Chapter 8 The Psychoanalytic Perspective

Question 1

Psychoanalysis

Answer 1

• sees behavior as determined partly by inner forces that are outside your awareness and control
• Originated by Sigmund Freud
• Many people think of Freud as the father of personality psychology

Question 2

Psychodynamic

Answer 2

*personality is a set of processes that are always in motion
*Forces emerge that can be channeled, modified, or transformed
*Personality is not one process but several, which sometimes work against each other-competing or wrestling for control over the person’s behavior
Pressures within the personality can conflict with each other
*Whatever most threatens you, your defensive processes keep it from overpowering you.
*Human experience is suffered with qualities of lust and aggression, sexuality and death.
*Rely on multiple metaphors
-Life and death- dual processes of metabolic functioning
-Compared mind to sociopolitical system
-Physics- treating personality as an energy system or the competition among forces as hydraulic systems
*Human behavior itself is highly symbolic- symbolize other more hidden qualities

Question 3

Topographical model

Answer 3

• Conscious: the part of the mind that holds what you’re now aware of
• Preconscious: the part of the mind representing ordinary memory
• Can be brought to awareness easily
• Ex: think of your phone number or last movie you saw
• Unconscious: part of the mind that’s not directly accessible to awareness
• Source of desires and as a repository for urges, feelings, and ideas that are tied to anxiety, conflict, or pain
• Despite being stored away in the unconscious, these things aren’t gone
• Continuing influence on later actions and conscious experience
• Core operations of personality take place
• Material passes easily from conscious to preconscious and back
• Material from both of these can slip into the unconscious
• Unconscious material can’t be brought voluntarily to awareness because of forces that keep it hidden

Question 4

Structural model

Answer 4

• personality as having three aspects- interact to create the complexity of behavior
• Aren’t physical entities but are perhaps best thought of as labels for three aspects of functioning

Question 5

Id

Answer 5

• original component of personality, present at birth
• All the inherited, instinctive, primitive aspects of personality
• Functions entirely in the unconscious
• Closely tied to basic biological processes- underlie life
• All psychic energy comes through it
• “Engine” of personality
• Follows the pleasure principle
• Satisfies needs via the primary process, mostly through wish fulfillment

Question 6

Pleasure principle

Answer 6

• all needs should be satisfied immediately

* Unsatisfied needs -> aversive tension states

Question 7

Primary processes

Answer 7

*forming an unconscious mental image of an object or event that would satisfy the need

Question 8

Wish fulfillment

Answer 8

*the experience of having image of an object or event that would satisfy the need

Question 9

Ego

Answer 9

• evolves from the id and harnesses part of the id’s energy for its own use
• Tries to make sure the id’s impulses are expressed effectively, by taking into account the external world
• Most ego functioning is in the conscious and preconscious
• It also functions in the unconscious to ties to the id
• Follows the reality principle
• Delay the discharge of the id’s tension until an appropriate object or context is found
• Uses the secondary process
• Using the reality principle and secondary process thought- the source of intellectual processes and problem solving
• “Executive” role in personality- mediates between the desires of the id and the constraints of the external world
• Positive force- exercises restraint over the id
• No moral sense
• Pragmatic, focused on getting by
• Mature personality
• Delay is easiest when children distract themselves, shifting attention away from the desired reward
• Children who are better able to delay -> achievement and social responsibility, well-defined ego
• Among boys, it’s closely related to the ability to control emotional impulses, to concentrate, and to be deliberate in action.
• Among girls, is more related to intelligence, resourcefulness, and competence -> recognize delay as being the situationally appropriate response

Question 10

Reality principle

Answer 10

*taking into account external reality along with internal needs and urges

Question 11

Secondary process

Answer 11

*matching the unconscious image of a tension-reducing object to a real object

Question 12

Reality testing

Answer 12

*form plans of action to satisfy needs and test the plans mentally to see whether they will work

Question 13

Superego

Answer 13

• Develops while the person resolves a particular conflict during development
• Embodiment of parental and societal values, which are incorporated into the self via introjection
• Stem mostly from the values of your parents
• Divided into two parts: Ego ideal, Conscience
• Has three interrelated goals
• Tries to prevent (not just postpone) any id impulse that would be frowned on by one’s parents
• Tries to force the ego to act morally, rather than rationally
• Tries to guide the person toward perfection in thought, word and need

Question 14

Introjection

Answer 14

• process of “taking in” or incorporating the values of the parents
• To obtain parents’ love -> do what its parents think is right
• To avoid pain, punishments, and rejection -> avoids what its parents think is wrong

Question 15

Ego ideal

Answer 15

*Comprises rules for good behavior or standards of excellence

Question 16

Conscience

Answer 16

• comprises rules about what behaviors the parents disapprove of and punish
• Causes the conscience to punish you with feelings of guilt
• Ego reflects things you strive for, and the conscience reflects things to avoid

Question 17

Ego strength

Answer 17

• Person’s ability to balance the desire of the Id, the moral dictates of the superego, and the constraints of reality
• the ego’s ability to be effective despite them (conflict)
• With little ego strength, the person is torn among competing pressures.
• With more ego strength, the person can manage the pressures.
• The healthiest personality is one in which the influences of all three aspects are integrated and balanced.

Question 18

Drive “Instincts”

Answer 18

• biological need and its psychological representation
• Ex: a lack of sufficient water in the body’s cells is a need that creates a psychological state of thirst -> drive to drink water
• Pressure builds until drive is satisfied- hydraulic model
• Two classes of drives
• Life instinct-eros, libido
• Death instinct- thantos
• Catharsis- release of tension

Question 19

Hydraulic model

Answer 19

• if a drive isn’t expressed, its pressure continues to build
• Trying to prevent a drive from being expressed only creates more pressure toward its expression

Question 20

Life or sexual instincts (Eros)

Answer 20

• set of drives that deal with survival, reproduction, and pleasure
• Not all life instincts deal with erotic urges per se
• Hunger and pain avoidance, sex

Question 21

Libido

Answer 21

the energy of the life instincts

Question 22

Death instincts (Thanatos)

Answer 22

• Life leads naturally to death and that people desire unconsciously to return to nothingness
• Effects of the death instincts is usually held back by the life instincts -> effects of death instincts aren’t always visible.
• Death drive has received less attention than Eros
• Aspect of the death instinct has received attention from psychologists concerns aggression.
• Aggression: not a basic drive but stems from thwarting of the death drive
• If eros block expression of the death drive, tension remains.
• Acts of aggression express self-destructive urges but turned outward onto others.

Question 23

Apoptosis

Answer 23

• Today’s biology assumes a death instinct in human physiology
• Apoptosis: an active gene-directed suicide process; occurs in human cells in certain circumstances; critical in development; involved in the body’s defense against cancer
• Cell-death function is coded in your cells
• Death is an ultimate goal for parts of the body
• Perhaps extends more broadly into personality

Question 24

Catharsis

Answer 24

• the release of emotional tension in such an experience
• Engaging in aggression should reduce tension, because the aggressive urge is no longer being bottled up
• This act dissipates the urge’s energy, the person should be less likely to be aggressive again in the near future
• Megargee: people with strong inhibition against aggressing rarely blow off steam, even when provoked. Over time, their feelings build until their restraints can no longer hold -> brutal aggression -> trivial final provocation
• Overcontrolled aggressors-> revert to their overcontrolled, passive ways
• Mixed evidence- some said aggression make them feel better
• Aggression can help dissipate arousal, but it’s less clear why. Some of the evidence suggests that actual retaliation produces this effect, but not symbolic or fantasy retaliation.
• Catharsis effects, the effects occur only under very specific circumstances
• The evidence doesn’t support this aspect of psychoanalytic theory very well.

Question 25

Anxiety

Answer 25

• Freud (1936/1926): didn’t view anxiety as a drive per se but as a warning signal to the ego that something bad is about to happen. Nonetheless, people seek to avoid or escape anxiety.
• If your ego did its job perfectly, you would never feel anxiety
• Id impulses would be released at appropriate times and places, preventing neurotic anxiety.
• You would never let yourself do anything (or even want to do anything) that your superego prohibited, preventing moral anxiety
• No one’s ego works this well

Question 26

Reality Anxiety

Answer 26

*arises from a danger in the world; rooted in reality; we deal with it by fixing, avoiding, or escaping from the situation that creates the feeling

Question 27

Neurotic Anxiety

Answer 27

• unconscious fear that your id impulses will get out of control and make you do something that will get you punished
• Not a fear of expressing the id impulses but a fear of the punishment that will result from expressing them
• Has a kind of basis in reality
• The danger is rooted inside, in the urges of the id
• Harder to deal with than reality anxiety

Question 28

Moral Anxiety

Answer 28

*fear people have when they have violated (or are about to violate) their moral code
*Felt as guilt or shame
Its source is internal, in your conscience
*You can’t escape your id, your can’t run away from your conscience

Question 29

Defense mechanisms

Answer 29

• tactics it develops to help avoid the other kinds of anxiety
• When defenses work well, they keep anxiety away
• Operate unconsciously
• Distort or transform reality in one way or another

Question 30

Repression

Answer 30

*central mechanism of defense
*A certain amount of energy available to the ego is used to keep unacceptable impulses out of consciousness
*Can be done consciously
*Anna Freud called suppression
Person tries to force something out of awareness
*Block from awareness not only id impulses but also information that’s painful or upsetting- sometimes this is the memory or impulses you already expressed
*Repression need not be total
*Simply avoid retrieving it- you haven’t forgotten it
*If reminded of it, you’re still aware it’s here. But you’d just as soon not be reminded of it. This would be a partial repression.
*Concerning your faults/weakness (Self Enhancement Theory)
*Concerning your inevitable death (Terror Management Theory)
*Conflict with moral standards (Cognitive Dissonance Theory)

Question 31

Suppression

Answer 31

• Dan Wegner: conducted a program of *studies on thought suppression
• Trying not to think about something can actually make that thought become more likely later on, especially if the thought is an emotionally arousing one
• Wegner’s White Bear experiment
• By lowering your defenses -> reduce the pressure of unwanted thought -> it will go away on its own

Question 32

Denial

Answer 32

• refusal to believe an event took place or a condition exists
• Denial resembles repression in many ways
• Both keep from awareness what the person feels unable to cope with
• Differ in the source of the threat
• Repression deals with threats that originate within the dynamics of the mind.
• Denial deals with threats with other sources.
• They save you from pain or anxiety
• Create problems in the long run
• Take up energy that could be used in other ways
• Other defenses develop and operate in combination with repression
• Free up some of the energy, while keeping unacceptable impulses, thoughts, or feelings from registering in your consciousness

Question 33

Projection

Answer 33

• reduce anxiety by ascribing your own unacceptable qualities to someone else
• Project traits, impulses, desires, or even goals onto another person
• Allows expression of fear- so releases tension, unlike denial or repression
• Ex: “Amanda is so fake” (Maybe the person saying this is fake)
• Provides a way to hide your knowledge of a disliked aspect of yourself while still expressing that quality, though in a highly distorted form
• Helps to get true desires into the open in one form or another, releasing some of the energy required to repress them
• The desire emerges in such a way that the ego and superego don’t recognize it as belonging to you. Thus, the threat is sidestepped.

Question 34

Rationalization

Answer 34

• reduce anxiety by finding a rational explanation (or excuse) for a behavior that you’re really did for unacceptable reasons, wrong for morally correct reasons
• Protects against other kinds of threats
• In responses to success and failure
• Take credit for good performances and blame bad performances on forces outside their control

Question 35

Intellectualization

Answer 35

• tendency to think about threats in cold, analytical, and emotionally detached terms
• Allows people to dissociate their thoughts from their feelings
• Separates and isolates the threatening event from the feeling that normally would accompany it
• Ex: By focusing on the disease intellectually and compartmentalizing that information, she shields herself from distress

Question 36

Displacement

Answer 36

• shifting an impulse from one target to another
• When intended target is threatening
• Substituting a less threatening target for the original one reduces anxiety

Question 37

Sublimination

Answer 37

• lets impulses be expressed, by transforming them to an acceptable form.
• Anxiety goes down when a transformed impulse is expressed, instead of the initial one.
• Reflect maturity- Freud
• Keeps problems from occurring, rather than functioning after anxiety is aroused.

Question 38

Psychosexual Development

Answer 38

• Freud believed that early experiences are critical in determining adult personality
• Freud viewed personality development as movement through a series of stages
• Each is associated with an erogenous zone

Question 39

Erogenous zone

Answer 39

an area of the body that’s the focus of sexual energy in that period

Question 40

Fixation

Answer 40

• if the conflict isn’t well resolved, too much energy gets permanently invested in that stage
• Can occur for two reasons
• A person who’s overindulged in a stage may be reluctant to leave it and move on, and a person whose needs are deeply frustrated in a stage can’t move on until the needs are met
• Personality stuck at this stage
• The stronger the fixation, the more libido is invested in it
• In a very strong fixation, the person is so preoccupied- albeit unconsciously- that little energy is left for anything else

Question 41

Oral Stage

Answer 41

• from birth to roughly 18 months
• Interaction occurs through the mouth and lips, and gratification focuses in that area
• The mouth is the source of tension reduction (eating) and pleasurable sensations (tasting, licking, and sucking)
• Completely dependent on others for their survival
• Children are under increasing pressure to let go of their mother and become less reliant on her
• First Substage (6 months)
• Oral incorporative phase: more or less limited to taking things in
• Several traits develop here, depending on what the infant was exposed to
• If exposed to a benign world -> optimism and trust
• Less supportive world -> pessimism and mistrust
• Too helpful world -> strong dependency on others
• Second Substage
• Starts with teething
• Oral sadistic phase
• Sexual pleasure comes from biting and chewing (even inflicting pain- thus sadistic)
• Weaned from the bottle or breast and begins to bite and chew food
• Determine who will be verbally aggressive later on and who will use “biting” sarcasm
• Oral individuals should relate to the world orally
• More preoccupied than others with food and drink
• When stressed -> more likely to smoke, drink, or bite their nails
• When angry -> verbally aggressive
• Concerned with getting support from others
• Do things to ease interactions with people
• Joseph: tests of oral imagery relate to both obesity and alcoholism
• Orality -> measures of interpersonal interest and social skills
• Oral imagery -> need to nurture others and to interpersonal effectiveness
• People high in oral imagery -> volunteer readily for interpersonal tasks and rely on other people’s judgments during ambiguous tasks
• People who display oral imagery seem highly motivated to gain closeness and support from others and are sensitive to others’ reactions
• React physically to social isolation and to cues of rejection
• Use more physical contact during social interaction and are more self-disclosing

Question 42

Anal Stage

Answer 42

18 months and continues *into the third year

• The anus is the key erogenous zone
• Pleasure comes from defecation
• Toilet training- first time that external constraints are systematically imposed on their satisfaction of internal urges
• When toilet training starts, children can no longer relieve themselves whenever and wherever they want. They must learn that there’s an appropriate time and place for everything.
• Urging the child to eliminate at a desired time and place and praising the child for success.
• Provides a basis for adult productivity and creativity
• Rather than praise for a job well done, the emphasis is on punishment, ridicule, and shame for failure.
• If the child adopts an active pattern of rebellion, eliminating forcefully when the parents least want it, a set of anal expulsive traits develop.
• Tendencies to be messy, cruel, destructive, and overtly hostile.
• Anal retentive

Question 43

Anal retentive

Answer 43

*if the child tries to get even by withholding feces and urine
Rigid, obsessive style
Anal triad: stinginess, obstinacy, and orderliness
Stinginess reflects the desire to retain feces
Obstinacy: the struggle of wills over toilet training
Orderliness: reaction against the messiness of defecating

Question 44

Phallic Stage

Answer 44

*begins during the third year and continues through the fifth year
*Focus shifts to the genital organs
*Most children begin to masturbate, as they become aware of the pleasure that results
*Autoerotic awakening sexual desires
*Self-stimulation -> sexual pleasure
Libido shifts toward the opposite-sex parent
*Fixation result in personalities that reflect the Oedipal conflicts
-Men: Seduce as many women/ father many children; assert their masculinity through expressing symbolically by great career success- fail sexually and professionally because of guilt the feel over competing with their father for their mother’s love
-Women: Relating to men in a way that’s seductive and flirtatious but with a denial of the sexuality; excites men with her seductive behavior and is then surprised when they want sex with her
*Holds great turmoil: love, hate, guilt, jealousy and fear
*Determines their attitudes toward sexuality, interpersonal competitiveness, and personal adequacy

Question 45

Oedipus Complex

Answer 45

• boys’ desire to possess their mothers and replace their fathers
• Electra complex: for girls
• Boys
• His love for his mother transforms into sexual desire and his feelings for his father shift toward hostility and hatred- rival for his mother’s affection
• Over time, jealousy and competitiveness toward father may become extreme -> guilt
• Girls
• Abandon their love relationship with their mother for a new one with their father- when the girl realizes she has no penis
• Withdraw affection from her mother and blame her for her castrated condition because her mother has no penis either
• Affection is drawn to her father because he has a penis
• Penis envy
• Female counterpart of castration anxiety in boys
• Resolve conflicts through identification- by becoming more like her mother

Question 46

Castration anxiety

Answer 46

• the boy also fears that his father will retaliate against him; fears that his father will castrate him to eliminate the source of his lust
• Repress his desire for his mother
• Identify with his father

Question 47

Identification

Answer 47

• tendency to develop feelings of similarity to and connectedness with someone else
• Gives the boy a kind of “protective coloration”- being like his father makes it seem less likely that his father will harm him
• By identifying with the father, the boy reduces his ambivalence toward him
• Paves the way for development of the superego, as the boy introjects his father’s values
• By identifying with the father, the boy gains vicarious expression of his sexual urges toward his mother- gain symbolic access to his mother through his father
• The more the boy resembles the father, the more easily he can fantasize himself in his father’s place

Question 48

Penis envy

Answer 48

• wish that her father would share his penis with her through sex or that he would provide her with the symbolic equivalent of a penis- a baby
• Female counterpart of castration anxiety in boys
• Resolve conflicts through identification- by becoming more like her mother

Question 49

Latency period

Answer 49

• age 6 to the early teens
• Sexual and aggressive drives are less active results partly from the emergence of ego and superego
• Children turn their attention to other pursuits- often intellectual or social in nature
• Onset of puberty, sexual and aggressive urges again intensify- toward end of latency period
• Adolescents- adult sexual desires but sexual intercourse isn’t socially sanctioned for them- ego’s coping skills are severely tested

Question 50

The Genital Stage

Answer 50

• later adolescence and adulthood
• If earliers stages have been negotiated well, the person enters this stage with libido still organized around the genitals and it remains focused there throughout life.
• A desire develops to share mutual sexual gratification with someone
• Capable of loving others not just for selfish reasons
• Ability to share with others in a warm, caring way and to be concerned with their welfare
• Freud believed that people don’t enter the genital stage automatically and that this transition is rarely achieved in its entirety.
• Less control over their impulses than they should
• Difficulty in gratifying sexual desires in a completely satisfying and acceptable way
• Genital personality is an ideal to strive for, rather than an end point to be taken for granted

Question 51

Parapraxes

Answer 51

*provide insights into a person’s true desires
Freudian slip: an error in speech that seems to suggest an unconscious feeling or desire
*Ex: forgetting= keep something unconsciousness- motive
*Ex: slips of the tongue= expresses all or part of the unconscious thought or wish, despite the effort to keep it hidden- related to anxiety
*Motley (1985): shock-related slips and sexual slips

Question 52

Dreams

Answer 52

Expose will of unconscious through manifest content

Question 53

Manifest content

Answer 53

*sensory images- what most of us think of as the dream

Question 54

Latent content

Answer 54

• the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and wishes behind the manifest content
• Tells why a dream takes the form it does

Question 55

Three sources of latent content

Answer 55

• Sensory stimulation that bombards us as we sleep- prompt dreams and be absorbed into them
• Current concerns: thoughts, ideas, feelings connected to waking life
• Unconscious impulses: blocked from expression while you’re awake and are often related to core conflicts; infantile in form and primitive in content; reveals the most about a person’s personality

Question 56

Projective techniques

Answer 56

• formal ways of assessing unconscious processes
• Confront people with ambiguous stimuli
• No obvious response, responses are believed to reflect unconscious feelings, attitudes, desires, and needs
• Using the defense mechanism of projection, people perceive aspects of themselves in the stimulus. What’s projected presumably reflects the unconscious.

Question 57

Rorschach inkblot test

Answer 57

• Hermann Rorschach (1942)
• Each inkblot is bilaterally symmetrical
• Link on five of them is all black, but the intensity is uneven (solid black to light gray)
• Two have both black and red ink
• Three have pastel colors: blue, green, yellow, pink and orange
• One person at a time in a two-stage procedure
• Views the inkblots in a predetermined order and indicates what he or she sees in them- or what the inkblot resembles or suggests
• Views all ten cards again.
• Examiner reminds the person what he or she said earlier and asks what it was about the card that made the person say that.
• Serious psychometric problems
• Data suggested that it is better at identifying depressed and psychotic persons than the MMPI-2
• Psychometric criteria are irrelevant
• Its value is in the insights it gives the examiner
• Not to be viewed as clinical aid

Question 58

John Exner’s scoring

Answer 58

• The responses are first compared against those of people with known personalities
• Responses are examined at a progression from one card to the next
• Responses are analyzed in terms of location (where to focus), determinants (form, color, shading, or perceived movement), and content (response’s subject)
• Reveal information about person’s unconscious motivations and feelings

Question 59

Origins of Problems

Answer 59

• Childhood experiences: overinvestment of energy in a fixation- prevents flexible adult functioning by depleting energy the ego needs
• Broad repression of basic drives and urges
• Too many urges to be buried -> person’s basic nature will be distorted and denied
• Repressed needs will be able to squeeze their way past the repression only in twisted forms
• Required to keep the needs hidden is a constant drain on energy available to ego
• Buried trauma

Question 60

Free association

Answer 60

• the person was simply to say aloud whatever came to mind
• Enabled material hidden in the unconscious to gradually emerge
• Helped convince Freud that what emerged often wasn’t literally true
• Led him to rethink how he viewed the content of free association
• Producing something important, but it wasn’t quite what it had seemed to be
• Symbolic form: less threatening, letting it emergy
• Creates a jumble of symbols that makes no sense on the surface
• Partial context
• Uncover the conflicts and loose the restrained energy
• Allows symbolic access to the problem
• Rarely gets to the heart of the problem due to the threat in the repressed material

Question 61

Resistance

Answer 61

*people in therapy sometimes actively fight against becoming aware of repressed conflicts and impulses
*Conscious or unconscious
*Sign that something important is nearby
*Close to revealing something sensitive
Illustration of how emotionally wrenching psychoanalytic therapy can be
*Uncover distressing truths- truths that have been buried in the unconscious precisely because they’re too painful to admit

Question 62

Transference

Answer 62

• set of displacement
• Feelings toward other people in the patient’s life are displaced (transferred) onto the therapist
• Love or hatred
• Another defense- therapist provokes less anxiety than do the original objects of the feelings
• Help point out the significance of the feelings that are being displaced
• Its interpretation is an important part of the therapy process

Question 63

Insight

Answer 63

• re-experiencing of the emotional reality of repressed conflicts, memories, or urges, previously unconscious parts of one’s personality
• No power to change the person
• Come in the context of an emotional catharsis, a freeing of pent-up energy
• Emotional release doesn’t help unless there is also reorganization

Question 64

Criticisms

Answer 64

• Highly symbolic
• Metaphorical flexible
• Difficult to measure and directly test
• Heavy reliance on case studies- don’t necessarily generalize to population as a whole
• The importance and function of the unconscious