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Sigmund Freud
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theories of personality - sigmund freud
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1SIGMUND
FREUD
BIOGRAPHY AND CONCEPTS (Instincts, Levels of Mental Life and Structures of
Personality)
Life highlights
- Relationship with his mother and father
- Relationship with male colleagues (from allies to rivals)
- Relationship with spouse and children, especially Anna
- Medical background
- Freud’s personalityo
Rigid
o Intellectual/Academic
o Ambitious
INSTINCTS
- Propelling forces of the personality
o It pushes us to behave in certain ways
- Mental representations of internal stimuli that drive a person to take certain actions
o They are forces that drive behavior and determine the direction of that behavior
- Transformed physiological energy that connects the body’s needs with the mind’swishes
o Came from physiology, further proving the biological influence (the focus of
psychoanalysis
- Aim: to satisfy a bodily need to reduce tension
- This energy could be displaced to substitute objects–determines individual personality
o The behavior– when we displace that energy to substitute object. The kind of
behaviors that we do determines what is consistent and unique to our personality
Two types of instincts:
1. Life instincts (Eros)
o The drive for ensuring survival of the individual by satisfying thebiological
needs
▪ Includes: thirst, hunger, sex and pain avoidance
o Oriented towards growth and development
o Manifest through libido driving persons toward pleasurable behaviorsand
thoughts
o Cathexis is the process of the investing libido in objects
▪ When we displace those libido
o Freud’s belief: individuals are predominantly pleasure-seeking beings(Id)
▪ He believes that the Id is something that keeps us alive: it letsus live.
▪ The life instinct makes us feel alive
, 2
2. Death Instincts (Thanatos)
o The unconscious drive toward decay, destruction and aggression
o It could be a destruction of others or the self
o Aggressive drive is the wish to die turned against objects other thanthe self
which compels us to destroy, conquer and kill
TOPOGRAPHY OF THE MIND / THREE LEVELS OF AWARENESS:
1. Conscious
− Located at the tip of the iceberg
− Small part of our mind and contains what’s in our mind at the presentmoment
− Awareness at the moment
− We may not properly response to the situations if EVERYTHING is in the
conscious
part of the mind
2. Preconscious
− Readily available information to the conscious
− Conscious can access it
− Bigger than the conscious part of the brain
3. Unconscious
− Contains our earliest memories and memories that were buried due to its
painful/embarrassing nature
− All the things that happened to us are stored here
− Drives, urges instincts that we are not aware of but affects our behavior thatare part of
our unconscious
− Actions that are driven by our unconscious may lead to hurt ourselves andeven
others
− Necessary to befriend our unconscious
STRUCTURAL MODEL OF THE MIND / THREE PARTS THAT HAVE ROLES IN DECISION
MAKING:
1. Id
− Depths of our unconscious
− Biological drives are parts of its foundations, and it acts on the pleasureprinciple
− Body and instincts talking
− Wish fulfilment
o Main goal
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