personality unit

• personality: individuals unique and consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
• trait: description and measurement of personality differences
• free association: a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind (can be trivial and embarrassing)
• hypnosis: relaxing a person into a highly suggestive state to uncover unconscious memories
• Freud's theory: a person's thoughts emerge from unconscious motives and unresolved childhood conflicts
• psychoanalysis: attributes thought and action to unconscious motives and conflicts
• unconscious: not aware of thoughts, but has great influence over our conscious thoughts and behaviors; reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, and feelings
• repress: forcibly block from our consciousness because they would be unsettling to acknowledge
• ego: mostly consciousness; makes peace with the superego and id
• superego: internalized ideals; the voice of our moral compass; how we ought to behave
• id: unconscious energy (sex and aggression); unconscious psychic energy constantly strives to satisfy basic drives to survive, reduce, and agress
• pleasure principle: seeks immediate gratification
• eros: life instinct (libido: sexual energy or motivation)
• thanatos: death instinct; self-destructive actions
• reality principle: satisfies the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
• 'I want' (id)
• 'I will' (ego)
• 'I should' (superego)
• psychosexual stages: childhood stages of development during which the id focuses on distinct erogenous zone
• oral (0-18 months): pleasure centers on the mouth; sucking, biting, chewing
• fixation in the oral phase- can lead to smoking or biting nails
• anal (18-36 months): pleasure focuses on bowl and bladder control
• fixation of the anal phase- can lead to anal retentive (uptight) or expulsive (lazy) behaviors
• phallic (3-6 years): pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
• fixation in the phallic phase- men: overly masculine; women: need for attention or dominance
• latency (6-puberty): a phase of dormant sexual feelings; same-sex friendships
• fixation in the latency phase- none
• genital (puberty on): maturation of sexual interests
• castration anxiety: boy feels their father will punish them by castrating them
• Oedipus complex: a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
• Electra complex: girl's sexual desires towards their father and jealousy for rival mother
• penis envy: girls suffer from deprivation and loss, and blames mother for being insufficiency equipped
• gender identity: our sense of being male of female
• fixation: a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual, in which conflicts were unresolved
• defense mechanisms: tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality; UNCONSCIOUS
• repression: banishes anxiety- arousing wishes and feelings from consciousness
• regression: retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated
• reaction formation: switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites
• projection: disguising one's own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
• rationalization: offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions