FI CONCESSION ASSESSMENT
PERSONALITY THEORIES PYC2601
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
2nd Semester 2022 exams
DUE DATE: 31 March 2023
PLEASE PARAPHRASE YOUR OWN WORK TO AVOID PLAGIARISM
“OWN YOUR WOR”
QUESTION 1
Since Freud holds that all behaviour is caused by factors within the personality, he has to find an
intrapsychic explanation for phenomena such as war, aggression, murder, suicide and death. The
explanation he offers is that people have a death drive. While the basic function of the life drive is to
build bigger and bigger biological units, the death drive’s basic function is to break down living cells
and change them into dead matter (Eidelberg, 1968; Freud, 1964b, Vol.23). The original object of the
death drive is the individual’s body. The death drive is immediately brought into conflict with the life
drives, and this conflict is projected outward in the form of aggression and destructive behaviour
towards other people and things (Freud, 1961b, Vol. 21; Freud, 1964a, Vol.22).
The first externalised form of aggression manifests itself during the first year of life in the shape of
oral aggression, for example, when the baby bites the mother during feeding (Freud, 1964b, Vol.23).
This obviously causes the mother to interrupt her feeding, or to wean the child from her breast, both
of which the child experiences as punishment. Freud points out that all aggressive behaviour, such as
murder, suicide and violence, is regulated by strong moral codes, as is the case with sexual behaviour
(Freud, 1961b, Vol.21). Just as with sexual drives, these aggressive impulses lead to conflict between
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, the aggressive drives and the moral social code incorporated in the superego. Once again, the
individual has to find ways of utilising his or her death drive energy (which, like the sex drive energy,
cannot simply disappear). Consequently, the death drive also plays an important role in the normal
development of the individual and in the causation of psychopathology.
The death drive (which is sometimes also called destrudo) operates in various ways. Most commonly,
the individual projects the energy outwards in the form of aggression towards other people or by
destroying things. Freud ascribes all violence, aggression and destructive behaviour of any kind to
the death drive.
Through the defence mechanism of sublimation, however, the energy may also be exercised in
socially acceptable ways in professions where objects are literally or symbolically destroyed, for
example by butchers, carpenters or film critics (Freud, 1964a, Vol.22). Another way in which the
death drive energy is used is in the workings of the superego, which Freud regarded as a form of
aggression against the individual. Thus the superego uses aggressive drive energy by making the
person feel guilty about his or her undesirable wishes and actions and causing pain through
reproach. In this way the death drive is refocused on the individual in a secondary way (Freud, 1955a,
Vol.8). Freud also holds that all forms of self-inflicted harm, such as performance errors (for example,
when you accidentally hit yourself on the thumb with a hammer), accident-proneness and suicide,
are the outcome of the unconscious operation of the death drive through the superego.
These attempts by Freud to explain behaviour demonstrate his position of psychic determinism,
namely that all behaviour, even when it appears accidental or coincidental, is the outcome of forces
within the individual.
Ultimately, however, the death drive reverts to its original object, in other words, the individual
causes his or her own death. In death the individual achieves a totally tensionless state, nirvana,
which Freud views as the unconscious ideal of all life. In his own words: ‘The goal of all life is death’
(Freud, 1955a, Vol.8; Freud, 1955c, Vol.18; Freud, 1961a, Vol.19).
QUESTION 2
2.1
I. Learning through direct experience
Learning through direct experience is by no means the only form of learning. According to
Bandura learning and conditioning should not be thought of as automatic processes, and
they maintain that cognitive processes play a significant role even in this type of learning.
Bandura (1977:17) specially points out that people do not just produce behaviour, but also
consciously perceive and think about the results of their behaviour. Thinking is therefore an
important factor, and the individual not only reacts to stimuli, but interprets them and makes
hypotheses about the results of various possible behaviours in a specific situation. All
available information plays a role in this process of interpretation, including what other
people say about the results of behaviour. Even if people regularly received positive
reinforcement for a particular response, they would not persist with the behaviour if they
believed, on the basis of reliable information from others, that it was not going to be
rewarded in future (Estes, 1972; Grings, 1973).
II. Observational learning
According to Bandura and other social cognitive learning theorists, observational learning
(that is, learning by observing other people’s behaviour) is the most important form of
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