Personality and Stages of Development

March 12/13

Quiz #13

• 1. According to the _________________ Approach, people are born with certain biological drives such as aggression, sex, and the need for superiority.
• 2. This psychologist believed that many of our deepest thoughts, fears, and urges remain out of our awareness.
• 3. According to Freud, what are the three basic psychological structures?
• BONUS:
• 4. Why is psychoanalysis called a “talking cure?”
• 5. _________ __________ are methods the ego uses to avoid recognizing ideas or emotions that may cause personal anxiety.

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Psychoanalytical

Id, Ego, Superego

Freud

Articulating our thoughts helps us deal with our unconscious problems

Defense Mechanisms

Psychoanalytical Approach

• ALL people (even most well-adjusted) have inner struggles
• We are born with basic drives: aggression, sex, need for superiority
• These drives may conflict with laws, social norms, and moral codes

Freud

• Father of this theory
• Observed people and found that some lost feeling in a hand or became paralyzed when nothing was medically wrong
• Found many had things that were making them angry or anxious but refused to acknowledge their emotional problems

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Free Association

• Please find someone in the room that you are comfortable with (or just turn to a neighbor)

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• For the next two minutes, talk to that person about about anything that pops into your mind

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• Switch

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Psychoanalysis

• One way Freud explored the unconscious
• People are encouraged to talk about anything that pops into their minds
• Those who had lost feeling or become paralyzed regained their function during these exercises
• Called the “talking cure”

Dream Analysis

• We experience the unconscious through dreams

• Better access to the unconscious
• Eventually abandoned this practice

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Hypnosis

Three Basic Psychological Structures

Id

• “I want what I want, and I want it now”
• Represents basic drives such as hunger
• Demands pleasure through instant gratification
• Does not care about laws, norms, or needs of others
• Pleasure Principle: urge for an immediate release of energy or emotion that will bring personal gratification
• Present at birth

Ego

• Develops because demands for instant gratification cannot be met or meeting those will be harmful
• “Stands for reason and good sense”
• Reality Principle: understanding that in the real world we cannot always get what we want
• Wants to satisfy id in ways that are consistent with reality and will repress improper impulses of the id (censor)
• Ex.: Id tells you you’re hungry and ego tells you that certain ways of satisfying that are more appropriate than others (cooking something as opposed to eating it raw)

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Superego

• Develops throughout early childhood
• Moral Principle: by incorporating standards and values of parents and society, superego provides our moral sense
• Acts as the conscience → will fill ego with feelings of guilt and shame when we think or do something society deems as “wrong”

• Ego has it rough- caught between conflicting messages from the id and superego and must compromise between the two

• Ex.: Studying

Defense Mechanisms

• Methods the ego uses to avoid recognizing ideas or emotions that may cause personal anxiety
• Operate unconsciously

Repression

• Removes anxiety-causing ideas from conscious awareness
• How successful is this?

Rationalization

• Protect us from unacceptable ideas by distorting them
• Rationalization = self-deception to justify unacceptable behavior or ideas
• Cheating

Displacement

• Transfer of an idea or impulse from a threatening object to a less threatening object
• Bullies

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Regression

• When under a lot of stress, we will return to behavior that is characteristic of an earlier stage of development
• We will act like children again

Projection

• We deal with unacceptable impulses by projecting them on others
• People see their own faults in others

Reaction Formation

• Act contrary to genuine feelings in order to keep true feelings hidden
• Example: if you are angry with someone you may act super nice to them or you may punch the person you like

Denial

• Refuse to accept the reality of anything that is bad or upsetting

Sublimation

• We can channel our basic impulses into socially acceptable behavior
• Hostile person can channel aggressive impulses into contact sports

Effects

• WHEN USED IN MODERATION, defense mechanisms are normal and healthy
• They become DANGEROUS when they lead us to ignore underlying issues

Stages of Development

• 1. Oral
• 2. Anal
• 3. Phallic
• 4. Latent
• 5. Genital
• Being at birth and continue through adolescence
• Children encounter conflicts at each stage

Divide Stages

• Each row will have a stage
• Each person will write one thing about that stage on the board

Carl Jung

• Added onto a lot of Freud’s ideas.
• Collective Unconscious: a store of human concepts shared by all people across all cultures.
• Archetypes: ideas and images of the accumulated experience of all human beings.
• Ex: young hero, fertile mother, wise old man, hostile brother, fairy godmothers, wicked witches, themes of rebirth or resurrection.

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Alfred Adler

• Inferiority complex: may be physical, mental, sexual
• Coined the term “sibling rivalry”
• Creative-self: self-aware and strives to overcome obstacles.

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Karen Horney

• Greatest influences on personality are social relationships
• Parent-child relationship is incredibly important
• When parents are harsh or neglectful, children will experience insecurity, basic anxiety
• Hostility created by the anxiety, turned into regression for fear that they will drive their parents away

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Erik Erikson

• Eight stages includes the changing concerns of adulthood