Psychology 2550A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Psychological Repression, Reality Principle, Conversion Disorder

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2550A/B
• Professor: David Vollick

Document Summary

Freud compared personality to an iceberg: only the tip shows itself overtly, the rest lies below the surface. He saw people as driven by impulses and striving to satisfy deep and lasting sexual and aggressive urges. He interpreted what people said about themselves as highly indirect, disguised, symbolic representations of unconscious, underlying forces. Freud built his theories and treatment on clinical observations and therapeutic experiences with disturbed persons, as well as on his painful psychoanalyses of himself and colleagues. Sensory anaesthesia: losses of sensory ability (blindness, deafness) that seem to have no neurological origin. These symptoms expressed a way of defending against unacceptable, unconscious wishes. Hysteria: the presence of massive repression and the development of a symptom pattern that indirectly or symbolically expresses the repressed needs or wishes. Two key assumptions underlie much of freud(cid:495)s conception: his unique innovation was to propose that behaviour is never accidental: it is psychologically determined by mental motivational causes.