Unit 10 Vocab

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Psychodynamic Theories

Answer 2

Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.

Question 3

Psychoanalysis

Answer 3

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes that actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the technique used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Question 4

Unconscious

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Free Association

Answer 5

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring unconscious, in which the person relaxes and says what comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Question 6

id

Answer 6

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 7

Ego

Answer 7

The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates, among the demand of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires, and ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Question 8

Superego

Answer 8

The part of the personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals, and provide standards for judgment (the conscience) and her future aspirations.

Question 9

Psychosexual Stages

Answer 9

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 10

Oedipus Complex

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Identification

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Fixation

Answer 12

In psychoanalytic theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Question 13

Defense Mechanisms

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Repression

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Collective Unconscious

Answer 15

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