Psychoanalytic Theory

• a source of motivation that encompasses sexual energy but goes beyond it

  libido
• account for the aggressive drive

  death instincts
• According to Freudian psychoanalytic view, the personality consists of three systems:

  1. Id
  2. Ego
  3. Superego
• Freudian perspective, humans are viewed as energy systems.
• the original system of personality

  id
• it has contact with the external world of reality

  ego
• the judicial branch of personality

  superego
• The greatest contributions of Freud which are the key to understanding behavior.

  Consciousness and the Unconsciousness
• Clinical evidence for postulating the unconscious includes the following:

  1. Dreams
  2. Slips of the tongue and forgetting
  3. Posthypnotic suggestions
  4. Material derived from free association techniques
  5. Material derived from projective techniques
  6. The symbolic content of psychotic symptoms
• For Freud, consciousness is a thin slice of the total mind. The unconscious stores all experiences, memories, and repressed material.
• The aim of psychoanalytic therapy, therefore, is to make the unconscious motives conscious.
• a feeling of dread that results from repressed feelings, memories, desires, and experience that emerge to the surface of awareness

  anxiety
• it can be considered as a state of tension that motivates us to do something

  anxiety
• it develops out of a conflict among the id, ego, and superego over control of the available psychic energy

  anxiety
• The function of anxiety is to warn of impending danger.
• 3 kinds of anxiety:

  1. reality anxiety
  2. neurotic anxiety
  3. moral anxiety
• the fear of danger from the external world, and the level of such anxiety is proportionate to the degree of real threat

  reality anxiety
• the fear that the instincts will get out of hand and cause one to do something for which one will be punished

  neurotic anxiety
• the fear of one's own conscience

  moral anxiety
• help the individual cope with anxiety and prevent the ego from being overwhelmed

  ego defense mechanisms
• defense mechanisms have two characteristics in common:

  1. they either deny or distort reality
  2. they operate on an unconscious level
• threatening or painful thoughts and feelings are excluded from awareness

  repression
• "closing one's eyes” to the existence of a threatening aspect of reality

  denial
• actively expressing the opposite impulse when confronted with a threatening impulse

  reaction formation
• attributing to others one's own unacceptable desires and impulses

  projection
• directing energy toward another object or person when the original object or person is inaccessible

  displacement
• manufacturing “good” reasons to explain away a bruised ego

  rationalizing
• diverting sexual or aggressive energy into other channels

  sublimation
• going back to an earlier phase of development when there were fewer demands

  regression
• taking in and “swallowing” the values and standards of others

  introjection
• identifying with successful causes, organizations, or people in the hope that you will be perceived as worthwhile

  identification
• masking perceived weaknesses or developing certain positive traits to make up for limitations

  compensation
• Freud postulated three early stages of development that often bring people to counseling when not appropriately resolved.

  1. oral stage
  2. anal stage
  3. phallic stage
• deals with the inability to trust oneself and others, resulting in the fear of loving and forming close relationships and low self-esteem

  oral stage
• deals with the inability to recognize and express anger, leading to the denial of one's own power as a person and the lack of a sense of autonomy

  anal stage
• deals with the inability to fully accept one's sexuality and sexual feelings, and also to difficulty in accepting oneself as a man or woman

  phallic stage
• Erikson's theory of development holds that psychosexual growth and psychosocial growth take place together, and that at each stage of life we face the task of establishing equilibrium between ourselves and our social world.
• according to Erikson, it is equivalent to a turning point in life when we have the potential to move forward or to regress

  crisis
• it is grounded on id psychology, and it holds that instincts and intrapsychic conflicts are the basic factors shaping personality development (both normal and abnormal) 


  classical psychoanalysis
• tends to be based on ego psychology, which does not deny the role of intrapsychic conflicts but emphasizes the striving of the ego for mastery and competence throughout the human lifespan.


  contemporary psychoanalysis