Chapter 15 First Half Why Am I Doing This

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Question 2

Sigmund Freud

Answer 2

A psychologist who believed heavily in the work of the unconscious and the drives of sexual desire and aggression; criticized for theories inability to predict behavior

Question 3

Free association

Answer 3

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Question 4

Psychoanalysis

Answer 4

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Question 5

Unconscious

Answer 5

According to Freud, a reservoir of most, unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories; according to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware

Question 6

ID

Answer 6

The part of personality that contains a reservoir of unconscious energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive desires; operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

Question 7

Ego

Answer 7

The largely conscious executive part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality; operates on reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

Question 8

Superego

Answer 8

The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations

Question 9

Psychosexual stage

Answer 9

The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct sexually stimulating zones

Question 10

Oedipus complex

Answer 10

According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

Question 11

Identification

Answer 11

The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos

Question 12

Fixate

Answer 12

A lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

Question 13

Defense mechanisms

Answer 13

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Question 14

Repression

Answer 14

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Question 15

Regression

Answer 15

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated

Question 16

Reaction formation

Answer 16

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites; people express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

Question 17

Projection

Answer 17

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Question 18

Rationalization

Answer 18

Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reason for one’s actions

Question 19

Displacement

Answer 19

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet

Question 20

Alfred Adler

Answer 20

Psychologist who proposed the idea of inferiority complex; believed much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority rather than overcoming the source

Question 21

Karen horney

Answer 21

Psychologist that countered Freud’s idea that women have weak superegos and suffer penis envy; attempted to balance the traditional masculine view of psychology; believed in importance childhood

Question 22

Carl jung

Answer 22

Psychologist that proposed we have a collective unconscious; explains that we share instincts, urges, and memories common to all people

Question 23

Collective unconscious

Answer 23

Carl Jung’s concept of the part of the mind that contains inherited instincts, urges, and memories common to all people

Question 24

Projective text

Answer 24

A personality test that provides vague stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics; open-ended questions only

Question 25

Thematic apperception test

Answer 25

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interest the through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

Question 26

Rorschach ink blot test

Answer 26

The most widely used projective test, a set of ten inkblots; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots