Personality
Unit X
Psychoanalysis
Freud & Co.
Exploring the Unconscious: Techniques
• Freud believed unexplained physical problems
stemmed from unconscious fears/desires that
were socially inappropriate
• He used free association – patient says whatever
word comes to mind in response to a stimulus
word
Try it: Free Association (from Carl Jung,
student of Freud)
• 1. head
• 2. green
• 3. water
• 4. to sing
• 5. dead
• 6. long
• 7. ship
• 8. to play
• 9. window
• 10. friendly
• 11. to cook
• 12. to ask
• Do any of these words seem to reveal hidden
feelings you might have about something or
someone in your life? Why or why not?
• Would you want anyone to read meaning into this
list of freely associated words? Why or why not?
Freudian Slips (parapraxis)
• Freud believed nothing said or done accidentally
was truly accidental – everything revealed the
unconscious mind at work
• Ex: “MARRIAGE = ONE MAN & ONE MAN” – TX
Republican Dan Patrick on Twitter
Projective Tests
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) shows people
ambiguous pictures and asks them to make up a story
• Rorschach inkblot test asks people to describe what they
see in inkblots
• Only valid for revealing hostility and anxiety, if that
Freud’s Personality Structures
• Id : unconscious, preoccupied with reducing basic
drives like reproduction and aggression, selfcentered
• Infants and people focused on enjoying the
present are good examples
• Devil on shoulder
Freud’s Personality Structures
• Superego: Moral conscience that focuses on how we
should behave, perfectionist
• Develops around age 4-5
• Angel on shoulder
Freud’s Personality Structures
• Ego: Uses reality principle to satisfy id in ways that
maximize long-term pleasure while also seeking to
satisfy superego, partly conscious
• Person between devil and angel making the
decision about what to do
• What would a person look like who had a strong
superego?
• What about a person with a weak superego?
Psychosexual Stages of Personality
Development
• Freud believed adult personality forms in childhood
• Id focuses on taking pleasure in different areas of the
body in stages
• Unresolved conflict could cause a person to fixate, or
get stuck in a stage
Stage 1: Oral
• 0 – 18 months, pleasure centers on mouth (biting,
sucking, chewing)
• Oral fixation could result from being abruptly weaned
• Person with fixation might exhibit passive dependence
(like infant), deny that dependence by acting tough, or
have an oral habit such as overeating or smoking
Stage 2: Anal
• 18-36 months, pleasure focuses on bowel/bladder
elimination, desire for control
• 2 possibilities for fixation:
• Anal-retentive: overly neat and passive-aggressive
• Anal-expulsive: overly messy and defiant
Stage 3: Phallic
• 3-6 years, pleasure focuses on genitals, struggle to
deal with incestuous sexual feelings
• Boys develop unconscious sexual feelings for their
mothers and become jealous/fear/hate their
fathers : Oedipus complex
Phallic Stage Cont.
• Boys know that girls have no penises and develop
castration anxiety, which causes them to repress their
desire for their mothers
• Girls know that they have no penises and develop penis
envy, blaming their mothers for castrating them and
becoming in love with/jealous of their fathers
• Fixation: Person may become reckless, narcissistic,
and/or incapable of close relationships
Stage 4 : Latency
• 6-puberty
• Children go through identification process, when
they try to become like their same-sex parent
• Sexual feelings are dormant
Stage 5: Genital
• Puberty and older
• Mature sexual interests expressed in heterosexual
relationships
Defense Mechanisms
• Ways to protect the ego from anxiety about losing
control over id/superego
• All involve unconsciously distorting reality
Defense Mechanism Mnemonic
• Rapid Racers Run Past Really Stinky Dangerous Dogs
• Repression, Regression, Reaction Formation, Projection, Rationalization,
Displacement, Denial
Repression
• Underlies all other defense mechanisms
• Removes anxiety-causing thoughts from consciousness
• Urges slip out in dreams and Freudian slips
Regression
• Returning to a more infantile stage of
development for comfort
• Ex: Calling mom when something bad happens
Reaction Formation
• Ego turns inappropriate urges into their opposites
• Ex: Boys who have a crush on girls and pull their
hair instead of talking to them
Projection
• Sees threatening urges in others instead of one’s self
• Ex: Aggressive person perceives everyone else as
insulting them
Rationalization
• Attempt to justify actions with socially acceptable
reasons
• Ex: Buying a convertible “to teach my kids to drive stick
shift”
Displacement
• Moves inappropriate impulses towards a more
acceptable object
• Ex: Someone who is mad at their parents but takes it out
on their sibling
Sublimation
• Turning unacceptable impulses into a socially
valuable product
• Ex: Dentist in Little Shop of Horrors who tortured
animals as a child
Denial
• Person rejects facts or how serious those facts are
• Ex: Someone ignores a growing mole (sign of skin
cancer), dismissing it as “nothing”
Neo-Freudians
• Generally de-emphasized sex and aggression, believed in
conscious interpretation of events, conflicts can be
solved
• Alfred Adler – described inferiority complex, birth order
theory of personality
• Karen Horney – wrote Feminine Psychology, a much
kinder take on women’s psychological development
Carl Jung
• Personal unconscious (similar to Freud)
• Collective unconscious – collection of inherited
experiences; archetypes shared will all humans,
explains cultural similarities
• Archetypes include: the Hero, the Shadow, the Quest,
the Good Mother, the Soul-Mate
The Humanistic Perspective
The Third Force
The Third Force in Psychology
• Humanistic psychology focuses on healthy people (unlike
Freud) and used self-reported feelings/experiences
(unlike behaviorists)
Abraham Maslow
• Studied creative, successful people
• Healthy people are self-actualized: accept themselves
and others, have a mission in life
Carl Rogers
• People are naturally good
• In order to grow in a healthy way, we need others to be
• 1. genuine – honest and unpretentious
• 2. accepting – unconditional positive regard – love others
despite knowing the worst about them
• 3. empathetic – share and reflect our feelings; really listen
Humanists and the Self
• Write down a few thoughts about who you are
• Now write down a few thoughts about who you would
ideally like to be
• If these things are similar, you probably have a positive
self-concept
• This is the goal of humanists
Criticism of Humanistic Perspective
• It’s unrealistic – people are not all good
• It’s subjective – Maslow and Rogers choose traits
that they liked as the most important
• It promotes selfish individualism as everyone
seeks their own self-fulfillment
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Reciprocal Determinism
• Focus is on how people interact with their environment
in their thoughts and actions
• Albert Bandura – We learn behaviors by watching, but we
also think about situations to decide how to act
• ABC – Affect (thoughts/emotions) influences Behavior
which causes Consequences
Locus of Control
• External – people perceive their destiny to be controlled by
outside forces (luck, stars, bad parenting, poverty)
• Internal – people perceive that they have control over their
own destiny (mostly through hard work)
• Those with internal locus of control are healthier, more
independent, and deal better with stress
Self-Control
• Self-control, like muscle, is weakest after use but
recovers with time
• Practice and discipline in one area can improve overall
self-control
• Self-control positively correlates with grades and social
achievement
Personal Control
• Giving people choices and control over their
activities and environment improves morale,
health and motivation (“engagement”)
• Having too many options can cause depression or
anxiety – information overload, greater fear of
regret
Optimism
• Optimists tend to be healthier and happier than
pessimists
• Too much optimism is unrealistic and can cause
overconfidence
• Most people fail to recognize their own incompetence –
they don’t know what they don’t know
• Other people can probably be more accurate in
describing your performance than you can
• Social-cognitive psychologists assess people’s behavior
by putting them in actual or mock situations (ie, student
teaching, simulation of fire for firefighters)
• This is the best way to predict someone’s future job
performance: looking at their past/current prefomance
Criticism of Social-Cognitive Perspective
• They ignore the importance of personality traits by focusing so much on
situations
Individualism Vs. Collectivism
• See pages 516-518, especially chart on page 518