An important part of understanding our personality is learning its components and its essential aspects. Our personality comprises of different fundamental characteristics and constituents that make up the totality of an individual’s whole being. We need to understand what these factors are in order for us to better appreciate our unique personalities.

The Three Components of Personality

Sigmund Freud is known for his study on the three basic components that greatly affect our personality. He created the three levels of awareness that are congruent to the three different parts of the mind: conscious mind, preconscious mind, and subconscious mind. According to him, our conscious mind includes our current or present mental processes contributing a major part in our current awareness.

The next level of mental awareness is our preconscious mind which, according to Freud, comprises those that we are aware of, but we do not really give focus or pay attention. We can either decide to take notice of these things and purposefully let our conscious mind be aware of them. The third part of the human mind is the subconscious where some of our thoughts surpass the conscious level.

From these levels of awareness by Freud, he then developed the three components of our personality: the id, ego, and super ego. These are the results of our thinking, feeling, and behaviors.

The id functions primarily based on pleasure principle wherein our mind seeks to achieve pleasure and avoid any form of pain. Freud mentioned that the id consists of two major instincts and these are eros and thanatos. The former is otherwise known as the life instinct that