Freud's Psychoanalysis Flashcards
Life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
- Lived primarily in Vienna, Austria
- Felt hostility towards father who was authoritarian
- Felt sexual attraction towards mother who was attractive and loving
- Theories reflected his childhood experiences
- Studied Medicine at the University of Vienna
- Published an article of cocaine’s benefits in 1884
- “Always a question of the genitals” with Charcot
- Became convinced sexual conflicts were the cause of emotional disturbance
What is the Oedipus complex?
Describe a child’s feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent and jealousy and anger toward his or her same-sex parent
What are instincts?
- Are the driving forces of our personality
- Are mental representations of internal needs (e.g. hunger, thirst, sex)
- Motivate the behavior that will satisfy the needs
Internal needs generate and reduce?
- These needs generate physiological energy (tension)
- Which the instinct aims to reduce
How often do we experience instinctual tension?
Always
Types of life instincts
Life and death
What are life instincts?
- Life instinct promotes survival
- Sexual instincts and basic instinctual impulses
- Sex drive: primary life instinct
What are death instincts?
- Includes negative feelings like hate, anger, and aggression.
- Reflects an unconscious wish to die (since all living things decay and die)
Examples of aggressive drive
- Our wish to die turned onto others/objects compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill
- Primary death instinct
What triggered Freud’s creation of death instincts?
- He endured physiological and psychological debilitations
- He witnessed bloodshed of WWI
- His daughter died at age of 26, leaving 2 young kids
The concept of death instincts-well received?
No
What are the levels of personality?
Id, Ego and Superego
Describe the Id
- Reservoir for life and death instincts
- The main goal is to increase pleasure and avoid pain
- Strives for immediate gratification
- Impatient
- No awareness of reality (i.e., societal constraints)
- Can only attempt to satisfy needs through reflex action, wish-fulfilling hallucinations, or fantasy
- Primary process thought: childlike thinking by which id attempts to satisfy drives
Describe the Ego
- Contains reason and rationality
- Helps the id to obtain what it craves
- But uses perception, judgment, memory to decides when and how (secondary process thinking)
- Operates in accordance with the reality principle
- Delays or redirects id satisfaction to meet the demands of reality (society)
- Constantly mediating and striking compromises between their conflicting demands
Explain the difference between primary and secondary process thinking
- Primary: is childlike thinking by which-Id
- Secondary: uses perception, judgment, memory to decides when and how-Ego
Describe the Superego
- Contains sense of morality
- ‘Right and wrong’ is learned by age 5 or 6, through praise and punishment
- Rewards and punishments for behavior eventually become self-administered
- We experience guilt or shame when we act contradictory to our moral code
- Parental control is replaced by self-control
- Superego aims to extinguish the demands of the id, completely (especially sex and aggressive drives)
- Strives solely for moral perfection
What are the Superego’s 2 main components?
- Conscience: consisting of behaviors for which we’ve been punished (“bad” behaviors)
- Ego-ideal: consisting of behaviors for which we’ve been praised (“good” behaviors)
What is anxiety?
- Anxiety: A Threat to the Ego
- According to Freud, anxiety:
- Is objectless fear; we cannot point to the source
- Is a root cause of emotional disturbance and psychotic behavior
- Can be overwhelming = traumatic anxiety
What happens to the ego when it is strained?
- Develops anxiety
- Defense mechanisms
If no action is taken during anxiety, what occurs?
Ego with be overthrown
How can the ego defend itself from anxiety using defense mechanisms/rational techniques? And what happens when these don’t work/irrational techniques?
Run away from threatening situation Inhibit impulsive need that is source of danger Obey orders of the conscience IF THESE DON'T WORK: Denials or distortions of reality Operate unconsciously
Define repression
involuntary removal (forgetting) of something from conscious awareness i.e. forgetting a traumatic memory
Name some defense mechanisms
Repression Denial Reaction Formation Projection Regression Rationalization Displacement Sublimation
Define denial
denying the existence of some threat or traumatic event
i.e. a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death
Define reaction formation
actively expressing the opposite impulse
i.e. a person threatened by sexual longings can become a crusader against pornography
Define projection
attributing unacceptable impulses to someone else
An unfaithful husband suspects his wife of infidelity.
Define regression
retreating to an earlier period of life when one felt safer, when the stresses didn’t exist, or where an all-powerful parent would take them away.
A wife refuses to drive a car even though it causes the family much disorganization. A result of her refusal is that her husband has to take her everywhere.
Define rationalization
reinterpreting behavior to make it seem more rational and acceptable
“I don’t care that he broke up with me, he had way too many issues anyway”
Define displacement
shifting the impulse from a threatening or unavailable object to a more available substitute
i.e. children who hate their parents, but are afraid to express it, may displace their anger onto someone else
Define sublimation
displacing the id impulse by diverting energy into socially acceptable behaviors
Sexual energy can be diverted (sublimated) into artistically creative behaviors
What are the psychosexual stages of development?
Include the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages through which all children pass
In each of these stages, a conflict exists that must be resolved before the child can progress to the next
In each stage, the “id” wants to be gratified
In each stage, the gratification of the id instincts will depend on a particular part of the body
Why would a child be reluctant to move to the next stage because:
The needs have not been satisfied
The needs are so supremely satisfied (indulged)
In either case, the child is said to be fixated
psychic energy remains invested at that stage
Leaves less energy for the following stages
What are the 2 outcomes of oral fixation?
Oral aggressive personality
Result of fixation due to dissatisfaction
Adults are prone to hostility, aggression, cruelty, pessimism
Oral incorporative personality
Result of fixation due to overindulgence
Adults are overly concerned with oral activities (i.e. eating, drinking, kissing)
Adults prone to depend on others to gratify needs
Outcomes of the anal stage
2. Anal Stage
If toilet-training is not going well, the child may react in 2 ways:
Defecate when and where they want!
A satisfactory technique for reducing frustration
May develop into anal-aggressive personality:
Adult is hostile, sadistic, cruel, destructive, hot-tempered
2. Hold back or retain feces!
Manipulative technique for securing parental attention and affection
May develop into anal-retentive personality:
Adult is stubborn, stingy, hoards and retains things in which security is dependent on, overly meticulous
What is the Oedipus complex? Boys
Boy has unconscious sexual desire for the mother and thus a desire to replace/destroy the father
Fear that father will find out and cut off penis = Castration anxiety
Leads boy to repress his sexual desire for mother
Leads also to identification with father (i.e. adopting his mannerisms, attitudes, superego standards)
Boy thus experiences vicarious sexual satisfaction
What is the Electra complex? Girls
Girl’s first love object is also the mother
But during the phallic stage, girl’s love shifts to father
A shift is a reaction to her discovery (at this stage) that boys have a penis and she does not
Girl envies father for his highly valued sex organ (Penis envy)
Girl represses love for father, identifies with mother, and accepts ‘inferior’ place in society
What can happen when phallic conflicts are resolved improperly?
influence adult relations with the opposite sex
cause lingering forms of castration anxiety and penis envy
lead to “phallic personality.”
What is the phallic personality characterized by?
Narcissism: the need for continual recognition and appreciation of attractive and unique qualities
In males: vain, arrogant, express personality through sexual conquests
In females: exaggerate femininity, uses charm to conquer men
Personality types
Oral-incorporative / Oral-aggressive
Anal-retentive / Anal-aggressive
Phallic personality (male/female)
Genital personality
Could Freud’s ideas be tested?
No
Supported Freudian ideas
Oral and anal character types
Basic concept of the Oedipal triangle
Castration anxiety
Unsupported Freudian ideas
Dreams are disguised expressions of repressed wishes
Males resolve Oedipus complex through identification with the father
Woman have inadequately developed superegos
Object relation theories
Object Relations Theories
Focus on interpersonal relationships with objects
Object = any person or activity that can satisfy an need/instinct
Diverges from Freud’s belief that we are pleasure seeking beings; instead it suggests that humans seek relationships.
Primary motivational factors in one’s life are human relationships, rather than sexual or aggressive triggers.
Emphasize the mother-child relationship especially
Theories all agree that the mother-infant experience is responsible for the formation of a child’s psychic structure
Agree that a person’s mind develops as a direct result of early relationships.
Because these relationships are forged in infancy, they continue to pervade a person’s existence throughout his or her life.
Heinz Kohut (1913-1981)
Emphasized the formation of the nuclear self
Develops based on the relationship between the infant and his/her self-objects
What is self-objects?
people who play such a vital role in our lives that, as infants, we believe they are part of our selves (namely, mother)
Role of the Mother
Mother is infant’s primary self-object
Must gratify the child’s physical needs and psychological needs
Must act as a mirror to the child – reflecting back a sense of uniqueness, importance, greatness
Reflection confirms the child’s sense of self-importance and becomes part of his/her nuclear self
If mother rejects child, and mirrors unimportance, the child develops shame or guilt
All aspects of the adult self (positive and negative) are formed by the child’s initial relations with primary self-object
Melanie Klein’s life (1882-1960)
An unwanted child who felt rejected by her parents
Suffered periodic bouts of depression
Estranged from daughter
Klein’s difficulties as a daughter and mother likely influenced theories
Melanie Klein’s ideas
Emphasized the first 5 to 6 months of life (vs. Freud who stressed the first 5 years)
Assumed babies are born with active fantasy lives
Fantasies consist of mental representations (images) of id instincts
These images temporarily satisfy the needs
Ex: a hungry baby can just imagine sucking at mother’s breast which will relieve his hunger, for some time
Infants relate, initially, only to parts of the objects
The first ‘part-object’ is the mother’s breast
The breast either gratifies or fails to gratify the id instinct
Based on this, infant judges whether the world is good or bad
Eventually, infants relate to whole objects (mother) rather than just part-objects (breast)
These experiences leave lasting mental images that remain influential over adult’s relationship with others
