Sigmund Freud: The Structure and Dynamics of the Mind

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory, including drives, topographic and structural models, defense mechanisms, psychosexual stages, and therapeutic techniques.

The Unconscious

The core assumption of all depth theories; the part of mental life containing drives, wishes, and memories to which the individual has no voluntary access, yet which drives most behaviour.

Hysteria

A condition characterized by physical symptoms (such as paralysis, numbness, or problems with vision and speech) that have no organic physical cause and are psychological in origin.

The "Talking Cure"

A therapeutic approach named by Anna O. in which a patient talks under hypnosis about the memories and emotions linked to physical symptoms, leading to the symptom's disappearance.

Cathartic Method

A treatment method described by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud in 1895 (from the Greek katharsis, meaning cleansing) involving the emotional release of memories behind symptoms.

Free Association

The basic rule and technique of psychoanalysis in which the patient speaks whatever comes to mind without censoring, criticising, or holding back thoughts.

Drive

A mental wish or representation of a physiological bodily need that acts as a link between body and mind, aimed at reducing tension and restoring internal balance.

Eros (Life Drives)

Inborn drives that serve the survival of the individual and the species (such as hunger, thirst, and sex/pleasurable activity), powered by psychic energy called libido.

Libido

The psychic energy that fuels the life drives (Eros), encompassing broad pleasurable and sexual activities.

Thanatos (Death Drive)

An unconscious drive introduced by Freud in 1920 reflecting a wish to return to an inanimate state, which turns outward into aggression, destruction, and killing.

Conscious

In the topographic model, the small, logical, and rational part of mental life that a person is aware of right now, governed by the reality principle.

Preconscious

Mental content not currently in awareness but easily retrieved, functioning as a censor that follows the reality principle and disguises threatening unconscious wishes.

Pleasure Principle

The operating rule of the unconscious and the id that demands immediate satisfaction of impulses without delay or regard for external reality.

Reality Principle

The operating rule of the conscious, preconscious, and ego that delays gratification until safe and realistic conditions are met.

Id

The oldest, inborn structure of personality; a chaotic, entirely unconscious reservoir of drives governed by the pleasure principle and using primary process thinking.

Primary Process Thinking

An irrational mode of mental functioning used by the id that attempts to satisfy a need through a mental image or wish fulfilment.

Ego

The structure of personality developing from the id that negotiates between the demands of the id, the superego, and the external world using secondary process thinking.

Secondary Process Thinking

The logical, realistic, and problem-solving cognitive mode employed by the ego to navigate outer reality.

Superego

The inner judge of personality formed around age 5 to 6 through the internalisation of parental and societal rules, divided into the ego-ideal and conscience.

Ego-Ideal

The component of the superego representing who a person should be, built from parental praise and producing feelings of pride when lived up to.

Conscience

The component of the superego representing prohibited actions and rules, built from parental punishments and generating guilt when violated.

Defence Mechanisms

Unconscious strategies employed by the ego that deny or distort reality to shield itself from conflict-induced anxiety.

Repression

The foundational defence mechanism involving the involuntary pushing of threatening thoughts, wishes, or memories out of awareness.

Denial

A defence mechanism characterized by refusing to acknowledge or accept a threatening external fact in reality.

Projection

A defence mechanism where an individual attributes their own unacceptable traits, impulses, or feelings onto someone else.

Displacement

A defence mechanism that involves redirecting an unacceptable or aggressive impulse from a threatening target to a safer, less threatening one.

Rationalization

A defence mechanism that protects self-esteem by inventing logical, socially acceptable reasons to justify behavior driven by unacceptable motives.

Reaction Formation

A defence mechanism wherein an individual converts an unacceptable impulse into its exact opposite, often displaying it in an exaggerated fashion.

Regression

A defence mechanism in which an individual retreats under stress to behaviors characteristic of an earlier developmental stage where they felt safe.

Sublimation

A defence mechanism considered by Freud to be the healthiest and the foundation of culture, involving the redirection of drive energy into creative, productive, or socially valued channels.

Realistic Anxiety

Fully conscious fear generated in response to an actual, observable danger in the external environment.

Neurotic Anxiety

An inner fear that the ego will lose control and be overwhelmed by uncontrollable, forbidden impulses arising from the id.

Moral Anxiety

An emotional signal of fear or guilt experienced when the ego acts, or contemplates acting, in opposition to the standards of the superego.

Fixation

A developmental stall occurring when excessive frustration or excessive satisfaction leaves a portion of libidinal energy permanently attached to a particular psychosexual stage.

Oral Stage

The first psychosexual stage (0 to 18 months) centered on the mouth (sucking, swallowing, biting), whose central conflict is weaning.

Anal Stage

The second psychosexual stage (1.5 to 3 years) centered on the anus and bowel elimination, involving the conflict of toilet training and the struggle for self-control.

Phallic Stage

The third psychosexual stage (3 to 6 years) centered on the genitals, featuring bodily curiosity, difference discovery, and the Oedipus complex.

Oedipus Complex

A phallic stage conflict wherein a child experiences unconscious sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry toward the same-sex parent, resolved in boys via identification.

Castration Anxiety

A boy's phallic-stage fear that his powerful father will punish his incestuous desires by removing his penis.

Penis Envy

Freud's concept that a girl realizes she lacks a penis, blames her mother, and turns her desires toward her father, leading to an allegedly weaker superego.

Latency Stage

A developmental period from age 6 to puberty where sexual drives are quiet and energy is channeled into friendships, schoolwork, hobbies, and social skill building.

Genital Stage

The final psychosexual stage extending from puberty through adulthood where sexual energy focuses on mature relations with others, with the goal 'to love and to work'.

Parapraxis (Freudian Slip)

A slip of the tongue, pen, or memory resulting from conflict between an intended conscious statement and an unconscious disturbing intention breaking through.

Manifest Content

The remembered storyline and conscious imagery of a dream as recalled by the dreamer.

Latent Content

The underlying, unconscious, and forbidden wish that provides the true psychological meaning of a dream.

Dream Work

The unconscious mental mechanisms (including condensation, displacement, and symbolization) that transform and disguise latent content into manifest dream imagery.

Resistance

A patient's unconscious defensive opposition to psychoanalytic progress, manifested by forgetting, arriving late, falling silent, or questioning the method.

Transference

The therapeutic process whereby a patient redirects emotional feelings, expectations, and attitudes originally held toward early parental figures onto the psychoanalyst.

Countertransference

The emotional reactions and unconscious feelings that an analyst experiences toward a patient during the course of therapy.

Working Through

The repetitive clinical phase in which a patient repeatedly confronts and works through core conflicts across multiple situations until emotional insight and lasting change stabilize.