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Theories of Personality Freud:…
Theories of Personality Freud: Psychoanalysis
Outline,1
Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
Biography of Freud
Levels of Mental Life
Provinces of Mind
Dynamics of Personality
Defense Mechanisms
Outline, 2
Related Research
Critique of Freud
Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
Concept of Humanity
Stages of Development
Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis has endured because it
attracted a group of followers who were dedicated to spreading psychoanalytic doctrine, and
postulated the primacy of sex and aggression two universally popular themes
advanced the notion of unconscious motives, which permit varying explanations for the same observations
Biography of Freud
Spend most of his life, 80 years, in Vienna, Austria
Was interested in medicine, science, and psychiatry
Born in Freiberg Moravia, which is now a part of the Czech Republic, in 1856
Learned the hypnotic technique for treating hysteria with Charcot and catharsis with Breuer
Published Studies on Hysteria with Breuer Abandoned seduction theory in 1987 and replaced it with the Oedipus complex
In 1900, he wrote Interpretation of Dreams
Was driven out of Austria by the Nazis in 1938
Died in London 1939
Levels of Mental Life
Preconscious
The preconscious contains images that are not in awareness but that can become conscious either quite easily or with some level of difficulty
Conscious
Consciousness plays a relatively minor role in Freudian theory
Conscious ideas stem from either the perception of external stimuli (our perceptual conscious system) or from the unconscious and preconscious after they have evaded censorship
Unconscious
The unconscious include drives and instincts that are beyond awareness but that motivate most human behaviors
Freud believed that unconscious drives can become conscious only in disguised or distorted form such as dream images, slips of the tongue, or neurotic symptoms
Unconscious processes originate from two sources:
Repression, or the blocking out of anxiety-filled experiences
Phylogenetic endowment, or inherited experiences that lie beyond an individual's personal experience
Provinces of the Mind
The Ego
The Ego, or secondary process, is governed by the reality principle and is responsible for reconciling the unrealistic demands of the id and the superego
The Superego
The superego, which serves the idealistic principle, has two subsystems- the conscience and the ego-ideal
The conscience results from punishment for improper behavior whereas the ego-ideal stems from rewards for socially acceptable behavior
The Id
The id, which is completely unconscious, serves the pleasure principle and contains our basic instincts
It operates through the primary process
Dynamics of Personality: Refer to those forces that motivate people
Instincts
Freud grouped all human drives or urges under two primary instincts- sex (Eros or the life instinct) and aggression (the death or destructive instinct)
The aim of the sexual instinct is pleasure, which can be gained through the erogenous zones, especially the mouth, anus, and genitals
The object of the sexual instinct is any person or thing that brings sexual pleasure. All infants possess primary narcissism, or self-centeredness, but the secondary narcissism of adolescence and adulthood is not universal.
Both sadism (receiving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on another) and masochism (receiving sexual pleasure from painful experiences) satisfy both sexual and aggressive drives. The destructive instinct aims to return a person to an inorganic state, but it is ordinarily directed against other people and is called aggression
Anxiety
Only the ego feels anxiety, but the id, superego, and outside world can each be a source of anxiety
Neurotic anxiety stems from the ego's relation with the id; moral anxiety is similar to guilt and results from the ego's relation with the superego; and realistic anxiety, which is similar to fear, is produced by the ego's relation with the real world
Defense Mechanisms: Operate to protect the ego against the pain of anxiety
Introjection
Take place when people incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego to reduce feelings of inferiority
Sublimation
Involve the elevation of the sexual instinct's aim to a higher level, which permits people to make contributions to society and culture
Projection
Seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviors that actually reside in one's own unconscious
When carried to extreme, projection can become paranoia, which is characterized by delusions of persecution
Regression
Occur whenever a person reverts to earlier, more infantile modes of behavior
Some adult may return to the oral stage as a means of reducing anxiety
Fixation
Develop when psychic energy is blocked at one stage of development, making psychological change difficult.
Some adults may remain fixated on the anal stage of psychosexual development
Displacement
Takes place when people redirect their unwanted urges onto other objects or people in order to disguise the original impulse
Reaction Formation
A reaction formation is marked by the repression of one impulse and the ostentatious expression of its exact opposite
Repression
It is the most basic of all defense mechanisms because it is an active process in each of the others
Involves forcing unwanted, anxiety-loaded experiences into the unconscious
Stages of Development - Freud saw psychosexual development as proceeding from birth to maturity through four overlapping stages
Latency Period
Freud believed that psychosexual development goes through a latency stage- from about age 5 years until puberty- in which the sexual instinct is partially suppressed
Genital Period
The genital period begins with puberty when adolescents experience a reawakening of the genital aim of Eros
The term "genital period" should not be confused with "phallic period"
Infantile Period- Encompasses the first 4 to 5 years of life
Anal phase
During the 2nd year of life, a child goes through an anal phase
If parents are too punitive during the anal phase, the child may adopt an anal triad, consisting of orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy
Phallic phase
During the phallic stage, boys and girls begin to have differing psychosexual development
At this time, boys and girls experience the Oedipus Complex in which they have sexual feelings for one parent and hostile feelings for the other
The male castration complex, which takes the form of castration anxiety, breaks up the male Oedipus complex and results in a well-formed male superego
For girls, however, the castration complex takes the form of penis envy, precedes the female Oedipus complex, leads to a gradual and incomplete shattering of the female Oedipus complex and results it a weaker and more flexible female superego
Oral phase
An infant is primarily motivated to receive pleasure through the mouth
Maturity
Freud hinted at a stage of psychological maturity in which the ego would be in control of the id and superego and in which consciousness would play a more important role in behavior
Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory- Freud erected his theory on the dreams, free associations, slips of the tongue, and neurotic symptoms of his patients during therapy. But he also gathered information from history, literature and works of art
Freud's Later Therapeutic Technique
Beginning in the late 1890s, Freud adopted a much more passive type of psychotherapy, one that relied heavily on free association, dream interpretation, and transference
The goal of Freud's later psychotherapy was to uncover repressed memories, and the therapist uses dream analysis and free association to do so
With free association patients are required to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant or distasteful
Successful therapy rests on the patient's transference of childhood sexual or aggressive feelings onto the therapist and away from symptom formation
Patients' resistance to change is seen as progress because it indicates that therapy has advanced beyond superficial conversation
Dream Analysis
In interpreting dreams, Freud differentiated the manifest content (conscious description) from the latent content (the unconscious meaning)
Nearly all dreams are wish-fulfillments, although the wish is usually unconscious and can be known only through dream interpretation
To interpret dreams Freud used both dream symbols and the dreamer's associations to the dream content
Freud's Early Therapeutic Technique
During the 1980s, Freud used an aggressive therapeutic technique in which he strongly suggested to patients that they had been sexually seduced as children
He later dropped this technique and abandoned his belief that most patients had been seduced during childhood
Freudian Slips
Freud believed that parapraxes- now called Freudian slips- are not chance accidents but reveal a person's true but unconscious intentions
Related Research- Although Freudian theory has generated much related research, it rates low on falsifiability because most research findings can be explained by other theories. In recent years, however, many researchers have investigated hypotheses inspired by psychoanalytic theory
Pleasure and the Id/Inhibition and the Ego
Some research (Solms, 2001; Solms & Turnbull, 2002) has established that the pleasure-seeking drives have their neurological origins in two brain structures, namely the brain stem and the limbic system
Repression, Inhibition, and Defense Mechanisms
Solms (2004) reported cases from the neuropsychological literature demonstrating repression of information when damage occurs to the right-hemisphere and if this damaged region becomes artificially stimulated the repression goes away; that is, awareness returns
Unconscious Mental Processing
In recent years, neuroscience has been investigating the brain during a variety of cognitive and emotional task, and much of this work relates to Freud's notion of unconscious motivation
For example, one pair of reviewers (Bargh & Chartrand, 1990) concluded that 95% of human behaviors are unconsciously determined, and that Freud's metaphor of the iceberg was probably accurate
In addition Mark Solms (2000, 2004; Solms & Turnbull, 2002) argued that many Freudian concepts are consistent with modern neuroscience research. These include unconscious motivation, repression, and the pleasure principle.
Research on Dreams
Research by Wegner and colleagues (Wegner, Wenzlaff, & Kozak, 2004) tested Freud's hypothesis that wishes repressed during the day will find their way into dreams during the night
Results showed that people dreamed more about their repressed targets than their non-repressed ones; that is, they were more likely to dream about people they spend sometime thinking about, a finding quite consistent with Freud's hypothesis
Related Research, 2
Defense Mechanisms
Neuropsychological underpinnings of repression
Research on Dreams
Activation-synthesis theory
Critique of Freud, 1
Freud regarded himself as a scientist, but many critics consider his methods to be outdated, unscientific, and permeated with gender bias