psychoanalytic theory

Meaning: Freud proposed that much of mental life is unconscious. Personality comes from three interacting structures. The id is instinctual and follows the pleasure principle. The ego follows the reality principle and mediates between the id and the world. The superego holds internalized moral standards. When these conflict, anxiety results, and the ego reduces it with defense mechanisms such as repression, denial, projection, displacement, reaction formation, regression, rationalization, and sublimation. The theory also describes psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital); unresolved conflict at a stage can cause fixation. Therapy aims to bring unconscious material into awareness, for example through free association and dream interpretation.

On the MCAT: A vignette describes a behavior and asks which defense mechanism it shows. A man angry at his boss who then yells at his family is displacement. A person who acts like a child under stress is regression. Questions may also ask which structure drives a desire or a guilty feeling, or ask for a criticism: the theory is hard to test empirically and is not easily falsified.

Common confusion: Repression is an unconscious forgetting of threatening material. Suppression is conscious, deliberate pushing away of a thought. The ego is not just the conscious mind, since parts of its defensive work are unconscious.