PersonalityUnit X

PsychoanalysisFreud & Co.

Exploring the Unconscious: Techniques

•Freud believed unexplained physical problems stemmed from unconscious fears/desires that were socially inappropriate

•He used free association – patient says whatever word comes to mind in response to a stimulus word

Try it: Free Association (from Carl Jung, student of Freud)

• 1. head

• 2. green

• 3. water

• 4. to sing

• 5. dead

• 6. long

• 7. ship

• 8. to play

• 9. window

• 10. friendly

• 11. to cook

• 12. to ask

•Do any of these words seem to reveal hidden feelings you might have about something or someone in your life? Why or why not?

•Would you want anyone to read meaning into this list of freely associated words? Why or why not?

Freudian Slips (parapraxis)

•Freud believed nothing said or done accidentally was truly accidental – everything revealed the unconscious mind at work

•Ex: “MARRIAGE = ONE MAN & ONE MAN” – TX Republican Dan Patrick on Twitter

Projective Tests

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) shows people ambiguous pictures and asks them to make up a story

•Rorschach inkblot test asks people to describe what they see in inkblots

•Only valid for revealing hostility and anxiety, if that

Freud’s Personality Structures

• Id : unconscious, preoccupied with reducing basic drives like reproduction and aggression, self-centered

• Infants and people focused on enjoying the present are good examples

•Devil on shoulder

Freud’s Personality Structures

• Superego: Moral conscience that focuses on how we should behave, perfectionist

•Develops around age 4-5

•Angel on shoulder

Freud’s Personality Structures

•Ego: Uses reality principle to satisfy id in ways that maximize long-term pleasure while also seeking to satisfy superego, partly conscious

•Person between devil and angel making the decision about what to do

•What would a person look like who had a strong superego?

•What about a person with a weak superego?

Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development

•Freud believed adult personality forms in childhood

• Id focuses on taking pleasure in different areas of the body in stages

•Unresolved conflict could cause a person to fixate, or get stuck in a stage

Stage 1: Oral

• 0 – 18 months, pleasure centers on mouth (biting, sucking, chewing)

•Oral fixation could result from being abruptly weaned

• Person with fixation might exhibit passive dependence (like infant), deny that dependence by acting tough, or have an oral habit such as overeating or smoking

Stage 2: Anal

• 18-36 months, pleasure focuses on bowel/bladder elimination, desire for control

• 2 possibilities for fixation:

•Anal-retentive: overly neat and passive-aggressive

•Anal-expulsive: overly messy and defiant

Stage 3: Phallic

•3-6 years, pleasure focuses on genitals, struggle to deal with incestuous sexual feelings

•Boys develop unconscious sexual feelings for their mothers and become jealous/fear/hate their fathers : Oedipus complex

Phallic Stage Cont.•Boys know that girls have no penises and develop castration anxiety, which causes them to repress their desire for their mothers

•Girls know that they have no penises and develop penis envy, blaming their mothers for castrating them and becoming in love with/jealous of their fathers

• Fixation: Person may become reckless, narcissistic, and/or incapable of close relationships

Stage 4 : Latency

•6-puberty

•Children go through identification process, when they try to become like their same-sex parent

•Sexual feelings are dormant

Stage 5: Genital

•Puberty and older

•Mature sexual interests expressed in heterosexual relationships

Defense Mechanisms

•Ways to protect the ego from anxiety about losing control over id/superego

•All involve unconsciously distorting reality

Defense Mechanism Mnemonic

• Rapid Racers Run Past Really Stinky Dangerous Dogs

• Repression, Regression, Reaction Formation, Projection, Rationalization, Displacement, Denial

Repression

•Underlies all other defense mechanisms

•Removes anxiety-causing thoughts from consciousness

•Urges slip out in dreams and Freudian slips

Regression

•Returning to a more infantile stage of development for comfort

•Ex: Calling mom when something bad happens

Reaction Formation

•Ego turns inappropriate urges into their opposites

•Ex: Boys who have a crush on girls and pull their hair instead of talking to them

Projection

• Sees threatening urges in others instead of one’s self

• Ex: Aggressive person perceives everyone else as insulting them

Rationalization

•Attempt to justify actions with socially acceptable reasons

• Ex: Buying a convertible “to teach my kids to drive stick shift”

Displacement

•Moves inappropriate impulses towards a more acceptable object

• Ex: Someone who is mad at their parents but takes it out on their sibling

Sublimation

•Turning unacceptable impulses into a socially valuable product

•Ex: Dentist in Little Shop of Horrors who tortured animals as a child

Denial

•Person rejects facts or how serious those facts are

•Ex: Someone ignores a growing mole (sign of skin cancer), dismissing it as “nothing”

Neo-Freudians•Generally de-emphasized sex and aggression, believed in conscious interpretation of events, conflicts can be solved

•Alfred Adler – described inferiority complex, birth order theory of personality

•Karen Horney – wrote Feminine Psychology, a much kinder take on women’s psychological development

Carl Jung

•Personal unconscious (similar to Freud)

•Collective unconscious – collection of inherited experiences; archetypes shared will all humans, explains cultural similarities

•Archetypes include: the Hero, the Shadow, the Quest, the Good Mother, the Soul-Mate

The Humanistic PerspectiveThe Third Force

The Third Force in Psychology

•Humanistic psychology focuses on healthy people (unlike Freud) and used self-reported feelings/experiences (unlike behaviorists)

Abraham Maslow

• Studied creative, successful people

•Healthy people are self-actualized: accept themselves and others, have a mission in life

Carl Rogers • People are naturally good

• In order to grow in a healthy way, we need others to be

• 1. genuine – honest and unpretentious

• 2. accepting – unconditional positive regard – love others despite knowing the worst about them

• 3. empathetic – share and reflect our feelings; really listen

Humanists and the Self

•Write down a few thoughts about who you are

•Now write down a few thoughts about who you would ideally like to be

• If these things are similar, you probably have a positive self-concept

• This is the goal of humanists

Criticism of Humanistic Perspective

• It’s unrealistic – people are not all good

• It’s subjective – Maslow and Rogers choose traits that they liked as the most important

• It promotes selfish individualism as everyone seeks their own self-fulfillment

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Reciprocal Determinism

• Focus is on how people interact with their environment in their thoughts and actions

•Albert Bandura – We learn behaviors by watching, but we also think about situations to decide how to act

•ABC – Affect (thoughts/emotions) influences Behavior which causes Consequences

Locus of Control

• External – people perceive their destiny to be controlled by outside forces (luck, stars, bad parenting, poverty)

• Internal – people perceive that they have control over their own destiny (mostly through hard work)

• Those with internal locus of control are healthier, more independent, and deal better with stress

Self-Control

• Self-control, like muscle, is weakest after use but recovers with time

• Practice and discipline in one area can improve overall self-control

• Self-control positively correlates with grades and social achievement

Personal Control

•Giving people choices and control over their activities and environment improves morale, health and motivation (“engagement”)

•Having too many options can cause depression or anxiety – information overload, greater fear of regret

Optimism•Optimists tend to be healthier and happier

than pessimists

• Too much optimism is unrealistic and can cause overconfidence

•Most people fail to recognize their own incompetence – they don’t know what they don’t know

•Other people can probably be more accurate in describing your performance than you can

• Social-cognitive psychologists assess people’s behavior by putting them in actual or mock situations (ie, student teaching, simulation of fire for firefighters)

• This is the best way to predict someone’s future job performance: looking at their past/current prefomance

Criticism of Social-Cognitive Perspective

• They ignore the importance of personality traits by focusing so much on situations

Individualism Vs. Collectivism

• See pages 516-518, especially chart on page 518