Unit 10 Flashcards
Personality
An individual’s characteristics pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Psychodynamic theories
Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experience
Psychoanalysis
Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
Unconscious
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware
Free association
In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious where a person relaxes and says the first thing that comes to mind
id
Reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Demands immediate gratification
Ego
Largely conscious “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
Superego
Part of personality that represents internalized ideals (our conscience/moral compass)
Psychosexual stages
Childhood stages of development when id’s pleasure - seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
(Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)
Oral stage
0-18 months, pleasure sensors on mouth —> sucking, biting, chewing
Anal stage
Pleasure focuses on bowel & bladder elimination; coping with demands for control
18-36 months
Phallic stage
3-6 years, pleasure zone is the genitals, coping with incestuous sexual feelings
Latency stage
6-puberty, a phase of dormant sexual feelings
Genital stage
Puberty on, maturation of sexual interests
Oedipus (ED-un-puss) complex
A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and jealousy for the “rival” father
Electra complex
A girl’s sexual attraction toward her father & jealousy toward her mother
Identification
Process by which children incorporate their parent’s values into their developing superegos
Fixation
A lingering focus of pleasure - seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage where conflicts were unresolved
Defense mechanisms
The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Repression
Defense mechanism that unconsciously banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
Regression
Retreating to an earlier psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated on
Reaction formation
Acting in the opposite way