psychodynamic & humanistic perspectives on personality
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Psychodynamic & Humanistic Perspectives on Personality. Defense Mechanisms. Freud said anxiety is the price we pay for living in a civilized society. Defense mechanisms: protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. There are 7 defense mechanisms. 1. Repression. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Psychodynamic & Humanistic Perspectives on Personality
Defense Mechanisms
Freud said anxiety is the price we pay for living in a civilized society.
Defense mechanisms: protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
There are 7 defense mechanisms
1. Repression
Banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness. According to Freud, the most frequently repressed thoughts were of an unacceptably erotic nature.
Freud believed repression was the basis for all the other anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms.
The aim of the psychoanalysis was to draw repressed, unresolved childhood conflicts back into consciousness to allow resolution and healing.
2. Regression
Allows an anxious person to retreat to a more comfortable, infantile stage of life.
3. Denial
Lets an anxious person refuse to admit that something unpleasant is happening.
Thoughts of invincibility.
4. Reaction Formation
Reverses an unacceptable impulse, causing an anxious person the express the opposite of the anxiety-provoking unconscious feeling.
Example: To keep the “I hate him.” thoughts from entering consciousness, the ego generates an “I love him” feeling.
5. Projection
Disguises threatening feelings of guilty anxiety by attributing the problem to others.
Example: “I don’t trust him” really means, “I don’t trust myself.”
Rationalization
Displaces real, anxiety-provoking explanations and replaces them with more comforting justifications for actions.
Rationalization makes mistakes seem reasonable and often sounds like an excuse.
7. Displacement
Shifts and unacceptable impulse toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.
Example: company owner who becomes upset and yells at the manager, who yells at the clerk, who goes home and yells at the kids, who end up kicking the dog.
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
1. Oral Stage
Lasts through first 18 months of life.Pleasure comes from chewing, biting and
sucking.Weaning can be a conflict in this stage.
2. Anal Stage
Lasts from 18 months to 3 years. Gratification comes from bowel and bladder
function.Potty training can be a conflict in this stage.
3. Phallic Stage
Lasts from age 3 to age 6The pleasure zone shifts to the genitals.Freud believed boys felt love for their
mothers and hatred, fear, or jealousy for their fathers.
Viewing dad as a rival for mom’s love, the boy fears punishment from his father during this stage.
4. Latency Stage
Lasts from age 6 to puberty.Girls learn to do “girl-like” things and boys
learn “boy-like” behaviors.This is called identification process.Shows us what it means to be male or female.
5. Genital Stage
Starts at puberty.Person begins experiencing sexual feelings to
others.
Interference & Motivated Forgetting
Interference
A retrieval problem that occurs when one memory gets in the way of another.
Example: two radio stations battling with frequency.
Proactive Interference
When an older memory disrupts the recall of a newer memory.
Example: Remembering last years locker combination proactively interferes with remembering this years combination.
Retroactive Interference
When a more recent memory disrupts the recall of an older memory.
Example: Your memory of your class schedule for this year has overwhelmed the schedule you followed last year.
Motivated Forgetting
Forgetting unwanted memories either consciously or unconsciously.
Example: forgetting through the process of repression.
Works Cited
Broeker, Charles T. “Thinking About Psychology The Science of Mind and Behavior.