Freud referred to the largely conscious executive part of the personality as the

By Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College

The five-factor model, or the Big Five, shows that people’s traits, grouped in consistent ways, are stable over time and can predict behavior. According to this model, people’s traits group into five basic dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Emotional intelligence is positively correlated with these factors.

Critiques for the Five-factor Model

There are a couple of critiques for the five-factor model. One issue is what psychologists call the person-situation controversy. It’s certainly clear that our personality traits may influence our behavior. But it’s also clear that the situation we are in may have an even stronger effect. Most of us have times in which we are pretty quiet and shy—say, in a new situation or one in which we don’t know many people. That doesn’t make us introverts. So, it’s not clear exactly to what extent our behavior is influenced by our traits as much as the situation we are in.

A related concern is over what it means to say personality traits are relatively stable over time. How much do traits actually change? For example, to what extent do traits change as people grow and mature? One recent longitudinal study found that people tend to increase in empathy with age; which makes sense, as we probably get better with practice and having more relationships at seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Empathy is not one of the Big Five traits, but empathy is positively correlated with agreeableness. And other longitudinal research suggests that agreeableness itself tends to increase across the lifespan.

A third, and deliberate, omission from the Big Five description of personality is the role of unconscious factors in personality. After all, the five-factor trait theory focuses on personality as a function of behavioral traits we can observe. But this placed it in opposition to the earliest, and most controversial, theory of personality, as developed by Sigmund Freud, which described personality as rooted largely in the unconscious.

This article comes directly from content in the video series Introduction to Psychology. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective

According to Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective, personality is made up of three different levels of consciousness or awareness. The smallest portion of personality is our conscious, which is what we are actively aware of and can think about. Second, just below the level of awareness, is our preconscious, which refers to thoughts, motives, and memories that we can pretty easily bring into conscious awareness. But, according to Freud, the third and most important part of personality is the unconscious, which consists of thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories of which we are largely unaware. Freud initially used the terms unconscious and subconscious interchangeably, but psychologists today use the term unconscious.

It’s not just that we are unaware of the things in our unconscious; in Freud’s view, we actively work to repress or block unacceptable thoughts or wishes from our conscious. Freud thought these unconscious wishes are too painful to acknowledge, but that despite our best efforts, these unconscious wishes leak out, in our dreams, our physical symptoms, and in many aspects of daily life. This is why the expression ‘Freudian slip’, describes a small slip of the tongue that is thought to reflect powerful unconscious feelings that we normally keep hidden.

Freud’s Theory of Personality

Freud’s theory of personality rests almost entirely on his assumption that we repress painful experiences and desires, that we banish them into our unconsciousness because they are too painful to acknowledge. However, repression is actually a pretty rare mental response to trauma. In fact, people who’ve experienced very traumatic events—a concentration camp, a sexual assault, combat—often find it impossible to block these disturbing experiences from their mind. Instead, they experience repeated memories and flashbacks of these events. So, repression seems to be much less common than Freud assumed.

In addition to proposing that personality operates on three distinct levels of consciousness, Freud also believed that personality was composed of three distinct mental structures: First, a completely unconscious id, a part of personality that is entirely focused on satisfying basic ‘pleasure principle’ drives, such as hunger, thirst, sex, and aggression. Next, there’s the ego, largely conscious, operating on the ‘reality principle’. Finally, there’s the superego, which focuses on internalized ideals and standards for judgment and operates on the ‘morality principle’.

Defense Mechanisms

In many cases, the ego can’t find a way to balance out the needs of the id and superego, which then leads to considerable anxiety.

According to Freud, the ego then uses a variety of different strategies to try to reduce or redirect that anxiety in some way. These strategies, known as defense mechanisms, all have the same goal, which is to banish anxiety-provoking thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. But they operate entirely at an unconscious level.

Though many parts of Freud’s theory have failed to be supported by empirical research, there is widespread agreement that people do like to feel good about themselves and blocking threatening feelings may be an effective strategy for feeling somewhat better. A 1998 review of evidence for seven of Freud’s proposed defense mechanisms found support for some—denial and reaction formation in particular.

Common Questions about Personality Traits and Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

Q: What is person-situation controversy?

Person-situation controversy means that while our personality traits may influence our behavior, it’s also clear that the situation we are in may have an even stronger effect. So, it’s not clear exactly to what extent our behavior is influenced by our traits as much as the situation we are in.

Q: According to Freud, what are the three different levels of consciousness that make up personality?

According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, personality is made up of three different levels of consciousness or awareness. The smallest portion of personality is our conscious, which is what we are actively aware of and can think about. Second, just below the level of awareness, is our preconscious, which refers to thoughts, motives, and memories that we can pretty easily bring into conscious awareness. But, according to Freud, the third and most important part of personality is the unconscious, which consists of thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories of which we are largely unaware.

Q: What is the goal of defense mechanisms?

The ego uses a variety of different strategies to try to reduce or redirect anxiety. These strategies are known as defense mechanisms. The goal of defense mechanisms is to banish anxiety-provoking thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

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