Mead and Freud

Paper Summary:

One of the most fundamental questions for the field of psychology is how it is that we come to be the way that we are. What is it that makes us human? To what extent are we all like one another and to what extent are we each unique? The paper shows that two of the founding scholars of the discipline of psychology, Sigmund Freud and George Herbert Mead, both created models to explain how fundamental and arguably universal human psychic structures developed. The paper explains that while sharing some common ideas about the ways in which human nature and human personality are formed, the two scholars proposed distinctly different interior road-maps of the human psyche as well as very different pathways by which core psychic structures develop. The paper therefore examines, discusses and compares Mead's Interactionist Model and Freud's ideas on the power of the ego.

From the Paper:

"We, as individuals, are generally made aware of the activation of our personal defense mechanisms, Freud argued, by the presence of anxiety in our lives. We know that one or more of our defense mechanisms are working because when they are we experience a rush of anxiety. Defense mechanisms are brought into play by the psyche to allow the ego to work to reach solutions (i.e. compromises) to the problems that each individual meets in the course of everyday life. Defense mechanisms allow the ego to cope with something unwelcome (usually something threatening to our safety or comfort) by allowing that unwelcome thing to emerge into our consciousness in a disguised (and therefore manageable) form."

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