Freud Lexicon (Slides)

Question 1

Oedipus Complex

Answer 1

an universal unconscious sexual wish in a child for the parent of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by hostility towards the parent of the same sex.

Question 2

Latent Content

Answer 2

The thoughts related to the unconscious wishes that made the manifest content of dreams.

Question 3

Manifest Content

Answer 3

Points to the content of a dream that one remembers upon the waking. This is the facade of dream, the image or idea of it.

Question 4

Condensation

Answer 4

psychological unconscious process whereby two ideas or images combine into a single one bearing features from both (especially in dreams and fantasies)

Question 5

Displacement

Answer 5

Defence mechanism consisting in the transference of the affect from a representation to another, related to it.

“the redirection of an impulse (usually aggression) onto a powerless substitute target. The target can be a person or an object that can serve as a symbolic substitute.”

examples: “Someone who feels uncomfortable with their sexual desire for a real person may substitute a fetish. Someone who is frustrated by his or her superiors may go home and kick the dog.”

Question 6

Overdetermination

Answer 6

Refers to all provoking causes of a hysterical symptom. Or, symptoms can/probably/usually have multiple causations.

Question 7

Repression

Answer 7

the exclusion of distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings from the conscious mind. Often involving sexual or aggressive urges or painful childhood memories, these unwanted mental contents are pushed into the unconscious mind.

Question 8

Instincts

Answer 8

A pre-lingual bodily impulse that drives our actions.
Instinct is outside of knowing.
There are two classes of instincts: 1) Eros or the sexual instincts and 2) Thanatos or the death-instinct

Question 9

Pleasure Principle

Answer 9

Tells us to do whatever feels good

Question 10

Return of the Repressed

Answer 10

process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable “derivatives of the unconscious”. Parapraxes, slips or symptomatic actions are examples of such derivatives.

Question 11

Reaction-Formation

Answer 11

When you feel an urge to do or say something and then actually do or say the opposite.

It also appears as a defense against a feared social punishment. May result in exaggerated actions.

Question 12

Anxiety

Answer 12

A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning.

Question 13

Mourning

Answer 13

One of two possible responses to loss. Mourning is conscious and healthy.

Question 14

Melancholia

Answer 14

One of two possible responses to loss. Unconscious and unhealthy.
Separation from an object of attachment remains incomplete. Instead of retracting the libido invested with the lost object and redirecting it to another object its excess libido is driven inwards. Part of the person identifies with the lost person, resulting in an inner division.

Question 15

Ego

Answer 15

The ego develops in order to mediate between the unrealistic id and the external real world. It is the decision making component of personality.

Question 16

Identification

Answer 16

The earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person.
Eg., in the Oedipus Complex, the little boy identifies with the father.

Question 17

Ambivalence

Answer 17

The simultaneous presence of love and hate toward an object.
Eg. A child finds pleasure in touching themselves but finds that the act is prohibited. They may continue to touch, but they’ll hate the act as they perform it.

Question 18

Narcissism

Answer 18

“Loving oneself,” Freud argues, is the “libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation” (On Narcissism)

Question 19

Cathexis

Answer 19

Somewhere between intense attention and obsession

The energy you direct in desire

Question 20

Reality Principle

Answer 20

Tells us to subordinate pleasure to what needs to be done, work

Question 21

Sublimation

Answer 21

Subordination of the pleasure Principle to the reality Principle

Where you take desired that can’t/shouldn’t be fulfilled and turn that energy into something productive

Question 22

Parapraxes

Answer 22

Slips of the tongue that reveal something that has been repressed

Question 23

Primary Narcissism

Answer 23

The basic, sexually charged desire directed at the self. The impulse for self-care.

Question 24

Secondary Narcisissm

Answer 24

A pathological state; a magnified, extreme manifestation of the primary narcissism which exists in all individuals.

Question 25

Sexual Instinct, Eros

Answer 25

Compatible with the self-preservative instincts

Question 26

Death-instinct, or Thanatos

Answer 26

A natural desire to “re-establish a state of things that was disturbed by the emergence of life” (“Ego and the Id” 709).
Allowed Freud to explain man’s desire for murder and destruction.

Question 27

Id

Answer 27

The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It consists of all the inherited (i.e. biological) components of personality present at birth, including the sex (life) instinct – Eros (which contains the libido), and the aggressive (death) instinct - Thanatos.

The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to the instincts.

Question 28

Superego

Answer 28

The superego incorporates the values and morals of society which are learned from one’s parents and others. It develops around the age of 3 – 5 during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

The superego’s function is to control the id’s impulses, especially those which society forbids, such as sex and aggression.