Unit 10 Personality

Question 1

Free association

Answer 1

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

Question 2

Psychoanalysis

Answer 2

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts

Question 3

Unconscious

Answer 3

A reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we’re unaware

Question 4

id

Answer 4

A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure rather than pain.

Question 5

ego

Answer 5

The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

Question 6

Superego

Answer 6

The part of personality that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations

Question 7

What are Freuds psychosexual stages?

Answer 7

The childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

Question 8

Oedipus complex

Answer 8

According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

Question 9

Identification

Answer 9

The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos

Question 10

Fixation

Answer 10

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved

Question 11

Defense mechanisms

Answer 11

The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Question 12

Repression

Answer 12

The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

Question 13

Regression

Answer 13

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated

Question 14

Reaction formation

Answer 14

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. This, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

Question 15

Projection

Answer 15

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others

Question 16

Rationalization

Answer 16

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions