Transcript The Freudian Theory of Personality

Mohit Puri ,
Ph.D . Education Course Work 2010-2011,
Roll No. 9054
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Conscious – contains the thoughts you are
currently aware of.
Preconscious – large body of retrievable
information.
Unconscious – the material that we have no
immediate access to.
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Id – present at birth; selfish part of you,
concerned with satisfying your desires.
 Pleasure principle – only concerned with what brings
immediate personal satisfaction regardless of physical
or social implications.
 Id impulses tend to be socially unacceptable.
 Wish-fulfillment – used to satisfy needs that cannot
immediately be met; can imagine, which temporarily
satisfies the need.
 Completely buried in the unconscious.
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Ego – develops during the first two years of
life; primary job is to satisfy the id impulses
in an appropriate manner by taking
consequences into consideration.
 Reduces tension.
 Moves freely among the conscious, preconscious, and
unconscious parts of the mind.
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Superego – develops by the time the child is 5
years old; represents society’s and parent’s
values and standards.
Conscience – right and wrong.
◦ Can be weak – little inward restraint.
◦ Super moral – impossible ideals of perfection.
 Moral anxiety – ever-present feeling of shame or guilt.
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Libido – the life or sexual instinct.
 Sexually motivated behaviors not only include those
with blatant erotic content, but every action aimed at
receiving pleasure.
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Thanatos – death or aggressive instinct.
 The unconscious desire we all have to die and return to
the earth.
 Death instinct is turned outward and expressed as
aggression toward others.
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The ego’s way of dealing with unwanted
thoughts and desires; wants to resolve
tension.
 Repression – active effort of the ego to push threatening
material out of consciousness or to keep such material
from ever reaching consciousness. This is a constant,
active process.
 Sublimation – the ego channels threatening unconscious
impulses into socially acceptable actions.
 Ex: Aggressive id impulses are channeled into competitive
sports.
 Displacement – involves channeling our impulses to nonthreatening objects; do not lead to social rewards.
 Ex: If someone is angry at the boss, he or she may take that
anger out on the children at home.
 Denial – refusing to accept that certain facts exist;
insisting that something is not true.
 Reaction Formation – hiding from a threatening
unconscious idea or urge by acting in a manner opposite
to our unconscious desires.
 Ex: People obsessed with religious values.
 Intellectualization – ego handles threatening material
by removing the emotional content from the thought
before allowing it into awareness; by considering
something strictly intellectual, previously difficult
thoughts are allowed into awareness without anxiety.
 Projection – attributing an unconscious impulse to
other people instead of ourselves; we free ourselves
from the perception that we are the only ones that
have that thought.
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Its goal is to bring crucial unconscious
material into consciousness, where it can be
examined in a rational manner.
Ways to bring material into consciousness:
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Dreams
Projective tests
Free association
Freudian slips
Hypnosis
Accidents
Symbolic behavior
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Strengths:
◦ Freud developed the first comprehensive theory of
personality.
◦ Many personality theorists have deemed it
necessary to point out where their theories differ
from or correct weaknesses in Freud’s works.
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Criticisms:
◦ Many Freudian ideas appear in the literature that
predates Freud’s work.
◦ Many of his hypotheses are not testable.
◦ Freud relied heavily on case study data for evidence
which was extremely biased.
◦ Many of Freud’s followers broke away from the group
because Freud refused to take into account the
experiences that happened after 6 years of age and
how they may influence personality.