Theories of Personality
Freud
Chapter 2
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© 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Outline
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Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
Biography of Freud
Levels of Mental Life
Provinces of Mind
Dynamics of Personality
Defense Mechanisms
Cont’d
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Outline
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Stages of Development
Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
Related Research
Critique of Freud
Concept of Humanity
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Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
• What Made This Theory Interesting
– Cornerstones: Sex and aggression
– Spread by a dedicated group
– Brilliant language (Goethe Prize in Literature)
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Biography of Freud
• Born in Freiberg Moravia (now the Czech
Republic) in 1856
• Spent most of life (80 years) in Vienna
Austria
• Was the eldest son of eight
• Studied Medicine, specializing in
psychiatry; interested in science
• Studied hysteria with Charcot & Breuer
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Biography (cont’d)
• Studies on Hysteria (1895)
• Abandoned seduction theory in 1897 and
replaced it with Oedipus Complex
• In 1900 wrote Interpretation of Dreams
• After 1900 developed international circle of
followers (Adler, Jung, and others)
• Was driven out of Austria by Nazis in 1938
• Died in London in 1939
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Level of Mental Life
• Unconscious
– Beyond awareness
• Includes drives, urges, or instincts
• Is known only indirectly
– Two sources of unconscious processes
• Repression
• Phylogenetic Endowment
• Preconscious
– Not in conscious awareness, but can be
• Conscious
– Mental life that is directly available, plays a minor role
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Provinces of the Mind
• The Id
– Pleasure Principle
– Primary Process
• The Ego
– The Reality Principle
– Secondary Process
• The Superego
– The Idealistic Principle
– Conscience
– Ego-Ideal
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Dynamics of Personality
• Drives
– Libido or Sex Drive
– Thanatos or Aggression/Destructive Drive
• Anxiety
– Neurotic Anxiety
– Moral Anxiety
– Realistic Anxiety
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Defense Mechanisms
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Repression
Reaction Formation
Displacement
Fixation
Regression
Projection
Introjection
Sublimation
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Stages of Development
• Infantile Period (Birth-5)
– Oral Phase
– Anal Phase
– Phallic Phase
• Male Oedipus Complex
– Castration Complex
• Female Oedipus Complex (Electra)
– Penis Envy
• Latency Period (5-puberty)
• Genital Period (puberty-adulthood)
• Maturity
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Applications of
Psychoanalytic Theory
• Free Association
– Transference
– Resistance
• Dream Analysis
– Manifest and latent content
• Freudian or Unconscious Slips (Parapraxes)
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Related Research
• Unconscious Mental Processing
– Automatic, implicit, nonconscious processing
• Inhibition and the Ego
– Limbic system
• Defense Mechanisms
– Neuropsychological underpinnings of repression
• Research on Dreams
– Activation-synthesis theory
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Critique of Freud
• Did Freud Understand Women?
• Was Freud a Scientist?
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Theories are difficult to test
Generated considerable research
Difficult to falsify
Very loose organizational framework
Not a good guide to solve practical problems
Internally consistent theory
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Freud’s Concept of Humanity
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Deterministic and Pessimistic
Causality over Teleology
Unconscious over Conscious
Biology over Culture
Equal emphasis on Uniqueness and
Similarity
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