4: Psychodynamic Motives Flashcards
Define motivation.
Forces and factors, usually viewed as residing in the person, that energize and direct behaviour.
There are three different psychological perspectives to motivation. What are they?
Psychodynamic: sexuality, aggression, pleasure-seeking motivate most human behaviour.
Humanistic: all people strive towards self-determination and self-actualization.
Diversity view: humans can be motivated by a wide variety of things.
Consciousness is defined by the conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious. Define each.
Conscious: within current awareness.
Pre-Conscious: not currently aware, but could readily enter awareness if you decided to retrieve this material (i.e., memory).
Unconscious: information within the mind that cannot be readily retrieved.
The unconscious is considered a repository for what?
Urges and feelings associated with conflict, pain, fear, sex. Things we cannot admit about ourselves, sealed off from awareness as self-protective measure.
What is repression? What is a caveat to it as a coping mechanism?
Certain feelings, desires, memories are sealed away in the unconscious because they threaten the person’s well-being.
They are still there, can bubble up in unexpected ways.
Freud’s model of personality is derived from three components. Explain.
Superego: sense of morality. Internalized cultural values about “right” and “wrong.”
Ego: conscious aspect, tries to balance demands between superego and id.
Id: unconscious energy, instinctual sexual and aggressive urges.
The id includes the concept of the pleasure principle. Define it.
Seeking immediate gratification without concern for possible consequences of inappropriate thoughts and actions.
When the pleasure principle is not possible, what is used instead? Provide an example.
Primary process thinking (fantasizing about wishes).
Id forms mental image of a desired object to substitute for an urge to reduce tension and anxiety.
The source of unconscious energy is the id’s _____, which constantly push people to meet them.
Desires.
What is catharsis pertaining to the id?
Reduction of tension by engaging in processes that provide relief from relentless needs of the id.
The superego operates under what principle?
Perfection principle: notion that we must act perfectly by meeting societal demands, often taking the form of internalized parental values.
What is the reality principle?
Ego must balance unrealistic urges of the Id and Superego with the reality of the situation.
The ego uses what type of thinking?
Secondary process thinking: involves planful thoughts and decisions that consider environmental contingencies/challenges.
According to Freud, what are the three drives?
Libido: psychic and emotional energy associated with sexual urges.
Life Instincts: instincts surrounding sexuality and survival.
Death Instincts: instincts assumed to motivate one’s behaviour to promote own death or aggression towards others.
Defense mechanisms are a maladaptive response that occur when? What is the practical reason for them?
No realistic way to satisfy both the Id and the Superego’s demands.
Distort reality, operate unconsciously to lessen anxiety.
What are the three anxieties that defense mechanisms seek to reduce?
Realistic Anxiety: actual threats in outside world.
Neurotic Anxiety: fear of uncontrollable urges of the Id breaking free.
Moral Anxiety: guilt/shame over failing to live up to perfect ideal.
Defense mechanisms can include motivated forgetting. What are the two mechanisms involved in this?
Repression: dangerous impulse actively and totally excluded from consciousness.
Denial: refusing to acknowledge anxiety-inducing aspects of environment or threatening feelings that are happening right now.
What is considered the primary defense mechanism?
Repression.
Defense mechanisms can include changing the target. What are the two mechanisms involved in this?
Projection: unacceptable impulse repressed, then attributed to other people.
Displacement: unacceptable or dangerous impulse repressed, then redirected at safer substitute target.
Defense mechanisms can include thinking your way out of things. What are the two mechanisms involved in this?
Intellectualization: emotion connected with an upsetting event repressed, situation dealt with as intellectually interesting event.
Rationalization: person constructs false, but plausible explanation or excuse for an anxiety-arousing behavior or event that has occurred.
Defense mechanisms can involve reverting to an earlier stage. What is the mechanism involved in this?
Regression: retreating to earlier. more primitive stage or mode of behavior in order to avoid pain, threat, anxiety.
Defense mechanisms can involve doing something different to avoid anxiety-inducing behaviours and events. What are the two mechanisms involved in this?
Reaction Formation: anxiety-arousing impulse repressed, psychic energy finds release in an exaggerated expression of opposite behaviour.
Sublimation: repressed impulse released in the form of a socially acceptable or even admired behavior.
What is considered to be the only “healthy” defense mechanism?
Sublimation.
Karen Horney’s ideas that were feminist, her emphasis on the influence of culture, and her de-emphasis of infantile sexuality earned the ire of whom?
Orthodox Freudians.
