Theories of Personality: Sigmund Freud

Biography

• Lived 1856 - 1939
• Used to be a physician
• THEORY: based on clinical population
• THEORY: influenced by “Victorian times”
• Died in UK – oral cancer – suicide (heavy smoker)
• Most of his patients were women (OBJECTS)
• Suicide (overdose morphine) age 83

The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud’s theory proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality
• Free Association
  • Reaction against hypnosis
  • Ex. The patient is asked to relax and say whatever comes to mind, no matter how embarrassing/trivial – seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
• First came up use of hypnosis – influenced by the work of Dr. Mesmer
• Hypnosis
  • Altered state of consciousness
  • Case of Anna O.
  • With colleague and mentor J. Breur (hypnosis)
  • Unexplainable symptoms (paralyzed but no cause)
  • Root issues: father’s illness, dog’s bite
  • As Anna started talking, symptoms lessened
  • Free Association => chimney sweeping
    • Started talking about her father
• Unconscious
  • According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
  • Contemporary viewpoint – information processing of which we are unaware

Personality Structure

• Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

  • Iceberg metaphor

  

• Id

  • Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy
  • Strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
  • Operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

• Superego

  • The part of personality that presents internalized ideas
  • Represents “rules” of society
  • Operates on the morality principle, provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations

• Id and Superego

  • In constant conflict
  • Causes guilt and anxiety
  • People need to learn how to cope with this conflict
  • Some do it successfully and others don’t
  • Conflicts must be resolved by ego

• Ego

  • The largely conscious, “executive part” of the personality
  • Mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
  • Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desire in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

  

*Eros takes precedence over Thanatos

Defense Mechanisms

• The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality (can be a normal process, but can also lead to disordered behavior)
• Motivators are unconscious
• Tactics that reduce/redirect anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality

1. Repression
   • A defense mechanism that pushes threatening thoughts into the unconscious
   • Forgetting
   • Often connected with trauma (abuse, PTSD, MPD)
2. Denial
   • A defense mechanism in which one refuses to acknowledge anxiety provoking stimuli
   • When you deny something exists
   • Rejecting it exists
3. Projection
   • A defense mechanism in which anxiety arousing impulse are externalized by placing onto others
   • Putting own anxiety to others
4. Displacement
   • A defense mechanism in which the target of one’s unconscious fear/desire is shifted away from the true cause
5. Sublimation
   • A defense mechanism where dangerous urges are transformed into positive, socially acceptable forms
   • Dangerous urges -> positive forms
   • Ex. Surgeon who becomes excited at the sight of blood
6. Regression
   • A defense mechanism where one returns to an earlier, safer stage of one’s life to escape present threats
   • Emotionally unstable -> fetal position
7. Rationalization
   • A defense mechanism where after the fact (post hoc) logical explanations for behaviors that were actually driven by internal unconscious motives
   • Forced self-justification
   • Ex. “I did it because of you.”
8. Reaction Formation
   • A defense mechanism that pushes away threatening impulses by overemphasizing the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings
   • Opposite of what you really mean
   • Engaging in the opposite feelings
   • Ex. express a disdain for pornography but really enjoy it

Personality Development

• Psychosexual Stages
  • The childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
  • Majority of personality is formed before age 6

Stages of Psychosexual Development

1. Oral Stage: Birth to 2 years
   • Need for oral stimulation
   • Achieved through sucking and later chewing
   • If the oral stimulation was inadequate the individual would continue to seek it throughout life
   • Oral Dependent Personality: gullible, passive, and need lots of attention
   • Oral Aggressive Personality: like to argue and exploit others
   • Oral activity and means of aggression
2. Anal Stage: 2-3 years
   • Gratification now comes from emptying the bowel
   • Attention turns to the process of elimination. Child can gain approval/express aggression by letting go/holding on
   • Anal Retentive: stubborn, stingy, orderly, and compulsively clean (hold on)
   • Anal Expulsive*:* disorderly, messy, destructive, or cruel (letting go)
3. Phallic Stage: 3-6 years
   • Interest in genitals develop
   • Child now notices and is physically attracted to opposite sex parent
   • Child derives pleasure from playing with genitals
4. Latency Stage: 6 years to Puberty
   • Less interest in own and others’ bodies
   • Little cross sex interaction
   • Freud thought sexual energies were submerged/repressed during this stage
5. Genital Stage: Puberty to Adulthood
   • Sexual nature now develops fully with adult needs and desires
   • Recurrence of masturbation and interest in sexual matters
   • Freud thought there was a progression to interest in the opposite sex if latency stage was fully resolved. If not, result was homosexuality.

Identification

• The process by which children incorporate the parents’ values into the developing superegos
• The reason our culture placed so much emphasis on traditional families

Fixation

• A lingering focus on pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

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