Psych Honors Personality

Psych Honors Personality - Psychoanalysis Notes for quiz

Personality

Unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Personality Theory - Three Topics

explain how people are different and similar, and why every individual is unique

• Psychoanalytic

• Humanistic

• Trait

Sigmund Freud - Founder of Psychoanalysis

Believed individuals thoughts and behaviors emerge from tension from UNCONSCIOUS motives and CHILDHOOD CONFLICTS

Freud Therapy Method

Tried to provide insight into thought and actions by trying to expose and interpret underlying UNCONSCIOUS motives and conflicts

Free Association

having a person relax and say whatever comes to mind no matter how trivial or emberassing. Say words and have the person say the first word they associate with it to uncover what's in the unsonscious mind.

Levels of Mind - Conscious Mind

all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, that one is aware of in this particular moment

Levels of Mind - Preconscious Mind

holds information that is not conscious but is easily retrievable into consciousness. (simple things such as phone number, childhood memories)

Levels of Mind - Unconscious Mind

unacceptable thoughts, urges, wishes, feelings and memories (one is not aware of them)

Divisions of the Mind - ID

Part of personality that consists of unconscious energy from basic aggressive and sexual urges - present from birth.

Operates on the pleasure principle the drive towards immediate gratification

the WANT

ID - Eros

the type of energy which is the life instinct, or life force perpetuates life. Leads to people taking care of themselves.

ID - Thantanos

the energy that deals with the death instinct, why people engage in risky behaviors

ID - Libido

sexual energy, driving force behind human sexual motivation and behavior

Divisions of the Mind - SUPEREGO

internalization of societal and parental rules, standards, and guidelines

develops age 5 - 6 and is partially unconscious (guilt develops here)

one’s conscience

can be harshly punitive (feelings of guilt)

what someone SHOULD do

Divisions of the Mind - EGO

part of personality that mediates between demands of the ID (WANT) and the constraints of the SUPEREGO (SHOULD)

Reality Principle - postpone gratification in accordance with the demands of reality

• rational, organized, logical

• may repress desires that cannot be met acceptebally

Creates defense mechanisms for feelings produced when weighing the ID and SUPEREGO

what one WILL do

Defense Mechanisms

unconscious mental processes employed by the ego to reduce anxiety

Repression

the forgetting of anxiety producing thoughts, feelings, and memories

• “I don’t remember that happening…”

Denial

the refusal to admit that something unpleasant happened or is happening

“Nope, that did not happen”

Regression

acting immature and retreating to a more infantile stage of one’s life through their behavior

• throwing a temper tantrum

Reaction Formation

• acting in a way that is the complete opposite of unacceptable urges

• being hypocritical

• ex. boys will tease the girls that they actually like

Projection

• attributing unacceptable impulses one has to someone else

• “No, I’m not a cheater. You are!”

Rationalization

• trying to reason away anxiety-producing thoughts

• finding justification for something bad happening

• “It’s Ok - I didn’t want that anyway”

Undoing

• unconsciously neutralizing anxiety causing action by doing a second action that “undoes” the first (such as a good deed)

• trying to make up for something bad or a bad impulse by doing a good thing

Displacement

• shifts an unacceptable impulse towards a more acceptable person or object

• if mad at your boss, take it out on your little sister

  • the little sister would be a safer target to take out your anger in order to not lose your job but still express the impulse

Sublimation

• Unacceptable urges are channeled into more acceptable activities

• taking unacceptable aggressive urges and channeling them into playing football

• like dealing with angry energy by working out

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

• childhood stages of development according to Freudian theory

• in each stage the ID’s pleasure seeking energies are focused on different parts of the body (called erogenous zones)

• a person may become fixated or stuck on a stage and attempt to achieve this pleasure as an adult in a way that is equivalent o how it was achieved in that stage

Oral Stage (Birth - 1 year)

• the Mouth

• associated with pleasure (chewing, biting, sucking)

• fixation may lead to nail biting or thumb sucking

Anal Stage (1 - 3 years)

• gratification comes from bowel and bladder function

  • such as by having control over when to use the bathroom

• Fixation may lead to anal retentive (having a short fuse) or anal expulsive (rebelliousness and emotional instability) behaviors

  • this results from the sense of having a lack of control later in life (if not properly allowed to develop in this stage)

Phallic Stage (3 - 5 years)

• focus of pleasure shifts to the genitals

• freud believed young children develop sexual attraction to their opposite sex parent

• child identifies with and tries to mimic the same sex parent - Freud says this is how one learns gender identity

• Fixation can lead to excessive masculinity (males) and excessive need for attention (females)

Latency Stage (5 - puberty)

• Sexuality is repressed due to intense anxiety caused by the Oedipus/Electra Complex

• children instead focus on hobbies, school, friendships

Genital Stage

• sexual feelings re-emerge and are redirected toward others who resemble the person’s opposite sex parent

Oedipus Complex

• Freud believed young Boys have have sexual feelings for their mother

• Boys tend to feel hostility and jealousy to their fathers because they have more power (“greater masculine power”)

• only the father being with the mother becomes internalized as taboo in the boy as the SUPEREGO develops

Castration Anxiety

• boys afraid that their fathers with punish them for having feelings for their mother by castrating them, therefore losing their masculinity

Electra Complex

• Freud believed young girls have incestuous feelings for their father and compete with their mothers

• for their father's affection, leading to feelings of rivalry and jealousy.

  • counterpart to the Oedipus Complex in boys

• Girls resent their mother and suffer from deprivation and loss without masculinity

  • they blame the mother for “sending her into the world insufficiently equipped”

• eventually the girl learns to attempt to take the mothers place she identifies with the mother