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Summary of course 1.2 Differences Between People
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Summary of all problems discussed during course 1.2 Differences Between People.
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PROBLEM 1PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES: FREUD’S CONCEPTIONS
- Compared personality to an iceberg
- Person driven by impulses and striving to satisfy deep and lasting sexual and aggressive urgings
- Sensory anesthesias→ losses of sensory ability→ proposed these symptoms expressed a way of defending against
unacceptable, unconscious wishes
- Histeria→ presence of massive repression and the development of a symptom pattern that indirectly or symbolically expresses
the repressed needs and wishes
Freud’s view on Human Nature
- Human activity relied on psychic energy→ its source is instincts (strong natural forces, purely biological response to stimuli)
- Drives→ psychological processes produced by biological stimuli
- Operates via ID
- Trying to prevent those drives from being expressed creates pressure toward its expression and this build-up of energy leads to
catharsis (release of emotional tension os an undone drive)
- Two predictions:
1. Engaging in aggression to reduce tension
2. Because of the previous aggression, the urge disappears and the person is less likely to be aggressive in the
near future
- Freud’s theories were build up on psychoanalysis→ Freud’s belief that all people possess thoughts, feelings, desires and
memories
- Two key assumptions
1. Motivational/psychic determinism
2. These causes are outside of person’s complete consciousness/awareness
- Deliberation without awareness→ when a person confronts a difficult decision he puts it out of his conscious mind and it goes to
the unconscious, where it is still being thought outside a person’s awareness (helps person arrive at sudden, but often correct
decision)
Motivational Determinism→ behavior is never accidental, it is determined by mental motivational causes
- All behavior is motivated and the causal chain that links wishes to actions can be complex and indirect
- Focus is not on behavior, but on the motivations that it serves and reflects
- Motives are usually disguised in their expressions and unconscious, rooted in early experiences
The Roads to the Unconscious
Dreams→ unconscious effort to fulfill a wish that could not be expressed more directly
- Analyst’s task→ discover hidden secrets underneath the surface→ by overcoming dreamer’s own resistance to facing
themselves
- Main sources of anxiety→ person’s own unconscious sexual desires and aggressive impulses
- Route to self-acceptance→ honest recognition of one’s sexuality and aggressiveness→ avoiding self-deception was key
- Making unconscious impulses conscious was the road to health
Free Association (therapeutic method)
- Patient in couch is encouraged to simply say anything and everything that comes to mind, no matter what it is or how irrational it
might seem (no censor)
- Resistance occurs often but it is worked
Topographical Model of Mind (3 parts)
- Conscious→ part of the mind that holds what you are now aware of
- Preconscious→ part of the mind that represents ordinary memory (can be brought
to awareness easily)
- Unconscious→ part of the mind not directly accessible to awareness
- Freud saw it as the source of desire for urges, feelings and ideas that are
tied to anxiety, conflict or pain
- Kept beyond awareness by repression
- Despite being stored away, they are not gone, they influence on later
actions and conscious experiences (where the core operations of
personality take place)
1
,Psychic Structure: Anatomy of the Mind
The Id: Passions at the Core (unconscious)
- Basis of personality, energy source for the whole system and foundation for ego and superego to develop
- Innermost core personality→ linked with biological processes
- Basic impulses (sex and aggression), seeks immediate gratification regardless of consequences, does not follow reason or logic,
irrational, impulsive
Theory of Instincts→ two classes of instincts/drives
1. Eros (life or sexual instinct)→ drives that push for pleasure, reproduction and survival
- This generates libido→ energy created to satisfy the Id (sex drive) that becomes attached to or fixed on, aspects of the
internal and external environment→ continuously transformed, fixed onto “objects” (people and zones of human body,
not only inanimate things)
2. Thanatos (death instinct)→ unconscious human desire to return to the inanimate state (death)
- This includes the urge to destroy, harm or aggress against others or oneself
- Expressed in aggression, including self-aggression and suicidal
- Energy involved in building up (anabolism) living matter and its wasting and destruction (catabolism)
- Apoptosis→ desire to die, gene related to suicidal process→ what makes us aggressive
- Catharsis→ absorb anger and then explode
Pleasure Principle→ tendency to seek immediate tension reduction
Primary Process Thinking→ Id forms internal image or hallucination of desired object to discharge tension
- Direct, irrational, reality ignoring attempts to satisfy needs
- Because this cannot reduce tension, the Ego develops
The Ego: in the Service of Reality, Reason, Order (predominantly conscious but works in all 3)
- Direct outgrowth of the Id→ tries to make sure its impulses are expressed correctly
- In direct contact with external world
- Governed by considerations of safety→ its task is the preservation of organism
- Freud believed ego was the hope of the world→ allow humans to emerge from irrationality and primitivism
- Way towards life of reason, order and harmony
The Reality Principle→ taking into account external reality along with internal needs and urges
- Test reality and delay discharge of tension until the appropriate object and environmental conditions are found
Secondary process→ realistic, logical thinking and planning through the use of the higher or cognitive mental processes
- Focusing on environment and consequences rather than immediate satisfaction
The Superego: High Court in Pursuit of Perfection, Ideas, Transcendence (mix of conscious and unconscious processes)
- Internalizes influence of parents and their ideals
- Represents morals and standards of society that have become part of the individual in the course of the development of
personality
- Active identification occurs→ incorporation of parental images and commands
- Represents ego’s ideals and higher values and goals→ can inspire individual to go beyond self-gratification
- Inspires transcendence→ virtuous behavior
- Divided into two subsystems
1. Ego ideal→ rules for good behavior
2. Conscience comprises→ rules about what behaviors society disapproves and punishes
- 3 interrelated goals
1. Prevent any Id impulses that might be rejected by society
2. Force Ego to act morally
3. Guide person toward perfection in thought, word and deed
Looking back at Freud’s Theory of Mental Structures
- It was initially rejected by many researchers and academic psychologists
- In the 21st century it has become more relevant
- “Hot system”
Conflict, Anxiety and Psychodynamics
- Psychodynamics→ processes through which personality works
2
, - Transformation of motives→ basic impulses persist and press for discharge but the objects at which they are directed and the
manner in which they are expressed are transformed
Conflict
- Id, ego and superego are always in dynamic conflict
- Dynamic→ continuous interaction and clash between Id impulses and restraining forces against them
- Conflict develops to a degree that the environment and other persons, and later the superego, punish or block immediate
impulse expression
- Anxiety→ produced by conflict between the three institutions→ we try to reduce tension
Anxiety
- Freud didn’t view anxiety as a drive, but as a warning signal to the ego that something bad is about to happen
- Three types of anxiety
1. Reality anxiety (external)→ fear in response to real, external threat
2. Neurotic anxiety (internal)→ conflict between id and ego, fear to get punished
3. Moral anxiety (internal)→ fear of violating moral code, conflict between ego and superego, felt as shame
Defense Mechanisms→ function is to protect ego by minimizing anxiety
1. Repression→ process of preventing unacceptable thoughts, feelings or urges from reaching the conscious awareness
- Can be done consciously→ suppression (Anna Freud)
2. Denial→ refusal to believe an event took place or that a condition exists
3. Projection→ projecting own unacceptable qualities to someone else, way to hide knowledge of a disliked aspect of oneself
4. Rationalization→ generating acceptable reasons for outcomes that can appear socially unacceptable (excuses for events)
5. Intellectualization→ tendency to think about threats in cold, analytical and emotionally detached way
6. Displacement→ unacceptable impulses get redirected from the original source to a non-threatening target
7. Sublimation→ expression of impulses by transforming them to an acceptable form, reflection of maturity (doing smth to calm
anger)
8. Reaction Formation (compensation)→ behavior in which a person will attempt to hide their feelings by adopting the exact
opposite
9. Regression→ returning yo coping mechanisms/strategies for less nature stages of development
10. Un-doing→ repairing incorrect behavior, unconscious attempt to take back a thought or action that resulted in guilt or anxiety
11. Isolation→ separation of the idea of an unconscious impulse from its appropriate effect, allowing only the idea and not the effect
to enter awareness
Personality Development
Stages of Development (psychosexual stages)
1. Oral stage→ birth to 18 months
- Pleasure is focused on the mouth (and lips) and satisfaction of sucking, eating and biting
- Id wants immediate gratification
- Divided into two periods→ (1) sucking and (2) biting and chewing
- Two oral substages
1. Oral incorporative stage (6months) → child is helpless and dependent
- Less support or attention→ mistrust
- Too much support→ strong dependency on others
2. Oral sadistic phase→ sexual pleasure comes from biting
- When infant is totally dependent upon others for satisfaction of needs
- Fixation→ when stressed is likely to smoke, drink, bite nails / when angry is likely to be verbally aggressive
2. Anal stage→ 18 months to 3 years
- Shift in body pleasure to the anus
- Pleasure comes from retention and expulsion of feces
- Id desires immediate tension reduction
- During toilet training, the child has his first experience with imposed control
3
, - Fixation→ children who achieve little control might grow up to be dirty, while other with too much control might grow up
to become compulsive, overly neat
3. Phallic stage→ from 3 to age 5
- Focus on genital organs, pleasure by touching
- Child observes difference between male and female
- Fixations:
- Oedipus complex→ boy’s sexual desire for mother and fear (hostility) of father → castration anxiety
- Electra complex→ girl blames mother for lack of penis, desires his father and penis envy (this conflict may
never be resolved)
4. Latency stage→ age 6 to early teens
- Less concern with sexuality→ more with social nature
- Child represses memories of infantile sexuality and forbidden sexual activity by making them unconscious
- Ego and superego emerge
5. Genital stage→ later adolescence and throughout adult life
- If not fixated at early stages, libido will be focused on genitals
- Mature sexual gratification
- Person is capable of genuine love for others and can achieve adult sexual satisfactions
Freud’s Theory of Identification
- Anaclitic identification→ based on the intense dependency of a child on the mother
- Dependency upon caretaker is profound
- Identification with the aggressor→ for boys this follows after dependency with the mother
- Aggressor→ father
- Motivated by fear of harm and castration
- Love for the father is mixed with hostility
- Boys develop a stricter superego
- Child adopts personality of same sex parent
Exposing the Unconscious
- Accidents are no random, but urges of the unconscious mind
- Parapraxes → provides insights into a person’s true desires
- Memory lapses, slips of speech and accidents
PROBLEM 2
TWO THEORIES OF LEARNING: Classical and Operant Conditioning
Behaviorism’s view
- Persons are machinelike
- Behaviorist explores how these mechanisms learn, how they change in reaction to environmental input
- Determinism→ belief that an event is caused or determined by some prior event
- In relation with human behavior→ belief that people’s behavior is caused in a lawful scientific manner
- Opposite of belief in “free will”
- Science of personality
- Behavior must be explained in terms of causal influence of environment
- Understanding of people should be built entirely on controlled laboratory research (could involve people or animals)
Environmental determinism
- People are subject to physical laws that can be understood through scientific analysis
- Behaviorists recognize that people have thought and feelings but they argue that these are caused by environmental factors
- Situational specificity of behavior
- It often may be impractical, as well as unethical, to manipulate environmental variables that may affect people’s everyday
behavior to study personality
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov’s Theory→ Russian psychologist
4
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