Freud

50 flashcards

What are the three levels in the mind?

Conscious mind, preconscious and unconscious

What is the conscious mind?

Our conscious awareness

What is the preconscious?

Anything that could be brought into the conscious mind.

What is the unconscious mind?

Things outside of our awareness that are unacceptable or unpleasant (have been repressed) that has a significant influence on peoples behaviour (contains instincts, drives and repressed disturbing memories).

What is the structure of the personality components?

The Id, the superego and the ego

What is the Id?

Present at birth, known as the pleasure principle that is our instincts and basic drives towards sex and aggression

What is the super ego?

Develops after socialisation and our conscience and moral standards from the same sex parent and punishes the ego for wrongdoings through guilt.

Formed at the phallic stage (around 5)

What is the ego?

Acts as a referee to resolve conflict between the Id and superego through defence mechanisms When a balance can’t be achieved, abnormal behaviour results develops at the age of 2

e.g anxiety disorders occur from an over developed super ego

What is the healthy psyche?

When all the components are balanced.

What is the neurotic psyche?

When the superego is more dominant.

What is the psychotic psyche?

When the Id is more dominant.

What is Freuds method?

Psychoanalysis which is a form of therapy to access the unconscious mind e.g dream analysis and free association

What are the five psychosexual stages during development?

1. Oral stage (0-1)

2. Anal stage (1-3)

3. Phallic stage (3-6)

4. Latency stage (6-12)

5. Genital stage (puberty onwards)

What is the oral stage description?

Focus of pleasure is on the mouth- mothers breast is the object of desire.

What is the oral stage fixation (consequences of unresolved conflict)?

Oral fixation: smoking, biting nails, sarcastic, critical

What is the anal stage description?

The focus of pleasure is on the anus, the child gains pleasure from withholding and expelling faeces. Toilet training is the major demand. Ego begins to develop- children become aware of the demands others are placing in them.

What are the fixations of the anal stage?

Anal retentive- perfectionist and obsessive

Anal expulsive- thoughtless and messy

What is the phallic stage description?

Focus of pleasure is on the genital area, child experiences the Oedipus (males) or electra (females) complex

What is the phallic stage fixation?

Phallic personality: narcissistic, reckless, possibly homosexual

What is the description of the latency stage?

Development of other activities means less concentration on sexual areas, earlier conflicts are repressed.

What if the genital stage description?

Primary source of pleasure is how the pursuit hetero relationships. Fixation and conflict may present this with the consequence that sexual perversions may develop.

What is the fixation of the genital stage?

Difficulty forming heterosexual relationships.

In order to deal with conflicts and problems in life, what did Freud state?

That the ego employs a range of defence mechanisms.

What are defence mechanisms?

Unconscious strategies used by the ego to manage anxiety caused by conflict between the parts of the personality.

What are the three defence mechanisms?

Repression, denial and displacement.

What is repression?

Forcing a distressing memory from the conscious mind to the unconscious.

What is denial?

Refusing to believe something because it is too acknowledge the reality.

What is displacement?

Transferring feelings from true source of distressing emotion onto a substitute target.

What is the weakness of Freuds psychodynamic approach linking to gender bias?

• his views on women and female sexuality was less developed then that of male

• Was androcentric- male focused

• Freud seemed to ignore female sexuality and how it may differ from men so therefore not effective for female patients

What is the weakness of Freuds psychodynamic approach linking to critics claim that there is no scientific evidence for his theory and this it is not scientific or falsifiable?

• opponents claim that as the unconscious cannot be tested, Freud could interpret behaviour in any way to fit his theory

• doesn’t meet the scientific criterion of falsification and is not open to empirical testing (can’t be disproved)

• his ideas were based pn the subjective study of singe individuals such as a little Hans- difficult to make universal claims about human behaviour

seen as pseudoscientific- not a real science

What is the counter argument to the claim that there is no scientific evidence towards Freuds theory?

Fisher and Greenberg summarised about 2500 studies and concluded that experimental studies for psychoanalysis, compared well with studies relevant to any other major of psychology

They found support for the existence of unconscious motivation in human behaviour as well as the defence mechanisms

What is the positive towards the psychodynamic approach creating a new approach to treatment?

• Introduced new therapy- psychoanalysis

• First attempt to treat mental disorders psychologically rather than physically

• was way to access the unconscious

• claims to help clients by bringing their repressed emotions into their conscious mind so they can be dealt with

• Used techniques such as dream analysis and free association

• have led to the develop of modern talking therapies like counselling

• The psychodynamic approach has explanatory power and had a huge influence

• claimed success for many clients with mild neuroses

What is the counter argument towards Freuds work linking to psychoanalysis therapies and how it dpesn’t apply to all mental disorders?

Psychoanalysis is regarded as inappropriate and harmful for people with more serious mental disorders like shizophrenia

A symptom is delusional thinking and paranoia so they have lost grip with reality so cannot articulate their thoughts in the way required.

When can parts of the unconscious show?

through dreams or through slips of the tongue (referred to as parapraxes)

e.g calling a female teacher mum

What is the link of Freuds work and dreams?

• Freud believed that dreams are meaningful and require interpretation. Dreams are basically motivated by wish fulfilment/expressing fantasies that are not acceptable or possible in real life

• in dreams the ego's defences are lowered so that some of the repressed material comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form

• The nature of the dream is transformed into something which is less threatening to the conscious mind so as to ensure sleep is not disturbed

• To understand the dream the symbolism must be interpreted in the context of what the person recalls

• Freud distinguished between the manifest content of a dream (what the dreamer remembers) and the latent content, the symbolic meaning of the dream (i.e. the underlying wish)

• The manifest content is often based on the events of the day

• To interpret dreams, Freud used the technique of free association

• This requires a person to think of the dream and say the first thing that comes into their head without censoring it, no matter how silly it may seem.

What are all the psychosexual stages meant for except the latency?

each stage marks a different conflict that the child much resolve in order to get to the next stage

What are the defence mechanism in the long term?

seen as psychologically unhealthy and undesirable

What is psychic determinism?

• In Freud’s eyes, we are slaves to our past in the sense that our future behaviour and personality is largely ‘mapped out’ as a result of psychic conflicts in early childhood

• Like the behaviourist approach, Freud regards free will as an ‘illusion’ and calls the very idea of human agency into doubt.

• Few psychologists would accept this argument as it represents too extreme a view.

• Most would acknowledge the influence that early childhood has on our behaviour

• For example, this is a key idea in many theories of child development, counselling and social work

• However, the idea that we are entirely determined by conflicts in early years is too extreme and leaves no room for free will beyond early childhood.

• This suggests that Freud’s assertion that there is no such thing as an accident, is too far-fetched and undermines a key part of his theory.

What is the eodipus complex?

In the pahillic stage, Freud claimed boys develop incestous feelings towards their mother and a hatred towards their father (oedipus complex)

Leads them to repress their feelings towards their mother and identify with their father taking on his gender and moral values

What is the electra complex?

Girls in the phallic stage experience penis envy- experience desire for father and hate for mother

Although Freud was less clear on the process in girls, they are thought to give up their desire for their father ver time and replace this with a desire for a baby

Does the ego work on the reality principle?

yes

Does the Id reside in the conscious mind?

No

What is the assumption of the approach?

A persons unconscious is very important in determining their behaviour.