Psychoanalytic Theory - The Psychoanalytic theory states that childhood experiences and the unconscious affects and influences human behavior. This theory emphasizes the unconscious, therefore saying that personalities possess memories, beliefs, urges, drives, and instincts that we are not aware of. I. Levels of Mental Life - Freud insisted that people are motivated by drives in which the have little or no awareness of. He saw these functions operating on 3 levels. a. Unconscious - The unconscious consists of drives, urges, instincts that are not in awareness but influences and motivate the human behavior. - Freud stated that the unconscious originates from repression and phylogenetic endowment. • Repression - The forgetting/blocking-out of anxiety-filled experiences. • Phylogenetic Endowment - Inherited experiences/images from our early ancestors that is beyond one’s personal experiences. b. Preconscious - The preconscious contains images and elements that are not in conscious but can be brought to the conscious quite simply or with some difficult effort. - The contents of the preconscious comes from the conscious perception and the unconscious. • • Conscious Perception - It is what a person perceives that briefly stays in the conscious and quickly passes into the preconscious after the attention is diverted. Unconscious - Freud believed that through a disguised form, ideas can slip past the vigilant censor and enter the preconscious. c. Conscious - The conscious plays a minor role in the Psychoanalytic theory. It is the mental elements that are in awareness in any given time. - Ideas can reach the consciousness from perceptual conscious system and through evasion of censorship. • Perceptual Conscious System - Perception that through external stimuli. • Evasion of Censorship - Non-threatening ideas from the preconscious and welldisguised images from the unconscious that cloaks themselves as harmless and evade the primary censor. Eventually leading to consciousness. II. Provinces of the Mind - Freud introduced a three-part structural model, three provinces of the mind. This helped Freud explain mental images according to their functions or purposes and in connection with the levels of mental life. a. Id - The Id’s sole function is to serve the pleasure principle. It has no contact with reality but strives to reduce tension through satisfying basic desires and operates in the primary process. b. Ego - The Ego is the only region of the mind that is in contact with reality or the external world or the realistic principle. It is responsible for either satisfying and delaying the gratification of the Id and Superego that operates through secondary process. c. Superego - The superego is guided by the idealistic principle. It has two subsystems the conscience and the ego-ideal. • Conscience - Results of experiencing punishments for improper behavior. • Ego-ideal - Results of experiencing rewards for proper behavior. III. Dynamics of Personality - The dynamics of personality’s purpose is to explain the driving forces behind people’s behavior. This force stems from the psychical and physical energy from their basic drives. a. Drives - Drives serves as a constant motivational force. Freud stated that various drives can all be grouped under two major headings: sex or Eros and aggression, distraction or Thanatos. b. Sex - The sexual drives’ aim is pleasure but not limited to genital satisfaction. Freud believed that the human body is invested with libido. Other than the genitals, the mouth and anus are capable of bringing sexual pleasure and they are called erogenous zones. - Sex can take upon different forms, narcissism, love, sadism, and masochism. • • • • Narcissism - Infants are primarily self-centered. This universal condition is known as primary narcissism. Occurrence of this in adolescence and adulthood is called secondary narcissism but it is not universal. Love - Another form is love, develops when people invest their libido on an object or a person. Masochism - Gains sexual pleasure from painful experiences. Sadism - Gains sexual pleasure from inflicting pain to another. c. Aggression - Freud stated that the aim of the destructive drive is to return the organism, to an inorganic state (death). Sexual drive aggression can also be in different forms, such as teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humiliation, humor, and the enjoyment obtained from other people’s suffering. d. Anxiety - Only the ego is capable of producing or feeling anxiety but the id, ego, and superego are involved in the three kinds of anxiety. • Neurotic Anxiety - • Originates from Id to Ego. Moral Anxiety - Originates from the conflict and relation between Ego and Superego. • Realistic Anxiety - Originates from the Ego’s relation with the real world. IV. Defense Mechanisms - Unconscious techniques that to avoid dealing directly with the sexual and aggressive implosives and defend itself against anxiety. a. Repression - Unconscious forgetting that involves forcing unwanted anxiety loaded experiences into the unconscious. b. Reaction Formation - Adopting a disguise or expression that is directly opposite of its original form. c. Displacement - Redirection of unacceptable urges into objects or people that are less threatening so that the original impulse is concealed. d. Fixation - Over satisfaction or under satisfaction on a various stage that leads to permanent attachment of the libido onto a certain stage of development. e. Regression - When exposed to stress and anxiety, a person reverts back to an earlier and more infantile behavior. f. Projection - When an internal impulse produces too much anxiety, the ego reduces anxiety through attributing those unacceptable feeling or behaviors that are actually one’s own g. Introjection - Incorporation of the positive qualities of another into their own ego to reduce feelings of inferiority. h. Sublimation - Rechanneling unacceptable desires by substituting a cultural or social aim. V. - Stages of Development Freud saw psychosexual development from birth and eventually culminates to maturity in 4 stages. a. Infantile Period - Infants go through a period of pregenital sexual development during their first 4 to 5 years after birth. This is divided into three subphases: oral, anal, and, phallic. • Oral Phase - Mouth as the organ that provides pleasure. - Over satisfaction or under satisfaction in this stage could lead to oral fixation. • Anal Phase - Anus as the organ that provide pleasure. - Being punitive in this stage leads to anal triad. ▪ Anal Triad - • orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy Phallic Phase - Genital as the organ that provides pleasure. - Experience of Oedipus Complex. ▪ Oedipus Complex - Sexual feelings for one parent and hostility to the other. ▪ Male Oedipus Complex - A boy’s identification with his father; wanting to be him. Later on, developing sexual desire for his mother; wanting to have his mother. Leads to seeing his father as a rival for the love of his mother. ▪ Male Castration Complex - Takes form of castration anxiety. - For girls, castration takes form in penis envy. b. Latency Period - Freud believed that in this stage of development, from about 5 up until puberty, sexual instincts are partially suppressed or not present. c. Genital Period - Puberty reawakens the sexual aim and begins the genital period. d. Maturity - Freud suggests that in this stage of development people obtains balance among the structures of the mind, being in control of the Id and Superego and attain physical maturity wherein consciousness plays an important role in behavior. VI. - Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory Freud spent time conducting therapy not only to help patients but also to gain insights into human personality necessary to expound psychoanalytic theory. This section looks at the techniques he had applied. a. Free Association - Extracting and Expressing thoughts. b. Resistance - Actions, behaviors or anything a patient does that opposes treatments. c. Transference - Refers to strong sexual and aggressive feelings. d. Freudian slips - Unacceptable impulses that break through the ego’s defenses. e. Dream Analysis - Manifesting contents of dreams to more important latent content. ▪ Manifest Content - ▪ Surface meaning given by the dreamer. Latent Content - Unconscious material. References: Feist, G., Feist, J. and Roberts,. Theories of Personality. McGrawHill.10thedition. C2021
