Understanding Personality: The Freudian Perspective
Personality refers to an individual's unique behavioral traits, which can be categorized into specific traits like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Various theories, including Freud's psychoanalytic theory, attempt to explain personality by focusing on unconscious forces, childhood experiences, and coping mechanisms. Freud emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind and believed that human behavior is influenced by unconscious motives and conflicts related to sexual and aggressive impulses.
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Personality: refers to an individual s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits Used to explain 1)consistency in behavior and 2)distinctiveness of behavior
Personality trait: a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations Cattell concluded that personality can be described completely by measuring just 16 traits
McRae and Costa 1) O Openness to experience 2) C Conscientiousness 3) E Extraversion 4) A Agreeableness 5) N Neuroticism
Def: include all the diverse theories descended from the work of Sigmund Freud, which focus on unconscious mental forces
Attempts to explain personality, motivation, and psychological disorders by focusing on childhood experiences, on unconscious motives, and methods used to cope w/sexual and aggressive urges
3 parts: 1) Id: primitive, instinctive component; operates according to pleasure principle 2) Ego: decision-making component; operates according to the reality principle 3) Superego: moral component; incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong
Conscious: whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time Preconscious: material just beneath the surface of awareness that can be easily retrieved Unconscious: thoughts, memories, and desires that are well beneath the surface of conscious awareness but that nonetheless exert great influence on behavior
Freud: peoples lives are dominated by conflicts that center on sexual and aggressive impulses Sexual and aggressive desires are thwarted more often
Lingering conflicts can produce anxiety Worry about: 1) id going out of control and creating negative consequences or 2)superego out of control creating guilt about a real or imagined transgression
Def: largely unconscious reactions that protect a person from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety or guilt
Rationalization: creating false but plausible causes to justify unacceptable behavior Repression: keeping distressing thoughts and feelings buried in the unconscious Projection: attributing one s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another Displacement: diverting emotional feelings (anger) from original source to a substitute Reaction Formation: behaving opposite of what you feel Regression: reverting to immature behavior Identification: bolstering self-esteem by forming an imaginary or real alliance with some person or group
Def: developmental periods w/a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality Fixation: failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected
Oral stage: 1styear; erotic focus is the mouth Anal stage: 2nd year; erotic pleasure from bowel movements Phallic stage: c. age 4; erotic focus on the genital; self- stimulation
Latency stage: expanding social contacts beyond the immediate family Genital stage: refocus on genitals, channeled toward peers
Unconscious has 2 layers 1) Personal unconscious: repressed or forgotten material 2) Collective unconscious: a storehouse of latent memory traces inherited from people s ancestral past
People share an unconscious Archetypes: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning
1stto describe Introverts: preoccupied w/the internal world of their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences Extraverts: interested in external world of people and things
Striving for superiority: a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life s challenges Compensation: involves efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one s abilities
Excessive feelings of inferiority leads to an inferiority complex People overcompensate and pursue status and power over others
Unconscious forces can influence behavior Internal conflict often plays a key role in generating psychological distress Early childhood experiences can have powerful influences on adult personality People do use defense mechanisms to reduce unpleasant emotions
Criticisms: Poor testability ideas too vague to test Inadequate evidence Sexism a bias against women exists
