PSYA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Psychodynamics, Iceberg, Neurology

• School: UTSC
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYA02H3
• Professor: Kyle Danielson

Document Summary

Psychodynamic theory: personality theory extending from freud"s psychoanalytic approach. Personality is formed by needs, striving and desires largely operating outside of awareness -> motives that can also produce emotional disorders. Psychodynamic researchers call the mental processes that are outside our awareness the dynamic unconscious. Dynamic unconscious: an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories, the person"s deepest instincts an desires, and the person"s inner struggle to control those forces. Freud divided this dynamic (un)conscious into three parts. Ego -> allows us to deal with life"s practical demands (morals and values) Practiced neurology: the study of disorders of the nervous system. Interested in a set of individuals who had "hysteria" Developed psychoanalysis based on his patients" free associations, fantasies, and dreams. Freud believed that our personality is determined by which of these three parts of the unconscious is dominant. Which of those that are dominant determine our personality. Argued that conflicts between the three parts causes anxiety.