Theories of Personality: Freud, Jung, Adler, Klein, and Horney

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theories of personality, including Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Melanie Klein, and Karen Horney.

Unconscious (Freud)

The great underworld of vital, unseen forces that control thoughts and deeds.

Phylogenetic Endowment

Unconscious inherited images passed down through many generations of repetition.

Instincts (Freud)

Mental representations of internal stimuli that motivate personality and behavior, serving as the sole energy sources for human behavior.

Libido

The psychic energy that drives a person toward thoughts and behaviors, most significantly sex; the manifestation of life instincts.

Id

The most primitive part of personality and source of all psychic energy; operates on the pleasure principle to seek immediate satisfaction without considering morality.

Ego

The personality structure operating on the reality principle that balances the id's desires with the objective world through secondary processes and realistic thinking.

Superego

The structure operating on the moral principle, consisting of the conscience and ego-ideal, which enforces societal values through rewards and punishments.

Reality Anxiety

A form of anxiety characterized by the fear of real, objective dangers in the external environment.

Neurotic Anxiety

The fear of punishment resulting from instinctual gratification, or the fear that the id's impulses cannot be controlled.

Moral Anxiety

Fear of the conscience resulting from conflict between the id and superego when instincts or impulses violate moral standards.

Repression

A defense mechanism that bars unacceptable ideas, memories, or desires from conscious awareness, leaving them to operate in the unconscious mind.

Reaction Formation

A defense mechanism in which an anxiety-producing impulse or feeling is replaced with its conscious opposite.

Sublimation

A type of displacement in which an instinctual drive is redirected into a socially acceptable activity.

Parapraxes (Freudian Slips)

Blunders or faulty performances that serve as expressions of unconscious ideas in everyday life.

Transference

Strong sexual or aggressive feelings, positive or negative, that patients develop toward the therapist during treatment.

Analytical Psychology

Carl Gustav Jung's theory of personality, emphasizing the personal unconscious, collective unconscious, archetypes, and psychological types.

Personal Unconscious

The region of the Jungian psyche that contains forgotten or repressed individual experiences and complexes.

Complexes

Patterns of emotions and memories organized around common themes, in which a central idea or feeling attracts related experiences.

Collective Unconscious

The storehouse of latent memory traces or tendencies inherited from ancestral human and prehuman experiences across generations.

Archetypes

Universal ideas, symbols, or patterns formed through repeated generational experiences that carry a strong emotional element.

Persona

The social mask, facade, or role that a person presents to the outside world.

Shadow

The archetype representing the hidden, inferior, or rejected parts of the personality.

Anima

The archetype representing the feminine aspect present within a man's psyche.

Animus

The archetype representing the masculine aspect present within a woman's psyche.

Individuation

The lifelong process of integrating conscious and unconscious components of the psyche to develop a unified, complete personality.

Principle of Opposition

The Jungian dynamic principle stating that conflict between opposing tendencies or processes is necessary to generate psychic energy.

Principle of Equivalence

The principle stating that psychic energy is neither created nor destroyed; energy expended in one part of the system will reappear elsewhere.

Principle of Entropy

The principle stating that psychological energy naturally tends to move toward equilibrium or balance.

Introversion

A psychological attitude oriented toward the subjective, inner world of thoughts and feelings.

Extraversion

A psychological attitude oriented toward engaging with the objective, external world.

Individual Psychology

Alfred Adler's theory of personality, emphasizing social interest, the creative self, conscious goals, and the uniqueness of personality.

Striving for Success or Superiority

The fundamental upward drive to improve oneself, overcome weaknesses, and achieve completion or perfection.

Inferiority Feelings

Normal feelings of weakness or inadequacy that serve as a basic motivation for growth and self-improvement.

Inferiority Complex

A state that occurs when a person is unable to adequately compensate for normal feelings of inferiority.

Fictional Final Goal

An imagined future goal or subjective ideal that directs and guides a person's present behavior.

Organ Dialect

The expression of psychological conflicts and difficulties through physical conditions or bodily symptoms.

Social Interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl)

The innate potential to cooperate with other people in order to achieve personal and societal goals.

Style of Life

A unique character structure or pattern of personal behaviors through which an individual strives toward superiority and perfection.

Creative Self

The Adlerian concept that individuals actively construct and shape their own personalities and lifestyles through conscious choices and interpretations.

Ruling/Dominating Type

A personality type characterized by high activity level and low social interest that seeks to control or dominate others.

Getting Type

A personality type characterized by low activity level and low social interest that relies heavily on other people to satisfy needs.

Avoiding Type

A personality type characterized by low activity level and low social interest that sidesteps challenges and tasks out of fear of failure.

Socially Useful Type

A personality type characterized by high activity level and high social interest that actively cooperates with others and contributes to society.

Depreciation

An Adlerian safeguarding tendency where an individual undervalues other people's accomplishments while overvaluing their own to feel superior.

Accusation

An Adlerian safeguarding tendency involving the blaming of other people for one's own shortcomings and personal failures.

Object Relations Theory

A theory rooted in psychoanalysis that emphasizes early interpersonal attachments and internal representations of others, particularly the mother-child bond.

Phantasies (Klein)

Unconscious mental representations of internal instincts, drives, and 'good' or 'bad' objects present from infancy.

Internal Objects

Inner representations of external figures or caregivers that have been internalized and shaped by unconscious phantasies.

Paranoid-Schizoid Position

An early state in which an infant splits external objects into wholly good or bad entities, experiencing persecutory anxiety focused on threats to the self.

Depressive Position

A developmental state starting around five to six months where objects are integrated as whole, accompanied by guilt and fear of losing a loved object.

Splitting (Klein)

A primary psychic defense mechanism that keeps incompatible feelings, impulses, or objects segregated into separate good and bad categories.

Projective Identification

A psychic defense where split-off parts of the self are projected into another person, followed by interacting with that person as if they possess those attributes.

Play Therapy (Klein)

A therapeutic technique used to analyze children directly by allowing them to express conscious and unconscious wishes through toys and art materials.

Psychoanalytic Social Theory

Karen Horney's theory stating that personality is shaped mainly by relationships, culture, and social conditions rather than biological drives alone.

Basic Hostility

Repressed resentment and anger that children develop when parents neglect, reject, dominate, or fail to provide genuine love.

Basic Anxiety

An all-pervading feeling of being lonely, isolated, and helpless in a potentially hostile world.

Moving Toward People

A compliant neurotic trend where an individual manages feelings of helplessness by compulsively seeking affection, approval, and dependence on others.

Moving Against People

An aggressive neurotic trend where an individual regards others as hostile enemies and seeks security through power, exploitation, and dominance.

Moving Away from People

A detached neurotic trend characterized by emotional withdrawal, isolation, and an exaggerated emphasis on total self-sufficiency.

Idealized Self-Image

An unrealistic, grandiose picture of oneself constructed to compensate for feelings of isolation, inferiority, and weakness.

Neurotic Search for Glory

A compulsive drive to actualize one's idealized self-image through perfectionism, neurotic ambition, and vindictive triumph.

Tyranny of the Should

Inflexible, relentless inner demands that compel a person to attain unattainable standards of perfection (e.g., 'I should never fail').

Neurotic Claims

Unrealistic demands and expectations that one is entitled to special treatment, exemptions, and privileges from others.

Neurotic Pride

A spurious sense of superiority based on an imaginary idealized self rather than on realistic qualities or achievements.

Self-Hatred (Horney)

The condemnation, rejection, and despising of one's real self because it fails to meet the impossible standards of the idealized self.

Alienation from the Real Self

The loss of contact with one's genuine emotions, needs, and desires due to intense striving toward an idealized persona.

Womb Envy

Karen Horney's concept that men experience unconscious jealousy toward women's biological capacity for pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing.