superego, and nature. The sense of self keeps us from following up on each urge we have and being so ethically determined that we can't work legitimately.

Psychodynamic approaches usually involve the individuals unconscious. Assumptions to the Psychodynamic approach as described by Saul McLeod in 2007 are:

Freud: The personality consists of the id, the ego, and the super-ego. The id represents our impulses, and this is the unconscious part of our psyche. On the other hand, the ego is not as chaotic. The ego is more reality-driven, and may take into account etiquette and norms (Sletvold, 2013). Lastly, the super-ego?s aim is to help control and modify the impulses of the id, and

2. The ego comes from the illusory self and the identification with external form of the world. Ego always needs more sufferings to strengthen itself and it becomes the source of human pain body. A child may cry when someone takes away his toy, no matter he’s rich or poor, no matter that toy is a stuffed toy or a high-tech electronic product. People make identification with objects. “More I have, more I am” seems to be the norm of society. The pain of loss is not different because the feeling of anguish derives from the misconception of “I” or “my”. The ego identifies with possession. The

In 1923 Sigmund Freud noticed the clash within thought and mental processes which led him to identify three parts of our psyche. He referred to these as the Id, Ego and the Superego. The Id is ‘the primitive, unconscious basis of the psyche, dominated by primary urges’ *. It comes from the initial instinct to satisfy our needs and desires what can be known as the pleasure principle. The uncontrollable repressed part of our psyche, for example a newborn child is primarily id controlled. However external contact with the outside world shapes and develops the psyche. At this point the ego develops.

It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dream and of course the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ...It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.(1)

EGO- The reality-testing part of the personality; also referred to as the reality principle. More formally, it is the personality component that is conscious, more immediately controls behavior, and is most in touch with external reality. For Freud, the ego was primarily concerned with how objectives might be best accomplished. The EGO tends to effect strategies for the individual that maximize pleasure and minimize pain. It lays out the various paths of action that can lead to wish fulfillment. The EGO inherently

The psychodynamic therapies stress importance of the unconscious mind, extensive interpretation by the therapist and the role of early childhood experiences in the development of an individual’s problems. Psychoanalysis is Freud’s therapeutic technique for analyzing an individual’s unconscious thoughts. Freud believed that a person’s current problems can be traced to childhood experiences (King, 2013).

The Ego is the decisive, rational part and conscious part of the mind that deals with external reality (McLeod, 2003). Freud supposed that the ego surfaced from the Id to arbitrate between the Id and the external world. (Feltham and Dryden, 2004), The Ego is logical, and incorporates problem solving abilities, memory and

Id is thoughts that are driven by desire (devil on the shoulder), Ego is a state of being, and Superego thoughts that are driven by your consciousness (angel on the shoulder).These three categories were created by the psychologist Sigmund Freud. His theory can be applied to William Golding's book Lord of the Flies. This novel follows the story of schoolboys between the ages of six to twelve who crash on an island, and fall into savagery. As the boys spend more time on the island, their consciences start to fade away and they start to return to their primitive and savage ways.The reason why communities break up is because the id is taking over in each of the boys and starts to dominate their minds based on primitive instincts. Some may argue that their super egos are still intact to make decisions based on their consciousness, but at the end the only the id leads.

Freud was an Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis; he was born on 6th May 1856 and died 23rd September 1939 in London. Freud developed psychoanalysis which looked into dreams, fantasies and someone’s free association. The psychodynamic approach looks into the unconscious (unware) and how this effects behavior and the conscious (aware) and the relation between them in our mind (psyche). Freud’s theories about child sexuality, ego’s and what makes us tick were most influential in the 20th century.

The Ego is said to be the developed from the Id during infancy, and ensures that the requirements of the Id is expressed and is fulfilled in a socially adaptable situation with the material world. The Ego is said to be following the “reality principle” where the Ego acts as a moderator by preventing the demands of the Id by logically denying to prevent any consequences that would be painful. The Ego operates at the unconsciousness, preconscious and on the conscious level. The Ego also acts as an intermediator between the Id and the Superego where anxiety would be the result of the conflicts. To deal with anxiety, the Ego manages them through “defense mechanism”. Examples of defense mechanisms are denial, repression, rationalization, projection, reaction formation, displacement, regression, identification, substitution, and sublimation.