Freud's Personality Psychology Terms & Definitions Study Set

Psychoanalysis theory

Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

what did freud believe?

- sexual beings

- human nature stays in dna and rules and laws keep us on a straight arrow

- instincts are innately bad

unconscious

the hidden wishes, needs, and conflicts of which a person is unaware and filled with sexual aggressive impulses, and unresolved issues

free association

therapeutic technique central to psychoanalysis in which the therapist encourages patients to report, without restriction, any thoughts that occur to them no matter how irrelevant, unimportant, or unpleasant

resistance

unwilling to disclose painful memories

- Freud believed resistance caused those memories to be repressed in the unconscious

dreams

"royal road to the unconscious"

dream analysis

the therapist interprets the symbolic meaning of the client's dreams

preconscious

contains the experiences that are unconscious but that could be conscious easily

conscious

the ideas and sensations of which we are aware

instincts

the driving forces in personality

seek gratification and homeostasis

life instincts

instinctive urge to preserve life, includes basic needs

libido

originally sexual instincts, later revised to psychic and pleasurable gratification of life instincts

death instinct

instincts to return to a state of balance, free of painful struggles before death, as a result, comes aggression

id

the pleasure principle - wants immediate gratification, consisting of unconscious sexual and aggressive instincts

ego

the executive functioning of personality. - aims to balance the needs of the id

superego

strives for perfectionism - where our conscience comes from

repression

unconsciously banish painful memories from consciousness

suppression

active and conscious attempt to stop anxiety-provoking thoughts by simply not thinking about them. (stored in preconscious)

denial

refusal to perceive an unpleasant event in reality

displacement (defense mechanism)

unconsciously redirect anger on substitute objects or people

sublimation (defense mechanism)

form of displacement, though done by displacing anger on ones socially acceptable

regression (defense mechanism)

movement from mature behavior to immature behavior

Rationalization (defense mechanism)

justification of behavior through the use of plausible, but inaccurate, excuses

Intellectualization (Defense Mechanism)

dissociation between thoughts and feelings with elaborate rationale to explain unbearable pain

undoing (defense mechanism)

performing an act to nullify or make amends for an undesirable one

stages of development

oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital

fixation

a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

oedipal complex

in the phallic stage, boys develop a sexual longing for their mothers and see their father his rival

electra complex

in the phallic stage, penis envy causes love for their father because he has the desired object

Transference

attitudes of both affection and hostility, toward "parents" and are displaced onto the therapist

positive transference

special affection toward the therapist, usually develops first (praise, trust, falling in love)

Countertransference

therapists reaction with personal feelings toward the patient

negative transference

showing anger and hostility toward the therapist

projection (defense mechanism)

attributing our own undesirable characteristics on to others

reaction formation (defense mechanism)

convert undesirable characteristics to their opposites