demands of toilet training, may be both messy and disorganized ("anal expulsive") or highly controlled and compulsively neat ("anal-retentive").To live in social groups, impulses cannot be freely acted on They must be controlled in logical, socially acceptable ways. When the ego fears losing control of the inner struggle between the demands of the id and the superego, the result is anxiety. Anxiety, said Freud, is the price paid for civilization.Unlike specific fears, the dark cloud of anxiety is unfocused. Anxiety is therefore, difficult to cope with, as when we feel unsettled but have no basis for feeling that way. Freud proposed that the ego protects itself against anxiety with ego defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms reduce or redirect anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality. Some examples follow:!. Repression banishes anxiety arousing thoughts and feelings from consciousness. According to Freud, repression underlies every defenses mechanisms, each of which can disguise threatening impulses and keep them from reaching consciousness. Freud believed that repression explains why lust a parent is not remembered from childhood. However, he also believed that repression is often incomplete, with the repressed urges seeping out in dream symbols and slips of the tongue.2. Regression - retreating to an earlier, more infantile stage of development where some psychic energy still fixates. Thus, when facing the anxious first days of school, a child may regress to the oral comfort of thumb sucking. 3. In reaction formation, the ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites. En route to unconsciousness, the unacceptable proposition of "I hate him," may become "I love him." Timidity becomes daring. Feelings of inadequacy become bravado. According to the principle behind this defense mechanism, vehement social crusaders, such as those who urgently campaign against gay rights, may be motivated by the ve...
