in
Perspective

Freud’s Model
• Superego (introjected social norms)
• Ego (Self image)
• Id (Instinctual desires of sex and aggression -- largely unconscious)

All of mans misery stems from the conflict between:
Civilization and
Man’s basic aggressiveness
(This argument is developed in Freud’s book “Civilization and Its Discontents”.)

1) Thanatos (death instinct, aggression) is bound to
Eros (life instinct, libido is sexual energy, sex)
2) Aggression and civilization are incompatible.

Man’s outward aggression is introjected (internalized) as the superego directed against the ego.
Civilization’s norms are introjected and their violation are punished by the feeling of guilt.
Neurosis is the result of this conflict.

Psychosexual-Stage Assumptions
– Critical events that occur in every child’s life.
–
Each stage involves an erogenous zone : part of the body that involve sexual pleasure.
– At each stage, there is a conflict between pleasure and reality.
– Resolution of conflict determines personality.
– If needs are either undergratified or overgratified, people become fixated at a particular stage.

The personality is formed in the first few years of life as the child resolves the first 3 psychosexual stages of development.
• Oral (0 - 18 months) Sucking, biting, chewing
• Anal (18 - 36 months) Toilet training
• Phallic (3 - 6 years) Incestuous sexual feelings
• Latency (6 - puberty) repressed sexuality
• Genital (puberty on) mature sexuality

Oral stage
• 0 to 18 months
• Erogenous zone is mouth.

Gratification through sucking and swallowing.
• Oral fixation has two possible outcomes.

Oral receptive personality.

Preoccupied with eating/drinking.

Reduce tension through oral activity.
 eating, drinking, smoking, biting nails

Passive & needy; sensitive to rejection.

Oral aggressive personality

Hostile & verbally abusive to others.

Anal Stage
» 1 1/2 to 3 years.
» Erogenous zone is the anus.
»
Conflict surrounds toilet training:
» active seeking for tension-reduction vs. self-mastery
» Anal fixation has two possible outcomes.
» Anal retentive personality: stingy, compulsive, stubborn, perfectionist.
» Anal expulsive personality: lack of self control, messy, careless.

Phallic Stage
» 3 to 6 years.
»
Erogenous zone is the genitals.
» Ambivalence of love relationships
» Oedipus/ Electra complex:
»
Child is sexually attracted to the opposite sex parent and wish to replace the same sex parent.

Latency Stage
» 6-11 years
» Sexual interest is inactive and sublimated into socially acceptable goals such as school work, play and sports
» Problems in earlier stages are repressed and culturally appropriate schemes of disgust for inappropriate love objects are learned

Genital Stage
» 11 years on
» Reawakening of sexual activity
»
Individual either deals with id impulses constructively or replays earlier conflicts
» Reproduction, sexual intimacy

Latent versus
Manifest

Title

Title

Title

Catharsis:
Recalling the experience that caused a neurosis.

Primary Process = unconscious processes of the id ( dreams , freeassociation , right brain, irrational)
Secondary process = conscious processes of the ego (rational)

Title

Defense Mechanisms
•
In order to sustain repression and minimize anxiety, the ego employs several defense mechanisms .
These mechanisms help maintaining the stability and sanity of the individual, although they sap a considerable amount of mental energy in the process
• Repression
• Denial
• Displacement
• Projection
• Rationalization
• Reaction formation
• Sublimation

REPRESSION
(Motivated Forgetting)
• Abrupt and involuntary removal of any threatening impulse, idea or memory from awareness.

Title

Title

DENIAL
(Motivated Negation)
• Blocking of external events from entry into awareness, when perception of such stimuli is symbolically or associatively related to threatening impulses.

DISPLACEMENT
(Redirection of Impulse)
• Redirection of impulses, usually aggressive ones, onto a substitute target when the appropriate target is too threatening.

Title

PROJECTION
(Displacement Outward)
• Attributing of one’s own unacceptable impulses, wishes or thoughts to another person or object

Title

RATIONALIZATION (Explaining
Away)
• Offering a socially acceptable and apparently more or less logical explanation for an act or decision actually produced by unconscious impulses.

REACTION FORMATION (Believing the Opposite)
• Transformation of unacceptable impulses into their opposites and more acceptable forms.

SUBLIMATION
(Acceptable Substitutes)
• Transformation of an impulse into a socially productive and acceptable form

Love as Sublimated Sex
• Sexuality is a reminder of our animalistic nature and as such it reminds us of our vulnerability to death
• Sexual desire is sublimated into a profound human emotional experience: romantic love
• Love and friendship transforms sex from an animal act to a symbolic human experience
• Sex becomes a meaningful part of one’s cultural worldview and therefore less threatening

Study 1
5.2
5
4.8
4.6
4.4
4.2
4
5.11
4.49
4.46
low high
Neuroticism / Reactivity
5.14
mortality salience control

1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1.17
1.31
Study 2
1.57
0.82
low high
Neuroticism / Reactivity physical romantic

Defense Mechanisms
• Repression
• Denial
• Intellectualization
• Reaction formation
• Rationalization
• Displacement
• Projection
• Identification
• Sublimation