FYI

Formation of the superego

The superego forms as the child grows and learns parental and social standards. The superego consists of two structures: the conscience, which stores information about what is "bad" and what has been punished and the ego ideal, which stores information about what is "good" and what one "should" do or be.

The ego's use of defense mechanisms

When anxiety becomes too overwhelming, it is then the place of the ego to employ defense mechanisms to protect the individual. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany the feeling of anxiety. In the first definitive book on defense mechanisms, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936),^[6] Anna Freud introduced the concept of signal anxiety; she stated that it was "not directly a conflicted instinctual tension but a signal occurring in the ego of an anticipated instinctual tension". The signaling function of anxiety is thus seen as a crucial one and biologically adapted to warn the organism of danger or a threat to its equilibrium. The anxiety is felt as an increase in bodily or mental tension and the signal that the organism receives in this way allows it the possibility of taking defensive action towards the perceived danger. Defense mechanisms work by distorting the id impulses into acceptable forms, or by unconscious or conscious blockage of these impulses.

• Level I - pathological defenses (i.e. psychotic denial, delusional projection)
• Level II - immature defenses (i.e. fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
• Level III - neurotic defenses (i.e. intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
• Level IV - mature defenses (i.e. humor, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)