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• Psychodynamic theories


  Theories of Freud and Adler
• Personality


  Our characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
• Unconscious


  Large below the surface area which contains thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories, of which we are unaware
• Free association


  The patient is asked to relax and say whatever comes to mind, no matter how embarrassing or trivial
• Hysteria


  Paralysis or improper functioning of the body
• Levels of Mental Life

  • Unconscious – all those drives, urges or instincts that are beyond our awareness
  • Preconscious – all those elements that are not conscious but can become quite readily or with some difficulty
  • Conscious – all those elements in awareness at any given time
• Id


  • Reservoir of unconscious psychic energy constantly striving to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress
  • Operates on the pleasure principle: If not constrained but reality, it seeks immediate gratification
• Superego


  • Represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscious) and for future aspirations
  • Operates the morality principle, that demands right and wrong
• Ego


  • The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates the demands of the id, superego, and reality
  • Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
• Psychosexual Development Stages

  • Oral (0-18 months)
  • Anal (18-36 months)
  • Phallic (3-6 years)
  • Latency (6 to puberty)
  • Genital (puberty)

  
• Oedipus complex


  A boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
• Electra complex


  A girl's sexual desire towards her father and feeling sof jealousy and hatred for the rival mother
• Castration anxiety


  Fear from boy's struggle to deal with his love for mother while knowing he cannot overcome his father physically
• Penis envy


  Desire for male dominated advantages
• Identification


  The process by which, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos
• Fixation


  Lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved
• Freudian slips


  Also called "parapraxes." A lapse of memory or mental error, such as a slip of the tongue or misplacement of an object, which, in psychoanalytic theory, is due to unconscious associations and motives
• Free recall / free association


  Concept of a person having one word and freely associating any word with it
• Anxiety


  The unpleasant state accompanied by the physical sensation of uneasiness
• Types of Anxiety

  • Neurotic Anxiety – apprehension of unknown danger
  • Moral Anxiety – fear of the retribution of one's own conscience
  • Reality Anxiety – fear of real danger
• Defense mechanism


  Tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality
• Repression


  A defense mechanism that pushes threatening thoughts into the unconscious
• Reaction formation


  A defense mechanism that pushes away threatening impulses by overemphasizing the opposite in one's thoughts and words
• Denial


  A defense mechanism in which one refuses to acknowledge anxiety provoking stimuli
• Projection


  Defense mechanism in which anxiety arousing impulse are externalized by placing onto others
• Displacement


  Defense mechanism in which the target of one's unconscious fear or desire is shifted away from true cause
• Sublimation


  Defense mechanism where dangerous urges are transformed into positive, socially acceptable forms
• Regression


  Defense mechanism where one returns to an earlier, safer stage of one's life to escape present threats
• Rationalization


  Defense mechanism where after the fact (post hoc) logical explanations for behaviors that were actually driven by internal unconscious motives
• Alfred Adler


  • In 1902 invited to join Freud's Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
  • In 1910 made president but by then his ideas had diverged from Freud's and the two of them began to dislike each other
  • In 1911 he resigned and in 1912 he founded the rival individual psychology movement
• Striving for success or superiority


  The final goal of success or superiority toward which all people strive unifies personality and makes all behavior meaningful

  People strive for superiority or success as a means of compensation for feelings of inferiority or weaknesses

  Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal superiority with little concern for other people

  Psychologically healthy people strive for the success of all humanity, but they do so without losing their personal identity
• Adler's personality theory


  • Personality was formed early in life, positive and negative experiences early in childhood could lead to reactions that would establish lifelong personality orientations or goals

  Adler's brother died beside him in bed when he was three
• Inferiority complex


  In infancy we all have a state of inferiority, our main motivator is to escape this feeling of inferiority, this manifests in many ways, both positive and negative
• Adler's dream theory


  Dreams are a mechanism for problem solving, in which our unconscious mind works on problems with which our waking mind has struggled

  It is not so much the dream narrative that gives us the answer to our problem but the emotional residue that guides us towards a correct decision

  Adler's murder dream - he was deciding whether to return a soldier to the First World War front line, he dreamt that he had murdered someone, on waking he realised this was his attempt to solve the problem and decided not to send the soldier back
• Birth order


  Adler saw family dynamics as very important in a child's development, a child's place in birth order can impact on their personality
• Social interest


  The urge in human nature to adapt oneself to the conditions of social environment, an individual's attitude towards and awareness of being part of the human community

  Finding meaning and purpose in life by participating in endeavors beyond oneself is a key aspect of social interest, belonging to groups also reduces a sense of isolation and loneliness that can be a part of the human condition
• Style of life


  The self-consistent personality structure that develops, includes a person's goal, self-concept, feeling for others and attitude toward the world

  The manner of a person's striving, product of the interaction between heredity, environment and creative power

  Healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior and have some limited ability to change their style of life
• Creative power


  Style of life is molded by people's creative power, places people in control of their own lives, ability to freely choose a course of action
• External factors of maladjustment


  • Exaggerated physical defects - subjective and exaggerated feelings of inferiority because they overcompensate for their inadequacy

  Pampered style of life - weak social interest but a strong desire to perpetuate the pampered, establish a permanent parasitic relationship with the mother or mother substitute

  Neglected style of life - children who feel unloved and unwanted are likely to develop this feeling, abused and mistreated children develop little social interest and ten to create a neglected style of life, they learn inferiority because they are told and shown every day that they are no value, they learn selfishness because they are taught to trust no one
• Safeguarding tendencies


  Patterns of behavior to protect their exaggerated sense of self-esteem against public disgrace