Notes: Freud’s Theory of Personality
MAIN IDEAS:
 Importance of the unconscious mind in determining our
behavior. Freud would say we don’t really know ourselves evidence: Dreams and Freudian slips.
 Our childhood experiences are forgotten or repressed, but
have a powerful effect on our adult personalities.
Ex. Demanding parent’s behavior causes child to have low self esteem
which leads to unhappiness as an adult.
 Freud viewed the human personality as an energy system.
The energy came from:
1) Life instincts (erotic/pleasurable desires)
2) Death instincts (destructiveness, aggression)
Personality Structure
 Id: (Want to do) Inborn,
instinctual, biological urges.
Pleasure Principle.
 Ego: (Can do) Forms in 2nd or
third year.
Reality Principle.
 Superego: (Should do) Your
conscience, source of guilt.
Moral Principle.
Freud’s Idea of the Mind’s Structure
FREUD’S THEORY OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
• Freud believed all children are born with powerful, but
unconscious sexual and aggressive urges that must be
tamed. In order to become “civilized” children must
acquire a sense of right and wrong.
Stage of
Development
ORAL STAGE
Weaning: period of
frustration
ANAL STAGE
Learning social
control
PHALLIC STAGE
Child becomes a rival
for the affections of
the parent of the
opposite sex.
Characteristics
Erotic pleasures obtained
through the mouth. Sucking,
breast feeding.
Child enjoys holding in (anal
retentive) or pushing out (anal
expulsive) feces.
Toilet training experienced as a
restraint on freedom.
Children discover the pleasure
they can get from their genitals.
They become aware of the
differences between the sexes.
Age/Sex
0-2
M+F
2-3
M+F
3-5
M+F
BOYS: OEDIPAL CONFLICT
• Boy has an unconscious desire to marry his mother and kill his
father. The father is powerful, so the boy fears punishment
(castration). To prevent this he tries to be “good” by making
himself just like the father - called Identification. (If you can’t beat
him, join him.)
GIRLS: ELECTRA COMPLEX
(Proposed by other Freudians, but Freud himself didn’t think females went through
this.)
• Unconsciously wants to marry the father and kill the mother. To
escape punishment she “vicariously” possesses the father by
identifying with her mother. She feels her mother’s triumphs and
failures as her own. Adopts mother’s moral code.
• Penis Envy: Girls suspect (possibly on a conscious level) their
mother has removed the penis they once had as punishment for
desiring the father. To make up for this “deficiency” she tries to
marry a man like her father and develops the desire to have
babies. (Freud did believe this)
BOYS AND GIRLS
Latency Stage: Around age 5, sexual desires are pushed into
the background. Children learn new skills and explore.
Sublimation: Process of redirecting sexual impulses into
learning tasks.
Genital Stage: At adolescence, sexual drives reappear.
Depending on how well you resolved your Oedipal or
Electra complex your adult relationships will be more or
less “normal” or adaptive.
• Freud thought personality was complete at adolescence.