Freud believed that all aspects of our personalities derive from unconscious biological instincts. We are the product of three forces, the Id, Ego, and the Super Ego, who are constantly trying to balance instinctive drives, reality, and social norms. The Id is the part of the unconscious connected with primary processes. The Id is in accordance with the pleasure principle, the idea that humans seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. While the Id has this long wish list to be fulfilled, the Ego is the part of the unconscious that satisfies all the needs of the Id. The Ego is connected to the reality principle. By working on the unconscious as well as a conscious level, the Ego is able to find appropriate objects in reality that will satisfy the Id. Although the Id and the Ego seem to form a perfect pair, if the two were the only components of our personality we would be incredibly spontaneous and animalistic creatures. For example, a person with this condition could simply be walking down the street hungry and in order to satisfy their instincts they would take a child's ice cream right off their hands without any guilt. Thankfully, we have a superego. The superego is the part of our personality that keeps us from taking a child's ice cream no matter how badly we may want to. The superego works with the Ego to satisfy the Id's wishes by taking into consideration what is socially acceptable in reality. .
Although the Id, Ego, and Superego seem to have everything under control, the Ego sometimes becomes overwhelmed by the Id and the Superego. When this happens, the Ego unconsciously distorts part of reality in order to dissolve the pressure by using defense mechanisms. There are many forms of ego-defense mechanisms, but they all have two common factors: the person using the defense mechanism is completely unaware because it's an unconscious process, and they distort some aspect of reality.