Freud's Psychoanalytical Perspective: Exploring the Unconscious

1. Chapter 10 We get to talk about Freud!

2. Personality 5-7% AP students in psychology should be able to do the following: • Compare and contrast the major theories and approaches to explaining personality (e.g., psychoanalytic, humanist, cognitive, trait, social cognition, behavioral). • Describe and compare research methods (e.g., case studies and surveys) that psychologists use to investigate personality. • Identify frequently used assessment strategies (e.g., the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI], the Thematic Apperception Test [TAT]), and evaluate relative test quality based on reliability and validity of the instruments. • Speculate how cultural context can facilitate or constrain personality development, especially as it relates to self-concept (e.g., collectivistic versus individualistic cultures). • Identify key contributors to personality theory (e.g., Alfred Adler, Albert Bandura, Paul Costa and Robert McCrae, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers).

3. Freud’s Psychoanalytical Perspective Exploring the unconscious

4. The core Ideas • Freud decided that some neurological disorders have psychological causes= the unconscious! • Some failed attempts at hypnosis led to trying free association • Free Association: in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

5. Free association • Created a line of “mental dominoes” • Freud believed that it would allow him to retrace that line, following a chain of thoughts leading into the patient’s unconscious, where painful unconscious memories could be retrieved or released= theory of personality/psycholanalysis

6. The mind • The mind is largely hidden (think Titanic Iceberg) • Our Conscious Awareness is what floats above the surface and you can see • Everything else is the Unconscious • Thoughts, wishes, wishes, feelings, and memories • Some are store temporarily in a preconscious area

7. The mind

8. Themes? • Nothing is ever accidental • Jokes are expressions of repressed sexual and aggressive tendencies • Dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious” • (remember manifest content?- censored expression as opposed to the latent content- what it really means)

9. Personality structure • Personality arises from a conflict between impulse and restraint • Aggressive biological urges and internalized social controls over these urges • Personality arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflict • Three interacting systems: ID, EGO, SUPEREGO

10. The ID • Unconscious psychic energy constantly strives to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress • Operates on the pleasure principle- seeks immediate gratification • Think newborn baby- cries all the time • Think addicts- willing to sacrifice future success for today’s pleasure

11. ego • Develops as you do • Responds to the real world, operates on the reality principle • Seeks to gratify the id’s immediate impulses in realistic ways that will bring long term pleasure • Contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories

12. superego • The voice of our moral compass (conscience) LAME • Forces the ego to worry about the real and the ideal • How we OUGHT to behave • Strives for perfection

13. reconciliation • The EGO must reconcile the two • EGO = executive • ID= little devil on your left shoulder • SUPEREGO= little angel on your right shoulder

14. Personality development • Personality forms within the early years= • Psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) • Id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones

15. Psychosexual stages

16. Oedipus Complex • A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for his father • Electra complex

17. Identification • Process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values in to their developing superegos • Realize our gender identity • Fixation- your pleasure seeking energies may leave you locked in a stage

18. Defense Mechanisms • Defense mechanisms- tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality • Protect our self understanding • Repression- banishes anxiety-arousing wishes and feelings from consciousness

19. Defense mechanisms

20. Evaluation • NOPE- but some things are enduring • Current models challenge the idea of repression as well

21. Psychodynamic Theories and modern views of the unconscious

22. Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists • Pioneering psychoanalysts who accept basic ideas, but they placed more emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and in coping with the environment, as well as doubting that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations

23. Alfred Adler and Karen Horney- believed that childhood social tensions are important for personality development • Adler- (proposed inferiority complex) behavior is driven by efforts to overcome childhood inferiority feelings that trigger our desire for love and security • Horney- childhood anxiety triggers our strivings for superiority and power (tried to balance masculine view of psychology)

24. Carl Jung • Unconscious contains more than just thoughts and repressed feelings • Collective conscious: common reservoir of images, or archetypes, derived from our species’ universal experiences • Explains why, for many people spiritual concerns are deeply rooted and why some people in different cultures share certain myths and images, such as mother as symbol of nurturance (most psychologists today discount this idea) • Take away? Most of our struggles are unconscious

25. Assessing Unconscious Processess • Projective tests: personality tests that provide an ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamic

26. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • Person views an ambiguous picture and then makes up a story about it • Clinician may presume that any hopes, desires, and fears that people see in the ambiguous image are projections of their own inner feelings or conflicts

27. Rorschach inkblot test • What do you see? • Criticisms vary- lack of validity and reliability

28. Modern unconscious mind • We fly on autopilot! (the unconscious mind is HUGE) • False consensus effect: tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors • Terror management theory- thinking about our own mortality provokes various terror-management defenses

29. Get out a blank piece of paper

30. Humanistic theories

31. Humanistic theories • Focus on the ways that people strive for self-determination and self-realization • Contrast with behaviorism and its strict scientific objectivity- people bring self-reported experiences and feelings to the table

32. Abraham Maslow • Remember the hierarchy of needs? • We ultimately seek • self-actualization (process of fulfilling our potential) • Self-transcendence (meaning, purpose, and communion beyond the self) • Realized this by studying healthy, creative people

33. Carl Roger’s Person-centered perspective • Agreed with much of Maslow • Believed that people are basically good • Required three growth-promoting conditions • Genuineness- open about their feelings, drop facades, and are transparent • Acceptance- offer unconditional positive regard (total acceptance towards a person • Empathy- share and mirror each other’s feelings • Self-concept- all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, the answer to the question “who am I?”

34. Assessing self-worth • Sometimes personality is assessed by questionnaires • Some think any type of questionnaire in insincere • Intimate conversation and discussion

35. Evaluating humanistic theories • Pervasive impact on counseling/schooling • Also impacted popular psych (value of positive feelings/self-worth) • Concepts are vague and suggestive- individualism? (dangers)

36. Trait Theories

37. traits • Traits- characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports

38. Exploring traits • Factor Analysis- statistical procedure used to identify clusters of test items that tap basic components of intelligence (such as spatial ability or verbal skill) ==extravert • Eysenck & Eysenck- we can reduce many of our normal individual variations to two or three dimensions • Unstable/stable and introverted/extroverted

39. Biology and personality • Brain imaging techniques have been showing us cool things • Ex) extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal level is relatively low • Ex) frontal lobe area involved in restraint is less active than in introverts • Recall- autonomic reactivity (how you response to stress)

40. Assessing traits • Personality inventories- questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide-range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)- most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), it is now used for a variety of screening purposes • Objective • “lie scale”

41. The big five • Paul Costa/Robert McCrae • http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/ • Where do you fall on these five dimensions? • Openness • Conscientiousness • Extraversion • Agreeableness • Neuroticism

43. Big 5 • Stability? Quite stable (emotional instability/extraversion/openness waning during early and middle adulthood) (agreeableness/conscientiousness rising) • Heritable? Varies, but usually runs 50% or more for each dimension • Predict behavior? People usually tell the truth

44. Evaluating trait theory • Person-situation controversy- our behavior is influenced by the interaction of our inner disposition with our environment • Personality stabilizes as we get older • Consistency of specific behaviors is not as solid • Personality tests are thus weak predictors of behaviors

45. Social cognitive theories and exploring the self

46. Social cognitive theories • Social cognitive perspective- views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context) • Behavioral approach- perspective that focuses on the effects of learning on our personality development • Social cognitive proposes that we worry more about the importance of mental processes (what we think about a situation)

47. Reciprocal influences • Reciprocal determinism- the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, and environment

48. Optimism vs pessimism • Feelings of personal control • Pessimism- has an impact • Optimism- blind us to real risks, illogical bias, “it won’t happen to me” • Blindness to our own incompetence

49. Assessing behavior in situations • Military uses baseline assessments • “the person’s past behavior patterns in similar situations

50. Evaluating social cognitive theories • Build from psychological research • Critics- focus so much on the situations they fail to appreciate people’s inner traits (emotions?)