PSYC 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Unconscious Mind, Oral Stage, Psychoanalytic Theory
2 May 2018
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Introduction to Personality and Psychodynamic Theories
What is Personality?
Personality
●An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
●Two historically significant theories have become part of our cultural legacy.
○Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory proposed that childhood sexuality and
unconscious motivations influence personality.
○The humanistic approach focused on our inner capacities for growth and
self-fulfillment.
■Later theorists built upon these two broad perspectives.
●Trait theories examine characteristic patterns of behavior (traits)
●Social-cognitive theories explore the interaction between people’s
traits (including their thinking) and their social context
Psychodynamic Theories
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective: Exploring the Unconscious
●Psychodynamic Theories
○View personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of
childhood experiences
○Human behavior is a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and the
unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts
●These theories are descended from Freud’s psychoanalysis
○Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious
motives and conflicts
■The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to
expose and interpret unconscious tensions
○Freud was the first to focus clinical attention on our unconscious mind
●Observing patients whose disorders made no neurological sense led Freud to his
“discovery” of the unconscious
○According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings,
and memories
■Ex: He speculated that lost feeling in one’s hand might be caused by a fear
of touching one’s genitals
■Ex: Unexplained blindness or deafness might be caused by not wanting to
see or hear something that aroused intense anxiety
○According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we
are unaware
●After some early unsuccessful trials with hypnosis, Freud turned to free association
○In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person
relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
■Freud believed that this would allow him to retrace a line of mental
dominoes that had fallen from his patients’ distant past to their troubled
present, following a chain of thought leading into the patient’s
unconscious
●There, painful unconscious memories, often from childhood, could
be retrieved and released
●Freud was interested in the mass of unacceptable passions and thoughts that he believed
we repress, or forcibly block from our consciousness because they would be too
unsettling to acknowledge
○He believed that without our awareness, these troublesome feelings and ideas
powerfully influence us, sometimes gaining expression in disguised forms
■Ex: The work we choose, the beliefs we hold, our daily habits, our
troubling symptoms
●Personality Structure
○In Freud’s view, human personality—including its emotions and strivings—arises
from a conflict between impulse and restraint
■Between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our
internalized social controls over these urges
■Personality arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflict
●To express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without
also bringing guilt or punishment
○To understand the mind’s dynamics during this conflict, Freud proposed three
interacting systems: the id, ego, and superego
■The id is a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy
basic sexual and aggressive drives (basic drives to survive, reproduce and
aggress)
●The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate
gratification
○Ex: People with a present rather than future time
perspective (ex: those who heavily use tobacco, alcohol,
and other drugs) and would sooner party now than sacrifice
today’s pleasure for future success and happiness are
id-dominated people
■The ego is the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that
mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.
●The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires
in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
○As ego develops, a young child responds to the real world
●The ego contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts,
judgments, and memories
■The superego is the part of personality that represents internalized ideals
and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future
aspirations
●Around age 4 or 5, Freud theorized that a child’s ego recognizes
the demands of the newly emerging superego
○The voice of our moral compass (conscience) that forces
the ego to consider not only the real but the ideal
●The superego focuses on how we ought to behave.
○It strives for perfection, judging actions and producing
positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt.
■Ex: Someone with an exceptionally strong superego
may be virtuous yet guilt ridden
■Ex: Someone with a weak superego may be
outrageously self- indulgent and remorseless
■Because the superego’s demands often oppose the id’s, the ego struggles
to reconcile the two.
●It is the personality “executive,” mediating among the impulsive
demands of the id, the restraining demands of the superego, and
the real-life demands of the external world
●Personality Development
○Freud concluded that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages
■During which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct
pleasure- sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zone
Document Summary
An individual"s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Two historically significant theories have become part of our cultural legacy. Sigmund freud"s psychoanalytic theory proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. The humanistic approach focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment. Later theorists built upon these two broad perspectives. Trait theories examine characteristic patterns of behavior (traits) Social-cognitive theories explore the interaction between people"s traits (including their thinking) and their social context. View personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Human behavior is a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts. These theories are descended from freud"s psychoanalysis. Freud"s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. Freud was the first to focus clinical attention on our unconscious mind.
