Theories of Personality

Freud: Psychoanalysis

Chapter 2
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 Outline
• Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Biography of Freud
• Levels of Mental Life
• Provinces of Mind
• Dynamics of Personality
• Defense Mechanisms

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 Outline
• Stages of Development
• Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Related Research
• Critique of Freud
• Concept of Humanity

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Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory

• What Made This Theory Interesting

– Cornerstones: Sex and aggression
– Spread by a dedicated group
– Brilliant language (Goethe Prize in Literature)

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 Biography of Freud
• Born in Freiberg Moravia (now the Czech
Republic) in 1856
• Spent most of life (80 years) in Vienna
Austria
• Was the eldest son of eight
• Studied Medicine, specializing in
psychiatry; interested in science
• Studied hysteria with Charcot & Breuer

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 Biography (cont’d)
• Studies on Hysteria (1895)
• Abandoned seduction theory in 1897 and
replaced it with Oedipus Complex
• In 1900 wrote Interpretation of Dreams
• After 1900 developed international circle of
followers (Adler, Jung, and others)
• Was driven out of Austria by Nazis in 1938
• Died in London in 1939

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 Level of Mental Life
• Unconscious
– Beyond awareness
• Includes drives, urges, or instincts
• Is known only indirectly
– Two sources of unconscious processes
• Repression
• Phylogenetic Endowment
• Preconscious
– Not in conscious awareness, but can be
• Conscious
– Mental life that is directly available, plays a minor role

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 Provinces of the Mind
• The Id
– Pleasure Principle
– Primary Process
• The Ego
– The Reality Principle
– Secondary Process
• The Superego
– The Idealistic Principle
– Conscience
– Ego-Ideal
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 Dynamics of Personality

• Drives
– Libido or Sex Drive
– Thanatos or Aggression/Destructive Drive
• Anxiety
– Neurotic Anxiety
– Moral Anxiety
– Realistic Anxiety

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 Defense Mechanisms
• Repression
• Reaction Formation
• Displacement
• Fixation
• Regression
• Projection
• Introjection
• Sublimation

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 Stages of Development
• Infantile Period (Birth-5)
– Oral Phase
– Anal Phase
– Phallic Phase
• Male Oedipus Complex
– Castration Complex
• Female Oedipus Complex (Electra)
– Penis Envy
• Latency Period (5-puberty)
• Genital Period (puberty-adulthood)
• Maturity

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 Applications of
Psychoanalytic Theory
• Free Association
– Transference
– Resistance
• Dream Analysis
– Manifest and latent content

• Freudian or Unconscious Slips (Parapraxes)

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 Related Research
• Unconscious Mental Processing
– Automatic, implicit, nonconscious processing
• Inhibition and the Ego
– Limbic system

• Defense Mechanisms
– Neuropsychological underpinnings of repression

• Research on Dreams
– Activation-synthesis theory

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 Critique of Freud
• Did Freud Understand Women?
• Was Freud a Scientist?
– Theories are difficult to test
– Generated considerable research
– Difficult to falsify
– Very loose organizational framework
– Not a good guide to solve practical problems
– Internally consistent theory

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 Freud’s Concept of Humanity
• Deterministic and Pessimistic
• Causality over Teleology
• Unconscious over Conscious
• Biology over Culture
• Equal emphasis on Uniqueness and
Similarity

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