Freud

Question 1

What does Freuds theory of personality compromise of?

Answer 1

• Nature of human being and the source of human motivation
• Structure of personality
• Development of personality
• Levels of consciousness

Question 2

What are criticisms of Freuds work?

Answer 2

• Psychoanalytic theory – indoctrination into a cult (Sulloway, 1979)
• Karl Popper – Prescientific myth, irrefutable
• Difficult to test (e.g., libido/dream content)
• Male chauvinism
• Sexual motivation overly stressed, big focus on ‘innate’ urges – ignores social aspect
• Most of his theory is based on evidence gathered with patients (and few published) difficult to evaluate his claims.

Question 3

What are our two basic drives, according to Freud and how does human motivation relate to them?

Answer 3

1. Life instinct (eros): drive for survival, pleasure and reproduction – often referred to as sexual drive (although includes thirst/ hunger).
   Creates energy -> libido
2. Death instinct (Thanatos): humans are self-destructive (e.g., war/ conflict)

Human motivation occurs because of our attempts to satisfy these basic needs.

Question 4

What are the three basic structures to personality? (Simpsons)

Answer 4

Id – raw, uninhibited, instinctual energy (Homer Simpson)
Ego – executive part of the personality – planning, thinking, organising (Marge Simpson)
Super – ego – the conscience (Ned Flanders)

Question 5

What is the Id?

Answer 5

Id – raw, uninhibited, instinctual energy (Homer Simpson)
• Source of all cravings, impulses, drives (aggression, sexual, survival)
• Guided by the pleasure principle
• Freud believed that only the id was present at birth

Question 6

What is the ego?

Answer 6

Ego – executive part of the personality – planning, thinking, organising (Marge Simpson)
• Mediator between child and the outside world – the voice of reason
• Guided by the reality principle
• Second part to develop

Question 7

What is the super-ego?

Answer 7

Super – ego – the conscience (Ned Flanders)
• Makes judgements about right/wrong, internalised paternal attitudes
• Final part to develop

Question 8

What creates intra-psychic conflict (e.g. anxiety)?

Answer 8

The interaction between the id, ego and superego is what creates intra-psychic conflict (e.g., anxiety)

Question 9

What are the five stages of the development of personality according to Freud?

Answer 9

Oral stage
Anal stage
Phallic stage
Latency stage
Genital stage

Question 10

When does the ego develop during the five stages of the development of personality?

Answer 10

During the Oral and Anal stages.

Question 11

When does the super-ego develop during the five stages of the development of personality?

Answer 11

During the phallic and latency stages.

Question 12

According to Freud, how can we be psychologically well adjusted?

Answer 12

By successfully completing each stage. Those that do not complete each stage become fixated in that stage and it becomes part of their adult personality.

Question 13

What may happen if an individual becomes fixated in the oral stage of development?

Answer 13

• Too much/little gratification may lead to fixation

* Oral activities (e.g., smoking, alcohol, eating), dependency, aggression

Question 14

What may happen if an individual becomes fixated in the anal stage of development?

Answer 14

• Parental approach too lenient/strict
• Anal-expulsive (messy, destructive); anal-retentive (orderly, obsessive)
Phallic

Question 15

What may happen if an individual becomes fixated in the phallic stage of development?

Answer 15

• Men/ women do not resolve their complexes
• Vanity, self-obsession, sexual anxiety, inadequacy, inferiority, envy
Evidence for oral and anal personalities (Fisher & Greenberg, 1996)

Question 16

Explain the 5 stages of development according to Freud.

Answer 16

Oral stage
• Birth to 1 year
• Pleasure fixated around the mouth

Anal stage
• 18 months to 3 years
• Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination (about control of expulsion, relieving your bowels)

Phallic stage
• 3 to 5 years
• Pleasure fixated around the genitals (Begin to become aware of sexual differences) (Oedipus/Electra complex)

Latency stage
• 5 to 12 years
• Identification of one’s gender, defence mechanisms develop

Genital stage
• 12 to 18 years or older
• Maturation of sexual interests

Question 17

What are the different areas of the mind?

Answer 17

Conscious
• Material we are actively aware of at any given time
• Example: listening to what I say (or reading Facebook and not listening to what I say)

Preconscious
• Unconscious thoughts but could be easily be recalled
• Example: what time did you arrive for this lecture

Unconscious
• Memories, urges, fantasises we are unaware of sue their unacceptable nature
• Example: sexual or aggressive urges

Question 18

What is the Oedipus/Electra complex?

Answer 18

Oedipus: boys are attracted to their mother and become jealous of their father and want to kill him. Boys then internalise this and become like their father and fine someone to replace their mother.

Electra: involves a girl, becoming unconsciously sexually attached to her father and increasingly hostile toward her mother. She blames her mother for this and experiences penis envy.

Question 19

What is repression?

Answer 19

Repression is the process of keeping material unconscious (a defence mechanism)

Question 20

What’s Freuds theory on dreams?

Answer 20

• The ‘royal road’ to the unconscious
• Dreams function to preserve sleep by representing wishes as fulfilled
Desires that are unacceptable
Worries/stresses solved in a dream
• Two elements: manifest and latent content
• Manifest: how you might recall your dream
• Latent: dreams can censor real meanings from the unconscious

Question 21

What is free association?

Answer 21

• The act of relaying thoughts as they come to you without self-censorship
• Freud believed that this method could help tap into the unconscious mind
(Essentially you give someone a word and ask them to make connections with other words.)

Question 22

Name some defence mechanisms

Answer 22

Repression
Regression
Denial
Displacement 
Reaction formation
Conversion reaction
Rationalism
Isolation
Phobic avoidance
Projection
Sublimation
Undoing

Question 23

What did Freud suggest about defence mechanisms?

Answer 23

• Freud suggested that throughout the development of personality, people acquire defensive mechanisms
Defence mechanisms push disturbing, upsetting or socially unacceptable content in the unconscious and keep them there
• Defence mechanisms are psychologically adaptive, although according to Freud can become maladaptive

Question 24

How did Fenichal revise Freuds work on defence mechanisms?

Answer 24

Fenichel (1945) – revised Freud’s work – defensive mechanisms do not disguise one’s sexual or aggressive impulses, but to protect self-esteem or the self-concept

Question 25

What is reaction formation, give an example and evidence for it?

Answer 25

Reaction formation is converting socially unacceptable impulses into the opposite.
Example: insinuations that one is intolerant might lead to exaggerated efforts to be seen as tolerant.
Evidence: Non-prejudiced individuals given false physiological feedback about their racial prejudices subsequently gave more money to a Black individual than those who were not given such feedback (Dutton & Lake, 1973).

Question 26

What is projection, give an example and is there evidence for it?

Answer 26

Projection is perceiving others of having traits (particularly undesired) that one inaccurately believes oneself not to have.
Example: person who has feelings for someone other than partner accuses partner of having an affair
Evidence: False consensus effects (e.g., Ross et al., 1977)
Projection may be a by-product of a different defensive mechanism (Newman et al., 1997).

Question 27

What is displacement, give an example and evidence for it?

Answer 27

Displacement is altering the target of an impulse
Example: an unacceptable violent impulse towards one’s father may be transformed into a hostile attitude towards authority figures.
Evidence: Scapegoating (Hovland & Sears, 1939)
Participants who have been frustrated are more likely to be aggressive towards others even if not the source of frustration (Hokanson et al., 1963)
But is this displacement or mood arousal?

Question 28

What is undoing, give an example and is there evidence for it?

Answer 28

Undoing is the desire to alter the past to make something not happen (rumination about alternative outcomes)
Example: thinking of how you could have responded to someone
Evidence: People who had lost their jobs often replayed the ‘scene’ of their firing during their unemployment, thinking up clever things they wish they had said (Newman, 1988)
But is this defensive, or coping mechanism?

Question 29

What is isolation, give an example and is there evidence for it?

Answer 29

Isolation is creating a mental barrier between a threatening cognition and other thoughts/feelings
Example: people may stop a train of thought before changing to a different subject entirely
Evidence: Religious conversion – “born again” (Greven, 1977)
Those who had committed crimes described it as a closed, isolated incident that had no long lasting impact (Baumeister et al., 1990)

Question 30

What is sublimation, give an example and is there evidence for it?

Answer 30

Sublimation is channelling an unacceptable desire into something more socially acceptable
Example: aggressive people channel their aggression into sport
Evidence: none

Question 31

What is denial, give an example and is there evidence for it?

Answer 31

Denial is the refusal to accept certain facts that may be damaging to one sense of self. Example: smoker may refuse to admit that it is damaging to their health
Evidence: Externally attribute for failure, and remember failures less (Crary, 1966; Zuckerman, 1979)
Caffeine users question evidence that caffeine consumption is associated with certain diseases (Lieberman & Chaiken, 1992)

Question 32

What is the stance of neo-freudians on the development of Freuds work?

Answer 32

Neo-Freudians – disagreed with Freud’s highly sexualised view, but emphasised more the importance of social environment/culture

Question 33

List some other developments of Freuds work.

Answer 33

Erich Fromm - Emphasised other human drives such as relatedness, meaning and coherence.

Erik Erikson - Psychosocial stages of development.

Alfred Adler - Individual Psychology – drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

Carl Jung - Personality types (e.g., extraverted/introverted)  Myers-Brigg type indicator (Myers & McCaulley, 1985) – often used in occupational settings.
Did not just believe that the past affected our behaviour, but also our ability to think about the future.

Karen Horney - Women do not have penis envy, but jealously is culturally based (e.g., freedom, independence, respect). Men also have womb envy.
Coping styles (dependence, aggression, isolation).

Question 34

What ideas of Freuds have some validity and why may teaching Freud be useful?

Answer 34

The broad strokes of Freud’s ideas have some validity and, in some cases, well accepted (e.g., early experiences, anxiety/conflict, defence mechanisms, unconscious).

Teaching Freud may be a useful as students can see how ideas progress over time, and is an easy way to practice critically evaluating psychological theory.