29 Mar 2012
School
Department
Course
Professor
Personality Psychology
Class 14: The Psychoanalytic Domain
March 8, 2012
The Intrapsychic Domain
•Largely based on the work of Sigmund Freud
•Psychoanalytic Theory
•Some concepts (i.e. repression) have been supported
•However, contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory (called the neo-analytic movement) has moved
beyond Freud’s original theories
•Instead, psychoanalysts today focus on childhood relationships and adult conflicts with others
•Topics: Unconscious, Motivation, Conflict, Attachment, etc.
Assumptions
•Psychic Determinism:
•Nothing happens by chance or accident
•Everything we do, think, say and feel is an expression of our min
Five Central Propositions
Contemporary psychoanalysis is based on five foundational concepts:
1. Much of mental life is unconscious
2. Mental processes operate in parallel, hence individuals can have conflicted feelings
3. Childhood experiences are important
4. Mental representations guide people’s actions
5. Development involves regulating sexual & aggressive feelings AND moving from immature/social
dependent to interdependent
Contemporary Views on the Unconscious
•Motivated Unconscious View
•Behavior is motivated by unconscious processes “Cognitive Unconscious View”
•Individuals can be unaware of information that their sensory stimuli are processing (i.e.
subliminal perception, priming, ability to type)
•Information is “not in conscious awareness” but is not necessarily repressed
Repression and Contemporary Research on Memory
•Memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus argues that we should not conclude that all recovered
memories are false, just because some are apparently false
•Also, we should not assume that all recovered memories are true, just because some are true
•Loftus argues that we must be aware of processes that contribute to the construction of false
memories (e.g., popular press, behavior of some therapists)
So, You Want to Have a False Memory: A Closer Look
•Spreading activation model of memory: Mental elements are stored in memory along with
associations to other elements in memory
•Most modern cognitive psychologists believe that false memories can occur
• Humans have a constructive memory—i.e., memory influences in various ways what is recalled
• Research on mistakes of recognition on word lists help us understand dramatic false memories