PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Defence Mechanisms
19 May 2018
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Freud’s classical psychoanalytic theory
Central elements of classical psychoanalytic theory
Motivation
• Born with innate biological drivers
• Empirical question - how many and what kind of drives
• e.g. hunger, thirst, sexual (protosexual, sensual, need for
sensual experiences)
• Each drive has an appetite and seeks gratification
• Gratifying drive - brings pleasure, drives operate according to
pleasure principle
• Cognitive ability works in association with drives during
development
• Some drives will/won't be gratified immediately
• Reality principle
• Tension between what you want and what you get
• Shapes personality
Infantile
dependence
• Individual physically dependent on others to look after them
• Relatively sophisticated minds
• Help determine nature of primary attachments to other -
quality and attitude toward them
• Leaves lasting mark on rest of our lives
Socialisation
• Parents rewarding some behaviour activated to gratify drives
and punishing other behaviour
• Depends on family and culture
• Reward of food sometimes used to stop child from engaging
in socially unacceptable protosexual activity
• Child learns from what parents tell them
• Physically and psychologically dependent
• Child learns to internalise parental values
• Incorporate parental values into own personality
Internal conflict
and repression
• Socially unacceptable drives have to be repressed, rendered
unconscious
• Structural features of the psyche
• ID - psychological structure, repressed material
• Ego - not repressed, sits at or just below level of
consciousness
• Superego - (4-6yo), when matured, known as
conscience, what we think is right/wrong, how we think
we are vs how we would like to be morally
• Personality divided -> causes intrapsychic/internal conflict
• What we want vs what we know we can actually get
• Contribution of consciousness to personality, what/why is
unconsciousness, how it becomes unconscious
Compromise
formations
• Defence mechanisms - to overcome anxiety/conflict
• Protect ourselves from feeling what we don't want to
feel
• Dreams
• Psychosymatic symptoms
• Parapraxis
• Jokes and humour
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