Psychoanalytical TheoriesPersonality Theories

Prepared By Manu Melwin JoyResearch Scholar

School of Management StudiesCUSAT, Kerala, India.Phone – 9744551114

Mail – manu_melwinjoy@yahoo.com

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SAMSAMANTHA

Thoughts Feelings

Displaced Anger

Unconscious

• Psychoanalytic theories explain human behaviour in terms of the interaction of

various components of personality.

• Sigmund Freud was the founder of this school.

• Freud drew on the physics of his day (thermodynamics) to coin the term psycho-

dynamics.

• Based on the idea of converting heat into mechanical energy, he proposed

psychic energy could be converted into behaviour.

• Freud's theory places central importance on dynamic, unconscious psychological

conflicts.

Psychoanalytical Theories

Structural model of personality

The founder of psychoanalytic theory was Sigmund Freud. The

term psychoanalysis is used to refer to many aspects of Freud’s work

and research, including Freudian therapy and the research

methodology he used to develop his theories. Freud relied heavily

upon his observations and case studies of his patients when he

formed his theory of personality development.

Structural model of personality

According to Freud the mind can be divided

into two main parts:

• The conscious mind includes everything

that we are aware of. This is the aspect of our

mental processing that we can think and talk

about rationally.

• The unconscious mind is a reservoir of

feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that

outside of our conscious awareness. Most of

the contents of the unconscious are

unacceptable or unpleasant, such as feelings

of pain, anxiety, or conflict.

Stages of Psychosexual DevelopmentAccording to Sigmund Freud, personality is mostly established by

the age of five. Early experiences play a large role in personality development and continue to influence behavior later in life. Freud's theory of psychosexual development is one of the best known, but also one of the most controversial. Freud believed that personality develops through a series of childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behavior.

Sigmund Freud defined libido as the instinct energy or force, contained in what Freud called the id, the largely unconscious structure of the psyche. Building on the work of Karl Abraham, Freud developed the idea of a series of developmental phases in which the libido fixates on different erogenous zones

Structural model of personality

Defence Mechanisms

The term got its start in psychoanalytic therapy, but it has slowly worked its way into everyday language. In Sigmund Freud's topographical model of personality, the ego is the aspect of personality that deals with reality. While doing this, the ego also has to cope with the conflicting demands of the id and the superego. The id seeks to fulfil all wants, needs and impulses while the superego tries to get the ego to act in an idealistic and moral manner. What happens when the ego cannot deal with the demands of our desires, the constraints of reality and our own moral standards?

Defence Mechanisms

According to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that people seek to avoid.

Anxiety acts as a signal to the ego that things are not going right. Frued identified

three types of anxiety:

• Neurotic anxiety is the unconscious worry that we will lose control of the

id's urges, resulting in punishment for inappropriate behavior.

• Reality anxiety is fear of real-world events. The cause of this anxiety is

usually easily identified. For example, a person might fear receiving a dog bite

when they are near a menacing dog. The most common way of reducing this

anxiety is to avoid the threatening object.

• Moral anxiety involves a fear of violating our own moral principles.

In order to deal with this anxiety, Freud believed that defense mechanisms helped

shield the ego from the conflicts created by the id, superego and reality.

Defence Mechanisms

• Denial - Denial is an outright refusal to admit or recognize that something

has occurred or is currently occurring. Drug addicts or alcoholics often deny

that they have a problem, while victims of traumatic events may deny that

the event ever occurred.

• Repression - Repression acts to keep information out of conscious

awareness. However, these memories don't just disappear; they continue to

influence our behavior. For example, a person who has repressed memories

of abuse suffered as a child may later have difficulty forming relationships.

• Suppression - Sometimes we do this consciously by forcing the unwanted

information out of our awareness, which is known as suppression. In most

cases, however, this removal of anxiety-provoking memories from our

awareness is believed to occur unconsciously.

Defence Mechanisms

• Displacement - Displacement involves taking out our frustrations, feelings

and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening. Displaced

aggression is a common example of this defense mechanism.

• Sublimation - Sublimation is a defence mechanism that allows us to act

out unacceptable impulses by converting these behaviours into a more

acceptable form. For example, a person experiencing extreme anger might

take up kick-boxing as a means of venting frustration.

• Projection - Projection is a defense mechanism that involves taking our

own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people.

For example, if you have a strong dislike for someone, you might instead

believe that he or she does not like you

Defence Mechanisms• Intellectualization - Intellectualization works to reduce anxiety by thinking

about events in a cold, clinical way. For example, a person who has just been

diagnosed with a terminal illness might focus on learning everything about the

disease in order to avoid distress and remain distant from the reality of the

situation.

• Rationalization - Rationalization is a defense mechanism that involves

explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner,

avoiding the true reasons for the behavior. For example a student might blame

a poor exam score on the instructor rather than his or her lack of preparation.

• Regression - When confronted by stressful events, people sometimes

abandon coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in

development. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental

stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news.

Criticisms

• The theory is focused almost entirely on male development with little

mention of female psychosexual development.

• His theories are difficult to test scientifically. Concepts such as the

libido are impossible to measure, and therefore cannot be tested.

• Future predictions are too vague. How can we know that a current

behavior was caused specifically by a childhood experience? The length of

time between the cause and the effect is too long to assume that there is

a relationship between the two variables.

• Freud's theory is based upon case studies and not empirical

research. Also, Freud based his theory on the recollections of his adult

patients, not on actual observation and study of children.

Other TA topics available on slideshare1. Strokes - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/strokes-24081607.

2. Games People Play - http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/psychological-games-people-play.

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http://www.slideshare.net/manumjoy/cycles-of-developement-pamela-levin-transactional-analysis.

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