SM

Freud

Definition (#f7aeae)

Important (#edcae9)

Extra (#fffe9d)

Instincts:

  • Mental representations of internal stimuli that drive a person to take action.

  • Form of energy that connects needs and wishes of the mind.

  • Homeostatic approach: People are motivated to restore and maintain a physiological equilibrium.

Types:

  1. Life Instincts: Oriented towards survival.

  2. Libido: Drives a person towards pleasurable behavior and thoughts.

  3. Cathexis: Investment of psychic energy in an object or person.

  4. Death Instinct: Unconscious drive towards destruction and aggression.

  5. Aggressive Drive: Compulsion to destroy and kill.

Structures of Personality:

  1. Consciousness: Contact with outside world; EGO.

  2. Preconscious: Material just beneath the surface of awareness; SUPEREGO, EGO.

  3. Unconscious: Difficult to retrieve material, below the surface of awareness; SUPEREGO, ID.

  1. ID:

    • Aspects of personality allied with the instincts.

    • Operates on the pleasure principle; functions to avoid pain and maximize pleasure.

    • Primary thought process: Childlike thinking which the ID attempts to satisfy the instinctual drives.

  2. EGO:

    • Rational master of the personality.

    • Operates on the reality principle; provides appropriate constraint on the expression of the ID instincts.

    • Secondary thought process: Mature thought processes needed to deal rationally with the external world.

  3. SUPEREGO:

    • Moral aspect of personality.

    • Conscience: Contains behaviors for which the child has been punished.

    • Ego-deal: Contains moral or ideal behaviors for which a person should strive.

Anxiety:

Conflicts which threaten the EGO.

  1. Reality anxiety: Fear of tangible dangers.

  2. Neurotic anxiety: Conflicts between the ID and EGO.

  3. Moral anxiety: Conflicts between the ID and SUPEREGO.

Anxiety signals a problem with personality and alerts the individual that the ego is being threatened.

It induces tension in the individual and becomes a drive the individual is motivated to satisfy.

Defense Mechanisms:

Ego strategies to defend against anxiety provoked by conflict of daily life.

Characteristics: Operates unconsciously, denial or distortion of reality.

Types:

  1. Repression: Involves unconscious denial of the existence of something that causes anxiety.

  2. Denial: Denying the existence of an external threat or traumatic event.

  3. Reaction formation: Expressing an ID impulse that’s the opposite of the one truly driving the person.

  4. Projection: Attributing a disturbing impulse to someone else.

  5. Regression: Retreating to an earlier, less frustrating period of life and displaying childish and dependent behaviors.

  6. Rationalization: Reinterpreting behavior to make it more acceptable and less threatening.

  7. Displacement: Shifting ID impulses from a threatening object to a substitute available object.

  8. Sublimation: Altering or displacing ID impulses by diverting instinctual energy in socially acceptable behaviors.

Psychosexual Stages:

Personality develops in stages, gratification of id instincts depends on the simulation of corresponding areas of the body.

Each stage consists of an erogenous zone and conflict must be resolved to move onto the next stage.

Fixation: Portion of libido remains invested in one of the stages, caused due to excessive frustration or gratification.

Stages

Age

Characteristics

Oral

Birth - 1

Mouth is the primary erogenous zone.

Pleasure is derived from sucking, ID is dominant.

Anal

1 - 3

Toilet training interferes with gratification received from defecation.

Phallic

4 - 5

Incestuous fantasies, oedipus complex, anxiety, superego development.

Latency

5 - Puberty

Period of sublimation of sex instinct.

Genital

Adolescence - Puberty

Development of sex role identity and adult social relationship.

Oedipus complex:

  • Unconscious desire in boys for the mother, to replace the father.

  • Castration anxiety.

  • Complex is resolved by identifying with the father.

Electra complex:

  • Unconscious desire in girls for the father, to replace the mother.

  • Penis envy: Envy of the male because of penis possession and a sense of loss.

Human Nature/Research:

  • View was deterministic:

    • Goal: To reduce tension.

    • Personality is determined by early childhood interactions.

    • Contended that psychoanalysis can create free will.

  • Assessments:

    • Free Association:

      • Saying whatever comes to mind.

      • Catharsis: Expression of emotion expected to reduce symptoms.

      • Problems: Resistances; block or refusal of painful memories.

    • Dream Analysis:

      • Dreams show repressed desires, fears and conflicts.

      • Manifest content: Actual dream events.

      • Latent content: Hidden symbolic content.

Research:

  • Freud used the case study method.

  • Scientific research is done with subliminal perception.

  • Subliminal perception: Perception below the threshold of conscious awareness.

  • Some concepts are difficult to measure.

  • Research supports the concepts of:

    • Influence of the unconscious.

    • Displacement, repression, denial, and projection.

    • Dreams as a reflection of emotional concerns.

    • Freudian slip.

  • Anna Freud: Expanded the role of ego, held that operates independent of the ID.

Reflection:

Psychoanalysis had an impact on:

  • Psychological theories and practices

  • The image of human nature

  • Understanding personality

  • The emerging study of motivation

Criticisms:

  • Emphasis on biology, determinism, and sex.

  • Lack of healthy and positive human qualities.

  • Ambiguous definitions of concepts.