It acts according to the Pleasure Principle, which seeks to keep the level of tension low with pleasure. The ego is conscious and plays the middle role between the id and reality of our environment, operating on the Reality Principle, which finds appropriate ways for the person to satisfy his/her needs. the third system is our superego that represents our moral aspects, such as our values and ideals that we have established form society and learned as individuals. Our superego tells what is right and wrongs, and also has the job of trying to prevent impulses made by our id. It strives for perfection rather than for pleasure or realistic thinking (Engle and Snellgrove 98-99).
These systems must be balanced. When a person's ego is threatened, s/he goes into defense mode. In this mode we have a weapon called defense mechanism that we use to relieve tension. This mechanism has two characteristics: to distort reality and to operate unconsciously. Freud believes this ego defense was necessary to protect us from uncomfortable conflicts that we might have. Repression, displacement, and denials are a few defense mechanisms a person can experience. Repression is where a person forgets upsetting things because s/he wants to forget them. Something awful has happened, and s/he doesn't want to remember it because it is so awful and painful. So s/he begins to push it to his/her unconscious mind where it is forgotten. Displacement is where a person vents his/her anger towards a substitute figure. S/he is mad about something at school or work, but s/he gets angry with his/her family, instead of his/her classmates or fellow employees. Denial is where a person refuses to think about the problem and its external threats. Soon s/he begins to think they did nothing wrong -- cheating on a test, lying about where s/he was. The person makes it seem that s/he did nothing wrong, so nothing is the matter (Goodale and Goldberg 563).