DO NOW: Tell me one thing you know about Sigmund Freud (from your reading, from personal...

DO NOW:

Tell me one thing you know about Sigmund Freud (from your reading, from personal experience, pop culture, etc.).

AP Psychology Ms. Desgrosellier2.2.2010

PERSONALITY

Objective: SWBAT define personality.

PERSONALITY

Personality: an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Two major theories: psychoanalytic theory and the humanistic approach.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH Objective: SWBAT explain how Freud’s experiences in private practice led to his theory of psychoanalysis.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH From Vienna, Freud went to medical school before setting up a private practice specializing in nervous disorders.

He created the psychoanalytic perspective: the first comprehensive theory of personality. Included ideas about an unconscious region of the mind, psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms.

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS Objective: SWBAT discuss Freud’s view of the mind as an iceberg, and explain how he used this image to represent conscious and unconscious regions of the mind.

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS Freud based all his theories on observations of his patients.

psychoanalysis: 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.

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS He used 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. Freud assumed that there was a direct line from a patients past to their problems in the present.

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS He proposed that the mind is like an iceberg, mostly hidden below the surface. Conscious awareness is above the surface and visible to the rest of the world.

EXPLORING THE UNCONSCIOUS Unconscious: according to Freud,

a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Preconscious area: where we temporarily store thoughts.

He said we also repress unacceptable thoughts, forcibly blocking them from our consciousness because they would be too unsettling to acknowledge.

PERSONALITY STRUCTURE

Objective: SWBAT describe Freud’s view of personality structure, and discuss the interactions of the id, ego, and superego.


Freud proposed three interacting systems that explain human personality: 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.

People controlled by their id seek instant gratification.


Superego: the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.


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

The ego struggles to reconcile the superego and the id.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Objective: SWBAT identify Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, and describe the effects of fixation on behavior.


psychosexual stages: the childhood stages of development during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.


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

Other psychoanalysts believed there was an Electra complex, the same for girls having sexual feelings for their fathers.


identification: the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos. Identification with the same gendered parent helps develop a child’s gender identity.

Object relations theorists, like Freud, presumed that our early childhood relations with parents, caregivers, and everything else influence our developing identity, personality, and frailties.


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

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Objective: SWBAT describe the function of defense mechanisms, and identify six of them.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Defense mechanisms: in psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Examples: repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

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

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Examples: reaction formation: the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.

DO NOW:

Briefly explain Freud’s psychosexual stages of development.

Do you think his theories are valid? Why or why not?

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Examples: projection: psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

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

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Examples: displacement: psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

THE NEO-FREUDIAN AND PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORISTS

Objective: SWBAT contrast the views of the neo-Freudians and psychodynamic theorists with Freud’s original theory.


Neo-Freudians: psychoanalysts that followed Freud and his theories. Similarities: they accepted the Freudian personality structures, the importance of the unconscious, the shaping of personality in childhood, and defense mechanisms.


Neo-Freudians: psychoanalysts that followed Freud and his theories. Differences: more emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and in coping with the environment, and they doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations.


Alfred Adler believed that much of our behavior is driven by efforts to overcome our inferiority complex.

Karen Horney said that childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security. She also countered Freud’s assumption that women have weak superegos and suffer from “penis envy.”


Carl Jung agreed with Freud’s importance on the unconscious. Collective unconscious: Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

According to Jung, this explains why spiritual concerns are deeply rooted and why people in different cultures share certain myth and images.


Psychodynamic theory: assumes much of our mental life is unconscious, that we often struggle with inner conflicts among our wishes, fears, and values, and that childhood shapes our personalities and ways of becoming attached to others.

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES Objective: SWBAT describe two projective tests used to assess personality, and discuss some criticisms of them.

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES Projective tests: a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES Rorschach inkblot test: the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach

Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

ASSESSING INCONCSCIOUS PROCESSES

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Objective: SWBAT summarize psychology’s current assessment of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Modern research contradicts many of his theories. For example, today’s developmental psychologists do not think that infants’ neural networks are mature enough to sustain as much emotional trauma as Freud assumed.

Research has shown that gender identity forms earlier than the resolution of the Oedipus complex at age 5 or 6.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE According to modern research, repression, if it ever occurs, is a rare mental response to terrible trauma. Some researchers believe that prolonged stress might disrupt memory by damaging the hippocampus.

However, the more common reality is that high stress enhances memory.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Freud was right about at least one thing, that we have limited access to everything that goes on in our minds. Unconscious usually refers now to information processing that occurs without our awareness. e.g. schemas, the workings of the right hemisphere in split-brained patients, etc.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Terror-management theory: proposes that faith in one’s worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection against a deeply rooted fear of death.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Freud’s theories do not come from scientific research or theories. It offers after-the-fact explanations of any characteristic, but does not predict behaviors or traits.

EVALUATING THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE Despite all of this, Freud’s theories and ideas still exist today. They especially endure in popular culture and the general public, even as their value in science and psychology is declining.

DO NOW:

Who were the neo-Freudians? How were they similar to Freud? How were they different?

HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Humanistic psychology: focuses on the ways “healthy” people strive for self-determination and self-realization.

Humanistic psychology was a response to the negativity of the psychoanalytic perspective and the mechanistic psychology of behaviorism.

HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE

It believes that people are basically good.

Pioneering theorists were Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

Their third-force perspective emphasized human potential and seeing the world through the person’s eyes.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON Objective: SWBAT summarize Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, and explain how his ideas illustrate the humanistic perspective.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON Self-actualization: according to Maslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved. The motivation to fulfill one’s potential.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON Maslow developed his ideas by studying healthy, creative people rather than troubled clinical cases.

They shared certain characteristics, like being self-aware and self-accepting, open and spontaneous, loving and caring, not paralyzed by others’ opinions, and they were secure in their sense of who they are.

ABRAHAM MASLOW’S SELF-ACTUALIZING PERSON They focused their energies on a particular task.

Famous people he studied were Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Eleanor Roosevelt.

CARL ROGERS’ PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE Objective: SWBAT discuss Carl Rogers’ person-centered perspective, and explain the importance of unconditional positive regard.

CARL ROGERS’ PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE Rogers believed that people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies.

We can nurture our growth by being genuine – by being open with our own feelings, transparent, and self-disclosing.

CARL ROGERS’ PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE People can also nurture our growth by being accepting and by being empathetic.

Unconditional positive regard: according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person.

CARL ROGERS’ PERSON-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE Maslow, and especially Rogers, placed self-concept as the central feature of one’s personality. Self-concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”

ASSESSING THE SELF

Objective: SWBAT explain how humanistic psychologists assessed personality.

ASSESSING THE SELF

Some humanistic psychologists gave people surveys to evaluate their self-concept, both ideal and perceived.

Other humanistic psychologists believed that any sort of standardized measurement of personality was dehumanizing (including surveys!).

They preferred interviews and personal conversations.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE Objective: SWBAT state the major criticisms of the humanistic perspective on personality.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE Humanistic psychology, like Freudian, is pervasive – it has influenced counseling, education, childrearing and management.

It has also influenced popular psychology, like the importance of positive self-concept.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE Its emphasis on the individual reflects Western values.

There is however, criticism of the branch of psychology. Its concepts are vague and subjective.

The individualism it promotes could lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, and an erosion of moral restraints.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE Humanistic psychologists have countered that secure, nondefensive self-acceptance is actually the first step toward loving others.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE It also fails to recognize human capacity for evil. According to Rogers, evil would not happen in someone given growth-promoting conditions.

He said evil came from toxic cultural influences, including the educational system, the injustice in distribution of wealth, and our cultivated prejudices against individuals who are different.

EVALUATING THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE It also fails to recognize human capacity for evil.

However, Rollo May, another humanist, said that people make the culture and we are both evil and good.

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