Psychology of Personality

CPS 212

LECTURE -5-
Fundamental assumptions of psychoanalytic theory
 Fundamental assumptions of psychoanalytic theory
 Freud’s first solo-authored book, The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900.

 Basic Instincts: Sex and Aggression

What was the basic source of psychic energy? Freud believed that there were strong innate forces that
provided all the energy in the psychic system. He called these forces instincts. Freud’s original theory
of instincts was profoundly influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin had published his
book on evolution just a few years after Freud was born. In Freud’ s initial formulation, there were
two fundamental categories of instincts: self-preservation instincts and sexual instincts. Curiously,
these corresponded exactly to two major components of Darwin’s theory of natural selection:
selection by survival and selection by reproduction. Thus, Freud’ s initial classification of instincts
could have been borrowed from Darwin’s two forms of evolution by selection (Ritvo, 1990).
 The two instincts were usually referred to as libido for the life instinct and thanatos
for the death instinct. Although the libido was generally considered sexual, Freud
also used this term to refer to any need-satisfying, life-sustaining, or pleasure-
oriented urge.

 Similarly, thanatos was considered to be the death instinct, but Freud used this term
in a broad sense to refer to any urge to destroy, harm, or aggress against others or
oneself. Freud wrote more about the libido early in his career, when this issue was
perhaps relevant to his own life. Later in his career, Freud wrote more about
thanatos, when he faced his own impending death.
Psychoanalytic Approaches to
personality
 Unconscious
 The conscious mind is the part that contains all the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that you are
presently aware of. Whatever you are currently perceiving or thinking about is in your conscious
mind. These thoughts represent only a small fraction of the information available to you.

 The preconscious mind is any piece of information that you are not presently thinking about, but that
could easily be retrieved and made conscious, is found in the preconscious mind.

 The unconscious is the third and, according to Freud, largest part of the human mind. The metaphor
of an iceberg is often used to describe the topography of the mind. The part of the ice-berg above the
water represents the conscious mind. The part that you can see just below the water surface is the
preconscious mind. And the part of the iceberg totally hidden from view (the vast majority of it)
represents the unconscious mind.
Structure of personality
 Id
 Freud saw the id as something we are born with and as the source of all drives.

 According to Freud, the id operates according to the pleasure principle, which is the desire for
immediate gratification. The id cannot tolerate any delays in satisfying its urges.

 During infancy, the id dominates. When an infant sees an attractive toy, it will reach for the toy
and will cry and fuss (make a noise) if it can not get it. Infants can sometimes appear unreasonable
in their demands. Because the id operates according to the pleasure principle, it does not listen to
reason, does not follow logic, has no values or morals (other than immediate gratification), and
have very little patience.
 Id
 The id also operates with primary process thinking, which is thinking without
logical rules of conscious thought in reality.

 Dreams and fantasies are examples of primary process thinking. Although primary
process thought does not follow the normal rules of reality (e.g., in dreams, people
fly and walk through walls) Freud believed that there were principles at work in
primary process thought and that these principles could be discovered.
 Ego
 The ego is the plumber who works to redirect the pressure produced by the id instincts into
acceptable or at least less problematic outlets. The ego is the part of the mind that constrains the id to
reality. According to Freud, it develops within the first two or three years of life (after the “terrible
2s”).

 The ego operates according to the reality principle. The ego understands that the urges of the id are
often in conflict with social and physical reality. A child cannot just grab a candy bar of f the shelf at
the grocery store or hit his sister whenever she makes him angry. Although such acts might reduce
immediate tension in the child, they conflict with society s and parents’ rules about stealing and
beating up little sisters. The ego understands that such actions can lead to problems and that direct
expression of id impulses must therefore be avoided, redirected, or postponed.
 Superego: Upholder of Societal Values and Ideals
 Around the age of 5, a child begins to develop the third part of the mind, which Freud called
the superego.

 The superego is the part of the mind that internalizes the values, morals, and ideals of society.
Usually, these are instilled/implanted into the child by society’ s various socializing agents,
such as parents, schools, and organized religions.

 Freud emphasized the role of parents in particular in children’s development of self-control and
conscience, suggesting that the development of the superego was closely linked to a child’s
identification with his or her parents to return to the plumbing metaphor, the superego is the
plumber who wants to keep the regulators closed all the time and even wants to add more
regulators to keep the pressure under control.
 Superego: Upholder of Societal Values and Ideals
 The superego is the part of personality that makes us feel guilty, ashamed, or
embarrassed when we do something “wrong” and makes us feel pride when we do
something “right.”

 The superego determines what is right and what is wrong: it sets moral goals and
ideals of perfection and, so, is the source of our judgments that some things are good
and some are bad. It is what some people refer to as conscience. The main tool of
the superego in enforcing right and wrong is the emotion of guilt.
Interaction of the Id, Ego, and Superego

 The three parts of the mind -id, ego, and superego- are in
constant/endless interaction.

 They have different goals, provoking internal conflicts within an

individual. Consequently, one part of a person can want one thing,
whereas another part wants something else.
 Types of Anxiety
 Freud identified three types of anxiety; objective, neurotic, and moral anxiety .
Objective anxiety is fear. Such anxiety occurs in response to a real, external threat to
the person.

 For example, being confronted by a large, aggressive-looking man with a knife while
taking a shortcut through an alley would elicit objective anxiety (fear) in most people.
In this case, the control of the ego is being threatened by an external factor, rather
than by an internal conflict. In the other two types of anxiety, the threat comes from
within.
 Neurotic anxiety
 The second type of anxiety, Neurotic Anxiety, occurs when there is a direct conflict
between the id and the ego.

 The danger is that the ego may lose control over an unacceptable desire of the id.

 For example, a woman who becomes anxious whenever she feels sexually attracted to
someone, who frights at even the thought of sexual arousal, is experiencing neurotic
anxiety. As another example, a man who worries excessively that he might burst out
an unacceptable thought or desire in public is also beset by neurotic anxiety.
 Moral Anxiety
 The third type of anxiety, Moral Anxiety, is caused by a conflict between the ego and the
superego.

 For example, a person who suffers from chronic shame or feelings of guilt over not living
up to “proper” standards, even though such standards might not be attainable, is
experiencing moral anxiety.

 A young woman with bulimia, an eating disorder, might run 3 miles and do 100 sit-ups in
order to make up for having eaten a “forbidden” food. People who punish themselves,
who have low self esteem, or who feel worthless and ashamed most of the time are most
likely suffering from moral anxiety, from an overly powerful superego, which constantly
challenges the person to live up to higher and higher expectations.
Defense Mechanisms
 Defense Mechanisms
Repression

Freud used the term repression to refer to the process of preventing unacceptable thoughts,
feelings, or urges from reaching conscious awareness.

Repression was the forerunner of all other forms of defense mechanisms. Repression is
defensive in the sense that, through it, a person avoids the anxiety that would arise if the
unacceptable material were made conscious.

From his clinical practice, Freud learned that people often tended to remember the pleasant
circumstances surrounding an event more easily than the unpleasant ones. He concluded that
unpleasant memories were often repressed.
 Defense Mechanisms
Denial

When the reality of a situation is extremely anxiety-provoking, a person may resort to the
defense mechanism of denial. In contrast to repression, which involves keeping an
experience out of memory, a person in denial insists that things are not the way they seem.
Denial involves refusing to see the facts.

Displacement

In displacement, a threatening or an unacceptable impulse is channeled or redirected from

its original source to a nonthreatening tar get.
 Defense Mechanisms
Rationalization

Another common defense mechanism, especially among educated persons, such as

college students, is rationalization. It involves generating accept- able reasons for
outcomes that might otherwise appear socially unacceptable. In rationalization, the goal is
to reduce anxiety by coming up with an explanation for an event that is easier to accept
than the real reason.

Reaction Formation

In an attempt to stifle the expression of an unacceptable urge, a person may continually

display a flurry of behavior that indicates the opposite impulse. Such a tactic is known as
reaction formation.
 Defense Mechanisms
Projection

Another type of defense mechanism, projection, is based on the notion that sometimes
we see in others the traits and desires we find most upsetting in our selves. We literally
“project” (i.e., attribute) our own unacceptable qualities onto others. We can then hate
them, instead of hating ourselves, for having those unacceptable qualities or desires.
At the same time, we can disparage the tendencies or characteristics in question
without admitting that we possess them.
 Defense Mechanisms
Sublimation

According to Freud, sublimation is the most adaptive defense mechanism. Sublimation

is the channeling of unacceptable sexual or aggressive instincts into socially desired
activities. A common example is going out to chop wood when you are angry rather
than acting on that anger or even engaging in other less adaptive defense mechanisms,
such as displacement. Watching football or boxing is more desirable than beating
someone up.
The Psychosexual Stage Theory

 If a child fails to fully resolve a conflict at a particular stage of development he

or she may get stuck in that stage, a phenomenon known as fixation Each
successive stage represents a more mature mode of obtaining sexual
gratification.

 If child is fixated at a particular stage, he or she exhibits a less mature approach

to obtaining sexual gratification.
 Oral Stage
 The first stage, which Freud called the oral stage, occurs during the initial 18 months after birth.
During this time, the main sources of pleasure and tension reduction are the mouth, lips, and
tongue.

 Adults who still obtain pleasure from “taking in,” especially through the mouth, might be fixated at
this stage (e.g., people who overeat or smoke). Problems with nail biting, thumb sucking, or pencil
chewing might also occur.

 At a psychological level, people who are fixated at the oral stage may be overly dependent: they
may want to be babied, to be nurtured and taken care of, and thus to have others make decisions for
them. Some psychoanalysts also believe that drug addiction (because it involves pleasure from
“taking in”) is a sign of oral fixation.
 Anal Stage
 The second stage of development is the anal stage, which typically occurs between the ages of 18
months and 3 years of age. At this stage, the anal sphincter is the source of sexual pleasure.
During this time, the child obtains pleasure from first expelling feces and then, during toilet
training, from retaining feces.

 At first the id desires immediate tension reduction whenever there is any pressure in the rectum.
This is achieved by defecating whenever and wherever the urge arises. Parents, however, work to
instill in the child a degree of self-control through the process of toilet training. Many conflicts
arise around this issue of the child s ability to achieve some self-control. Some children achieve
too little control and grow up to be sloppy and dirty. Other children have the opposite problem:
they develop too much self-control and begin to take pleasure in little acts of self-control.

 Adults who are compulsive, overly neat, rigid, and never messy are, according to psycho-
analysts, likely to be fixated at the anal stage.
Phallic Stage
 The third stage, which occurs between 3 and 5 years of age, is called the phallic stage,
because the child discovers that he has (or she discovers that she does not have) a penis. In
fact, the major event during this stage is children’ s discovery of their own genitals and the
realization that some pleasure can be derived from touching them. This is also the
awakening of sexual desire directed outward and, according to Freud, it is first directed
toward the parent of the opposite sex.

 The Oedipal conflict is the unconscious wish to have his mother all to himself by
eliminating the father. (Oedipus is a character in Greek mythology who unknowingly kills
his father and marries his mother).

 The Electra complex

 The Latency Stage
 This stage occurs from around the age of 6 until puberty. Little psychological
development is presumed to occur during this time. It is mainly a period when the
child is going to school and learning the skills and abilities necessary to take on the
role of an adult. Because of the lack of specific sexual conflicts during this time,
Freud believed that it was a period of psychological rest, or latency.

 Subsequent psychoanalysts have argued, instead, that much development occurs

during this time, such as learning to make decisions for oneself, learning to interact
and make friends with others, developing an identity, and learning the meaning of
work.
The genital stage
 This stage begins around puberty and lasts through one’ s adult life.
Here the libido is focused on the genitals.

 But not in the manner of self-manipulation associated with the phallic

stage.
The Psychosexual Stage Theory
 Techniques for Revealing the Unconscious
The goal of psychoanalysis is to make the unconscious conscious. Mental illness,

problems with living, and unexplained physical symptoms can all be viewed as the

result of unconscious conflicts.

 Free Association

If you were to relax, to sit back in a comfortable chair, to let your mind wander, and

then to say whatever came into your mind, you would be engaging in free association.
 Techniques for Revealing the Unconscious
 Dreams

Thinkers have always speculated about the meaning of dreams, and it has long been

thought that dreams are messages from deep regions of the mind that are not

accessible during waking life.

In 1900, Freud published his book The Interpretation of Dreams, in which he

presented his theory of the meaning and purpose of dreaming.

 Projective Techniques
 The idea that what a person sees in an ambiguous figure, such as an inkblot,
reflects his or her personality is called t projective hypothesis.

 People are thought to project their own personalities into what they report
seeing in an ambiguous stimulus.
 The Process of Psychoanalysis
 The patient must also come to understand the unconscious dynamics of his or her
situation. Toward this end, the psychoanalyst offers the patient interpretations of
the psychodynamic causes of the problems.

 The patient is confronted with an explanation of something she has been keeping
from herself. Through many interpretations, the patient is gradually led to an
understanding of the unconscious source of her problems. This is the beginning of
insight. Insight, in psychoanalysis, is more than a simple cognitive understanding
of the intrapsychic basis of one’s troubles, though this certainly is a part of insight.
Insight refers to an intense emotional experience that accompanies the release of
repressed material.
 The Process of Psychoanalysis
 The forces that have worked to repress the disturbing impulse or trauma now work
to resist the psychoanalytic process, in a stage of psychoanalysis called resistance.
As the patient’s defenses are threatened by the probing psychoanalyst, the patient
may unconsciously set up obstacles to progress.

 Another important step in most analyses is called transference. In this stage, the
patient begins reacting to the analyst as if he or she were an important figure from
the patient’s own life. The patient displaces past or present feelings toward
someone from his or her own life onto the analyst.