Neopsychoanalytic Approach Notes

The Neopsychoanalytic Approach

Several personality theorists, initially loyal to Freud and his psychoanalysis system, diverged due to disagreements with certain aspects of his approach. Key figures include Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and Henry Murray. Erik Erikson's work is also rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis.

These theorists collectively opposed Freud's emphasis on instincts as primary motivators and his deterministic view of personality, offering a more optimistic perspective on human nature. Their work marked an early diversification in the field of personality studies.

Carl Jung

Carl Jung, once designated by Sigmund Freud as his spiritual heir, developed a dramatically different theory of personality known as analytical psychology.

Jung's disagreements with Freud centered on:

The Role of Sexuality: Redefined libido as generalized psychic energy, not just sexual energy.
Direction of Influences: Argued that the future shapes us alongside the past, influenced by aspirations.
The Unconscious: Placed greater emphasis on the unconscious, exploring inherited experiences.

Jung integrated ideas from history, mythology, anthropology, and religion to depict human nature, focusing on the phylogenetic aspect of personality.

Psychic Energy: Opposites, Equivalence, and Entropy

Jung broadened Freud's concept of libido into a general life energy, also defining it as psychic energy fuelling the psyche (personality). Psychic energy drives psychological activities like perceiving, thinking, feeling, and wishing.

High psychic value is attributed to ideas or feelings that receive significant psychic energy investment, strongly influencing an individual's life. Jung explained psychic energy using principles from physics:

Opposites: Every wish or feeling has an opposite, creating conflict that motivates behavior and generates energy. The sharper the conflict, the greater the energy.
Equivalence: Energy expended is not lost but transferred to another part of the personality. When interest wanes, the energy shifts elsewhere. This transfer implies equal psychic value in the new area.
Entropy: A tendency toward balance in the personality. Energy flows from stronger to weaker desires or beliefs, aiming for equilibrium. Perfect balance is unattainable as conflict is necessary for energy production.

The Systems of Personality

Jung's psyche consists of interconnected systems: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

The Ego

The ego is the center of consciousness, responsible for perceiving, thinking, feeling, and remembering. It selectively admits stimuli into awareness and manages waking-life activities.

The Attitudes: Extraversion and Introversion

Oriented toward the external world. Introverts focus internally on thoughts and feelings. Everyone possesses both attitudes, but one dominates, influencing behavior. The non-dominant attitude resides in the personal unconscious.

Psychological Functions

Jung proposed four psychological functions:

Sensing: A non-rational function that reproduces experiences through the senses.
Intuiting: A non-rational function. Derives from hunches rather than external stimuli.
Thinking: A rational function. Judgments about true or false experiences.
Feeling: A rational function. Evaluates experiences as likeable or not.

Each person has the capacity for all four functions, but only one is dominant, with a dominant pair (either rational or irrational). Opposing functions cannot both be dominant.

The Personal Unconscious

The personal unconscious is a store of forgotten or suppressed material, similar to Freud’s preconscious. Experiences are grouped into complexes, which are patterns of emotions, memories, and wishes organized around a theme. Complexes influence behavior and may be conscious or unconscious. They can stem from personal or ancestral experiences.

The Collective Unconscious

The collective unconscious is the deepest level of the psyche, storing universal experiences of humankind and prehuman species. This inherited heritage influences present behavior and links each person to the past. We inherit predispositions rather than direct experiences. Basic, universal experiences shape our perceptions and reactions.

Archetypes

Archetypes are recurring themes or patterns manifesting ancient experiences from the collective unconscious. They include the hero, mother, child, God, death, and power. Key archetypes:

Persona: A public face or mask presented to others. It is necessary but can lead to identifying with the role rather than one's true nature.
Anima/Animus: Recognition of bisexuality, with the anima representing feminine aspects in men and the animus representing masculine aspects in women. Expression of both is essential.
Shadow: Contains primitive instincts and immoral desires. It must be tamed but also provides vitality. Suppression can lead to revolt or a dull psyche.
Self: Represents unity and harmony of the total personality, balancing conscious and unconscious processes. Achieving self-realization is a lifelong goal that integrates all parts of the personality.

The Development of the Personality

Personality is shaped by future aspirations and past events. Growth occurs throughout life, moving towards self-realization. Jung identified specific periods in development, unlike Freud’s focus on early childhood.

Childhood to Young Adulthood

The ego develops in early childhood, influenced by parents. Children begin to distinguish themselves and form an identity. Puberty marks psychic birth, requiring adaptation. Young adulthood focuses on education, career, marriage, and establishing a place in the world, with a predominantly extraverted attitude.

Middle Age

Significant personality changes occur between 35 and 40, often triggering a crisis. Individuals may feel empty despite achieving success. This transition requires re-channeling energy from external achievements to the inner world. The personality shifts from extraversion to introversion, balancing consciousness with the unconscious, to realize the self.

Individuation

It involves becoming an individual, fulfilling capacities, and developing the self. Environmental factors influence this innate tendency. It requires confronting the unconscious, following dreams and fantasies, and balancing unconscious forces with conscious awareness. Vital archetypes undergo shifts: dethroning the persona, accepting the shadow, and integrating bisexuality. The final stage promotes transcendence toward unity.

Alfred Adler

Alfred Adler's individual psychology emphasizes the uniqueness of each person, shaped by their social environment. Consciousness is central, with individuals actively creating themselves and directing their future, not driven by unseen forces. Each individual is primarily a social being. Our personalities are shaped by our unique social environments and interactions, not by our efforts to satisfy biological needs.

Inferiority Feelings: The Source of Human Striving

Inferiority feelings are a universal motivator, prompting growth through compensation. It begins in infancy, aware of adults' greater power, and continues through life. Feeling inferiror is not a sign of weakness or abnormality, but it is the source of all human striving.

The Inferiority Complex

An inability to overcome inferiority feelings results in a poor self-opinion and helplessness. It can stem from organic inferiority, spoiling, or neglect during childhood.

Organic Inferiority: Defects or weaknesses prompt compensation efforts, potentially leading to artistic, athletic, and social achievements. Failure results in an inferiority complex.
Spoiling/Pampering: Spoiled children expect constant attention and struggle when faced with challenges, leading to an inferiority complex.
Neglect: Neglected children lack love and security, developing feelings of worthlessness and distrust, fostering an inferiority complex.

The Superiority Complex

Overcompensation for inferiority feelings leads to an exaggerated sense of abilities and accomplishments. Individuals boast, exhibit vanity, and denigrate others.

Striving for Superiority, or Perfection

It began initially as being equated as having a weakness or femininity, later revised to a broader drive for perfection. It's not about supremacy over others, but about perfecting oneself.

Fictional Finalism

Adler used the term finalism for the idea that we have an ultimate goal, a final state of being, and a need to move toward it. The goals are fictional or imagined ideals. Beliefs influence perception and interaction. The concept is that fictional ideas guide behavior towards wholeness. Goals increase tension, requiring effort, and manifest both individually and socially.

The Style of Life

It is a unique pattern of characteristics, behaviors, and habits. It develops early, shaped by social interactions. Neglect may cause a revenge-seeking style.

The Creative Power of the Self

Individuals create their style of life, not passively shaped by childhood experiences. A person has individual free will that allows each of us to create an appropriate style of life from the abilities and experiences given us by both our genetic endowment and our social environment.

Universal Problems and Styles of Life

Behaviour Towards Others
Problems Of Occupation
Problems Of Love

Basic Style of Life for dealing with these problems:

Dominant Type
Getting Type
Avoiding Type
Socially Useful Type

The first three lead to abnormal behaviour and lack social interest, while the socially useful type cooperates with others.

Social Interest

Innate potential to cooperate with others is innate, influenced by early social experiences. Communities are indispensable to human beings for protection and survival, Adler noted that the mother's role was vital is developing the child’s social interest as well as other aspects of the personality.

Birth Order

It creates differing childhood conditions that determine personality. The order of birth is a major social influence in childhood.

Karen Horney

Karen Horney diverged from Freudian psychoanalysis due to her feminist views and different socio-cultural influences. She disagreed about the psychological portrayal of women (i.e. penis envy). Horney's early work insisted on Freud's ideas but she later founded a new school.

Her theory was influenced by her gender, experiences, and cultural forces that differed from Freud's Vienna. Horney placed greater emphasis than Freud did on social relationships as significant factors in personality formation. People are motivated not by sexual or aggressive forces but by the needs for security and love. Freud's concepts of the Oedipus complex, the libido, and the three-part structure of personality were questioned.

The Childhood Need for Safety

Horny believed social forces, not biological forces in childhood influence personality development. The major way parents weaken or prevent security is by displaying a lack of warmth and affection for the child. When feelings of helplessness do arise, they can lead to neurotic behavior. Fear or love can also cause these problems. These actions undermine the childhood need for saftey.

Basic Anxiety: The Foundation of Neurosis

Defined is described as an “insidiously increasing, all-pervading feeling of being lonely and helpless in a hostile world”. We can protect ourselves against basic anxiety in four ways:

Securing affection and love
Being submissive
Attaining power
Withdrawing

Another characteristic of these self-protective mechanisms is their power and intensity. They motivate the person to seek security and reassurance rather than happiness or pleasure. They are a defense against pain, not a pursuit of well-being. Often the neurotic will pursue the search for safety and security by using more than one of these mechanisms and the incompatibility among the four mechanisms can lay the groundwork for additional problems.

Neurotic Needs and Trends

Self-protective mechanisms can become permanent, assuming drive-like characteristics. Horney listed 10 neurotic needs: Affection and approval, A dominant partner, Power, Exploitation, Prestige, Admiration, Achievement or ambition, Self- sufficiency, Perfection, and Narrow limits to life. The pursuit of satisfaction is compulsive and intensive, as the only way to resolve basic anxiety. They can be presented in three groups, each indicating a person’s attitudes toward the self and others. The three categories are called directional movement the neurotic trends. The neurotic trends are displayed indiscriminately, in any and all situations.

The neurotic trends are:

Movement toward other people (the compliant personality)
Movement against other people (the aggressive personality)
Movement away from other people (the detached personality).

The Compliant Personality

It displays a desire to move toward other people: an intense and continuous need for affection and approval, an urge to be loved, wanted, and protected. It shows these needs toward everyone and is dependent of an other person for needs and protection.

The Aggressive Personality

Aggressive personalities move against other people. In their world, everyone is hostile; only the fittest and most cunning survive. To achieve the control and superiority so vital to their lives, they must consistently perform at a high level.

The Detached Personality

Those personalities are driven to move away from other people and to maintain an emotional distance. Because of this constriction of their emotions, detached personalities place great stress on reason, logic, and intelligence.

Conflict

The basic incompatibility of the three neurotic trends is defined as this term. All of us, whether neurotic or normal, suffer some conflict among these basically irreconcilable modes. It is much more intense in the neurotic who have and are rigid because they cannot be expressed as the circumstances warrant.

The Idealized Self-Image

We construct an image of ourselves: realistic for normal persons, illusory for neurotics with incompatible modes of behavior. This results in the tyranny of the shoulds, trying to match an unattainable ideal of perfection. The realistic image is a goal and the neurotic self image is an unsatisfactory substitute that alienates the neurotic from the true self, and one way in which neurotics attempt to defend themselves against the inner conflicts caused by the discrepancy between idealized and real self-images is by externalization, projecting the conflicts onto the outside world.

Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm argued we are not only shaped by social and cultural forces (i.e. as suggested by Frued), but that personality is influenced by the social and cultural forces. The increasing freedom we have achieved over the centuries, both from nature and from rigid social systems, has intensified our loneliness and isolation. Too much freedom has become a trap, a negative condition from which we attempt to escape. We are not doomed to suffering.

Freedom or Security: The Basic Human Dilemma

As Western civilization has progressed, people have achieved more freedom but feel more isolated. Conversely, less freedom correlated with greater belonging. Fromm contended that in the 20th century people had achieved greater freedom than in any other era yet felt more lonely, alienated, and insignificant than people did in centuries past.

Alienation from Nature

Humns are free of the instinctive biological mechanisms that guide animal behavior. Human beings are striving creatures who develop and grow, and post-primitive peoples revolted against subservience to the group. In Fromm’s view, alienation has been matched by a high degree of freedom and the Middle Ages (about A.D. 400–1400) as the last era of stability, security, and belonging. Personal freedom increased at the expense of societal ties, leading to insecurity.

Psychic Escape Mechanisms

He proposed three psychic mechanisms for escaping from the negative aspects of freedom and regaining our lost security: authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton conformity.

Authoritarianism
Destructiveness
Automaton conformity

Through this mechanism, we ease our loneliness and isolation by striving to become exactly like everyone else, by conforming to the societal rules that govern behavior. Such people temporarily gain the security and sense of belonging they so desperately need, they do so at the price of the self.

Personality Development in Childhood

The development of the individual in childhood parallels the development of the human species. As children grow, they achieve increasing freedom and independence from their parents. Infants know little freedom but are secure in their dependent relationship.

Fromm proposed the following three forms of interpersonal relatedness between parent and child: Symbiotic relatedness, Withdrawal-destructiveness, Love.

Symbiotic relatedness
Withdrawal-destructiveness
Love

The Basic Psychological Needs

The basic human needs are to attain security and escape loneliness and the conflicting drive for freedom and the creation of the self are universal. This opposition is manifested in six basic human needs needs. The drive to attain security and escape loneliness and the conflicting drive for freedom and the creation of the self are universal. hese are:

The need for relatedness
Transcendence
Need for rootedness
Identity
Frame of orientation
Excitation and Stimulation

The Productive and Nonproductive Character Types

Fromm proposed a number of character or personality types that underlie human behavior and describe how we relate or orient ourselves to the real world.

He proposed different character or personality types that underlie human behaviour and describe how we relate to the real world. These are split into

Nonproductive orientations are unhealthy ways of relating to the world, such as the receptive, exploitative, hoarding, and marketing character types, and the necrophilous
productive orientations is the ideal state of human development, and includes the biophilous and the being

Having versus being character types were his later writings, having is a nonproductive orientation and being is a productive orientation. In the having character type, the definition and meaning of a person’s life lies in possessions, in the things he or she owns. society in which the majority of the people were of the having type was a sick society. In the being character type, people define themselves in terms of what they are, not in terms of what they have.

Questions About Human Nature

Fromm presented an optimistic picture of human nature. Fromm believed we have an innate tendency to grow, develop, and realize our potential. This is our major task in life, our ultimate and necessary goal. Fromm proposed an ideal society. There is no one that is inherently goods or evil, but people can become evil if we fail to realize our potential, but rather that we can become evil if we fail to realize our potential.

Henry Murray

Henry Murray designed an approach to personality that includes conscious and unconscious forces; the influence of the past, present, and future; and the impact of physiological and sociological factors. He deviated from orthodox psychoanalysis.

His proposed list of needs is still widely used in personality research and assessment and in clinical treatment. His data, come from so called normal individuals. Also, some of the data were derived from more empirically based laboratory procedures rather than from case histories.

Principles of Personology

Rooted in the brain: The individual’s cerebral physiology guides and governs every aspect of the personality. Including feeling states , conscious and unconscious memories, beliefs, attitudes, fears, and values.
Tension reduction: Murray agreed with Freud and other theorists that people act to reduce physiological and psychological tension, but this does not mean we strive for a tension-free state.
Developmental process: An individual’s personality continues to develop over time and is constructed of all the events that occur during the course of that person’s life.
Personality changes: personality changes and progresses; it is not fixed or static.
Uniqueness of each person: It emphasizes the uniqueness of each person while recognizing similarities among all people. As he saw it, an individual human being is like no other person, like some other people, and like every other person.

The Divisions of Personality: Id, Superego, and Ego

Murray used the Freudian terms to describe parts of the personality and gave his interpretation:

The Id: The repository of all innate impulsive tendencies
The Superego: defined the superego as the internalization of the cultural values and norms by which we come to evaluate and judge our and others behavior.
The Ego: The rational governor of the personality; it tries to modify or delay the id’s unacceptable impulses.

Needs: The Motivators of Behavior

A need involves a physicochemical force in the brain that organizes and directs intellectual and perceptual abilities. The individual tries to reduce the level of tension. In turn behavior is activated.

Types of Needs:

Primary and secondary needs.
Reactive and proactive needs.

Characteristics of Needs

A need’s prepotency: The urgency with which needs impel behavior. The concept of subsidiation refers to a situation in which one need is activated to aid in satisfying another need. The thema combines personal factors (needs) with the environmental factors that pressure or compel our behavior (presses).

Personality Development in Childhood

Drawing on Freud’s work, Murray divided childhood into five stages which each characterized which leaves mark on personality in unconscious complexes which directs our later development. The stages are:

The Claustral stage
The Oral stage
The Anal stage
The Urethral Stage
The Genital or Castration Stage

Questions About Human Nature

Murray’s goal is not a tension-free state but rather the satisfaction derived from acting to reduce the tension.

On the free will versus determinism isssue, Murray argued that personality is determined by our needs and by the environment. It is only partially deterministic. Murray believed we are shaped by our inherited attributes and by our environment; each is of roughly equal influence.

The Life-Span Approach with Erik Erikson

Focuses on the development of the personality over the entire course of life and believed that all aspects of personality could be explained in terms of turning points, or crises, we must meet and resolve at each developmental stage. Erikson extended Freud's theory by the fact his emphasis was greater on the ego and on cultural and historical forces.

Psychosocial Stages of Personality Development

He divides the growth of the personality into eight psychosocial stages in that the developmental process was governed by what he called the epigenetic principle of maturation. Each confrontation with our environment is called a crisis in which each stage has a particular crisis or turning point . The stages can result in Maladaptive (negative) and an adaptive (positive) ways.

Trust Versus Mistrust

The oral-sensory stage of psychosocial development, parallels Freud’s oral stage of psychosexual development, occurs during our first year of life, the time of our greatest helplessness. The infant is totally dependent on the mother or primary care giver for survival, security, and affection. This stage the mouth is vital importance.
If the mother responds appropriately to the baby’s physical needs and provides ample affection, love, and security, then the infant will develop a sense of trust. The basic strength of hope, is associated with the successful resolution of the crisis during the oral-sensory stage.

Autonomy Versus Doubt and Shame

During the muscular-anal stage at the second and third years of life, corresponding to Freud’s anal stage, children learn to hold on and let go. Thwart and frustration of the child's independecne causes self doubt. The basic strength that develops from autonomy is will.which involves a determination to exercise freedom of choice and self-restraint in the face of society’s demands.

Initiative Versus Guilt

The locomotor-genital stage is the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and in rivalry with the parent of the same sex. If the child is punished, it will develop persistent guilt.The basic strength is purpose arises from initiative. Purpose involves the courage to envision and pursue goals.

Industriousness Versus Inferiority

From ages 6 to 11, the child begins school and is exposed to new social influences. If children are scolded, ridiculed, or rejected, they are likely to develop feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Praise and reinforcement foster feelings of competence and encourage continued striving. The basic strength that emerges from industriousness during the latency stage is competence.

Identity Cohesion Versus Role Confusion: The Identity Crisis

Adolescence, at which we must meet and resolve the crisis of our basic ego identity. Adolescents experiment with different roles and ideologies, trying to determine the most compatible fit. shaping an identity. The basic strength during adolescence is fidelity.

Intimacy Versus Isolation

We undertake some form of productive work and establish intimate relationships. People who are unable to establish such intimacies in young adulthood will develop feelings of isolation.The basic strength is love, which Erikson considered to be the greatest human virtue.

Generativity Versus Stagnation

Adulthood stage in which will become broader and more long-range, involving future generations and the kind of society in which they will live.The basic strength that emerges from generativity in adulthood is care.

Ego Integrity Versus Despair

Maturity and old age, we are confronted with a choice between ego integrity and despair. Simply stated, ego integrity involves accepting one’s place and one’s past. The basic strength that associated with this final developmental stage is wisdom is expressed in a detached concern with the whole of life.

Basic Weaknesses

Similarly to the way basic strengths arise at each stage of psychosocial development, so may basic weaknesses. In which in extreme can cause conditions:Maladaptions can lead to neuroses and malignancies can lead to psychoses.

Questions about human nature

A personality theorist who delineates basic human strengths would be thought to possess an optimistic view of human nature. We are capable of resolving each situation in a way that is adaptive and strengthening. A personality theorist who delineates basic human strengths would be thought to possess an optimistic view of human nature.

Adolescent Development

That identified five psychosocial types, or statuses, for that period: identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, identity diffusion, and alienated achievement.

Identity achievement describes adolescents who are committed to occupational and ideological choices. Moratorium, the second adolescent status. Foreclosure describes adolescents who have not experienced an identity crisis but who are firmly committed to an occupation and ideology. The identity diffusion status characterizes people who have no occupational or ideological commitments in adolescence and who may not have experienced an identity crisis. The fifth status, alienated achievement, describes adolescents who have experienced an identity crisis, have no occupational goal, and cling to beliefs that are critical of the social and economic system.