CLASSIC PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES

PSYC 2600: Lecture 11

Dr. Kira McCabe

Last Class

■ Evolution & Natural Selection

■ Evolutionary principles to psychological theories

• Need to Belong
• Helping Behaviour
• Aggression

■ Discussed theories of parental investment and how that impacts to mating preferences

■ Explored how individual differences can be explained by evolution

■ Limitations of evolutionary approaches

Learning Objectives

■ Briefly discuss Freud’s background

■ Explore his different levels of the mind

■ Define different types of anxiety and defense mechanisms

■ Discuss Freud’s psychosexual stages of development

■ Explore psychoanalysis

■ Review critiques and conclusions from Freud’s theories

Sigmund Freud: Brief Bio

■ Born in 1856, moved to Vienna at a young age and mostly lived there until 1938 (he moved and died in London a year later)

■ 1881: MD from University of Vienna

• Psychology as a field only founded by Wundt a couple of years earlier

■ Founder of psychoanalysis—the idea of talking therapy—and had a huge impact on the field

Why is Freud Important?

■ The impact that Freud had on the field of psychology (and culture) cannot be understated

• Many of his ideas about human development & personality don’t hold up well
• Some of his other work does (e.g., defense mechanisms)
• Testability & falsifiability of his theories remains a challenge

■ Only in the last few decades have things started to shift away from psychoanalysis in clinical psychology into more researchbased approaches (e.g., cognitive behavioural therapy)

Human Nature

■ Psychic energy: a source of (limited) energy within each person that motivates all human activity.

■ Instincts: Strong innate forces that provide all the energy in the psychic system

• Self-preservation instincts (aggression)
• Sexual instincts

■ Refined his theory with 2 specific instincts:

• Libido: life instinct
• Thanatos: death instinct

■ (Not quite Thanos)

Levels of the Mind

■ Conscious: Contains thoughts, feelings, and images about which one is presently aware

■ Preconscious: Contains information one is not presently thinking about, but can be easily retrieved and made conscious.

■ Unconscious: Part of the mind holding thoughts and memories that one is unaware of

• Largest part of the human mind
• NOT “subconscious”: “sub” means under, “un” means not conscious. You are not aware it’s there.

Levels of the Mind

■ Freud argued that unconscious material can take on a life of its own

• Motivated unconscious
• Unconscious material can “leak” into thoughts, feelings, and behaviours without us consciously knowing why.

■ Freud argued that nothing happens by accident—instead, there is a reason behind every act, thought, and feeling.

• Psychic Determinism

Psychic Determinism

■ Reasons could be discovered if contents of the unconscious could be examined

• Most symptoms of mental illness are caused by unconscious motivations
• To cure psychological symptoms, the unconscious cause must be discovered

■ Psychoanalytic personality theory: Concerns how people cope with their sexual and aggressive instincts within the constraints of civilized society

• This involves different parts of the mind: id, ego, superego

The “id”

■ Dark, inaccessible part of personality

■ Source of all drives & urges

■ Operates under the pleasure principle

– Desire for immediate gratification

■ Not rational, logical, or organized

■ No notion of time

■ Iceberg level = unconscious

■ Often depicted as the devil on the shoulder

The “superego”

■ Conscience, source of guilt/shame

■ Internalizes values, morals, & ideals of society

• What one ought to do
• Parental influence is part of it

■ Also not bound by reality

■ Iceberg level = between the conscious and unconscious

■ Often depicted as the angel on the shoulder

The “ego”

■ Negotiator, problem-solver, pragmatic

■ Operates under the reality principle

– Guides behaviour based on the constraints of reality

■ Mediates between id, superego, & “environmental affordances”

■ Iceberg level = mostly conscious

■ Ego is the person between the angel & the devil

Conflict & Anxiety

■ Players (id, ego, superego) are in constant conflict

– Result of this conflict is “anxiety”

■ Anxiety is an unpleasant state that signals that things are not right and that something must be done

■ Signals that control of ego is being threatened by reality, by impulses from id, or by harsh controls exerted by superego

Types of Anxiety

■ Objective anxiety occurs in response to real, external threat to a person

■ Neurotic anxiety is conflict between id and ego—trying to rein in unacceptable desires from the id.

■ Moral anxiety is conflict between ego and superego—trying to manage shame and guilt from the superego.

■ In all three types of anxiety, ego copes with threats and defends against dangers to reduce anxiety.

■ Ego uses various defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety

(unconsciously).

■ What do defense mechanisms do? – Protect the ego

• Minimize anxiety & distress

■ Anna Freud did a lot of this work, and it is a big part of psychoanalytic theory that (generally) holds up.

■ Repression: process in which a person forgets something they experienced because it is too painful.

• Example: “repressed memories” of childhood abuse

■ Denial: Refusal to believe

• Example: After being diagnosed with a chronic illness or terminal condition, a person might refuse to believe that the problem is as serious as it really is.

■ Regression: Revert to earlier stage of development

• Example: A child who has recently learned to feed themselves may suddenly seem unable to do so and revert to relying on their caregivers to feed them.

■ Projection: Misattribute your feelings or thoughts to others

• Example: A person who is cheating on their partner is suspicious that their partner is cheating on them.

■ Reaction Formation: To hold back an unacceptable urge; a person may display a

flurry of behaviour that indicates the opposite impulse

• Example: A neighbor is mean to you & you respond by being overly nice to them

■ Displacement: A threatening or an unacceptable impulse is redirected from its original source to a less threatening target.

• Examples: A person who is mad at their boss yells at a subordinate office intern.

■ Rationalization: Generating acceptable reasons for outcomes that might otherwise appear socially unacceptable

• Example: Rejected after first date? I didn’t like them anyways!

■ Sublimation: Channel feelings into acceptable outlets

• Examples: art, exercise, etc.
• Most adaptive defense mechanism

Psychosexual Stages of Development

■ Freud argued that all people pass through a series of stages in personality development

■ At each of the first three stages, young children must face and resolve specific conflicts.

■ Children see sexual gratification at each stage by investing libidinal energy in a specific body part (erogenous zone)

■ If a child fails to resolve a conflict at a particular stage, he or she may get stuck in that stage or become fixated

■ Each successive stage represents a more mature mode of obtaining sexual gratification.

Stage 1: Oral stage

■ General Timeframe: Birth to 18 months

■ Erogenous zone: Mouth

■ Developmental Task: Develop ego (i.e., learn to delay gratification through

weaning)

• If successful: you develop trust (trusting you will get food at some point)
• If unsuccessful: dependent or independent

■ If over/under-indulged, child develops an oral fixation

• Behaviour: gum chewing, overeating, smoking, drug addiction, etc.

Stage 2: Anal Stage

■ General Timeline: 18 months to 3 years

■ Erogenous Zone: anus

■ Developmental Task: Develop self control (e.g., through toilet training)

• If successful: mastery, self-control
• If unsuccessful: fixation can be either “anal-retentive” (obstinate, resistant, neat, frugal, stingy) or anal-expulsive (disorderly,

sloppy, aggressive, loose temper, unkempt)

Stage 3: Phallic stage

■ General Timeline: 4 to 6 years

■ Erogenous zone: genitals

■ Developmental Task: development of superego

• Identify with same sex parent & repress desire for opposite sex parent (also concepts of Oedipal complex & castration anxiety for boys, Electra complex and penis envy for girls)
• Adopt gender roles

■ Traits: Masculinity/Femininity

■ Successful: Adopt parents’ moral values

■ Fixation: People who are stuck in this phase can be overly dramatic and use partners for sex

Stage 4: Latency Stage

■ General Timeline: Age 6 to 12

■ Erogenous zone: none – “quiet period”, become sexually disinterested (Same-sex friendships)

■ Developmental Task: Drives need to be transformed through “sublimation”

– Reorient needs in new directions that are socially appropriate/acceptable

■ Coping skills learned

Stage 5: Genital Stage

■ General Timeline: Puberty to Death

■ Erogenous zone: genitals

■ Developmental Task: Attach libido to real external objects

• Learn to love others
• Contribute to society by productive, cooperative work

■ Love and Work (recall circumplex: warmth/communion vs dominance/achievement)

Key Points

■ Freud’s model of personality suggests reasons for individual differences

■ Determined by how one satisfies libido at each of 5 stages

• Trust
• Mastery/self-control/autonomous – Masculinity/femininity
• Good coping skills, resilient
• Achievement motivated – Interpersonally warm

Fixation

■ Important implications for fixations

• A clue that issues not successfully resolved at each stage

■ Repression of unresolved issues ties up (limited) psychic energy

• Not available for other stressors
• Repressed issues sneak out

■ In dreams

■ “Accidents”

■ Humour

■ Symbolic behaviour

■ “Freudian slips”: when something slips out that you didn’t mean for it to, it’s what you were really thinking and holding in.

Psychoanalysis

■ Goal of psychoanalysis is to bring out unresolved issues to free up psychic energy through different methods

■ Dream analysis (see Interpretation of Dreams)

• Interpreting that latent content in the dream

■ Free association: Relax & say whatever comes to mind

• By relaxing the censor that screens everyday thoughts, free association allows potentially important material into conscious awareness.

■ Projective techniques: Rorschach (inkblot) tests (which have terrible reliability & validity)

■ Hypnosis

■ “Talking cure”

Psychoanalysis

■ Psychoanalyst offers interpretations of psychodynamic causes of problems

■ Goal: Gain insight—an understanding of the unconscious source of problems

■ But process is difficult and wrought with roadblocks and challenges

• Resistance: Patient creates obstacles to progress
• Transference: Patient reacts to therapist like a person in their own

life

Criticisms

■ Freud’s model emphasizes the dark side of humankind

■ People driven by animalistic passions for sex and pleasure (and aggression and destruction) that need to be controlled by ego

• People are not “noble creatures” in Freud’s model
• Emphasizes everything that can go wrong

■ Freud also relied on case studies more than experimentation

Conclusion

■ Freud’s model of personality is comprehensive, but isn’t testable

• Doesn’t really hold up as a good theory of personality

■ Psychologists have nevertheless drawn from these ideas

• Current research bears some resemblance but doesn’t really support Freud’s propositions
• We likely have things in an unconscious part of our mind, but maybe not the way

Freud proposed

Next Lecture

■ Enjoy your Fall Break!

■ Contemporary psychoanalysis views (reaction to Freud) – Chapter 10