KHA329 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Toilet Training, Castration, Puberty
1 Jul 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Individual Differences week 8: traditional approaches to individual differences
Personality
Psychoanalytical approaches to individual differences:
Sigmund Freud:
- Highly influential
- Presenting ideas around the fact that we can have information that we can
forget
oHe suggested we forgot on purpose
oAlso first person to suggest we have an unconscious
- Paradigm shifts:
oSexual desires, dreams
oFirst developmental psychologist
- Instincts:
oInnate, biological
oStrive to meet these
oSeeking pleasure and minimizing pain
oIf needs are met you will experience pleasure, if not, discomfort
oSource
oAim
Goal: to obtain steady state of biological needs being satisfied
oObject
oImpetus:
Intensity around this process
Are you hungry because you haven’t eaten in days vs. hours
oVaries quite a bit
oPersonality is driven by these instincts
oEros:
Life and sexual instinct or drive
Libido in the psychic energy associated with sexual instinct
Impulse to assure reproduction
Other things aside from sex that you can do this
Whole body can provide instinct gratification
Eating and drinking can be a form of sexual
gratification
View in terms of the culture at the time
Thought that this only applied to men: women and children
were above this
oThanatos:
Death and aggressive instincts and drives
Why would you want this? Because if you died this would
result in the resolution of tension
Aggression comes from this:
Instinct to die so we should aim this at yourself
But instead this is applied to other people:
oResults in murder and aggressive acts
oFinate amount of psychic energy:
Expenditure of mental energy
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Goes toward out instincts
oCathexis:
Investing psychic energy into desired stimuli
Explains smoking and risk behaviours
oThese are not learnt, we are born with
- The topographic (iceberg) model of the mind
oThree levels of awareness
oConscious:
Aware of now
oPreconscious
Ordinary memory
Can bring to mind easily
oUnconscious:
We don’t know we know
Taken all of our threatening thoughts and memories and
actively suppressed them so we no longer have to deal with
them
Lots of these
They will sneak out into conscious awareness in different ways
A very psychic force
Early experiences shape how you deal with these experiences
later in life
oMost of what we are dealing with is in unconscious
10% in consciousness
14% in preconscious
Rest is unconscious
not surprising given we have limited amount of psychic energy
- Structural model: ego, ID, superego
oComprise the model
oId:
Completely unconscious
Fundamentally drives us and is where most of instincts come
from
Fulfilling biological needs
Psychological drives
Guided by the pleasure principle
Primary process
Characteristics:
Illogical, immoral, no idea of reality or self
preservation, seeks immediate pleasure
Doesn’t care about the consequences in social settings
Wish fulfillment and reflex action
Original core out of which personality emerges
Not modified and cannot be changed by environmental factors
Doesn’t have contact with that
When these are met, psychological tension is reduced
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
oEgo:
Conscious of this
Development occurs around 6-8 months
Guided by reality principles
You cannot always get what you want when you want it
Kicks in and control impulses of ID
Secondary process
Characteristics:
Logical, rational, forms realistic plans to satisfy needs
of id
Put plans into place to make desire happen
Negotiates compromise between id and superego, by
identifying and testing appropriate objects
Horse and the rider
In a well developed personality: ego does the main job
Main controller
Maintains levels of control over other aspects of the
personality
Governs superego too
Under threat from demands in the external world, id and super
ego create anxiety: dealing with different things than id
Realistic
Neurotic
Moral
Problems and tensions surrounding difficult topics
Dangers, threat, neurotic tensions
Fear of giving in to an id impulse
oBeing naughty
Defense mechanisms:
Tools the ego can use in its jobs as the mediator
between the ide and the superego, irrational methods to
reduce anxiety
Are unconscious and distort reality
In order to be effective
oSuperego:
Develops as individual resolves conflict
The rule maker
Develops around ages 3-5 years
When child starts to internalize parent values
Taken on to the child’s own superego
What should I try and be and how will I work toward achieving
this
Partly conscious and partly unconscious
Sense of guilty conscious
Operates across all levels of consciousness
Interacts with levels in different ways
Forces ego to act in a moral way
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Individual differences week 8: traditional approaches to individual differences. Presenting ideas around the fact that we can have information that we can forget: he suggested we forgot on purpose, also first person to suggest we have an unconscious. Paradigm shifts: sexual desires, dreams, first developmental psychologist. Instincts: innate, biological, strive to meet these, seeking pleasure and minimizing pain, if needs are met you will experience pleasure, if not, discomfort, source, aim. Goal: to obtain steady state of biological needs being satisfied: object, impetus: Are you hungry because you haven"t eaten in days vs. hours: varies quite a bit, personality is driven by these instincts, eros: Libido in the psychic energy associated with sexual instinct. Other things aside from sex that you can do this. Eating and drinking can be a form of sexual gratification. View in terms of the culture at the time. Thought that this only applied to men: women and children were above this: thanatos:
