Chapter 2 Flashcards
Tabula rasa
The idea that the mind of an infant is a blank slate and that all knowledge, abilities, behaviors, motives are acquired through experience
Activity-passivity issue
active contribution to their own development or are passively shaped by forces beyond their control
Continuity-discontinuity issue
characterized as gradual and continuous or abrupt and stage like
Developmental stage
A distinct phase within a larger sequence of development; a period characterized by a particular set of abilities, motives, behaviors, or emotions that occur together and form a coherent pattern
University-context-specificity issue
The debate over the extent to which developmental changes are common to everyone or different from person to person
Psychoanalytic theory
The theoretical perspective associated with Freud and his followers that emphasizes unconscious motivations for behavior, conflicts within the personality, and stages of psychosexual development
Instinct
An inborn biological force assumed to motivate a particular response or class of responses
Unconscious motivation
Freud’s term for feelings, experiences, and conflicts that influence a person’s thinking and behavior even though they cannot be recalled
ID
A psychoanalytic term for the inborn component of the personality that is driven by the instincts of selfish urges
Ego
The rational component of the personality
School refusal behavior
A reluctance or refusal to go to school or to remain there, sometimes called school phobia because it often involves intense anxiety
Superego
Component of the personality that consists of the individual’s internalized moral standards
Libido
Freud’s term for the biologic energy of the sex instinct
Psychosexual stages
Freud’s five stages of development, associated with biological maturation and shifts in the libido: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
Fixation
In psychoanalytical theory, a defense mechanism in which development is arrested and part of the libido remains tied to an early stage of development
Oedipus complex
Freud’s term for the conflict that 4-6 year old boys experience when they develop an incestuous desire for their mothers and a jealous and hostile rivalry with their fathers
Identification
Freud’s term for the individual’s tendency to emulate, or adopt the attitudes and behaviors of another person, particularly the same sex parent
Electra complex
Female version of the Oedipus complex, in which 4-6 yr old girls are said to envy their father for possessing a penis and would choose him as a sex object in the hope of sharing this valuable organ that she lacks
Defense mechanisms
Used by the ego to defend itself against anxiety caused by conflict between the ID’s impulses and social demands
Repression
Removing unacceptable thoughts or traumatic memories from consciousness, as when a young woman who was raped has no memory at all of being raped (or less drastically, engages in denial, knowing deep down that she was raped but not accepting the reality of it.)
Regression
Defense mechanism that involves retreating to an earlier, less traumatic stage of development
Projection
Defense mechanism that involves seeing in others the motives we fear we possess, as when a husband charges his wife with being the one who is jealous and insecure, not he.