Chapter 2- Freud: Psychoanalysis Flashcards
The unconscious has two different levels:
The unconscious proper and the preconscious
All of those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness but that nevertheless motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions
The unconscious
The blocking out of anxiety filled experiences
Repression
Inherited experiences that lie beyond an individuals personal experience
Phylogenetic endowment
Contains images that are not in awareness but that can become conscious either quite easily or with some level of difficulty
The preconscious
Those mental elements in awareness at any given point in time. It is the only level of mental life directly available to us
Consciousness
The medium for the perception of external stimuli, in other words, what we perceive through our sense organs
Perceptual conscious system
Conscious idea stem from two areas:
The perception of external or stimuli (our perceptual conscious system) and from the preconscious a (within the mental structure) after they have evaded censorship
Freud conceptualized three regions of the mind:
The ID, the ego, and the super ego
The ego cuts across the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious components. What about the super ego and ID?
The super ego is both pretty conscious and unconscious and the ID is completely unconscious
The part of the mind which is completely unconscious, serves the pleasure principle, and contains our basic instincts
The ID
The ID operates through the:
Primary process. It survival is dependent on the development of a secondary process to bring it into contact with the external world. This secondary process functions through the ego.
The only region of the mind in contact with reality. It becomes a person sole source of communication with the external world.
The ego or secondary process
The ego is governed by this principal and is responsible for reconciling the unrealistic demands of the ID and the super ego
The reality principle
Represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality and is guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles. It has no contact with the outside world.
The superego
The superego has two subsystems:
The conscience and the ego-ideal
Results from experiences with punishments for improper behavior and tells us what we should not do
The conscience
Develops from experiences with rewards for proper behavior and tells us what we should do
The ego-ideal
Those forces that motivate people
Dynamics of personality
Freud grouped all human drives urges under two primary instincts:
Sex and aggression
Every basic drive is characterized by four things:
An impetus, a source, an aim, and an object
According to Freud this is the amount of force a drive exerts
It’s impetus
According to Freud this is the region of the body in a state of excitation or tension by a drive
It’s source
According to Freud, a drive’s ______ is to seek pleasure by removing that excitation or reducing the tension
Aim
According to Freud, a drive’s _____ is the person or thing that serves as the means through which the aim is satisfied
Object
Areas capable of producing sexual pleasure, for instance, the genitals, mouth, and anus
Erogenous zones
The aim of the sexual instinct is
Pleasure, which can be gained through the erogenous zones
The object of the sexual instinct is any person or thing that brings sexual
Pleasure
Infants are primarily self-centered, with their libido invested almost exclusively on their own ego. This condition, which is universal, is known as
Primary narcissism, or self-centeredness
During puberty, adolescents often redirect their libido back to the ego and become preoccupied with personal appearance and other self interests. This is called:
Secondary narcissism. It is not universal
The need for sexual pleasure by inflicting pain or humiliation on another person
Sadism
Receiving sexual pleasure from painful experiences
Masochism
The destructive instinct aims to return a person to an inorganic state, but it is ordinarily directed against other people and is called
Aggression
A felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation that warns the person against impending danger.
Anxiety
Only the ____ can produce or feel anxiety
Ego. The ID, superego, and outside world can each be a source of anxiety
Apprehension about an unknown danger. The feeling itself exists in the ego, but it originates from ID impulses
Neurotic anxiety
Similar to guilt and stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego
Moral anxiety
Closely related to fear, and unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger. Produced by the ego’s relation with the real world.
Realistic anxiety
These operate to protect the ego against the pain of anxiety
Defense mechanisms
List eight defense mechanisms identified by Freud
Repression, reaction formation, displacement, fixation, regression, projection, introjection, and sublimation
Involves forcing unwanted, anxiety-loaded experiences into the unconscious. It is the most basic of all defense mechanisms because it is an active process in each of the others
Repression
The repression of one impulse and the ostentatious expression of its exact opposite
Reaction formation
When people redirect their unwanted urges onto other objects or people in order to disguise the original impulse
Displacement
Develop when psychic energy is blocked at one stage of development, making psychological change difficult. The permanent attachment of the libido onto an earlier, more primitive stage of development. When the prospect of taking the next step becomes to anxiety provoking, the ego may resort to the strategy of remaining at the present, more comfortable psychological stage
Fixation
Whenever a person reverts to earlier, more infantile modes of behavior
Regression
Seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviors that actually reside in one’s own unconscious
Projection
An extreme form of projection which is characterized by delusions of persecution
Paranoia
When people incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego to reduce feelings of inferiority
Introjection
The elevation of the sexual instinct’s aim to a higher level, which permits people to make contributions to society and culture. Expressed most obviously in creative cultural accomplishments such as art, music, and literature
Sublimation
What are the four stages of life according to Freud
Infantile stage, latency, genital stage, and maturity
This stage encompasses the first 4 to 5 years of life and is divided into three sub phases: oral, anal, and phallic
Infantile stage
The infantile stage is divided into three sub phases
Oral, anal, and phallic
During this phase, and infant is primarily motivated to receive pleasure through the mouth
The oral phase
The oral phase is divided into two sub phases
The oral receptive phase when the aim is to receive the nipple. The oral sadistic. When infants respond to others through biting, cooing, closing their mouth, smiling, and crying
When the anus emerges as a sexually pleasurable zone. This period I s characterized by satisfaction gained through aggressive behavior and through the excretory function
The anal phase
The anal phase is divided into two subphases
The early anal period where children receive satisfaction by destroying or losing objects. The late anal period where children sometimes take a friendly interest towards their feces
People who continue to receive a Roddick satisfaction by keeping and possessing objects and by arranging them in an excessively neat and orderly fashion
Anal character
Consists of orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy and occurs if the parents are to punitive during the anal phase
The anal triad
At approximately three or four years of age children begin a third stage of infantile development, a time when the genital area becomes the leading erogenous zone
The phallic phase
Boys and Girls Club going to have differing psychosexual development during the _____ phase
Phallic
During the phallic phase, boys and girls experience the ______ _____ in which they have sexual feelings for one parent and hostile feelings for the other
Oedipus complex
Feelings of ambivalence in a boy play a role in the evolution of the _____ complex
Castration
The fear of losing the penis
Castration anxiety
In males, the castration complex which formed after the Oedipus complex, breaks up the Oedipus complex and results in a well formed male ______
Superego
For girls, the castration complex _______ the female Oedipus complex
Precedes
For girls, the castration complex takes the form of
Penis envy, girls become envious of the mail appendage and feel cheated and desire to have a penis. Because the castration complex precedes the Oedipus complex in girls, this leads to a gradual and incomplete shattering of the female Oedipus complex and results in a weaker and more flexible female super ego
During this period from about age 5 years until puberty, the sexual instinct is partially suppressed
Latency period. Brought about partly by parents his attempts to punish or discourage sexual activity in their young children
This period begins with puberty when adolescents experience a reawakening of the sexual aim.
The genital period
I stage attained after a person has passed through the earlier developmental periods in an ideal manner. Such people would have a balance among the structures of the mind, with their ego controlling their ID and super ego but at the same time allowing for reasonable desires and demands
Psychological maturity
During the 1890s, Freud used an aggressive therapeutic technique in which he strongly suggested to patients that they had been sexually seduced his children. He later drop this technique and abandon his belief that most patients had been seduced during childhood. This was called
Seduction theory
Patients are required to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant or distasteful. Successful therapy rests on the patients transference of childhood sexual or aggressive feelings onto the therapist and away from symptom formation
Free association
The strong sexual or aggressive feelings, positive or negative, that patients develop toward their analyst during the course of treatment. These feelings are not earned by the therapist and are merely transferred to her or him from the patients’ earlier experiences, usually with their parents
Transference
Permits patients to more or less relive childhood experiences within the nonthreatening climate of the analytic treatment
Positive transference
This kind of transference in the form of hostility must be recognized by the therapist and explained to patients so that they can overcome any resistance to treatment
Negative transference
A variety of unconscious responses used by patients to block their own progress in therapy. It can be a positive sign because it indicates that therapy has advanced beyond superficial material
Resistance
Freud used this therapeutic technique to transform the manifest content of dreams to the more important latent content
Dream analysis
The surface meaning or the conscious description given by the dreamer
Manifest content
Unconscious material in dreams
Latent content
The basic assumption of Freud’s dream analysis is that nearly all dreams are:
Wish fulfillments
Freud believed that dreams are formed in the unconscious but try to work their way into the conscious. They enter the conscious in a disguised form that can operate in two basic ways:
Condensation and displacement
Refers to the fact that the manifest dream content is not as extensive as the latent level, indicating that the unconscious material has been abbreviated or condensed before appearing on the manifest level
Condensation
Means that the dream image is replaced by some other idea only remotely related to it
Displacement
Condensation and displacement of content both take place through the use of
Symbols
Every day slips of the tongue or pen, misreading, incorrect hearing, misplacing objects, and temporarily forgetting names or intentions are not to chance accidents but reveal a persons unconscious intentions
Freudian slips or parapraxes
Although Freudian theory has generated much research, it rates low on this facet of a good theory because most research findings can be explained by other theories
Falsifiability
Freudian theory has inspired research in four areas
1) unconscious mental processing
2) pleasure and the ID: inhibition and the ego
3) the defense mechanisms
4) dreams
In recent years, research has concluded that __% of human behaviors are unconsciously determined. Iceberg metaphor
95
Some researchers have established that the pleasure-seeking drives have their neurological origins in two brain structures:
The brain stem and the limbic system
Research has reported cases from the neuropsychological literature demonstrating _________ of information when damage occurs to the right hemisphere and if this damaged region becomes artificially stimulated the ______ goes away; that is, awareness returns
Repression
On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate psychoanalysis’ ability to generate research as
High
On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate psychoanalysis’ openness to falsification
Very low
On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate psychoanalysis’ ability to organize data
Average
On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate psychoanalysis’ ability to guide action and to be parsimonious
Average
On the six criteria of a useful theory, we rate psychoanalysis’ internal consistency
Low because it lacks operational definitions
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Determinism versus free choice
Deterministic
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Pessimism versus optimism
Optimistic
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Causality versus teleology
Emphasized causality
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Conscious versus unconscious
Unconscious determinants over conscious processes
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Social versus biological influences
Biological
Freud’s concept of humanity:
Uniqueness versus similarities
Take a middle position
To Freud, mental life is divided into two levels:
The unconscious and the conscious
