TOP - Freud Psychoanalysis by Feist & Feist
Traits con- tribute to individual differences in behavior, consistency of behavior over time, and stability of behavior across situations. Traits may be unique, common to some group, or shared by the entire species, but their pattern is different for each individual. Thus each person, though like others in some ways, has a unique personality.
Characteristics are unique qualities of an individual that include such attributes as temperament, physique, and intelligence.
Theory Defined
A scientific theory is a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses.
First, a theory is a set of assumptions. A single assumption can never fill all the requirements of an adequate theory. A single assumption, for example, could not serve to integrate several observations, something a useful theory should do.
Second, a theory is a set of related assumptions. Isolated assumptions can nei- ther generate meaningful hypotheses nor possess internal consistency—two criteria of a useful theory.
A third key word in the definition is assumptions. The components of a theory are not proven facts in the sense that their validity has been absolutely established. They are, however, accepted as if they were true. This is a practical step, taken so that scientists can conduct useful research, the results of which continue to build and re- shape the original theory.
Fourth, logical deductive reasoning is used by the researcher to formulate hy- potheses. The tenets of a theory must be stated with sufficient precision and logical consistency to permit scientists to deduce clearly stated hypotheses.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
Proponent: Sigismund (Sigmund) Freud was born either on March 6 or May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, which is now part of the Czech Republic.
Freud’s understanding of human personality was based on his experiences with patients, his analysis of his own dreams, and his vast readings in the various sciences and humanities.
LEVEL OF MENTAL LIFE
1. Unconscious - The unconscious contains all those drives, urges, or instincts that are beyond our awareness but that nevertheless motivate most of our words, feelings, and actions.
Early childhood experiences that create high levels of anxiety are repressed into the unconscious, where they may influence behavior, emotions, and attitudes for years.
2. Preconscious - The preconscious level of the mind contains all those elements that are not conscious but can become conscious either quite readily or with some difficulty (Freud, 1933/1964).
Events that are not associated with anxiety but are merely forgotten make up the contents of the preconscious.
3. Conscious - Consciousness, which plays a relatively minor role in psychoanalytic theory, can be defined as those mental elements in awareness at any given point in time. It is the only level of mental life directly available to us.
- Conscious images are those in awareness at any given time.
Provinces of the Mind
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1. The Id - At the core of personality and completely unconscious is the psychical region called the id, a term derived from the impersonal pronoun meaning “the it,” or the not-yet- owned component of personality. The id has no contact with reality, yet it strives con- stantly to reduce tension by satisfying basic desires. Because its sole function is to seek pleasure, we say that the id serves the pleasure principle.
The id is unconscious, chaotic, out of contact with reality, and in service of the pleasure principle.
2. The Ego - The ego, or I, is the only region of the mind in contact with reality. It grows out of the id during infancy and becomes a person’s sole source of communication with the external world. It is governed by the reality principle, which it tries to substitute for the pleasure principle of the id.
The ego is the executive of personality, in contact with the real world, and in service of the reality principle.
3. The Superego - In Freudian psychology, the superego, or above-I, represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality and is guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles as op- posed to the pleasure principle of the id and the realistic principle of the ego.
- The superego serves the moral and idealistic principles and begins to form after the Oedipus complex is resolved.
2. Sex - The aim of the sexual drive is pleasure, but this pleasure is not limited to genital satisfaction. Freud believed that the entire body is invested with libido. Besides the genitals, the mouth and anus are especially capable of producing sexual pleasure and are called erogenous zones. Sex can take many forms, including narcissism, love, sadism, and masochism. Infants are primarily self-centered, with their libido invested almost exclusively on their own ego. This condition, which is universal, is known as primary narcissism. Sadism is the need for sexual pleasure by inflicting pain or humiliation on another person. Masochism, like sadism, is a common need, but it becomes a perversion when Eros becomes subservient to the destructive drive. Masochists experience sexual pleasure from suffering pain and humiliation inflicted either by themselves or by others.
3. Aggression - The aim of the destructive drive, according to Freud, is to return the organism to an inorganic state. Because the ultimate inorganic condition is death, the final aim of the aggressive drive is self-destruction. As with the sexual drive, aggression is flexible and can take a number of forms, such as teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humiliation. humor, and the enjoyment of other people’s suffering.
4. Anxiety - In defining anxiety, Freud (1933/1964) emphasized that it is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation that warns the person against impending danger. Neurotic anxiety is defined as apprehension about an unknown danger. Moral anxiety, stems from the conflict between the ego and the superego. Realistic anxiety, is closely related to fear. It is de- fined as an unpleasant, nonspecific feeling involving a possible danger.
- All motivations can be traced to sexual and aggressive drives. Childhood behaviors related to sex and aggression are often punished, which leads to either repression or anxiety.
Defense Mechanisms
Defense mechanisms are normal and universally used, when carried to an extreme they lead to compulsive, repetitive, and neurotic behavior. The principal defense mechanisms identified by Freud include repression, re- action formation, displacement, fixation, regression, projection, introjection, and sublimation.
1. Repression - Whenever the ego is threatened by undesirable id impulses, it protects it- self by repressing those impulses; that is, it forces threatening feelings into the un- conscious (Freud, 1926/1959a).
2. Reaction Formation - Reactive behavior can be identified by its exaggerated character and by its obsessive and compulsive form (Freud, 1926/1959a). An example of a reaction formation can be seen in a young woman who deeply resents and hates her mother.
3. Displacement - Freud (1926/1959a) believed that reaction formations are limited to a single object; for example, people with reactive love shower affection only on the person toward whom they feel unconscious hatred. In displacement, however, people can redirect their unacceptable urges onto a variety of people or objects so that the original im- pulse is disguised or concealed. For example, a woman who is angry at her room- mate may displace her anger onto her employees, her pet cat, or a stuffed animal.
4. Fixation - fixation is the permanent attachment of the libido onto an earlier, more primitive stage of development (Freud, 1917/1963). Like other defense mechanisms, fixations are universal. People who continually derive pleasure from eating, smoking, or talking may have an oral fixation, whereas those who are obsessed with neatness and orderliness may possess an anal fixation.
5. Regression - Once the libido has passed a developmental stage, it may, during times of stress and anxiety, revert back to that earlier stage. Such a reversion is known as regression (Freud, 1917/1963).
6. Projection - When an internal impulse provokes too much anxiety, the ego may reduce that anx- iety by attributing the unwanted impulse to an external object, usually another per- son. This is the defense mechanism of projection, which can be defined as seeing in others unacceptable feelings or tendencies that actually reside in one’s own unconscious (Freud, 1915/1957b). An extreme type of projection is paranoia, a mental disorder characterized by powerful delusions of jealousy and persecution.
7. Introjection - Whereas projection involves placing an unwanted impulse onto an external object, introjection is a defense mechanism whereby people incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego.
8. Sublimation- is the repression of the genital aim of Eros by substituting a cultural or social aim. The sublimated aim is expressed most obviously in creative cultural accomplishments such as art, music, and literature, but more subtly, it is part of all human relationships and all social pursuits.
- To protect itself against anxiety, the ego initiates various defense mechanism, the most basic of which is repression.
Stages of Development
1. Infantile Period - To Freud, the first 4 or 5 years of life, or the infantile stage, are the most crucial for personality formation.
a.) Freud’s first infantile stage of development is the oral phase. Infants obtain life-sustaining nourishment through the oral cavity, but beyond that, they also gain pleasure through the act of sucking.
b.) Freud (1933/1964) called it the sadistic-anal phase or, more briefly, the anal phase of development. During the early anal period, children receive satisfaction by destroying or losing objects. hen children enter the late anal period, they sometimes take a friendly interest toward their feces, an interest that stems from the erotic pleasure of defecating.
c.) At approximately 3 or 4 years of age, children begin a third stage of infantile development—the phallic phase, a time when the genital area becomes the leading erogenous zone. This stage is marked for the first time by a dichotomy between male and female development, a distinction that Freud (1925/1961) believed to be due to the anatomical differences between the sexes.
-Male Oedipus Complex Freud (1925/1961) believed that preceding the phallic stage an infant boy forms an identification with his father; that is, he wants to be his father. Later he develops a sexual desire for his mother; that is, he wants to have his mother.
- Female Oedipus Complex -Girls then become envious of this appendage, feel cheated, and desire to have a penis. This experience of penis envy is a powerful force in the formation of girls’ personality.
2. Latency Period - Freud believed that, from the 4th or 5th year until puberty, both boys and girls usually, but not always, go through a period of dormant psychosexual development. This latency stage is brought about partly by parents’ attempts to punish or discourage sexual activity in their young children. If parental suppression is successful, children will repress their sexual drive and direct their psychic energy toward school, friend- ships, hobbies, and other nonsexual activities.
3. Genital Period - Puberty signals a reawakening of the sexual aim and the beginning of the genital period.
4. Maturity - The genital period begins at puberty and continues throughout the individual’s life- time. It is a stage attained by everyone who reaches physical maturity. In addition to the genital stage, Freud alluded to but never fully conceptualized a period of psychological maturity, a stage attained after a person has passed through the earlier developmental periods in an ideal manner.
Freud’s Early Therapeutic Technique
The primary goal of Freud’s later psychoanalytic therapy was to uncover repressed memories through free association and dream analysis. “Our therapy works by trans- forming what is unconscious into what is conscious, and it works only in so far as it is in a position to effect that transformation” (Freud, 1917/1963, p. 280)
More specifically, the purpose of psychoanalysis is “to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the superego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organi- zation, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be” (Freud, 1933/1964, p. 80).
With free association, patients are required to verbalize every thought that comes to their mind, no matter how irrelevant or repugnant it may appear. The pur- pose of free association is to arrive at the unconscious by starting with a present con- scious idea and following it through a train of associations to wherever it leads.
Transference refers to the strong sexual or aggressive feelings, positive or negative, that patients develop toward their analyst during the course of treatment. Transference feelings are un- earned by the therapist and are merely transferred to her or him from patients’ ear- lier experiences, usually with their parents.
However, negative transference in the form of hostility must be recognized by the therapist and ex- plained to patients so that they can overcome any resistance to treatment (Freud, 1905/1953a, 1917/1963). Resistance, which refers to a variety of unconscious re- sponses used by patients to block their own progress in therapy, can be a positive sign because it indicates that therapy has advanced beyond superficial material.
Dream Analysis
Freud used dream analysis to transform the manifest content of dreams to the more important latent content. The manifest content of a dream is the surface meaning or the conscious description given by the dreamer, whereas the latent content refers to its unconscious material.
Freudian Slips
Freud believed that many everyday slips of the tongue or pen, misreading, incorrect hearing, misplacing objects, and temporarily forgetting names or intentions are not chance accidents but reveal a person’s unconscious intentions.
To cite reference:
Feist, Jess & Feist, Gregory J. 2008. Theories of Personality, 7th Edition. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.
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