Important Terms

• Psychodynamic is a term that describes how personality is a set of processes/forces that are always in motion. These processes/forces sometimes work against each other. The dominant role of unconscious processes and desires, in human experience and behavior, are hidden from one’s awareness.

• Psychoanalysis stresses the importance of human sexuality, lust, aggression, and death (influenced by Darwinian evolution.) The emergence of psychoanalysis can be traced to the end of the 19th century when globalization, women fighting for increased rights, higher education available to more people, psychologists traveling freely across borders, old customs and fashions were changing, authoritarian ways changing, newer views of nature were rising, and social scientists portraying life as complex and multidimensional were starting to take place.

Important Observations and Questioning Where Behavior Comes From

• Defense against the unpleasant anxiety caused by the conflict between these and societal norms. It is required for normal functioning

• Where does behavior come from? We assume that behavior comes from a direct link between our actions and our intentions. Accidents disrupt this assumption…but we figure them to be random.

• Sigmund Freud is another influential person involved in psychology and is the founder of psychoanalysis and was also a structuralist. He was also a medical doctor who was fascinated with myths, symbols, metaphors, etc.

• Structuralism, in a broad description, is a philosophical perspective and discusses how there is a hidden structure within us.

Sections of the Mind

• The term conscious describes the part of the psyche that holds what you are experiencing right now.

• The term preconscious describes what can be called early into conscious awareness easily, also known as our memories.

• The term unconscious describes how something is not accessible to our awareness in our psyche. Even though we do not always have access to it, it still influences our behaviors and experiences.

• (An important source used is down below.)

https://enorcerna.com/wiki/psychology/the-5-differences-between-conscious-unconscious-and-subconscious/#:~:text=Conscious%20and%20unconscious%20are%20recognized%20by%20Psychology%3B%20subconscious%2C,day%2C%20part%20of%20Sigmund%20Freud%27s%20theory%20of%20psychoanalysis.

The Importance of Psychoanalysis

• Two features of psychoanalysis are that it is very symbolic, and that therapy is part and parcel to the theory. It is very symbolic in that human behavior comes to be seen as mostly symbolic of the unconscious drives/impulses and it is the language we use to talk about the unconscious. The way therapy contributes to psychoanalysis is that the id contains inborn biological drives (sex, aggression, fear, etc.), the original component of personality (with you at birth), all psychic energy comes from it…it is the engine of who you are, the id seeks immediate gratification of its impulses (also known as the “pleasure principle”). The pleasure principle is the demand that an instinctual need be immediately gratified, and unsatisfied needs create tension.