Personality Flashcards
What is personality?
It is an accumulation of characteristics and behaviors that make up an individual’s uniqueness in life.
It is compromised of major traits, interest, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional problems
Why is Freud so important in psychology?
He discovered the unconscious
Where & when did freud work/live?
Victorian era
Vienna
What is free association?
It’s a method in psychoanalysis to explore the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.
What is the point of free association?
Freud believed that mental challenges from a patient’s past persevered through a person, up until the troubled presence. With free association, Freud believed he could follow that chain into the patient’s unconscious where painful unconscious memories can be retrieved and released
What is psychoanalysis?
Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
What is the unconscious?
According to Freud, it’s a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
According to contemporary psychologists, it is information processing of which we are unaware
What are the three levels of consciousness? Describe each
Conscious- the awareness of our own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
Preconscious- information or thoughts that could be brought into consciousness
Unconscious- the thoughts, feelings, and urges outside our awareness
What are the three interacting systems that Freud came up with? Describe each
id- unconscious psychic energy that constantly strive to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress. The id operates on the pleasure principle; it seeks immediate gratification
Ex. Of id person: people who use tobacco, alcohol, drugs, would rate so one party now than sacrifice today’s pleasure for future success and happiness.
Ego- it is the largely conscious, executive part of personality, that addresses the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle; satisfies the desires in ways that will bring long term pleasure rather than pain. The ego contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgements, and memories
Superego- the part of personality that voices our moral compass (conscience) that forces the ego to to consider not only the real, but the ideal.
Give the short summary of Freud’s components of personality
Id- pleasure principle, your inner child
Ego- reality principle, you in the middle
Superego- moral principle, your inner parent
Describe Freud’s 5 psychosexual stages with age and the focus of each
- Oral
Age- 0-18 months
Focus- pleasure centers on the mouth; sucking biting, chewing
2.Anal
Age- 18-36 months
Focus- pleasure focuses on the bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control
3.Phallic
Age- 3-6 years
Focus- Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
Oedipus stage- A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
Electra complex- basically same as oedipus stage, but for girls.
- Latency
Age- 6 to puberty
Focus- A phase of dormant sexual feelings
5.Genital
Age- puberty on
Focus- Maturation of sexual interests
What did Freud believe most influences are developing identity, personality, and frailties?
Early childhood relations
What does fixate mean?
It refers to the lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
What is the identification process
The process where children incorporate their parent’s values into their developing superegos
What are defense mechanisms?
It is the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is repression? Give an example
Repression banishes anxiety arousing wishes and feelings from consciousness
Ex.: A child, who faced abuse by a parent, later has no memory of the events, but has trouble forming relationships
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is regression? Give an example
Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.
Ex: A little boy reverts to the oral comfort of thumb sucking in the car on the way to his first day of school
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is reaction formation? Give an example
Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites
Ex.: repressing angry feelings, a person displays exaggerated friendliness
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is projection? Give an example
Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
Ex.: “The thief thinks everyone else is a thief”
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is rationalization? Give an example
Offering self justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions
Ex.: A habitual drinker says she drinks with her friends “just to be sociable”
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is displacement? Give an example
Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person
Ex.: A little girl kicks the family dog after her mother sends her to her room.
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is sublimation? Give an example
Transferring of unacceptable impulses into socially valued motives
Ex.: A man with aggressive urges becomes a surgeon.
In Freud’s seven defense mechanisms, what is denial? Give an example
Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities
Ex.: A partner denies evidence of his loved one’s affair
What is the most serious problem with Freud’s theory?
It offers after the fact explanations of any characteristic (smoking, a fear of horses, sexual orientation, etc) yet fails to predict such behaviors and traits.
