re were three interacting systems within the mind: the id, ego, and superego. The id is the largest part of the unconscious, and operates mainly on the need to gain pleasure and satisfaction. It mainly is the driving force behind a newborn infant who has no cares of the outside world, and will start to cry the moment it needs to be satisfied. The id is mostly the instincts that are part of a person for his whole life. The ego develops in a young child as a method to cope with the real world and satisfy the id’s impulses in more realistic ways other than crying. The ego can be seen as the moderator between the id and superego. Finally, the superego is the region of the mind that is mostly conscious. The superego forces the ego to consider the most ideal way of dealing with a problem. It is made up of morals, values, and culture’s influence on a person. The superego’s demands are very much opposed to those of the id, and it is the ego that must struggle to balance the ideas of the two. To live in a society one must be able to control the sexual impulses of the id. The roots of the anxiety in most of Freud’s patients, he discovered, had usually come from conflicts that they had been subject to in early childhood. He concluded that in a growing child, the id begins to focus on certain pleasure-seeking areas of the body. These areas Freud called the erogenous zones. The id’s constant changing of erogenous zones he called psychosexual stages. From birth to around 18 months old is known as the oral stage, when pleasure is focused on oral stimulation through biting, sucking, and chewing. The anal stage, which lasts from 18 months to around three years old, is when pleasure shifts to the bowels and the new-found ability to control his internal muscles. The next stage in a child’s development is known as the phallic stage, which usually lasts to around six years old. The child’s subconsc...
