THE PSYCHOANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVE

PERSONALITY

SIGMUND FREUD:EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• First modern psychologist to suggest that every personality has a large unconscious (unaware) component.

• believed “slips of the tongue”, things people mishear, dreams and misunderstandings, are not mistakes.– They are your unconscious

mind speaking.

SIGMUND FREUD: EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Experiences and painful memories are not forgotten but stored in the unconscious.– These experiences influence our behavior and feelings even

when not consciously remembered.– Unconscious motives and childhood experiences have an

enormous impact on behavior and personality in later life.• PRECONSCIOUS: the thoughts that can be recalled with little effort

– may include memories of recent events, recollections of friends, and simple facts.

• Concluded that some of the most powerful influences on human personalities and behaviors are things of the unconscious.

THE ID, EGO AND SUPEREGO:•Introduced by Freud – as the structural concepts of personality – as a model of how the mind works

•IMPORTANT: The id, ego, and superego are not actual parts of the brain; instead they explain how the mind

functions.

ID:• the part of the unconscious personality that contains our

needs, drives, instincts, and repressed material– strives to satisfy sexual and aggressive drives– the reservoir of the instinctual and biological urges– from birth all of our energy is invested in the id, responding

to unconscious inborn urges for food and water

•PLEASURE PRINCIPLE: seeking immediate gratification

ID:EXAMPLE

• The sesame street’s cookie monster always asks for cookies. “Me want cookie” is all the workings of the id. He operates in terms of the pleasure principle.

EGO:• the mostly conscious part of the personality that is realistic

and strives to meet the demands of the id and the superego in socially acceptable ways– operates in terms of the reality principle– gradually forms during the second and third years of life

• REALITY PRINCIPLE: satisfying the id’s desires that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

EGO:EXAMPLE

A person is hungry. The id drives the person to seek immediate satisfaction by eating all food available at once, instead of keeping some of it for later. On the other hand, the ego recognizes that the body needs nutritious food and it will allow the body to eat moderately and save some for future needs.

SUPEREGO:• the part of the personality that is the source of the

conscience and counteracts the socially undesirable impulses of the id– the voice of conscience that makes the ego think about both

the idea and reality– focuses only on how one should behave– strives for perfection, judging actions– produces positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt• strong superego: righteous, but often guilty• weak superego: remorseless and self-indulgent

SUPEREGO:EXAMPLE

Think of the superego as the “little angel”, over the shoulder (protagonist). The antagonist of this would be the id, which is the impulsive “devil.” (often portrayed in cartoons)

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT:• Sigmund Freud believed that personality forms in stages

during the first few years of life.• Stages are called the psychosexual stages.• Psychosexual stages: the childhood stages of development

where the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct areas of the body called erogenous zones.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT CONTINUED:

• Unresolved conflicts are caused by fixation.– Fixation: the lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies

at a psychosexual stage where conflicts remain unresolved• Freud believed that any unresolved conflicts in any of these

stages may cause problems later in life. • Example:

– An unresolved conflict in the anal stage may result in the need for control, wanting everything to be perfect, which is called anal-retentive.

PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGESSTAGE

• ORAL– 0 -1 8

months

• ANAL– 1 8 - 3 6

months

• PHALLIC– 3- - 6 years

FOCUS• pleasure centers on the mouth– biting, sucking,

chewing– weaning is a conflict

• bowel/ bladder elimination; coping with demands – Potty training is a conflict

• genitals; coping with incestuous feelings– Oedipus complex: boy’s sexual feelings towards

mother and hatred/ jealousy towards father– Electra Complex: girl’s sexual feelings towards

father and hatred/jealousy towards mother

PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES CONTINUED:

STAGE• LATENCY

– 6 yrs-puberty

• GENITAL– Puberty on

FOCUS• Repressed sexual feelings

and the feelings of anger towards rival parent– Gender Identity forms

through identification process

• Sexual interests mature

DEFENSE MECHANISMS• Freud says they are what the ego uses to protect itself with • reduce or redirect anxiety in different ways and distort reality• function indirectly and unconsciously• wouldn’t work if we recognized them• repression• regression• reaction formation• rationalization• displacement• sublimation

REPRESSION• banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, memories and feelings

from consciousness• Freud believes that it underlies all other defensives and

explains why we do not remember lust for parent during childhood.

• incomplete because the thoughts come out in dreams and slips of the tongue– Denial: a person with anxiety refuses to admit something is

unpleasant

REGRESSION• Going back to an earlier, more comfortable stage of

development where some of our “psychic energies” are still fixated

– Example: • A person who is anxious or nervous may go back to

sucking their thumb, or clinging to their mother/friend, because that was a comfortable stage of development.

REACTION FORMATION• The ego, unconsciously makes an unacceptable impulse

look like its opposite.

– Example: • Somebody who is timid or afraid of something might

act daring and brave.

RATIONALI ZATION• Allows us to make a self-justifying explanation in order to

not admit the real reason for our actions

– Example:• An alcoholic will say that they only drink for social

events instead of admitting that they have a disease.

DISPLACEMENT

• Diverting one’s impulses onto somebody or something else

– Example:• If you are angry at a friend and you take it out on your

family or another friend.

SUBLIMATION• Transferring an unacceptable impulse into a socially

valued motivation

– Example: • If you are angry, instead of getting into a fight, you

write a song.

TESTS:ASSESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Projective• Thematic apperception (TAT)• Rorschach inkblot

PROJECTIVE TESTS:ASSESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Developed by Henry Murray– A test that provides a certain stimuli, such as a picture,

that are supposed to trigger and project a person’s inner dynamics

– Results can change based on recent stimuli

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST:ASSESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Also called the TAT• Developed by Henry Murray• a test in which people express their inner feelings and

interests by telling stories that they make up about pictures they see

• Murray says that the test leaves an x-ray of someone’s inner self

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST:EXAMPLE

– A picture of a daydreaming boy- if you say that it is a picture of a boy thinking about succeeding in the future, you might actually be talking about your own goals

RORSCHACH INK B LOT TEST:ASSESSING THE UNCONSCIOUS

• Developed by Hermann Rorschach (Swiss psychiatrist)• test-taker is shown 10 inkblots and asked to describe what they see

in the picture and what ever they say shows their inner feelings• critics say that this test does not have the criteria of a good test• there is no set system for scoring and it is not good at predicting

behavior or being able to tell the difference between groups• some clinicians still believe in the test’s validity while others simply

use it as an icebreaker or aninterview technique

FREUD’S EARLY DESCENDANTS AND DISSENTERS:

• Neo-Freudians: psychoanalysts who share Freud’s basic ideas

• They differed from Freud in two very important ways:– put more emphasis on the conscious mind in interpreting

experiences and coping with the environment– disagreed that sex and aggression were “all-consuming

motivations”• Famous Neo-Freudians

– Alfred Adler– Karen Horney– Carl Jung

ALFRED ADLER:NEO-FREUDIAN

• thought that childhood social tensions (not sexual tensions) were crucial for personality formation

• believed that a lot of our behavior is made by our efforts to overcome our feelings of inferiority that we experienced during childhood

K AREN HORNEY:NEO-FREUDIAN

• Strongly disagreed with Freud’s belief that women have weaker superegos than men and suffered what he called “penis envy”

• believed that childhood social tensions (not sexual tensions) were important for personality formation

CARL JUNG:NEO-FREUDIAN

• paid less attention to social factors • agreed with Freud’s idea that the unconscious

has a powerful influence on personality formation

• we have a collective unconscious which he described as a “common reservoir” of images that came from the universal events that is shared by our species

• the unconscious contains more than repressed thoughts and feelings

FREUD’S IDEAS IN MODERN RESEARCH

• Today’s developmental psychologist perceive human development as lifelong, not fixed in childhood.– do not believe that infants’ neural networks are

mature enough to sustain as much emotional trauma as Freud proposed.

– Now, it is believed that gender identity is formed even without a same-sex parent present .

IS REPRESSION A MYTH ?

• Freud’s psychoanalytical theory rests on his assumption that the human mind often represses painful experiences, expulsing them into the unconscious, and if somehow brought back to memory, they would be exactly as we left them.

CRITICISMIS REPRESSION A MYTH?

• Shouldn’t we expect a child who has witnessed a parent’s murder to repress the traumatic experiences ?

• Shouldn’t survivors of the Nazi death camps have expulsed such atrocities consciousness ?

INTERESTING FINDINGS:IS REPRESSION A MYTH?

• Traumatic events, such as torture and rape, haunt survivors, who experience undesired remembrances and flashbacks.

MODERN RESEARCH: THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

• Modern researchers view the unconscious mind as a place where information processing occurs without our awareness. – The unconscious involves :• The component that inevitably controls our

understandings and interpretations• Priming stimuli which we have not consciously attended• Parallel processing of different aspects of vision and

thinking• One foundation of our defense from anxiety

– Terror-management theory: thinking about one’s mortality provokes enough anxiety to intensify prejudices

SUPPORTING EVIDENCETHE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

• Roy B aumeister and colleagues– If confronted with their sexism, racism, or incompetence, people

usually react with actions and views that seek to prove the opposite. • For example, a white research participant accused of racism

will most likely give more money to a black panhandler than their non-accused counterparts.

– This coincides with Freud’s reaction formation, which states that we behave in manners contradictory to our true feelings.

• False consensus effect: phenomenon where people tend to see their foibles and attitudes in others.– EX: People who lie, cheat and steal are more likely to believe that

others do as well.

MODERN RESEARCH:

• Today , most dynamic theorists and therapists believe that sex is not the main basis of personality. They do however agree with the idea that a lot of our mental life is in our unconscious and that our childhood helps shape our personalities.

FREUD’S IDEAS AS SCIENTIFIC THEORY

• Freud’s Ideas as Scientific Theory offers after- the- fact explanations of any characteristics , failing to predict such behavior and traits.

• Freud’s theory does not offer testable predictions.