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PSY 4420-Theories of Personality > Freud's Psychoanalysis > Flashcards

Freud's Psychoanalysis Flashcards

1
Q

Life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

A
  • 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
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2
Q

What is the Oedipus complex?

A

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

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3
Q

What are instincts?

A
  • 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
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4
Q

Internal needs generate and reduce?

A
  • These needs generate physiological energy (tension)

- Which the instinct aims to reduce

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5
Q

How often do we experience instinctual tension?

A

Always

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6
Q

Types of life instincts

A

Life and death

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7
Q

What are life instincts?

A
  • Life instinct promotes survival
  • Sexual instincts and basic instinctual impulses
  • Sex drive: primary life instinct
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8
Q

What are death instincts?

A
  • Includes negative feelings like hate, anger, and aggression.
  • Reflects an unconscious wish to die (since all living things decay and die)
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9
Q

Examples of aggressive drive

A
  • Our wish to die turned onto others/objects compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill
  • Primary death instinct
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10
Q

What triggered Freud’s creation of death instincts?

A
  • He endured physiological and psychological debilitations
  • He witnessed bloodshed of WWI
  • His daughter died at age of 26, leaving 2 young kids
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11
Q

The concept of death instincts-well received?

A

No

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12
Q

What are the levels of personality?

A

Id, Ego and Superego

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13
Q

Describe the Id

A
  • 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
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14
Q

Describe the Ego

A
  • 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
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15
Q

Explain the difference between primary and secondary process thinking

A
  • Primary: is childlike thinking by which-Id

- Secondary: uses perception, judgment, memory to decides when and how-Ego

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16
Q

Describe the Superego

A
  • 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
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17
Q

What are the Superego’s 2 main components?

A
  • 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)
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18
Q

What is anxiety?

A
  • 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
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19
Q

What happens to the ego when it is strained?

A
  • Develops anxiety

- Defense mechanisms

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20
Q

If no action is taken during anxiety, what occurs?

A

Ego with be overthrown

21
Q

How can the ego defend itself from anxiety using defense mechanisms/rational techniques? And what happens when these don’t work/irrational techniques?

A 
	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
22
Q

Define repression

A 
involuntary removal (forgetting) of something from conscious awareness
	i.e. forgetting a traumatic memory
23
Q

Name some defense mechanisms

A 
	Repression
	Denial
	Reaction Formation
	Projection
	Regression
	Rationalization
	Displacement
	Sublimation
24
Q

Define denial

A

denying the existence of some threat or traumatic event

 i.e. a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death

25
Q

Define reaction formation

A

actively expressing the opposite impulse

 i.e. a person threatened by sexual longings can become a crusader against pornography

26
Q

Define projection

A

attributing unacceptable impulses to someone else

 An unfaithful husband suspects his wife of infidelity.

27
Q

Define regression

A

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.

28
Q

Define rationalization

A

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”

29
Q

Define displacement

A

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

30
Q

Define sublimation

A

displacing the id impulse by diverting energy into socially acceptable behaviors
 Sexual energy can be diverted (sublimated) into artistically creative behaviors

31
Q

What are the psychosexual stages of development?

A

 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

32
Q

Why would a child be reluctant to move to the next stage because:

A

 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

33
Q

What are the 2 outcomes of oral fixation?

A

 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

34
Q

Outcomes of the anal stage

A

 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

35
Q

What is the Oedipus complex? Boys

A

 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

36
Q

What is the Electra complex? Girls

A

 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

37
Q

What can happen when phallic conflicts are resolved improperly?

A

 influence adult relations with the opposite sex
 cause lingering forms of castration anxiety and penis envy
 lead to “phallic personality.”

38
Q

What is the phallic personality characterized by?

A

 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

39
Q

Personality types

A

 Oral-incorporative / Oral-aggressive
 Anal-retentive / Anal-aggressive
 Phallic personality (male/female)
 Genital personality

40
Q

Could Freud’s ideas be tested?

A

No

41
Q

Supported Freudian ideas

A

 Oral and anal character types
 Basic concept of the Oedipal triangle
 Castration anxiety

42
Q

Unsupported Freudian ideas

A

 Dreams are disguised expressions of repressed wishes
 Males resolve Oedipus complex through identification with the father
 Woman have inadequately developed superegos

43
Q

Object relation theories

A

 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.

44
Q

Heinz Kohut (1913-1981)

A

 Emphasized the formation of the nuclear self

 Develops based on the relationship between the infant and his/her self-objects

45
Q

What is self-objects?

A

people who play such a vital role in our lives that, as infants, we believe they are part of our selves (namely, mother)

46
Q

Role of the Mother

A

 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

47
Q

Melanie Klein’s life (1882-1960)

A

 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

48
Q

Melanie Klein’s ideas

A

 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

PSY 4420-Theories of Personality (2 decks)

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