Chapter 14 - Personality Flashcards
What do psychodynamic theories focus on?
They focus on the psychological drives and forces within individuals that explain human behaviour and personality.
What is Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis?
Freud believed people could be cured by turning their unconscious thoughts into conscious thoughts to help them gain insight.
What does the iceberg picture represent, and what does it consist of?
The iceberg represents Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure. The iceberg consists of the ego, which is located at the top, then the superego, which is half submerged in water, and then the ID, which is fully submerged.
How does the ID operate, and what does it satisfy?
The ID operates on the pleasure principle; unconsciously strives to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and agress.
How does the ego operate, and what does it contain?
Operates on the reality principle; seeks to realistically gratify the ID’s impulses to bring long-term pleasure, and it contains perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories
What does the superego focus on, and what does it act as?
The superego focuses on ideal behaviour and strives for perfection. It acts as a moral conscious.
What are Freud’s 5 psychosexual stages?
Oral stage - birth to 1 year, the pleasure centers on the mouth.
Anal stage - 1 to 3 years: pleasures focus on the bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control.
Phallic stage - 3 to 6 years; pleasures zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings.
Latent stage - 6 to puberty; dormant sexual feelings
Genital stage - puberty to death; maturation of sexual interests.
What is repression? give an example.
Repression is the unconscious blocking of unpleasant emotions, impulses, memories, and thoughts from your conscious mind.
E.g., an adult suffers a severe spider bite as a child and develops a phobia for spiders later in life without any recollection of the experience as a child.
What is regression? Give an example.
Where a person returns to an early developmental stage for security.
E.g., an overwhelmed child clinging to its mother; sucking on a thumb; and bed-wetting.
What is reaction formation? Give an example.
Replacing an unwanted or anxiety-provoking impulse with its opposite.
E.g., a young boy bullies a girl because, subconsciously, he is attracted to her.
- Disliking a person, but overly acting nice to them.
What is projection? Give an example.
Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
E.g., the school bully who teases other children because his family teases him.
What is rationalization? Give an example.
Using self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reason for one’s actions.
E.g., a person who was turned down on a date might rationalize the situation by saying that they thought that person was not attractive anyway.
What is displacement? Give an example.
Transferring negative feelings from one thing to the other.
E.g., A man who is angry at his boss might put out his anger on his family.
What is denial? Give an example?
Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.
E.g., a partner denies evidence of his loved one’s affair.
- My auntie Karen shitting her pants on New Years, “it never happened,” “this isn’t real.”
According to Freud’s ideas about the three-part personality structure, the ____ operates on the reality principle and tries to balance demands in a way that produces long-term pleasure rather than pain; the ____ operates as the pleasure principle and seeks immediate gratification, and the ____ represents the voice of our internalized ideas (our conscious)
Ego, ID, and superego.
