Transcript Document 7206252

The Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Module 44
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Personality
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
 Exploring the Unconscious
 The Neo-Freudian and
Psychodynamic Theories
 Assessing Unconscious Processes
 Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
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Personality
An individual’s characteristic pattern of
thinking, feeling, and acting.
Each dwarf has a distinct personality.
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Psychodynamic Perspective
Freud encountered
patients suffering from
nervous disorders
whose complaints
could not be explained
in terms of purely
physical causes.
Culver Pictures
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
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Personality
• Freud proposed that excessive anxiety might be
due to:
• Lack of sexual gratification
• Masturbation (all of his patients who
suffered from nervous exhaustion had
masturbated!)
• Traumatic sexual experiences from early
childhood
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Personality
“Seduction hypothesis” – based on
supposed sexual abuse in childhood
from patients’ dream reports, slips of
the tongue, and other indirect
evidence.
– Some patients had no recollections of
such events, but Freud still believed this
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Personality
– Freud abandoned the seduction
hypothesis, claiming that his patients
had “misled” him
– He then claimed that his patients had
sexual fantasies as young children and
had guilt over those fantasies.
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Exploring the Unconscious
A reservoir (unconscious mind) of mostly
unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and
memories. Freud asked patients to say whatever
came to their mind (free association) to tap the
unconscious.
http://www.english.upenn.edu
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Dream Analysis
Another method to analyze the unconscious
mind is through interpreting the manifest and
latent contents of dreams.
The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791)
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Psychoanalysis
The process of free
association (chain of
thoughts) led to painful,
embarrassing
unconscious memories.
Once these memories
were retrieved and
released (treatment:
psychoanalysis) the
patient felt better.
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Id, Ego and Superego
Id unconsciously strives to satisfy
basic sexual and aggressive drives
operating on the pleasure principle,
demanding immediate
gratification.
Superego provides standards for
judgment (the conscience) and for
future aspirations.
Largely conscious, ego functions as the
“executive” and mediates the demands of id
and superego.
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Model of Mind
The mind is like an iceberg. Mostly hidden and
below the surface lies the unconscious mind.
The preconscious, stores temporary memories.
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Personality Structure
Personality develops as a result of our efforts to
resolve conflicts between our biological impulses
(id) and social restraints (superego).
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 Defense Mechanisms
 the ego’s protective methods of reducing
anxiety by unconsciously distorting
reality
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The ego, or “rational I,” has numerous ways of
defending itself against anxiety
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Defense Mechanisms
Ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by
unconsciously distorting reality.
1. Repression banishes anxiety-arousing
thoughts, feelings, and memories from
consciousness.
2. Regression leads an individual faced with
anxiety to retreat to a more infantile
psychosexual stage.
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Defense Mechanisms
3. Reaction Formation causes the ego to
unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses
into their opposites.
“The lady doth protest too much, me thinks.”
-- (W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III Scene ii)
4. Projection leads people to disguise their
own threatening impulses by attributing
them to others.
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Defense Mechanisms
5. Rationalization offers self-justifying
explanations in place of the real, more
threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s
actions.
6. Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive
impulses toward a more acceptable or less
threatening object or persons… redirecting
anger toward a safer outlet.
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Concept Check:
Name that defense mechanism!
Your ex-spouse, who cheated on you,
writes a best-selling non-fiction book
arguing that human beings are not
naturally monogamous and have an
instinctive need for multiple partners.
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Concept Check:
Name that defense mechanism!
You are in love with your best friend’s new
flame. The friendship is an old one and
very valuable to you. You tell everybody
that your friend’s new love interest is a
terrible human being and you don’t
understand the attraction at all.
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Concept Check:
Name that defense mechanism!
Your boss yells at you. You come home
and yell at your spouse. Your spouse yells
at your child. Your child goes out to the
yard and yells at the dog.
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Freud also developed a framework to explain the
development of personality
Psychosexual Stages
the childhood stages of development during which
the id’s pleasure-seeking energies (libido) focus on
distinct erogenous zones
Fixation
a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an
earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were
unresolved
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Stages of Personality Development
• Oral stage - first year of life in which the
mouth is the erogenous zone and
weaning is the primary conflict. Id
dominated.
Menu
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• Anal stage - second stage - about 2
years of age, the anus is the
erogenous zone and toilet training is
the source of conflict. Ego develops.
– Anal expulsive personality - a person
fixated in the anal stage who is messy,
destructive, and hostile.
– Anal retentive personality - a person
fixated in the anal stage who is neat,
fussy, stingy, and stubborn.
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Freud’s Theory: Stages of
Personality Development
• Phallic stage - third stage occurring
from about 3 to 6 years of age, in
which the child discovers sexual
feelings. Superego develops.
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Oedipus Complex
A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and
feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival
father. Also Electra complex for the girl’s desire
for the father.
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Identification
From the K. Vandervelde private collection
Through identification
their superego gains
strength incorporating
parents’ values.
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Freud’s Theory: Stages of
Personality Development
• Latency - fourth stage occurring during
the school years, in which the sexual
feelings of the child are repressed while
the child develops in other ways.
• Genital – sexual feelings reawaken with
appropriate targets.
Menu
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When a student asked him what was the
significance of his cigar, Freud replied “sometimes
a cigar is just a cigar.”
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The Neo-Freudians
Archetypes - powerful,
emotionally charged,
universal images or
concepts
Archive of the History of American Psychology/ University of Akron
Jung believed in the
collective unconscious
which contained a
common reservoir of
images derived from our
species’ past.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
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Jung’s archetypes
Other popular Jungian archetypes and examples from
our culture are:
• “The hero” – as seen in figures like Batman, Luke
Skywalker, Neo, Beowulf, Jesus;
• “The Warrior” – as seen in historical figures such
as Gladiators, samurai, Ninja, Vikings, and Knights;
• “The Trickster” – as seen in figures such as: Bugs
Bunny, The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin), the devil, and
Bart Simpson;
• “The Wise Old Man” – as seen in popular figures
such as Merlin, Yoda, Gandalf, Chef from South
Park, The Owl from Winnie the Pooh, and
Dumbledore from Harry Potter;
• “The Anima” – as seen in the PlayStation2 video
game Final Fantasy X, Rush’s song “Animate” from
the album Counterparts, and Joni Mitchell’s song
“Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow”.
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The Neo-Freudians
National Library of Medicine
Like Freud, Adler
believed in social
childhood tensions. A
child struggles with
the inferiority
complex during
growth and strives for
superiority and
power.
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
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The Neo-Freudians
Like Adler, Horney
believed in the social
aspects of childhood
growth and
development.
The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
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Assessing Unconscious Processes
Evaluating personality from an unconscious
mind perspective would require a psychological
instrument (projective tests) that would reveal
the hidden unconscious mind.
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Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT)
Developed by Henry Murray, TAT is a projective
test in which people express their inner feelings
and interests through the stories they make up
about ambiguous scenes.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
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Rorschach Inkblot Test
10 inkblots - designed by Hermann Rorschach.
It seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by
analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
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Projective Tests: Criticisms
Critics argue that projective test lack both
reliability (consistency of results) and validity
(predicting what it is supposed to).
1. Even trained raters evaluating the same
patient come up with different
interpretations (reliability).
2. And projective tests may misdiagnose a
normal individual as pathological (validity).
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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Modern Research
1. Personality develops throughout life and is
not fixed in childhood.
2. Freud underemphasized peer influence on
the individual which may be as powerful as
parental influence.
3. Gender identity may develop before 5-6
years of age.
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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Modern Research
4. There may be other reasons for dreams to
arise than wish fulfillment.
5. Verbal slips can be explained on basis of
cognitive processing of verbal choices.
6. Suppressed sexuality leads to psychological
disorders. Sexual inhibition has decreased,
but psychological disorders have not.
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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Freud's psychoanalytic theory rests on
repression of painful experiences into the
unconscious mind.
Majority of children, death camp survivors,
battle-scared veterans are unable to repress
painful experiences into their unconscious
mind.
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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Freud was right about the unconscious mind (but not
the way he explained it). Modern research shows the
existence of non-conscious information processing.
1.
Schemas that automatically control perceptions and
interpretations.
2.
Parallel processing during vision and thinking.
3.
Implicit memories.
4.
Emotions activate instantly without consciousness.
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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Freud’s theory has been criticized on scientific
merits. Psychoanalysis is basically untestable.
Most of its concepts arise out of clinical practice
which are after-the-fact explanations.
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