Psychology 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Unconscious Mind, Personal Unconscious, Psychosexual Development

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 1000
• Professor: Derek Quinlan

Document Summary

Personality: the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterize a person"s responses to life situations. Look for the causes of behaviour in a dynamic interplay of inner forces that often conflict with one another. Also focus on unconscious determinants of behaviour. Freud intended on becoming a medical researcher. Freud conducted experiments with patients suffering from conversion hysteria (physical symptoms appearing with no physical cause) Freud was convinced that the patients" symptoms were related to painful memories/feelings that have been repressed. When patients re-experienced these repressed memories, their physical symptoms disappeared or improved. Freud was then convinced that an unconscious part of the mind exerts influences on behaviour. He then conducted self-analysis in attempts to relieve his depression wrote. Freud considered personality to be an energy system. Instinctual drives generate psychic energy, which powers the mind and constantly presses for either indirect or direct release. Freud divided personality into 3 structures: id, ego, superego.