Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

Free association: therapeutic technique central to psychoanalysis in which the therapist encourages patients to report, without restriction, may thoughts that occur to them no matter how irrelevant, unimportant, or unpleasant.

• Freud believed there is a definite force controlling all actions and believed all thoughts were related

  • Nothing we do is accidental

Resistance: in psychoanalysis, when unwilling to disclose painful memories

• Freud believed resistance caused those memories to be repressed in the unconscious

Unconscious: (Freud) the depository of hidden wishes, needs, and conflicts of which the person is unaware and filled with sexual and aggressive impulses, and unresolved issues.

• Freud believed a great deal of our behavior is unconsciously driven

Dreams: the royal road to the unconscious

Dream analysis: psychoanalytic technique used to probe the unconscious through interpretation of the patient's dreams.

Process: analyze and interpret the symbols present in the manifest content in an attempt to discover the latent content or hidden meanings. Believed symbols had universal meanings.

Freud's 3 Parts of Mental Life

Conscious: the ideas and sensations of which we are aware

Preconscious: contains the experiences that are unconscious but that could be conscious easily

Unconscious: contains the experiences and memories of which we are not aware

Instincts: the driving forces in personality, govern behavior, and motivate to seek gratification and homeostasis.

Two main instincts that motivate us.

1. Life instincts: instinctive urges to preserve life, includes basic needs

Libido: originally sexual instincts, later revised to psychic and pleasurable gratification of life instincts.

1. Death instincts: instincts to return to a state of balance, free of painful struggles before death. As a result, comes aggression.

Freud's structural theory of personality

Three systems of the mind:

Id, ego, and superego

Id: the pleasure principle

Original aspect of personality, rooted biologically, consisting of unconscious sexual and aggressive instincts. Wants immediately gratification

Ego: the executive functioning of personality.

Aims to balance the needs of the id and the extremes of the superego in appropriate and realistic ways.

Superego: Strives for perfectionism.

Internalization of societal values instilled primarily by parents to teach right and wrong responses in given situations. Results in satisfaction or guilt and shame.

Where our conscience comes from.

• An overly active superego produces an individual who suffers from strong feelings of guilt and inferiority

  • A strong superego results in three kinds of anxiety: realistic, neurotic, and moral

Neurotic anxiety when a person is scared that their instincts or the desires of their id will get out of control and make them do something that they are going to regret.

Moral anxiety takes place when one does something against one's own conscience or when one fears excessively criticism and demands from one's parents or society.

Five Psychosexual Phases of Development:

Fixation: Defensive attachment to an earlier stage as a result of a traumatic experience in a particular stage. He considered fixation to be a defense against anxiety.

• Fixation during the oral phase, due to either deprivation or overindulgence, leads to the development of an oral personality that may have some of the following characteristics

  • Pessimism or optimism

  • Suspiciousness or gullibility

  • Self-belittlement or cockiness

  • Passivity or manipulativeness

• Fixation in the anal phase, an overdemanding or overcontrolling parent tends to produce an adult who exhibits an anal personality, meaning one who is dominated by a tendency to hold onto or to retain

Defense Mechanisms: protect people against pain and are universal reactions, all meant to keep anxiety at bay.

(Maladaptive)

Repression: unconsciously banish painful memories from consciousness

Suppression: active and conscious attempt to stop anxiety-provoking thoughts by simply not thinking about them.

(Stored in the preconscious)

Denial: refusal to perceive an unpleasant event in reality

Displacement; unconsciously redirect anger on substitute objects or people

Sublimation: form of displacement, though done by displacing anger on ones socially acceptable

Regression: movement from mature behavior to immature behavior

Projection: attributing our own undesirable characteristics on to others