PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes -Unconscious Mind, Projective Test, Reality Principle

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 1010
• Professor: Heather Jenkin

Document Summary

Psychodynamic theories: view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. As freud observed patients it led him to his discovery of the unconsciousness. He speculated that a lost feeling in one"s hand may be because of a fear of touching one"s genitals. Or a blind or deaf person has that condition because they do not want to hear or see something that aroused intense anxiety. Freud"s theory held that the mind was mostly hidden. Conscious awareness is like the part of the iceberg that floats above the surface. Beneath our awareness is the larger unconscious mind with its thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories. Some of these thoughts could be stored temporarily in a preconscious area and can retrieve them from conscious awareness. But freud was more interested in the mass of unacceptable passions and thoughts that he believed we repress our block from our consciousness because they would be too unsettling to acknowledge.