Freud's Structural Model of Personality
Freud not only theorized about how personality developed over the course of childhood, but he also developed a framework for how overall personality is structured. I n the 1890s, Freud proposed a theory that distinguished between three different levels of consciousness. According to Freud, the basic driving force of personality and behavior is known as the libido . Freud proposed that the id was the source of the libido ( Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors.), a source of energy for the entire psyche. This libidinal energy fuels the three components that make up personality: the id, the ego, and the superego. The ideas of id , ego , and super-ego were an attempt to describe important components of the psyche (PSY-kee). The psyche was conceived as the overall universe of the mind, while the id, ego, and super-ego were (to Freud) divisions or functions of the psyche. Freud described the id as "chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitat