Methods

• Dream analysis, hypnosis, and free association (“clear your mind and say it all”)

• Used interviews with his clients to delve into the unconscious and map out their mental processes

• He called this method psychoanalysis

Consciousness

• Three levels of consciousness:

  • Conscious

  • Preconscious

  • Unconscious

• Used these to create a personality structure of Id, Ego, and Superego

  • Id— immediate gratification, aims to satisfy basic sexual aggressive drives

  • Superego— internalized ideals, standards of judgment, and morals (“angel on your shoulder”)

  • Ego— mediator between the two personalities, the “realistic one”

    • “There are two sides in you. One is baser, one better.”

  

Stages of Psychosexual Development

• Freud believed that personality developed from unresolved problems in early childhood

• Children pass through a series of psychosexual stages, over or underdevelopment in each stage can result in a fixation

• Id focuses libido on a different erogenous zone (zone of pleasure) in each stage

Oral Stage

• 0-18 months

• The pleasure center is on the mouth

  • Sucking

  • Biting

  • Chewing

• Fixation can lead to smoking, chewing gum, biting nails, etc.

Anal Stage

• 18-36 months

• Pleasure focuses on bladder and bowel control

• Fixation can result in obsessive tidiness (too harsh) or untidiness (too lax)

Phallic Stage

• 3-6 years

• The pleasure zone is in the genitals

• Things get weird

  • The child develops Oedipus/Electra complex: Unconscious sexual desire for opposite-sex parent

  • They fear the same-sex parent or want them out of the way

  • Penis envy (girls) or fear of castration (boys)

  • Adopts characteristics of the same-sex parent

• Failure to resolve the Oedipus/Electra complex → fixation

• Fixation can result in homosexuality, self-obsession, or exhibitionism

Latency Stage

• 6-puberty

• Dormant sexual feeling

• “Cooties stage”— children tend to only spend time with same-sex children

Genital Stage

• Puberty to death

• The pleasure zone is in the genitals

• Maturation of sexual interests

Criticisms of Freud

• Only studied wealthy Austrian women

  • But then only applied his findings to males

• His claims are difficult to test since these are unconscious stages

• Sexist

Defense Mechanisms

• The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by distorting reality

• Repression— Pushing thoughts into our unconscious

  • Your pet gets hit by a car but you don’t remember seeing it

• Denial— Not accepting the ego-threatening truth

  • “I didn’t study but I’m sure I’ll do fine on the test”

• Displacement— Redirecting feelings toward another, usually weaker, person/object

  • You do badly on the test so now you bully your younger siblings

• Projection— Believing the feelings one holds for someone are actually the feelings that person holds for them

  • Liking someone and thinking they like you back

• Reaction Formation— Expressing the opposite of how we feel

  • You hate someone but are extra nice to them to make up for it

• Regression— Returning to an earlier, comforting form of behavior

  • Acting childish when you don’t get your way

• Rationalization— Coming up with a good result of a bad outcome

  • You didn’t get into the college you wanted to so you say it was too far away or too big or something

• Sublimation— Channeling frustrations toward a different goal

  • The only healthy one

• Identification— Identifying with a group or set of values

  • Pride parade

• Compensation— Making up for a lack of something in one area by making extra effort in another

  • You failed a math test so you work harder in English

Neo-Freudians

• Alfred Adler

  • Childhood does determine personality, but the focus should be on social factors and not sexual ones

  • Our behavior is caused by trying to overcome inferiority

• Erik Erikson

  • The different stages of major conflicts

• Karen Horney

  • Our behavior is caused by trying to overcome helplessness

  • Penis envy is sexist

• Carl Jung

  • We all have a collective unconscious

  • 12 archetypes (universally understood symbols/personalities)

  • Created the Meyers-Briggs test