AP Psychology - Unit 4.5a Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Theories

Psychodynamic Perspective

• focuses on the unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experiences

• rooted in Sigmund Freud’s work

• human behavior is a result of the dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind

• unconscious elements are theorized to come from unresolved conflicts

Psychoanalysis

refers to Freud’s theory of personality

• attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives

therapy and treatment involved;

• exposure and interpretation of unconscious tensions (ex: conflicts with expected gender roles)

• free association

• dream studies

Unconscious

• Freud: believed it was a reservoir of unacceptable thoughts and feelings

• Modern Psychologists: information that individuals process without conscious awareness

Free Association

• the subject is asked to relax and say whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

• helped gain insight into a person’s unconscious mind

Preconscious

• an area of consciousness that temporarily holds thoughts from which individuals can retrieve them into conscious awareness

Repression

banishes distressing thoughts, memories, or feelings from consciousness

• these thoughts can appear in an individual’s dreams or appear as freudian slips

Freud claimed that this was the most basic defense mechanism

ID

resides in a person’s unconscious mind

strives to satisfy basic drives

• survive

• reproduce

• aggress

focuses on pleasure and immediate gratification

disregards the outside world’s conditions, ethical principles, and/or consequences

Ego

• part of an individual’s partly conscious mind

• its purpose is to mediate the demand of the id, superego, and the external world

• seeks to regulate the id’s impulses by gratifying them in realistic ways that produce long-term pleasure

Superego

• the partly conscious part of an individual's personality

• represents a person’s internalized ideals, moral values, and judgements

• guides a person’s behavior based on what they ought to do

• develops around age 4 to 5

• creates either positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt

Psychosexual Stages

• Freud believed that people’s personalities form during their childhood years

• each stage presents its own conflicts

Erogenous Zones

• distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body that satisfy the id’s sexual demands

Oral Stage

0-18 months

pleasure centers on the mouth

• sucking

• biting

• chewing

people who were either orally overindulged or deprived might experience conflicts in adulthood

Anal Stage

18-36 months

pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination

• potty training

children cope with demands for control

Phallic Stage

• 3-6 years

• pleasure zone is the genitals

Oedipus Complex

emerges during the phallic stage

boys develop unconscious sexual desires for their mother and jealousy for their father

• causes them to feel guilty and fear punishment from their father

Electra Complex

• a parallel of the Oedipus complex that girls experience during the phallic stage

Latency Stage

• 6 years to puberty

• a phase of dormant sexual feelings

• focuses on developing social relationships

Genital Stage

• occurs from puberty onward

• maturation of sexual interests

Defense Mechanisms

• tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality

• used to help protect an individual's self-esteem

Denial

• occurs when an individual refuses to accept or believe painful realities

• ego will block certain external stimuli or feelings from entering conscious awareness

Displacement

• an individual redirects their sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening situation or person

Projection

• a person disguises their own unacceptable thoughts or impulses by attributing them to someone else

Rationalization

an individual justifies threatening behaviors or thoughts to make them seem more acceptable

Reaction Formation

an individual reacts in the opposite way as they feel

• they do not enact their unacceptable impulses

Regression

• an individual reverts back to behaviors of an earlier psychosexual stage

• ego generally uses this defense mechanism when it experiences heightened levels of stress

Sublimation

• a person transfers unacceptable impulses into socially valued actions

Manifest Content

• refers to the information that an individual remembers from their dream

Latent Content

• refers to a dreamer’s unconscious wishes

Neo-Freudians

psychoanalysts that adopt Freud’s interviewing techniques and basic ideas

however, they…

• emphasize the conscious mind’s role in interpreting and coping

• doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations

• opposed the assumptions that women have weak superegos and suffer “penis envy”

Collective Unconscious

• created by Carl Jung

• concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

• explains why people in different cultures share certain myths and images

Criticisms of Psychoanalysis

1. development is lifelong, not fixed in childhood

2. infants’ neural network are not mature enough to sustain as much emotional trauma as Freud assumed

3. slips of the tongue do not always represent individuals’ unconscious desires

4. rests on few objective observations

5. fails to predict behaviors and traits

6. repression is a rare occurrence

Terror-Management Theory

• a theory of death-related anxiety

• explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death

Projective Tests

• uses open response questions and ambiguous items to help psychologists understand a person’s preconscious and unconscious mind

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• a projective test

• people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Rorschach Inkblot Test

• a projective test

• designed by Herman Rorschach

• seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing how they interpret 10 inkblots

• critics argue that only a few of the many Rorschach-derived scores are valid and reliable