Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud's theory of personality and system of therapy for treating mental disorders

Instincts

mental representations of internal stimuli, such as hunger that drive a person to take certain actions.

Life Instincts

The drive for ensuring survival of the individual and the species by satisfying the needs for food water, air, and sex

Libido

To Freud, the form of psychic energy, manifested by the life instincts , that drives a person towards pleasurable behaviors and thoughts.

Death Instincts

The unconscious drive toward decay, destruction, and aggression.

Aggressive Drive

The compulsion to destroy, conquer, and kill.

id

To Freud, the aspect of personality allied with the instincts; the source of psychic energy, it operates according to the pleasure principle

Pleasure Principle

The principle by which the id function to avoid pain and maximize pleasure.

Primary-Process Thought

Childlike thinking which the id attempts to satisfy the instinctual drives.

Secondary-Process Thought

Mature thought processes needed to deal rational with the external world.

Ego

To Freud, the rational aspect of the personality, responsible for directing and controlling the instincts according to the reality principle.

Reality Principle

The principle which the ego functions to provide appropriate constraints on the expression of the id instincts

Superego

To Freud, the moral aspect of personality; the internalization of parental and social values and standards.

Conscience

A component of the super ego that contains behaviors for which the child has been punished.

Anxiety

To Freud, a feeling of fear and dread without an obvious cause

Reality Anxiety

Is a fear of tangible dangers in the real world such as: natural disasters, animals, car accidents, burning buildings etc.

Neurotic Anxiety

involves a conflict between id and ego. Conflict between instinctual gratification reality or expression sexual/aggressive impulses.

Moral Anxiety

involves a conflict between id and superego. Conflict between your actions and your moral code often resulting in guilt or shame.

Defense Mechanisms

Strategies the ego uses to defend itself against the anxiety provoked by conflicts of everyday life. Defense mechanisms involve denials or distortions of reality.

Repression

A defense mechanism that involves unconscious denial of the existence of something that causes anxiety

Denial

A defense mechanism that involves denying the existence of an external threat or traumatic event.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism that involves expression an id impulse that is the opposite of the one that is truly driving the person

Projection

A defense mechanism that involves attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else

Displacement

A defense mechanism that involves shifting id impulses from a threatening object or from one that is unavailable to an object that is available; for example, replacing hostility towards one's boss with hostility toward one's child.

Sublimation

A defense mechanism that involves altering or displacing id impulses by diverting instinctual energy into socially acceptable behaviors.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

To Freud, the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages through which all children pass. In these stages, gratification of the id instincts depends on the stimulation of corresponding areas of the body.

Oral Stage

Psychosexual Stage of Development: Birth - 1 year. Mouth is the primary erogenous zone; pleasure derived from sucking: id is dominant.

Anal Stage

Psychosexual Stage of Development: 1 - 3 years. Toilet training (external reality) interferes with gratification received from defecation.

Phallic Stage

Psychosexual Stage of Development: 4-5 years. Incestuous fantasies; Oedipus complex; anxiety; superego development.

Latency Stage

Psychosexual Stage of Development: 5 years - puberty. Period of sublimation of sex instinct.

Genital Stage

Psychosexual Stage of Development: Adolescence - adulthood. Development of sex-role identity and adult social relationships.

Fixation

A condition in which a portion of libido remains invested in one of the psychosexual stages because of excessive frustration or gratification.

Oedipus Complex

During the phallic stage (ages 4 - 5), the unconscious desire of a boy for his mother, accompanied by a desire to replace or destroy his father.

Electra Complex

During the phallic stage (ages 4 - 5), the unconscious desire of a girl for her father, accompanied by a desire to replace or destroy.

Penis Envy

The envy the female feels toward the male because the male possesses a penis; this is accompanied by a sense of loss because the female does not have a penis

Latency Period

To Freud, the period from approximately age 5 to puberty, during which the sex instinct is dormant, sublimated in school activities, sports, and hobbies, and developing friendship with members of the same sex.

Free Association

A technique in which the patient says what ever comes to mind. in other words, it is a kind of daydreaming out loud.

Catharsis

The expression of emotions that is expected to lead to the reduction of disturbing symptoms.

Resistance

In free association, a blockage or refusal to disclose painful memories

Dream Analysis

A technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover unconscious conflicts. Dreams have a manifest content (the actual events in the dream) and a latent content (the symbolic meaning of the dream events).

Freudian Slip

ordinary forgetting or a casual lapse in speech is actually a reflection of unconscious motives or anxieties. Such as referring that someone has sexual anxiety from misreading or having a verbal slip that leads to the individual saying something sexual related often resulting in embarrassment.