I am only who I am today because of my past. If you change my past, you change who I am. But who exactly am I? There is this theory of psychoanalysis that Sigmund Freud founded that breaks down one’s personality. Freud claimed that human behavior is driven by unconscious motivations that are caused by past experiences like childhood drama, love, death, complex emotions, and sexuality. Some of these experiences are very difficult to remember because our minds like to suppress traumatic memories. I know that I have countless memories from when I was a child suppressed. I am not sure yet how all my past emotions and actions explain my personality. Therefore, to gain insight about myself I must analyze my past. With Freudian’s theory, I must dig dip deep into my own unconsciousness and try to uncover bits and pieces of me to put together for a complete “me, myself, and I”.
First, Freud stated there are 5 stages of human development. After reading about these different stages, I have realized that there are times when I did not properly work out a crisis and I became fixated at that development stage. The first development stage is the oral stage. At this stage, the mouth is at the center focus. I believe there’s a part of me that’s been fixated at this stage. Babies do not have much control over what they do. As a baby, I was fed a lot. My parents kept feeding me multiple times a day. I remember in middle school I had an obsession with chewing gum. I did not chew gum because it made my breath smell fresh, but because my mouth could move. I can still remember that at times I will unconsciously start chewing gum very loudly. Sometimes I will even get obsessed with hearing a loud gum pop. These were all terrible habits to have, as I was disruptive to the people around me. When I got braces and retainers, however, the dentist advised against chewing gum, thus breaking my habit of chewing gum. After getting my braces off, I no longer had the urge to chew gum. However, I started to have a habit of snacking. Even if I have three meals a day, but I will often snack. I snack not because I am hungry, but because I like the feeling of munching and eating. I do not think this habit will ever be fixed because my dad loves to buy snacks, as he too has an eating habit, and in turn, there will always be snacks available in my household.
The second stage is the anal stage. This stage is related to toilet training. According to Freud, if your toilet training was not too successful, then the repercussion is a messy person. This means that during potty training your parents did not encourage or praise you when you peed and pooped successfully. I do not like to think I am a messy person, but unfortunately, there are times when I get really disorganized. I think this is because I am not good at regularly doing a number 2. I am also really bad at going to the bathroom often. I forget to drink water and I am always sitting, thus I barely get the urge to use the bathroom regularly. In these terms, my room, desk, and computer are usually messy. I like to use any table surface available to put things. I am not good at putting things back in their place in a drawer. I am not too good at planning a month ahead, but usually, I can plan my day out. Hence, Freud’s theory about the anal stage is accurate. My bowel movements are related to my sloppiness in life.
The third stage is the phallic stage. Freud wrote that children between the ages of 3-6 crave closeness from their parents. Children start to develop sexual pleasures, and an approach they take to fix their needs is by sleeping with their parents. I definitely did this as a kid. However, my parents sleep in separate beds and rooms. My mom has a larger bed, so I ended up sleeping with her a lot. I think I preferred my mom as opposed to my dad. Back then, my mom would often scum to buy me things compared to my dad. Due to this, I disagree with Freud’s theory about an Oedipus Complex. I never felt like I had penis envy nor dislike towards my mom or desire for my dad. I never tried urinated standing up. In China, it’s common to squat while urinating and I do like that method. During this stage, I’ve never had a preference on which gender I preferred to hang out with. I think my neighborhood was only filled with girls my age, thus I hung out with girls a lot more than boys. The boys were either a few years older or younger than me. I remember that I hated wearing jeans as a child. I preferred to wear the skirt and dress version of the school uniform. Even when I am not wearing uniforms, I would wear skirts or dresses.
Next is the fourth stage, which is the latency stage. I think Freud would believe this is one of the hardest stages for me to overcome. During this stage, we develop feelings of guilt, shame, and morality. For this particular stage, the only thing that comes to mind is how I learn about morals in catholic school. I have many memories of tying religion and ethics together. While I was 6-12, middle school, I have many experiences with Freud’s mental structures. The ID has a lot of impulse desires. Even to this day, I suffer from impulse decision making and consequences. When I was a child, I wanted attention. From the phallic stage, I got much of my parents’ love and attention. Especially since I was an only child, my need to be surrounded by people grew. Yet, at a private catholic school, an Asian child is weird and different. Thus, I was a loner growing up. But as a child I never gave up for attention, therefore I became a class clown. I would impulsively bombard other friend groups and playtime. During this age, I remember I had a lot of crushes. Nothing became of them, but I wanted to friend them and had dreams about them. During this stage, I think I mostly had female friends that were my support network. I never had any clear idea of what I wanted to do as a career during this stage. I knew which career paths I never wanted to go into.
Over time, I developed a superego. I realized as much as I wanted attention, I cannot always hog people’s time. Watching my parents, I slowly learn how there are times when people want to be left alone. My conscious formed an “ego”. This ego tries to keep a balance between my ID and superego needs. Freud would argue I have an overriding superego. I aim to please a lot. Like I have said, I like to be surrounded by people. Thus, I like to please people to like me. I always have trouble doing that. However, I still try my best. My parents often encourage me to befriend everyone. At times there will be two sides of people I want to befriend and civil with. Sometimes, one side will talk trash about the other side, and my ID and ego want to step in and shut the people down, but my superego persists on. I have never been self-conscience about my weight or appearance, but freshman year my mom called and told me my cheeks were fat on a recently uploaded picture on Facebook and I immediately became self-conscience and stopping eating regularly after that. I was annoyed at my mom for saying something rude like that, but my ego kept me from speaking out of line with my parents. Growing up Asian, I know there’s a stereotype of us needing to be the best of the best, but that was not possible for me. For a long time, even now, I am conscious of my grades and my intelligence. I am not smart, so I try to make it up by either waiting for someone else to hint the answer or pretending I can follow along.
The last stage of development is the genital stage. Freud stated that the ID will reawaken during adolescent. This time, sexual desires will project outward towards outsiders. According to Freud, if you are heterosexual, you are healthy. If you identify as a homosexual, then you’re stuck in a genital fixation. I believe this currently puts me in a fixation. While I do not identify as a homosexual, I do believe that I can find love from any gender. Most of my flirting started in college. I only began to sexually desire a significant other once I came to college. It is also at college when I stopped caring about which gender I’ll end up with; I like to keep an opened mind. This means Freud’s theory about fixations is right. I haven’t gotten over my fixation of eating, thus my oral stage is not complete. I cannot reach full sexual maturity and be mental health with this chewing habit.
I did have times when I suffered from loss of sleep and productivity due to close relationship issues. Many times I would take late night walks around campus because I could not relax my mind and sleep. Other times, issues persisted so much that I started to lose interest in clubs and extracurricular activities. During my third year, my (ex) best friend and I had such a huge dispute that I barely left my room or associate with anyone for a few weeks. I remember I was affected so much that even when I dragged myself to a club meeting one week, I had to walk out because I felt like crying. In the end, I took the opportunity to study abroad the next semester in China to escape the confines of America itself.
Another revolutionary theory of Freud’s is his viewpoint about dreams. Freud believed that dreams are the “the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” (Freud). Part of the dream analysis is how you sleep. How your physical sleep affects the dream you will have. I, for example, sometimes will fall asleep with my arms above my head. When this happens I remember in my dreams my arms will always feel paralyzed or locked behind myself. This is because in reality, my arms have fallen asleep and the blood cannot easily circulate through. Another physical thing that has happened to me is, falling asleep with my blankets above my head. When I do this, I remember in my dreams it is hard to breathe. Sometimes my dreams will take place underwater and I’ll feel like I am drowning.
Freud said dreams come from two mental sources: recent memories and childhood memories. Sometimes I’ll have dreams that involve people from elementary school. In these dreams, there’ll be events that happen that even I forget about. Yet, when I wake up, I’ll only vaguely remember the story, none of the details. I will also barely remember who is in the dreams; I will only know it was people from the middle or so on. An example of recent memories affecting my dreams that I can think of is me bleeding through the sheets. Once during my period, I bled through the pad onto the sheets. Ever since then, whenever I am on my period, my dreams will often remind me and then wake me up in the middle night to check that I didn’t bleed through my pad. Sometimes my dreams will re-remember an event that occurred. For example, I hosted a big event for one of my clubs last year. The planning of the event took a lot of mental energy. I remember before the event I had a dream where the event went perfectly. Everyone listened to me, and this calmed me. After the event happened, my dream was chaotic. The event was a disaster and the only person to blame was me. Between the two dreams, my reality of this event is distorted and remembered wrong. When something significant happens, like the day I was robbed, I will a bad dream. Being robbed scared me pretty hard that my mind created its own dream to scare myself even more at night.
On the topic of mental energy, Freud believed humans have a limited amount of energy. This limited energy created human behavior. Human behavior exists to release one’s tension. Freud identified two impulses that help human behavior reduce tension. The first impulse is a sexual impulse. Within this impulse is the libido. The libido is responsible for getting all your basic needs. The ID unconsciously will use its primal energy to get me what I want. As an only child, whatever my parents gave me was all for me. I used to take this for granted. Unconsciously, I got used to having my way. When hanging out with friends, I would argue for my way, my viewpoint, and for everyone to follow me. My comfortableness from being an only child created a selfish, self-center adolescent. Through time, my conscious and ego helped put me in place. Many of my friends recognize I am an only child through my behaviors. I also try my best to keep my ID in check.
The second impulse is the aggressive impulse. Aggressive impulse generally involves death-provoking activities. For example, substance abuse is an aggressive impulse. In my sophomore year, I was obsessed with a coffee drink. Architecture takes its toll, thus three days a week my friend and I would sneak out of the studio and take a trip to the DCC café for a cup of coffee. I became so addicted and used to caffeine by the end of the semester that I couldn’t live a day without it. When I went back home for a break, I went to the dentist. There I found out I got 2 more cavities, and 1 more developing. My dentist gave me a rundown of why. It was because I was sipping on coffee for hours a day that my mouth never resumed its normal ph level and potential to fight against cavities naturally. Thus, during break and the following semester, I swore off caffeine unless absolutely necessary. I never want to be dependent on caffeine again, and I most certainly do not want any more cavities. Another aggressive impulse I have is drinking alcohol. While do not think I am really bad, but whenever I hang out with a certain group of friends, we will always end up drinking. Our friendships never started off with alcohol, but once we started drinking, there was no turning back. When we are drunk we will go off on adventures (not drunk driving, don’t worry). Being drunk together keeps us on our toes and entertained. I am not sure there are many memories anymore that we all share where we are sober.
Freudian levels of Mental Awareness are the key to understanding human behavior. Freud distinguished three different levels of mental awareness; the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Conscious is the easy explainable subject of knowing what you’re always doing in everyday life. All my decisions, while sober of course, are made consciously. I think before I tell someone yes or reply to a message. The preconscious is the easily remembered portion of the unconscious. This includes me remembering what I wrote in this paper last night along with what I ate for dinner. It is the unconscious metal portion that Freud is most interested in. He believed that if you can understand the memories hidden away in the unconscious, then you can explain what you do sometimes. This makes sense. For example, I will always unconsciously look at my surroundings whenever I enter a new room and area. Thinking back on it, this is because since I was little, my family would take trips to Hong Kong and my parents will always repetitively prepare me on what to do if I get lost. They would contently point out safe areas, important people to ask for help, and anything useful for gathering attention. I will always still remember the one bus that will always take me back to my grandparents’ apartment in Hong Kong because it’s been ingrained into me. I think another explainable, unexplainable behavior I show is the behavior of being an only child. Since unconsciously I have always owned whatever my parents give me, I will always treat things I have as my own. I have this certain “mine” attitude that all other only children will share. Many of my friends will point out that they have inklings I am an only child due to how I act.
Freud mentioned the process of investing libidinal energy is called cathexis. If someone creates too much cathexis, a person can experience Neurosis. I believe whenever I go home for a break after a semester in college I experience Neurosis. At school, I spend a lot of time in libido. I talk to people, hang out with friends, and make new ones. A lot of this socialness is spoken in English. At home, I typically speak Cantonese to my parents. I remember after freshman year I got into the car back home and the whole ride I could not wrap my mind around speaking Cantonese. I could see listen and understand what my parents said, but I had a brain freeze and could only reply in English to them. I had a moment of neurosis, a moment of loss of my mother tongue. A similar thing happened when I went to China for about five months to study abroad. Two years ago, I came back to campus and I knew my English level dropped significantly. Many easy vocabulary words could not come easily to mind because of how long I haven’t heard or spoken English.
As mentioned above, human behavior exists for tension reduce. It reduces feelings of anxiety. Freud has a list of defense mechanisms that help reduce his types of anxiety. Some of these defense mechanisms can be helpful or harmful; as long as it reduces anxiety it is fine. The three types of anxiety are reality, neurotic, and moral. The types of defense mechanisms are repression, denial, intellectualization, projection, rationalization, displacement, and regression.
A lot of my primary and middle school memories are repressed. There were many days when I went home from school feeling sad and lonely. I was constantly going through reality and moral anxiety. The reality anxiety is fear of getting more bullied by other kids for being, eating, and speaking differently. The moral anxiety was being ashamed of being and looking different than others. I felt like being Asian American was so unpopular and against the norms. My tactic growing up was to repress those memories and run away. On top of that, I remember the days before high school, my family and I would always be yelling. There was never a day when we didn’t scream or shout at each other. I have tried to repress the days of when I would be sacked for being out of line. There were many things in my childhood I have repressed and try to never think about again.
When I entered high school, I finally found groups of accepting friends. They were no bullies and fun. However, the past will always come back to haunt me. I will still have the anxiety of being different. Thus, I started to project my differentness onto others. There are jokes, and there are racist jokes. I rationalized that I am not racist if the race I am making fun of my own race. My defense mechanisms were to project these racist jokes onto others, and then rationalize to them that I had the right to say them. Halfway through high school, we got a new principal. I once met him and since he was two head taller than me, the whole time I felt like he was looking down on me and did not like me. After freshman year, I went back to high school to visit teachers and friends and I bypassed the principle in the hallway. He saw me, but I do not remember him saying hi to me. This made me definitely think he did not like me. Four years later, in memory of him, I still do not believe he likes me… or even knows who I am.
For regression, old habits will come back into place. For example, shaking my legs or cracking my knuckles. If a piece of gum is in my mouth and I get anxious, I’ll revert to my old habit and chew really loudly and rudely. Sometimes on a project, I will get anxious over the details. I might obsess over the line weight or layout of the paper. This is pretty bad when working with a partner and on a deadline.
An example of intellectualization mechanism in my life is when my grandfather passed away. I bugged my parents to tell me the reason he was admitted to the hospital in the first place. I wanted to know what my grandfather was diagnosed with and how he can get better. I didn’t want to think about the chance of him dying (even though he ended up dying).
An example of a denial defense mechanism is definitely my grades. Often when I get a bad grade I’ll immediately think there’s an error. Even when the teacher goes over all the answers, I will still look for excuses as to how my grade was so low. In college, architecture studio grades are reliant on your semester-long project and final presentation. Sometimes when my grades come back now, I blame the critics for not fully understanding my project or the professor for not helping me improve and progress my project further. Another time I have used denial is during middle school. As mention above, I would come home sad every day. I was pretty hopeless back then, and going to a catholic school did not help with regaining hope. When I went back to school, during pray or mass I would vehemently deny the existence of God. How can I have such a miserable life if God was watching over me and loved me? I also projected a lot of anger towards God. I displaced a lot of aggression towards God. In reality, the problem was me.
Another example of me trying to use rationalization as a defense mechanism is the decision to delete a lot of emails from my past. Before instant messaging existed, “friends” and I would group email each other. All of these emails existed and sat in my inbox for a long time. One day, a few years later, I open to the inbox and open the emails to read them. Lots of conversations were sad to read. One day I made the decision to delete all the emails. They gave me too much anxiety. Within the emails, there was too much anxiety about my past –how I never felt accepted. When rereading the emails I feel trapped in the past. So I told myself to delete them all. One day, all the emails were gone from my inbox. And the next time I felt like reading the emails again… there were none.
A lot of my defense mechanisms rely on repression and denial. Sometimes I would project and displace my anger onto other people; other times I would rationalize the situation to make myself feel better. I barely use intellectualization or regression to alleviate my anxiety issues. Through this paper, I have to gain more insight into myself and personality. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of the human emphasizes so much on the developmental stages and internal conflicts one might have while growing up. It has given me insight into many of my repressed memories and unconscious childhood decisions I made in the past. There will always be times when I will feel depressed or anxious. There even might be unresolved conflicts throughout my life, but I’ll always have my ego to balance myself out and keep me in check.
cdreamer215 