Freud's Psychoanalysis

Question 1

Life of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Answer 1

• Lived primarily in Vienna, Austria
• Felt hostility towards father who was authoritarian
• Felt sexual attraction towards mother who was attractive and loving
• Theories reflected his childhood experiences
• Studied Medicine at the University of Vienna
• Published an article of cocaine’s benefits in 1884
• “Always a question of the genitals” with Charcot
• Became convinced sexual conflicts were the cause of emotional disturbance

Question 2

What is the Oedipus complex?

Answer 2

Describe a child’s feelings of desire for his or her opposite-sex parent and jealousy and anger toward his or her same-sex parent

Question 3

What are instincts?

Answer 3

• Are the driving forces of our personality
• Are mental representations of internal needs (e.g. hunger, thirst, sex)
• Motivate the behavior that will satisfy the needs

Question 4

Internal needs generate and reduce?

Answer 4

• These needs generate physiological energy (tension)

- Which the instinct aims to reduce

Question 5

How often do we experience instinctual tension?

Answer 5

Always

Question 6

Types of life instincts

Answer 6

Life and death

Question 7

What are life instincts?

Answer 7

• Life instinct promotes survival
• Sexual instincts and basic instinctual impulses
• Sex drive: primary life instinct

Question 8

What are death instincts?

Answer 8

• Includes negative feelings like hate, anger, and aggression.
• Reflects an unconscious wish to die (since all living things decay and die)

Question 9

Examples of aggressive drive

Answer 9

• Our wish to die turned onto others/objects compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill
• Primary death instinct

Question 10

What triggered Freud’s creation of death instincts?

Answer 10

• He endured physiological and psychological debilitations
• He witnessed bloodshed of WWI
• His daughter died at age of 26, leaving 2 young kids

Question 11

The concept of death instincts-well received?

Answer 11

No

Question 12

What are the levels of personality?

Answer 12

Id, Ego and Superego

Question 13

Describe the Id

Answer 13

• Reservoir for life and death instincts
• The main goal is to increase pleasure and avoid pain
• Strives for immediate gratification
• Impatient
• No awareness of reality (i.e., societal constraints)
• Can only attempt to satisfy needs through reflex action, wish-fulfilling hallucinations, or fantasy
• Primary process thought: childlike thinking by which id attempts to satisfy drives

Question 14

Describe the Ego

Answer 14

• Contains reason and rationality
• Helps the id to obtain what it craves
• But uses perception, judgment, memory to decides when and how (secondary process thinking)
• Operates in accordance with the reality principle
• Delays or redirects id satisfaction to meet the demands of reality (society)
• Constantly mediating and striking compromises between their conflicting demands

Question 15

Explain the difference between primary and secondary process thinking

Answer 15

• Primary: is childlike thinking by which-Id

- Secondary: uses perception, judgment, memory to decides when and how-Ego

Question 16

Describe the Superego

Answer 16

• Contains sense of morality
• ‘Right and wrong’ is learned by age 5 or 6, through praise and punishment
• Rewards and punishments for behavior eventually become self-administered
• We experience guilt or shame when we act contradictory to our moral code
• Parental control is replaced by self-control
• Superego aims to extinguish the demands of the id, completely (especially sex and aggressive drives)
• Strives solely for moral perfection

Question 17

What are the Superego’s 2 main components?

Answer 17

• Conscience: consisting of behaviors for which we’ve been punished (“bad” behaviors)
• Ego-ideal: consisting of behaviors for which we’ve been praised (“good” behaviors)

Question 18

What is anxiety?

Answer 18

• Anxiety: A Threat to the Ego
• According to Freud, anxiety:
• Is objectless fear; we cannot point to the source
• Is a root cause of emotional disturbance and psychotic behavior
• Can be overwhelming = traumatic anxiety

Question 19

What happens to the ego when it is strained?

Answer 19

• Develops anxiety

- Defense mechanisms

Question 20

If no action is taken during anxiety, what occurs?

Answer 20

Ego with be overthrown

Question 21

How can the ego defend itself from anxiety using defense mechanisms/rational techniques? And what happens when these don’t work/irrational techniques?

Answer 21

	Run away from threatening situation
	Inhibit impulsive need that is source of danger
	Obey orders of the conscience 
IF THESE DON'T WORK:
	Denials or distortions of reality
	Operate unconsciously

Question 22

Define repression

Answer 22

involuntary removal (forgetting) of something from conscious awareness
	i.e. forgetting a traumatic memory

Question 23

Name some defense mechanisms

Answer 23

	Repression
	Denial
	Reaction Formation
	Projection
	Regression
	Rationalization
	Displacement
	Sublimation

Question 24

Define denial

Answer 24

denying the existence of some threat or traumatic event

 i.e. a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death

Question 25

Define reaction formation

Answer 25

actively expressing the opposite impulse |  i.e. a person threatened by sexual longings can become a crusader against pornography

Question 26

Define projection

Answer 26

attributing unacceptable impulses to someone else |  An unfaithful husband suspects his wife of infidelity.

Question 27

Define regression

Answer 27

retreating to an earlier period of life when one felt safer, when the stresses didn’t exist, or where an all-powerful parent would take them away.  A wife refuses to drive a car even though it causes the family much disorganization. A result of her refusal is that her husband has to take her everywhere.

Question 28

Define rationalization

Answer 28

reinterpreting behavior to make it seem more rational and acceptable  “I don’t care that he broke up with me, he had way too many issues anyway”

Question 29

Define displacement

Answer 29

shifting the impulse from a threatening or unavailable object to a more available substitute  i.e. children who hate their parents, but are afraid to express it, may displace their anger onto someone else

Question 30

Define sublimation

Answer 30

displacing the id impulse by diverting energy into socially acceptable behaviors  Sexual energy can be diverted (sublimated) into artistically creative behaviors

Question 31

What are the psychosexual stages of development?

Answer 31

 Include the oral, anal, phallic, and genital stages through which all children pass  In each of these stages, a conflict exists that must be resolved before the child can progress to the next  In each stage, the “id” wants to be gratified  In each stage, the gratification of the id instincts will depend on a particular part of the body

Question 32

Why would a child be reluctant to move to the next stage because:

Answer 32

 The needs have not been satisfied  The needs are so supremely satisfied (indulged)  In either case, the child is said to be fixated  psychic energy remains invested at that stage  Leaves less energy for the following stages

Question 33

What are the 2 outcomes of oral fixation?

Answer 33

 Oral aggressive personality  Result of fixation due to dissatisfaction  Adults are prone to hostility, aggression, cruelty, pessimism  Oral incorporative personality  Result of fixation due to overindulgence  Adults are overly concerned with oral activities (i.e. eating, drinking, kissing)  Adults prone to depend on others to gratify needs

Question 34

Outcomes of the anal stage

Answer 34

 2. Anal Stage  If toilet-training is not going well, the child may react in 2 ways:  Defecate when and where they want!  A satisfactory technique for reducing frustration  May develop into anal-aggressive personality:  Adult is hostile, sadistic, cruel, destructive, hot-tempered 2. Hold back or retain feces!  Manipulative technique for securing parental attention and affection  May develop into anal-retentive personality:  Adult is stubborn, stingy, hoards and retains things in which security is dependent on, overly meticulous

Question 35

What is the Oedipus complex? Boys

Answer 35

 Boy has unconscious sexual desire for the mother and thus a desire to replace/destroy the father  Fear that father will find out and cut off penis = Castration anxiety  Leads boy to repress his sexual desire for mother  Leads also to identification with father (i.e. adopting his mannerisms, attitudes, superego standards)  Boy thus experiences vicarious sexual satisfaction

Question 36

What is the Electra complex? Girls

Answer 36

 Girl’s first love object is also the mother  But during the phallic stage, girl’s love shifts to father  A shift is a reaction to her discovery (at this stage) that boys have a penis and she does not  Girl envies father for his highly valued sex organ (Penis envy)  Girl represses love for father, identifies with mother, and accepts ‘inferior’ place in society

Question 37

What can happen when phallic conflicts are resolved improperly?

Answer 37

 influence adult relations with the opposite sex  cause lingering forms of castration anxiety and penis envy  lead to “phallic personality.”

Question 38

What is the phallic personality characterized by?

Answer 38

 Narcissism: the need for continual recognition and appreciation of attractive and unique qualities  In males: vain, arrogant, express personality through sexual conquests  In females: exaggerate femininity, uses charm to conquer men

Question 39

Personality types

Answer 39

 Oral-incorporative / Oral-aggressive  Anal-retentive / Anal-aggressive  Phallic personality (male/female)  Genital personality

Question 40

Could Freud's ideas be tested?

Answer 40

No

Question 41

Supported Freudian ideas

Answer 41

 Oral and anal character types  Basic concept of the Oedipal triangle  Castration anxiety

Question 42

Unsupported Freudian ideas

Answer 42

 Dreams are disguised expressions of repressed wishes  Males resolve Oedipus complex through identification with the father  Woman have inadequately developed superegos

Question 43

Object relation theories

Answer 43

 Object Relations Theories  Focus on interpersonal relationships with objects  Object = any person or activity that can satisfy an need/instinct  Diverges from Freud’s belief that we are pleasure seeking beings; instead it suggests that humans seek relationships.  Primary motivational factors in one's life are human relationships, rather than sexual or aggressive triggers.  Emphasize the mother-child relationship especially  Theories all agree that the mother-infant experience is responsible for the formation of a child’s psychic structure  Agree that a person’s mind develops as a direct result of early relationships.  Because these relationships are forged in infancy, they continue to pervade a person’s existence throughout his or her life.

Question 44

Heinz Kohut (1913-1981)

Answer 44

 Emphasized the formation of the nuclear self |  Develops based on the relationship between the infant and his/her self-objects

Question 45

What is self-objects?

Answer 45

people who play such a vital role in our lives that, as infants, we believe they are part of our selves (namely, mother)

Question 46

Role of the Mother

Answer 46

 Mother is infant’s primary self-object  Must gratify the child’s physical needs and psychological needs  Must act as a mirror to the child – reflecting back a sense of uniqueness, importance, greatness  Reflection confirms the child’s sense of self-importance and becomes part of his/her nuclear self  If mother rejects child, and mirrors unimportance, the child develops shame or guilt  All aspects of the adult self (positive and negative) are formed by the child’s initial relations with primary self-object

Question 47

Melanie Klein's life (1882-1960)

Answer 47

 An unwanted child who felt rejected by her parents  Suffered periodic bouts of depression  Estranged from daughter  Klein’s difficulties as a daughter and mother likely influenced theories

Question 48

Melanie Klein's ideas

Answer 48

 Emphasized the first 5 to 6 months of life (vs. Freud who stressed the first 5 years)  Assumed babies are born with active fantasy lives  Fantasies consist of mental representations (images) of id instincts  These images temporarily satisfy the needs  Ex: a hungry baby can just imagine sucking at mother’s breast which will relieve his hunger, for some time  Infants relate, initially, only to parts of the objects  The first ‘part-object’ is the mother’s breast  The breast either gratifies or fails to gratify the id instinct  Based on this, infant judges whether the world is good or bad  Eventually, infants relate to whole objects (mother) rather than just part-objects (breast)  These experiences leave lasting mental images that remain influential over adult’s relationship with others