myers unit 10 psych

Ego: the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain. (reality principle)

Id: a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification (there are filters)

Superego: the voice of our moral compass that forces the ego to consider not only the real but the ideal. The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations 

Rationalization: psychoanalytic defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

displacement: psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. 

Sublimation: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities. (Vinci and mommy issues) 

Denial: a psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even perceive painful realities.

terror management theory: a theory of death related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impeding death. 

Personality: an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting 

Free association:  a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing 

Rorschach Inkblot test: the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach, seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots. 

psychoanalysis: Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeming to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. 

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

projective test: personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

collective unconscious: Carl Jung’s concept of shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’s history. 

projection: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Salvadorian thief.

reaction formation: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. (Laughing when nervous) 

regression: psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. 

repression: in psychoanalytic theory the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness. 

defense mechanisms: in psychoanalytical theory the egos protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. 

Fixation:  lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual state, in which conflicts were unresolved. 

identification: the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents values into their developing superegos. 

Oedipus complex:  according to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

Psychosexual stages: the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital$ during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones 

Unconscious:  a reservoir of mostly  unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware