Ch.15 Personality Flashcards
(48 cards)
Personality
An individuals characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
Free Association
In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
Psychoanalysis
Frauds theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.
Unconscious
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are aware.
Id
Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The Id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
Ego
The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the Id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the ids desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
Superego
The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement( the conscious) and for future aspirations.
Psychosexual Stages
The childhood stages of development(oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the ids pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
Oral (0-18months)
Pleasure centers on the mouth – sucking,biting, chewing
Anal(18-36 months)
Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control.
Phallic(3-6years)
Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings.
Latency(6 to puberty)
Dormant sexual feelings.
Genital(puberty on)
Maturation of sexual interests
Oedipus Complex
According to Freud, a boys sexual desires towards his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
Identification
The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents values into their developing superegos.
Fixation
According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.
Defense Mechanisms
In psychoanalytic theory, the egos protective methods reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Repression
In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.
Regression
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, which some psychic energy remains fixated.
Reaction Formation
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.
Projection
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
Rationalization
Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for ones actions.
Displacement
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual and aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
Collective Unconscious
Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.