The formation of Mental Illnesses
According to PSYCHOANALYSISTHEORY, human’s mental system can be differentiated into SUPEREGO, EGO and ID. Simply saying, SUPEREGO is the norms given by the society (ethics, religious norms, legal norms, family norms, cultural norms, etc), EGO is ourselves, and ID is our subconscious including desire, appetite, libido, memory, etc. These three parts together are called PSYCHIC APPARATUS (Integral parts of human’s mental).
FREUD explained that every PSYCHIC CONFLICT will induce the unbalance energy in these three parts. For instance, if a man’s desire (ID) wishes to rob for his enjoyment on money, ethical and legal norms (SUPEREGO) will tell him it is a wrong action which would bring him to punishment. Because SUPEREGO and ID never reach the balance of energy, so EGO (ourselves) will sustain the pressure. This pressure will then warn us about the existence of pressure, this warning is SIGNAL ANXIETY.
To decrease the harm created by the pressure on us, our PSYCHIC APPARATUS will turn CONSCIOUS into UNCONCIOUS, then the pressure will become not obvious and we will not feel sad. This process is REPRESSION. REPRESSION is one of human nature’s DEFENCE MECHANISMS. Other DEFENCE MECHANISMS will be discussed in future.
Our UNCONSCIOUS is like a container, every one of us have their own CAPACITY to load pressure. Some people’s mentality is healthier so they have a relatively larger CAPACITY and stronger ability to sustain pressure. But some people are born in a tough family, some of them may have a traumatized childhood, an improper family education background and suffering from mental disease for example schizophrenia, their CAPACITY is smaller so they have a relatively weaker ability to sustain pressure.
After a long period of life with experience, more or less we have accumulated a lot of pressure in our containers. When a man enjoys his life, then he will learn various relaxing ways to prevent from overflowing the container. But for those adept at dealing with the pressure would lead their containers overflowing or rupture. At this time we will face the mental breakdown. Basically PSYCHOTHERAPY is to help us to erase our pressure inside the container so that we can live happily.