Personality Terms

• Consciousness


  our sense of reality. The smallest part of what goes into our mind.
• Preconscious 


  When we bring thoughts to conscious awareness.
• Unconscious


  beyond our awareness and where most of our actions take place.
• Psychoanalysis

  Freuds theory of personality, dream interpretation, and psychotherapy.
• id 


  exists at birth, includes all the instincts and energy necessary for survival with the goal to immediately satisfy instinctual needs
• Libido


  The instinctual energy necessary for sex
• Pleasure principle


  the urge towards immediate gratification of impulses
• Ego

  the ego is reality based residing in both the conscious and the unconscious. It exists to take reality into consideration in satisfying primitive needs.
• reality principle


  a guiding principle in ways to satisfy to id's primitive needs while also negotiating reality.
• morality principle


  the internalized need to comply with parental and other authority
• supergo


  primarily at the unconscious level, its the moral sense of right and wrong or a persons conscious.
• defense mechanisms

  distort or transform an urge emanating from the unconscious to protect itself from anxiety produced by the competing forces of the id and superego.
• Repression


  reducing anxiety by blocking impulses or memories from consciousness
• Regression

  the ego seeks to reduce anxiety by reverting to an earlier period of psychological development.
• Displacement 


  when aggressive urges are shifted, or displaced, toward another figure. Like ranting to someone about someone else.
• Projection


  Anxiety-producing feelings are repressed and then projected onto another person
• denial


  refusal of the ego to accept the reality of a situation so not to cause anxiety
• reaction-formation

  defending against anxiety producing thoughts by transforming the unacceptable urge into its opposite.
• Rationalization

  changing something thats unacceptable into something acceptable
• sublimation


  redirects unacceptable urges to something with social value.
• erogenous zone


  pleasurable parts of the body
• Psychosexual stage


  the id's urge for pleasure becomes associated with the body during this stage in development
• oral stage


  first 18 months of life. sexual pleasure through the mouth during feeding. fixation later in life would be overeating, smoking, over-depedence and sarcasm.
• anal stage

  ages 2 to 3, focusing on holding in or expelling feces. ego emerges with potty training and can result in obsession over neatness or messiness. or have a rebellious and hostile personality.
• phallic stage 


  3 to 6, sexual focus shifts to genitalia and attraction to parent of opposite sex.
• Oedipus Complex


  young boys sexually long for their mother and feel fear and hostility towards the father.
• Castration Anxiety


  fear that the father will damage or remove the boys penis because of the boys attempts to seduce the mother.
• Identification


  a process by which someone takes on the characteristics of another and the boy represses the sexual feelings for the mother and takes on the male identifications of the father.
• Electra Complex


  a Womans sexual attraction to her father.
• Penis Envy


  girls blame their lack of penis on the mother and don't develop a superego modeled after the father
• latency stage


  6 to puberty. the child focuses on intellectual and social development
• genital stage 


  puberty to adulthood. normal sexual desires emerge and intimate relationships outside of the family form.
• personal unconscious 


  contains all the repressed thoughts, memories, and emotions
• collective unconscious


  stores the shared sense of universal experiences common to all human beings
• shadow


  the evil or dark side of human nature
• animus


  the masculine archetype in women
• anima


  the feminine archetype in men
• individuation


  people become aware of their true selves through the process of assimilating the personal and collective unconscious into their conscious awareness.
• persona 


  the aspect of personality that a person presents to the world
• introvert


  the inner-directed personality type