Week 3 Flashcards
Explain how we are prisoners of our unconscious
We can’t be blamed or held responsible for our behaviours or attitudes as they have been shaped by time and relationships that we have no control over.
How has the influence of a century of psychoanalytic thought shaped our culture?
It has created a self-centred, narcissistic culture that seeks therapy and cure for what are basic elements of human experience.
3 physical structures of psyche
- ID.
- ego.
- superego
Id
Childlike, deviant.
Ego (2)
Negotiates between id and superego.
Social citizen responding and acting in the world.
Superego
Moral authority, conscience, shrieking internal parent figure, judgement, impossible to live up to.
Eros/Libido (3)
- Pleasure drive; ‘libidinal reservoir’ - murky lake of desires and sexual needs.
- narcissistic.
- establish and maintain unities.
Thanatos (3)
- Our desire to see the world burn, would rather die than spend another minute in it.
- dissolve connections and thus destroy or consume things.
- ultimate aim is to convert living into dead.
Defence mechanisms
The ways we protect ourselves by ‘spinning out intricate symbolic cobwebs’.
What are the 5 stages of psychosexual development?
- Oral.
- Anal.
- Phallic.
- Latency.
- Genital.
Oral stage (4)
- 0 -1 years.
- pleasure centred around mouth - stems from breastfeeding.
- id centred stage of development.
- stunted at oral age - prefer oral sex.
Anal stage (5)
- 1 - 3 years.
- Pleasure centred around anal region.
- Toilet training - gain control over bowel movements.
- aggressive parents approach = prim, proper, cheap, neat people.
- liberal approach = progressive, tolerant, left wing people.
Phallic stage (4)
- 4 - 6 years.
- pleasure around genitals.
- Oedipus and Electra complexes.
- always have some unresolved conflict from this stage.
Oedipus and Electra complexes
A desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a consequent sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex.
Electra = girls.
Latency stage (3)
- 7 - 11 years.
- period of sexual dormancy - develop non-sexual relations/friends.
- Oedipus/Electra conflicts are sunk into consciousness.
Genital stage
- 12 - 18 years.
- Puberty to adulthood; a new focus on genitals as biological maturity nears.
- mature relationships, love and sex.
Herbert Marcuses thoughts on psychonanalytic concepts
All psychoanalytic concepts suggest that the external (cultural, social, political, economic, historical contexts) changes and shapes the internal (the physical): drives are malleable.
Herbert Marcuses two principles
- The pleasure principle.
2. The reality principle.
The pleasure principle (4)
- immediate satisfaction.
- pleasure.
- joy (play).
- receptiveness.
- absence of repression.
The reality principle (5)
- delayed satisfaction.
- restraint of pleasure.
- toil (work).
- productiveness.
- security.
Freud - what does the unconscious consist of?
Repressed desires ‘forgotten’ by the self.
‘Self is barred access to …
Unconscious forms of knowing, thinking and feeling through acts of repression.’
What does the unconscious explain in terms of public life?
Why our personal/public life is filled with anxiety, conflict and tension.
Are culture/civilisation, superego/authority forces of repression?
Yes!
2 characteristics of unconscious
- Wholly pleasure seeking.
2. Radically indifferent to reality, logic, contradiction, time.
What does it mean the the unconscious is indifferent to contradiction?
That beliefs, desires, wishes and impulses exist in the unconscious without contradiction - one can simultaneously love and hate parents, desire and loathe siblings, accept and reject friends.
Christopher Lasch - what does the narcissist depend on?
Others to validate self-esteem.
Are narcissists normally extroverted or introverted?
Extroverted.
How can the insecurity of a narcissist be overcome?
By seeing ‘his grandiose self’ reflected in the attention of others.
