7.6 Psychoanalytic Theories of Personality

Psychoanalytic Theories

The Unconscious

1. 🤫Id—The id is the storage of unconscious thoughts and these thoughts are all directed toward fulfilling sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle that wants automatic gratification.
   • 💡Built by our sexual and aggressive needs
2. ⚖️Ego—The ego is between the id and the superego and it operates on the reality principle. It tries to satisfy what the id wants, but without the immediate gratification portion. Usually, because of the ego, needs are fulfilled in the long-run.
   • 💡Think of the ego as the decision maker and the balance between the id and superego.
3. 💯Superego—The superego is basically our conscience. It tries to make us conform to and thrive in society. If the id pushed us to do something bad, the superego would, in turn, make us feel guilty because the behavior wasn't morally correct.
   • 💡Built by our parents and society.

Image Courtesy of Simply Psychology.

Psychosexual Stages

1. Oral—pleasure focused on the mouth (sucking, biting, chewing)
   • Oral fixation—where the oral stage goes beyond the age of 1. Some examples are smoking, nail-biting, and gum-chewing.
2. Anal—pleasure focused on the bowel (potty training) 🚽
   • Anal Retentive—similar to oral fixation. Someone that is anal retentive focuses on being neat and organized. Extreme attention to detail.
   • Anal Expulsive—opposite of anal retentive. Person is usually disorganized, careless, and has some sort of artistic ability.
3. Phallic—pleasure focused on the genitals
   • Includes the oedipus complex, which is where young boys feel attracted to their mother and feel jealousy toward their father. There is also the electra complex, where young girls feel attracted to their father and jealousy toward their mother.
4. Latency—no sexual feelings
5. Genital—relationships and mature sexual experiences

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Defense Mechanisms

1. 📌Repression—Gets rid of the cause of anxiety
2. 👶Regression—Acting like a younger age when anxiety was not experienced.
   • An example is if a child sucked their thumb on the first day of school.
3. 😡Reaction Formation—Expressing the exact opposite emotion of what one feels.
   • An example would be being angry but acting really kind in front of your friends.
4. 🤦Projection—Taking how one feels and placing it on someone else
   • An example would be cheating on an exam and accusing your innocent classmate of cheating.
5. 🍺Rationalization—Making excuses for one's situation or cause of anxiety
   • An example is that someone who drinks might put their drinking addiction on their friends saying they are just "socializing."
6. ↔️Displacement—Changing the target of one's aggression
   • An example is if a child was mad at their parent, they might kick their dog 🐶
7. Sublimation—Rechanneling emotions into a socially acceptable activity.
   • An example would be an aggressive person turning that aggression into passion and become a surgeon.
8. ❌Denial—Refusing to believe an idea that causes anxiety
   • An example how smokers may refuse to admit that smoking is bad for their health.
9. 🧠Intellectualization—Obtaining knowledge over something as a means of having a sense of control.
   • An example is if a person suffers a tragedy, they would try and seek counseling and identify with others going through the same thing.

Image Courtesy of Verywell Mind.

Criticisms of Freud

• His findings are not really scientific; there is no empirical evidence. 🧪
• He overestimates the importance of early childhood and of sex. Psychologists today believe that we develop over a longer period of time, past our childhood.
• Little predictive power!
• Some psychologists, like Karen Horney and Nancy Chodorow, felt that Freud’s theories seemed chauvinistic.
• Today, psychologists agree with some of the defense mechanisms.

Impacts of Freud

Psychodynamic Theory

Carl Jung

1. Personal Unconscious—consists of painful memories and thoughts a person doesn't want to confront.
2. Collective Unconscious—passed down through a species, inherited universal concepts that we all share as humans. These concepts are called archetypes.

Alfred Adler