Chapter 15 Vocab Part 1

Question 0

Free Association

Answer 0

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.

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Question 2

Psychoanalysis

Answer 2

Freud’s 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.

Question 3

Unconscious

Answer 3

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thought, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Question 4

Id

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

Ego

Answer 5

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 id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Question 6

Superego

Answer 6

The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscious) and for future aspirations.

Question 7

Psychosexual Stages

Answer 7

The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Question 8

Oedipus Complex

Answer 8

According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Question 9

Identification

Answer 9

The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.

Question 10

Fixate

Answer 10

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Question 11

Defense Mechanisms

Answer 11

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Question 12

Repression

Answer 12

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Question 13

Regression

Answer 13

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.

Question 14

Reaction Formation

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Projection

Answer 15

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

Question 16

Rationalization

Answer 16

Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

Question 17

Displacement

Answer 17

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger.

Question 18

Alfred Adler

Answer 18

Believed that our personality is based on our childhood. How did parents handle their child’s development? Most well known for the inferiority complex: a pattern of avoiding feelings of inadequacy rather than trying to overcome their source.

Question 19

Karen Horney

Answer 19

Agreed that he childhood was important, but that social, not sexual tensions are crucial for personality formation. The people that you spend your time with, determines your personality.

Question 20

Carl Jung

Answer 20

Believed that our id, ego, and superego forces made us unique from one another. Also believed the collective unconscious.

Question 21

Collective Unconscious

Answer 21

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

Question 22

Projective Tests

Answer 22

A personality test, such as Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

Question 23

TAT

Answer 23

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Question 24

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 24

The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Herman Rorschach; seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.