Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow:-
Arun was an intelligent smart and friendly boy who was very popular amongst his peers. He often did not carry his lunch box to school but would eat from his classmates tiffins, on the sly, under the pretext of checking their bags for bringing mobile phones. He would often regret his behaviour at home but was unable to resist his temptation for interesting food and a little prank. On one such day Arun found Rs. 500/- in a friend's bag. Although he was tempted to take the money to buy food from the canteen, he did not take it, as he understood very well that it would be going too far. Stealing was something his conscience would never allow.
Which structure of personality according to Freud is at play when Arun is eating his friends food on the sly?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Id
Option (1) Id — Correct. The id deals with immediate gratification of primitive needs and works on the pleasure principle. It does not care for moral values, society or other individuals. Arun is ‘unable to resist his temptation for interesting food and a little prank’, so he eats from his classmates’ tiffins without asking them. This is the id’s demand at work: the id of a boy who wants an ice-cream cone tells him to grab the cone and eat it, and Arun does the same with his friends’ food.
Option (2) Preconscious — Incorrect. The preconscious is not a structure of personality but one of Freud’s three levels of consciousness: it holds mental activity of which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely. The structures of personality are the id, the ego and the superego.
Option (3) Super Ego — Incorrect. The superego is the moral branch that judges whether a gratification is ethical. It shows later, when Arun regrets his behaviour at home, not while he is eating the food.
Option (4) Libido — Incorrect. Libido is the instinctual life force that energises the id, not a structure of personality.
Note: The original NTA paper printed Option (2) as ‘Ego’. The official NTA Answer Key accepted both Option (1) and Option (2) as correct. NTA has probably taken the ego as correct too because Arun eats the food ‘on the sly, under the pretext of checking their bags for bringing mobile phones’. Hiding the act behind an excuse so that he is not caught is the work of the ego, which works by the reality principle and keeps in mind that grabbing something without asking may be punished. The urge to eat the food at once, without permission, still comes from the id. Therefore, to leave a single correct answer, Option (2) has been changed to ‘Preconscious’, for the benefit of students.
NCERT (2025-26): “Structure of Personality … Id : It is the source of a person’s instinctual energy. It deals with immediate gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses. It works on the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. Freud considered much of a person’s instinctual energy to be sexual, and the rest as aggressive. Id does not care for moral values, society, or other individuals. Ego : It grows out of id, and seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in accordance with reality. It works by the reality principle, and often directs the id towards more appropriate ways of behaving. For example, the id of a boy, who wants an ice-cream cone, tells him to grab the cone and eat it. His ego tells him that if he grabs the cone without asking, he may be punished. Working on the reality principle, the boy knows that the best way to achieve gratification is to ask for permission to eat the cone.…” |