313392 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Factor Analysis, Canoe.Com, Hermann Rorschach
Topic of Personality in Psychology
1. A personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and
acting.
● Two historically significant personality theories have become part of our
cultural legacy:
o Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
o The humanistic theories
● Later theorists built upon these two broad perspectives with theories like:
o Trait theories
o Social-cognitive theories
2. Psychodynamic theories view personality with a focus on the unconscious and
the importance of childhood experiences. Psychoanalysis is Freud’s theory of
personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and
conflicts. It also refers to the techniques used in treating psychological
disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
● The unconscious, according to Freud, is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable
thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary
psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
o Free association, in psychoanalysis, is a method of exploring the
unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes
to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
● Freud believed that human personality arises from a conflict between
impulse and restraint—between our biological urges and social controls over
these urges. He broke personality down into three parts:
o The id is a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according
to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id
operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate
gratification.
o The ego is the largely conscious, executive part of personality that,
according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id,
superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle,
satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring
pleasure rather than pain.
o The superego is the part of personality that, according to Freud,
represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment
(the conscience) and for future aspirations.
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● The psychosexual stages are the childhood stages of development (oral, anal,
phallic, latency, genital during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-
seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
o Freud believed that boys developed an Oedipus complex in the
phallic stage of development, when they develop both unconscious
sexual desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their
father, whom they consider a rival. Some psychoanalysts in Freud’s
era believed that girls experienced a parallel Electra complex.
o Identification is the process by which Freud believed that children
incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.
o Fixation, according to Freud, is a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking
energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were
unresolved (e.g. oral fixation).
● In psychoanalytic theory, defense mechanisms are the ego’s protective
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methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
o For example, repression is the basic defense mechanism that
banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from
consciousness.
● Freud today:
o Most contemporary psychodynamic theorists and therapists reject
Freud’s emphasis on sexual motivation.
o But, they give Freud credit for drawing attention to the vast
unconscious, to the struggle to cope with our sexuality, to the
conflict between biological impulses and social restraints, and for
some forms of defense mechanisms (false consensus
effect/projection; reaction formation).
o They stress, with support from modern research findings, the view
that much of our mental life is unconscious. The current view of the
unconscious is that it is a separate and parallel track of information
processing that occurs outside our awareness. This processing
includes:
1. schemas that control our perceptions,
2. priming,
3. implicit memories of learned skills,
4. instantly activated emotions, and
5. stereotypes.
o They believe that our childhood experiences influence our adult
personality and attachment patterns. But research does not support
Freud’s view that development is fixed in childhood. We now know
it is lifelong.)
o Freud’s concept of repression, and his view of the unconscious as a
collection of repressed and unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings,
and memories, also cannot survive scientific scrutiny.
o Many also believe that our species’ shared evolutionary history
shaped some universal predispositions.
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Document Summary
Topic of personality in psychology: a personality is an individual"s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Two historically significant personality theories have become part of our cultural legacy: sigmund freud"s psychoanalytic theory, the humanistic theories. Later theorists built upon these two broad perspectives with theories like: trait theories, social-cognitive theories, psychodynamic theories view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Psychoanalysis is freud"s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. It also refers to the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. The unconscious, according to freud, is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Freud believed that human personality arises from a conflict between these urges. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. according to freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.
