Perspectives on Personality

1. Perspectives on Personality Today our focus is on the Psychoanalytic Perspective

2. According to the text… Personality—an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting Add to this--pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persists over time and across situations

3. Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic • Causes of behavior are part of an interplay of inner sources that often conflict with one another • Unconscious plays a role in behavior

4. Freud’s Most Famous Contributions to Psychology • Psychosexual stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) • Structure of personality (id, ego, superego) • Dream interpretation • Defense mechanisms

5. Structure of Personality • Id • Ego • Superego

6. ID • Acts on the pleasure principle—seeks gratification • Id wants what IT wants when IT wants it • Is not concerned with consequences • Cannot operate in reality except through reflexes and wish fulfillment (daydreaming, dreams)

7. SUPEREGO • Storehouse of values and moral attitudes • The common notion of a conscience • Inner voice of “shoulds” and “should nots” • Ego ideal—an individual’s view of the kind of person he she should strive to become

8. EGO • The ego is reality-based that acts as a mediator b/w id and superego • Governed by the reality principle—puts reasonable choices before pleasurable demands

11. Adult Characteristics of Children who have been fixated at each stage

12. Defense Mechanisms • Mental strategies the ego uses to defend itself in the daily conflict between id impulses that seek expression and the superego’s demand to deny them

14. Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic • Sigmund Freud Freud’s views were so revolutionary that a splinter group formed, neo-freudians or neoanalytic theorists who disagreed with some of Freud’s concepts. They include: • Erik Erikson • Carl Jung • Karen Horney • Alfred Adler