Freud's seminal work on personality provided a model with three components.  These are the: 

• Id: a basic, instinctive force which expresses itself either as Eros, the love instinct (with an energy referred to as the 'libido'), or as Thanatos, the destructive or death instinct.
• Superego: a basic, instinctive force which is a drive towards the individiual's ideal self. This super conscientiousness is as extreme as the id.
• Ego: this part of the personality tries to keep a balance and sits between instinctive forces of the superego and the id.

A key idea in Freud's personality theory is that the individual is in conflict, due to the demands made by different parts of the personality. 

Freud did not write much specifically about learning, but principles derived from Freudian psychology have been used in education and training. For example, Freud's approach provided the basis of extremely influential interpretation of group interaction (known as the 'Tavistock Model'), which is relevant for understanding how groups operate within education and training contexts. This suggests that a group operates simultaneously at 2 levels (Bion, 1961):

• The 'Work Group'....meets to perform a specific and overt task.

However, this is often obstructed (or diverted) by the powerful emotional drives of the second `shadow' group that from time to time takes over. The shadow group may appear to be working on the task but it is actually governed by powerful yet unconscious forces arising out of fears for individual or group security. This is called the `basic assumption group' because its members behave `as if' certain things were true, even though they are not.

• The 'Basic Assumption Group'......behaves as if it shared the following tacit assumptions or motives:

Dependency: obtaining security and protection from one individual on whom it can depend (e.g. the leader);

Fight/Flight: preserving itself from destruction - either attacking (fight - scapegoating some other person in the group in order to avoid a difficult problem) or avoiding the task (flight - takes the form of withdrawal, passivity, dwelling on the past or jesting)

Pairing: two individuals form a bond in which warmth, closeness and affection are shown. Frequently, this happens when the group is bored, lost or resentful. In learning groups, 'pairing' can take 3 possible forms: a) 2 participants provide mutual support for each other, to the exclusion of the rest of the group; b) 2 participants engage in an intellectual battle, with each partner representing a different side of a conflict that has been preoccupying the group; c) the leader/tutor may pair with the group as a whole and collude with them in their wish to avoid work. 

The purpose of the 'shadow' or 'basic assumption' group is to replace uncertainty with something more concrete. In unstructured groups, greater uncertainty will develop.  The less structured the activity, the more likely it is that uncertainty will develop. Bion's ideas enable us to make sense of responses to uncertainty (initially subconscious), which can happen any time.

References:

• Bion, W. R. (1961) Experiences in Groups, London, Tavistock.
• Cotton, J. (1995) The Theory of Learning: An Introduction, London, Kogan Page.
• Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, F.P. (1997) Joining Together: Group Theory and Group Skills, (4th edition), New Jersey, Prentice-Hall International.