Personality & Abnormal Psychology: Psychodynamic Flashcards
Psychodynamic/ Psychoanalytic Theories
A branch of personality theories that focuses on the existence of unconscious internal states that motivate the overt actions of individual and thus their personalities.
Sigmund Freud
A psychodynamic theorist who theorized a structural dynamic model for psychodynamic personality.
Major Systems of Freud’s model
Id
Ego
Superego
Id
The source of psychic energy whose primary function is to relieve any psychic tension, real or unreal.
Pleasure Principle
The primary aim of the Id where any psychic tension is discharged.
Wish Fulfillment
The satisfaction of a desire or need through a dream or fantasy.
Ego
The mediator between Id and reality. It operates on the reality principle.
Reality Principle
The primary aim of the ego where the pleasure principle is postponed until the actual object that will satisfy the need has been discovered or produced.
Superego
The moral branch of personality that strives for perfection by balancing the conscience and the ego-ideal.
Conscience
It provides the rules and norms about what constitutes a bad behavior.
Ego-Ideal
It provides the rules for good and appropriate behavior.
Instinct
An innate psychological representation (wish) of a bodily (biological) excitation (need)
Libido
The energy by which life instincts perform rotted in sexual drive.
Defense Mechanism
Ego’s way of unconsciously, releasing excessive pressure due to anxiety with the goal of denying, falsifying, or distorting reality
Main Defense Mechaism
- Repression
- Suppression
- Projection
- Reaction Formulation
- Rationalization
- Regression
- Sublimation
- Displacement
Carl Jung
A psychoanalytical theorist who emphasized interpersonal, sociological and cultural influences.
Main Components of Jung’s theory
Conscious
Personal Unconscious
Collective Unconscious
Jung’s Conscious
Equivalent to Freud’s Ego
Jung’s Personal Unconscious
Equivalent to Freud’s Unconscious
Jung’s Collective Unconscious
A powerful system that is shared among humans and depicts experiences by our ancestors (ei. having a mother and father)
Archetypes
A thought or image that has an emotional element.
Different Essence of Archetypes
Persona
Anima + Animus
Shadow
Self
Persona
A mask that a person adopts in response to social demands. It originates from the concept that social riles have a useful purpose.
Anima + Animus
The distinction between female and male behaviors.
Shadow
The animal instincts that represents wildness and chaos
Self
The unification of conscious and unconscious.
jung’s Types of Personalities
Extroversion
Introversion
Both are present but one is more dominant in their different areas.
Extroversion
An orientation toward the external, objective work.
Introversion
An orientation toward the inner, subjective world.
Different Psychological Functions
Thinking
Feeling
Sensing
Intuiting
Alfred Adler
A psychoanalytical theorist who focused on the impact of social imperatives on the unconscious. He felt that a person’s drive for superiority drives the personality.
Inferiority Complex
An individual’s sense of incompleteness and sense of imperfection
Creative Self
A notion from Adler’s theory where an individual shapes his or her uniqueness and makes his or her own personality.
Style of Life
A notion from Adler’s theory where the manifestation of the creative self describes a person’s unique way of achieving superiority.
Fictional Finalism
The notion from Adler’s theory where an individual is motivated more by his or her expectations of the future than by past experiences.
Freud’s Main Principle
Behavior is motivated by inborn instincts
Jung’s Main Principle
Behavior is governed by inborn archetypes
Adler’s Main Principle
Behavior is motivated by striving for superiority
Karen Horney
A psychoanalytical theorist who studied neurosis
Theory on Neurotic Personality
Karen Horney’s theory that neurotic personality is governed by one of ten needs and each of these needs are directed towards making life and interactions bearable.
Horney’s 3 strategies
- Moving towards people to obtain the good will of people who provide security.
- Moving against people, or fighting them to obtain the upper hand
- Moving away or withdrawing from people
Horney’s theory on personality
She believed that healthy people used her 3 strategies and that difficulty with these will carry through adulthood.
Anna Freud
The founder of ego psychology
Ego Psychology
The study of the relationship between conscious ego and the world, or the unconscious or the superego.
Erik Erikson
A ego psychologist who expanded Freud’s stages to cover the entire lifespan.
Object Relations Theory
The study of the creation and development of the internalized objects in young children. The “object” is the symbolic representation of the significant part of a young child’s personality.
Object Relations Theorists
- Melanie Klein
- D.W Winnicott
- Margaret Mahler
- Otto Kernberg
Psychoanalysis
A type of psychotherapy that was developed by Sigmund Freud. A long-term treatment used to uncover repressed memories, motives, and conflicts stemming from problems in psychosexual development.
Hypnosis
The original method in Freud’s development of psychoanalysis.
Free Association
A method of Freud’s psychoanalysis. The client says whatever comes to their conscious mind regardless of how personal, painful or seemingly irrelevant it may be. Together, they recreate the client’s original conflict.
Dream Interpretation
Freud believed that a person’s defenses are down during dream state thus leading to understanding a person’s unconscious conflict.
Resistance
An unwillingness to relate to certain thoughts, motives or experiences.
Transference
Attributing to the therapist attitudes and feelings that developed in the patrient’s relations with significant others in the past. Through transference, an analyst can recreate the experience.
Countertransference
When a therapist has their own emotional reaction to the client’s original transference.
Neo-Freudian Approaches
A modified version of Freud’s psychoanalysis approach so as to emphasize current interpersonal relationships and life situations.
