PSY-1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Reality Principle, Preconscious, Electra Complex
Document Summary
Personality the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterize a person"s responses to life situations. Considered personality to be an energy system. Psychic energy generated by instinctual drives, this energy powers the mind and constantly presses for either direct or indirect release. Buildup of sexual energy can be discharged directly through sexual activity, or indirectly through fantasies or artistic depictions. Conscious events that we are presently aware of. Preconscious memories, thoughts, feelings, images that we are unaware of at the moment, but can be recalled. Unconscious dynamic realm of wishes, feelings, and impulses that lie beyond our awareness. Personality divided into three separate but interacting structures: Id primitive and unconscious part of the personality that contains the instincts. Operates according to the pleasure principle (seeks immediate gratification or release, regardless of rational considerations or reality) Operates according to reality principle (tests reality to decide when the id can safely discharge impulses)
