Making connections between lectures and exams

• Possible question: What are psychology’s levels of analysis and related perspectives?

• NOTE: I’ve presented the levels of analysis and four perspectives to you last class.

Figure 1.1 Biopsychosocial approachMyers: Exploring Psychology, Ninth EditionCopyright © 2014 by Worth Publishers

LEVELS OF ANALYSIS: Different perspectives focus on explaining behavior in different ways.

You would say this: A biological level of analysis focuses on the relationship between genes, the brain, and hormones on behavior.

Unit 1: Personality Psychology

• M/T-psychoanalytic • W-Humanistic• Th-Traits• F-Social Cognitive & Quiz

• M/T-Unit Review• W-Exam on Unit 1• Th-Intro to Psychological Disorders (Chp. 16)

Objectives/Questions

• Psychodynamic Theories– 1. Define personality– 2. Discuss the unconscious and conscious mind– 3. Describe Freud’s view of personality structure– 4. Discuss interaction of id, ego, superego– 5. Identify Freud’s psychosexual stages of development

and describe fixation– 6. Describe and identify defense mechanisms– 7. Contrast views of neo-Freudians and psychodynamic

theorists with Freud’s original theory

Overview: Ways of Looking at the Self

Freudian/Psychodynamic views: the Unconscious parts of the self Humanistic view of the Self-Actualizing Person Examining Traits, including the Big Five Factors/Dimensions Social and Cognitive Influences on Personality Self-Esteem and Self-Serving Bias

These different perspectives and concepts can help us examine: What we have in common: personality

components, basic drives, stages of development, categories of traits

Ways in which we differ: individual paths through stages, ways of managing basic drives and needs, levels of Trait dimensions

Personality: An individual’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

[persisting over time and across situations]

Sensitive, Reactive

Naïve

Agreeable, Open

Introverted

Neurotically irritable

Conscientious

Contentedly lethargic

These theories of human personality focus on the inner forces that interact to make us who we are.

In this view: behavior, as well as human emotions and personality, develop in a dynamic (interacting, changing) interplay between conscious and unconscious processes, including various motives and inner conflicts.

Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Theories

Sigmund Freud started his career as a physician. He decided to explore how mental and physical

symptoms could be caused by purely psychological factors.

He became aware that many powerful mental processes operate in the unconscious, without our awareness.

This insight grew into a theory of the structure of human personality and its development.

His name for his theory and his therapeutic technique: psychoanalysis.

Freud’s Path to Developing Psychonalysis

Techniques for revealing the unconscious mind:He used creative techniques such as free association: encourage the patient to speak whatever comes to mind, The therapist then interprets any potential unconscious wishes hidden in the client’s hesitations, slips of the tongue, and dreams.

Psychoanalysis: Techniques

Freud’s Personality/Mind Iceberg

Personality develops from the efforts of our ego, our rational self, to resolve tension between our id, based in biological drives, and the superego, society’s rules and constraints.

The mind is mostly below the surface of conscious awareness

The Unconscious, in Freud’s view: A reservoir of thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable.

We start life with a personality

made up of the id, striving

impulsively to meet basic

needs, living by “the pleasure

principle.”

In a toddler, an ego develops, a

self that has thoughts,

judgments, and memories

following a “reality principle”

Around age 4 or 5, the child develops

the superego, a conscience inter-

nalized from parents and society, following a

“morality principle.”

The ego works as the “executive” of this three-part system, to manage bodily needs and wishes in a socially acceptable way.

The Developing Personality

Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Stages The id is focused on the

needs of erogenous zones, sensitive areas of the body.

People feel shame about these needs and can get fixated at one stage, never resolve how to manage the needs of that zone’s needs.

Male Development Issues Freud believed that as boys in the phallic stage seek genital

stimulation, they begin to develop unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and hate their father as a rival, feeling guilt and fearing punishment by castration.

He named these feelings “the Oedipus complex,” after a story from Greek mythology.

Resolution of this conflict: Boys identify with their fathers rather than seeing them as a rival.

Defending Against Anxiety

Freud believed that we are anxious about our unacceptable wishes and impulses, and we repress this anxiety with the help of the strategies below.

Which Defense Mechanism Am I?

A politician gives anti-gay speeches, then turns out to have homosexual tendencies.

Reaction Formation

Someone with an anger problem accuses everyone else of being angry and threatening.

Projection

These two are sometimes confused with each other.

The common theme, as with all defense mechanisms: they seek to prevent being conscious of unacceptable feelings.

The difference: the first one compensates, the second one distracts.

Neo-Freudian, Psychodynamic Theorists

The importance of the unconscious and childhood relationships in shaping personality

The id/ego/superego structure of personality

The role of defense mechanisms in reducing anxiety about uncomfortable ideas

Adler and Horney believed that anxiety and personality are a function of social, not sexual tensions in childhood

Jung believed that we have a collective unconscious, containing images from our species’ experiences, not just personal repressed memories and wishes

Psychodynamic theorists, such as Adler, Horney, and Jung, accepted Freud’s ideas about:

Psychodynamic theorists differed from Freud in a few ways:

CarlJung

AlfredAdler

KarenHorney Criticized the Freudian portrayal of women

as weak and subordinate to men.She highlighted the need to feel secure in relationships.

Focused on the fight against feelings of inferiority as a theme at the core of personality, although he may have been projecting from his own experience.

Highlighted universal themes in the unconscious as a source of creativity and insight. Found opportunities for personal growth by finding meaning in moments of coincidence.

The Psychodynamic Theorists

Defense Mechanisms

Defense Mechanisms in Video Clips1. Denial2. Sublimation3. Displacement4. Regression5. Repression6. Reaction Formation7. Rationalization8. Projection

Humor as a defense mechanism…

Learning Check

• What was Freud’s view of personality?• How did Freud think people defended themselves

against anxiety?

Learning Check

• After your parents’ divorce, your previously potty trained 7-year-old sister begins wetting the bed again.

• What defense mechanism is being used?

• What is the underlying problem?

Flaws in Freud’s

scientific method

Unfalsifiability:He developed theories

that are hard to prove or disprove: can we test to

see if there is an id? Unrepresentative sampling:

He did not build his theories on a broad

sample of observations; he described all of

humanity based on people with unusual

psychological problems.Biased observations:

He based theories on his patients, which may give him an incentive to see them as unwell before

his treatment.

Post facto explanations

(hindsight bias) rather than predictions:

Whether or not a situation makes you anxious or not, you

could either be fixated or

repressing.

Evidence has Updated Freud’s Ideas Development appears to be lifelong, not set in stone by

childhood. Infant neural networks are not mature enough to create a

lifelong impact of childhood trauma. Peers have more influence on personality, and parents less,

than Freud assumed. Dreams, as well as slips of the tongue, have many possible

origins, less likely to reveal deep unconscious conflicts and wishes.

We may ignore threatening information, but traumatic memories are usually intensely remembered, not repressed.

Still, sexual abuse stories are more likely to be fact, less likely to be wish fulfillment, than Freud thought.

Gender and sexual identity seems to be more a function of genetics than Oedipus conflicts and relationships with parents.

Learning Check

• Which of Freud’s ideas did his followers accept or reject?

• How do today’s psychologists view Freud’s psychoanalysis?

Freud’s Legacy Freud benefitted psychology, giving us ideas about:

the impact of childhood on adulthood, human irrationality, sexuality, evil, defenses, anxiety, and the tension between our biological selves and our socialized/civilized selves.

Freud gave us specific concepts we still use often, such as ego, projection, regression, rationalization, dream interpretation, inferiority “complex,” oral fixation, sibling rivalry, and Freudian slips.

Not bad for someone writing over 100 years ago with no technology for seeing inside the brain.