Psychoanalytic/Psychodynamic

Psychoanalytic / Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

Introduction

• Instructor: Irene Tsang (irenetsang1510@gmail.com)

• Course: HPCS 4030 Personality and Individual Differences

• Topic: Psychoanalytic / Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality (2024/25 Sem2)

Core Principle of Psychoanalysis

• As Sigmund Freud stated, psychoanalysis aims to discover the unconscious in mental life.

Key Concepts and Assumptions

Psychodynamics

• 'Psychodynamic' refers to the transfer of psychic or mental energy between different structures and levels of consciousness within people's minds.

• Sigmund Freud developed his theories based on information from his patients during therapy sessions.

Determinism

• Determinism: A person’s behavior is determined by their unconscious motives, which are shaped by biological drives and early experiences.

Drives

• Self-preservative drives (including breathing, eating, drinking, and excreting).

• Species-preservative drives (sexuality).

Energy System

• A person is viewed as an energy system with a limited amount of energy referred to as "libido", which is psychic and sexual in nature.

The Life & Death Instincts

• Two drives motivate human behavior:

  • Eros (Life / Sexual Instincts): Associated with sex and life.

  • Thanatos (Death Instincts): Associated with aggression and death.

• Human motivation is rooted in seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and is broadly sexual.

Structure of Personality

• Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg, with only the "tip of the iceberg” being our conscious awareness.

• A person’s behavior results from interactions among three components: id (本我), ego (自我) and superego (超我).

Id (本我 - I want)

• The id is the primitive, instinctive component of personality and the reservoir of psychic energy.

• It encompasses raw biological urges (libido).

• Operates according to the "pleasure principle," demanding immediate gratification of its urges.

• Primary-process thinking: illogical, irrational, and fantasy-oriented.

Superego (超我 - I should)

• The superego is the moral component of personality, incorporating parental values and society’s standards about right and wrong.

• During childhood, social norms, rules, and ethics regarding morality are internalized.

Ego (自我 - I will)

• The ego is the decisive component of personality, operating according to the "reality principle."

• It seeks to delay gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets and situations can be found.

• Secondary-process thinking is relatively rational, realistic, and oriented towards problem-solving.

• The ego mediates and tries to avoid negative consequences from society by behaving "properly."

Levels of Awareness

• Conscious: Includes sensations and experiences a person is aware of at any point in time.

• Preconscious: Includes memories of events and experiences that can be retrieved with little effort.

• Unconscious: Container for memories and emotions that are threatening to the conscious mind such as anger, envy, traumatic memories, and sexual desires. It also includes needs and motivations of which individuals are unaware.

  • Slips of the tongue and seemingly irrational behaviors can reveal one's true feelings.

Internal Conflicts

• Our behavior is the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts between the id, ego, and superego.

• Prolonged and troublesome conflicts can lead to anxiety.

Defense Mechanisms (防衛機制)

• When conflicts are sustained, the ego becomes worried, leading to anxiety.

  • If the id is out of control, it can lead to ignoring potential negative consequences.

  • If the superego is out of control, it can lead to guilt and shame.

• Defense mechanisms develop to reduce anxiety and maintain a healthy personality.

• Ego-defense mechanisms help the individual cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed.

• Ego defenses are normal behaviors that can have adaptive value, provided they do not become a lifestyle that avoids facing reality.

• The defenses employed depend on the individual’s level of development and degree of anxiety.

• The unconscious mind is where we keep feelings and memories too painful to address consciously, causing us to develop psychological defenses.

• Defense mechanisms share two characteristics:

  • They either deny or distort reality.

  • They operate on an unconscious level.

• Defense mechanisms can be harmful if maintained and become habitual, leading to social isolation and an inability to learn from new experiences.

Common Defense Mechanisms

• Repression (潛抑): Keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious.

  • Examples:

    • A traumatized soldier has no recollection of a close brush with death.

    • A child abused by a parent has no recollection of the events but has trouble establishing relationships.

• Denial (否認): Blocking external events from awareness, refusing to experience a situation that is too much to handle.

  • Examples:

    • A man hears that his wife has been killed but refuses to believe it.

• Intellectualization/Rationalization (理智化/合理化): Creating false but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior.

  • Example:

    • A student watches TV instead of studying, saying that “additional study wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

• Identification (仿同): Bolstering self-esteem by forming an imagery or real alliance with a person or group.

  • Example:

    • An insecure young man joins a fraternity to boost his self-esteem.

• Regression (退化): A movement back to earlier psychological time when one is stressed, leading to childish behaviors.

  • Examples:

    • A child suddenly starts to wet the bed or suck his thumb after years of not doing so.

    • An adult has a temper tantrum when he doesn’t get his way.

• Displacement (替代): Diverting emotional feelings (usually anger) from their original source to a substitute target.

  • Example:

    • After a parental scolding, a young girl takes her anger out on her little brother.

• Projection (投射): Attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and motives to another person.

  • Examples:

    • A woman who dislikes her boss thinks she likes her boss but feels that the boss doesn’t like her.

• Reaction Formation (反向作用): Behaving in a way that is exactly the opposite of one’s true feelings.

  • Example:

    • A parent who unconsciously resents a child spoils the child with outlandish gifts.

• Sublimation (昇華): Satisfying an impulse with a substitute object in a socially acceptable way.

  • Examples:

    • Channeling anger into chopping wood or doing hours of exercise.

Mature vs. Immature Defense Mechanisms

• Immature:

  • Repression

  • Denial

  • Rationalization

  • Identification

  • Regression

  • Displacement

  • Projection

  • Reaction formation

• Mature:

  • Sublimation

  • Self-Control

  • Humor

  • Altruism

Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Completed in a predetermined sequence.

• Can result in successful completion with a healthy personality or failure, leading to an unhealthy personality.

• Freud believed that we develop through stages based upon a particular erogenous zone.

• Each stage focuses on a part of the body for experiencing pleasure.

• How conflicts between sources of pleasure are resolved determines adult personality.

Stages

Oral Stage: Birth to 1 Year

• Primary source of gratification: mouth.

• Sucking and feeding are the most important.

• A stage of total dependency.

• The infant also develops a sense of trust and comfort through this oral stimulation.

• The primary conflict at this stage is the weaning process—the child must become less dependent upon caretakers.

• Fixation leads to oral or narcissistic personality: demanding, impatient, envious, egocentric.

• Chewing gum, eating, smoking, and kissing.

Anal Stage: 1 to 3 Years Old

• Anus is the major center of bodily excitation or tension.

• Expulsion of the feces, intentional soiling, etc.

• The major conflict at this stage is toilet training—the child has to learn to control bodily needs.

• Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and independence.

• Fixation leads to anal personality: rigid, perfectionist, manipulative, anxious.

• Searching for power & control.

Phallic Stage: 3 to 6 Years Old

• Genital is the major center of bodily excitation or tension.

• Boys are aware of their sexual organ, they begin to masturbate and have to face the fear of castration; penis envy for girls.

• The young child’s development of an intense desire to replace the same-sex parent and enjoy the affections of the opposite-sex parent.

• Oedipus complex: affection for mother and hostility to father: competition & identification.

• Electra complex: the unconscious desire of girls to replace their mother and win their father’s love.

• Fixation leads to phallic character: male – competitive, exhibitionistic; female – naive seductive.

Latent Stage: 6 to 12 Years Old

• Decrease in sexual urges.

• Energy is channeled into emotionally safe areas.

• May not occur in unindustrialized societies.

• The child develops social, communication, and intellectual skills as well as self-confidence.

Genital Stage: Puberty to Death (Adolescence to Adulthood)

• Reawakening of the sexual urges.

• Normal, mature personality displays at that stage two psychoanalytic ideals: ability to love and to work.

• Identity formation vs. role diffusion.

Fixation

• During each stage, an unsuccessful completion means that a child becomes fixated (固著) on that particular erogenous zone.

• Either over– or under– indulges when he/she becomes an adult.

• Fixation occurs when the individual remains locked in an earlier developmental stage because needs are under- or over-gratified.

Fixation Consequences Table

Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives

Insights

1. Unconscious forces can influence behavior.

2. Internal conflict often plays a key role in generating anxiety.

3. Early childhood experiences can influence adults’ personality.

4. People use defense mechanisms to reduce their experience of unpleasant emotions.

Criticisms

1. Poor testability (可測試性) – psychodynamic ideas are too vague and difficult to test using scientific methods.

2. Sexism (性別歧視) – against females? e.g., Freud believed that females’ penis envy made them feel inferior to men.

Neo-Freudians

Ego Psychology

• Carl Jung and Alfred Adler argued that Freud overemphasized sexuality.

Jung’s Analytical Psychology

• The conscious level is the only one that individuals can know directly.

• Starting at birth, it continues to grow throughout life. As individuals grow, they become different from others.

• Individuation: This process has the purpose of knowing oneself as completely as possible.

• This can be achieved, in part, by bringing unconscious content into a “relationship with consciousness”.

• Jung put emphasis on people’s search for spiritual meaning in life. He developed analytical psychology and psychological types.

• The individual has “personal unconscious” as well as “collective unconscious” (=cumulative experience of preceding generations).

• Collective unconscious consists of ‘psychic structures’ or ‘cognitive categories’ which are not unique to the individual, but shared by all; influencing our thoughts, behaviors, and the way we look at the world.

• The term collective denotes materials that are common to all humans and significant to them.

Adler’s Individual Psychology

• Individual psychology emphasizes the individual’s social cultural backgrounds and holistic view of personality.

• Stresses that people need to take personal responsibility, strive to achieve life goals, and grow toward a sense of completion and belonging.

• Not libido but striving for status and power is a driving force in life.

• Ego development occurs as a result of:

  • meeting basic needs

  • identification with others

  • learning

  • mastery of developmental tasks

  • effective problem-solving

  • successful coping

• The ego develops capacities to function in the world, known as “ego functions” which enable people to function in a coherent, organized manner.

Critiques of Ego Psychology

• Freudian theory foregrounds the importance of the unconscious, while post-Freudian ego psychology tends to give primacy to the (more or less conscious) ego.

• When mastery and “proper” ego functioning are the focus of treatment, the therapist may become the model of normalcy.

• Cultural factors are often ignored.

• Pessimistic with respect to human nature.

• Equating happiness with freedom from tension.

• Overemphasized the role of unconsciousness in determining behavior.

• Inconsistent.

• The theory is not a fully scientific theory because:

  • The concepts are not open to direct observations.

  • Shows little ability to predict behavior.

  • Data cannot be collected in the laboratory.

  • Subjectivity of interpretations.

  • Great attention is given to early stages of life.

References

• Carver, C. & Scheier, M. (2013). Perspectives on Personality: Pearson New International Edition (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

• Corey, G. (2017). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (10th ed.). Mass.: Cengage Learning.

• Sharf, R. (2015). Theories of psychotherapy and counseling: concepts and cases (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning

• Weiten, W. (2017). Psychology: Themes and variations. Cengage Learning.