Personality I - Freud Flashcards
What is personality?
The unique pattern of enduring thoughts, feelings, and actions that characterize a person.
Personality research
Focuses on understanding the origins or causes of the similarities and differences among people in their patterns of thinking emotion and behaviour.
Recently, emphasis on measurement and assessment of personality
Four main approaches to personality
> Psychodynamic - Freud and others
> Trait - consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, actions forming an individual’s personality
> Social-cognitive - role of learning and cognition in shaping behaviour
> Humanistic - personality as a reflection of personal growth and search for meaning in life
Sigmund Freud (general)
> Trained as neurologist in late 19th C. In Vienna, Austria he treated patients who displayed ‘neurotic’ disorders (e.g. blind but through no physical cause).
> He came to believe that personalities, behaviour and behaviour disorders are determined by basic drives (instincts) and past psychological events
Sigmund Freud (approach)
Psychodynamic approach Idea that personality is like an iceberg - the tip clearly visible but the rest remains hidden.
He proposed that people are partly controlled by the subconscious part of their personality Interplay of various unconscious psychological processes determines thoughts, feelings, and behaviour
Freud’s main argument
That we all face the task of figuring out how to satisfy our basic urges (water, food, air, sex, aggression, etc.) and personality develops out of our struggle with this task.
Three major components of our personality
Id
Ego
Superego
Id
Unconscious part of personality with two kinds of ‘instincts’
> ‘Eros’ - life instincts, promote positive, constructive behaviour and reflect source of energy
> ‘Thantos’ - death instincts, responsible for aggression and destructiveness
Id operates on ‘pleasure principle’ - seeks out immediate satisfaction of both instincts regardless of society’s rules or feelings for others
Ego
Parents and teachers place restrictions on children’s Id impulses, so ego develops from Id.
Ego: responsible for finding ways to get what a person wants in the world.
Ego operates on ‘reality principle’, making compromises between Id’s demands for immediate satisfaction and the practical constraints imposed by the world
Superego
As children learn the rules and values of society, they tend to adopt them.
Internalising parental and cultural values produced the superego. It tells us what we should/should not be doing and makes us feel guilty for doing the latter
Psychodynamic conflicts
Inner turmoil among the three components
> Number, nature and outcome of these conflicts shape each individual’s personality.
Ego’s defence mechanisms (8)
Used to stop us becoming aware of Id’s socially unacceptable impulses or thoughts of violating Superego’s rules - so we don’t feel anxious/guilty.
Repression
Rationalization
Projection
Reaction formation
Sublimation
Displacement
Denial
Compensation
Psychosexual stages of personality development
Personality develops in childhood through psychosexual stages
Failing to resolve problems/conflicts at any stage leaves person fixated with area of pleasure associated at stage - which is shown in adult personality characteristics
Oral stage
Anal stage
Phallic stage
(Latency period
Genital stage)
Oral stage
1st year.
Mouth is centre of pleasure (eating, exploring, etc.)
Personality problems arise when oral needs are neglected or overindulged
Late weaning> overeating, child-like dependence
Early weaning ‘biting’ sarcasm
Anal stage
2nd year.
Toilet training clashes with instinctual pleasure in having bowel movements at will. Child’s ego develops to cope with parental demands for socially unacceptable behaviour
Toilet training starts too early/too harsh> preoccupation with neatness/cleanliness - becomes ‘anal’
Starts too late - disorganisation/impulsive symbolising expelling feces at will)
