4.7.2012
Chapter 13: Personality
Psychodynamic Theories
• Freud
o Personality Structures
▪ Personality arises from conflict between impulse and restraint
• Three conflicting forces: id, ego, superego
• Id: basic urges—pleasure principle
• Ego: uses ‘reality principle’ and conscious
deliberation/foresight to achieve goals of
id
o Attempts to reconcile conflicting demands of id and
superego
• Superego: moral sense, develops age 4-5
o Personality Development
▪ Psychosexual stages
• Early development stages that children go through
• Focus on specific erogenous zones
Stage Focus
Oral (0-18 months) Mouth related
Anal (18-36 months) Bowel/bladder elimination—demands for
control
Phallic (3-6 years) Genitals—electra/Oedipus complexes
develop
Latency (6-puberty) Dormant sexual feelings
Genital (puberty on) Maturation of sexual interests
• Phallic stage
o Beginning of Oedipus complex
▪ Identification with ‘rival parent’ (if
you can’t beat em, join em)
▪ Cause of individual’s gender identity
• Fixation
o Unresolved conflicts during some psychosexual
stage could lead to overindulgence or over-
prioritizing of that zone-related pleasure-
seeking behavior
o Defense mechanisms
▪ Anxiety results from membership in a society
• Defense mechanisms developed to distort reality to reduce
anxiety
▪ Repression—underlies all the other defense mechanisms
(see below)
• Regression—resort to earlier psychosexual stage to
recover some old familiar comfort
• Reaction formation
This study source was downloaded by 100000852681095 from CourseHero.com on 12-15-2022 20:18:03 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/9703521/Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging-Psychodynamic-Theories-Notes/
, Opposite
o
• Projection—attributing one own’s problems
and dispositions to another
• Rationalization
• Displacement—transfers feelings and impulses to a
less threatening, more acceptable object
• Denial
o The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
▪ Neo-Freudians place less emphasis on sex/aggression as being
determinants of all behavior
▪ Alfred Adler and Karen Horney
• Social not sexual relations during childhood
determine personality
• Adler: inferiority complex
o Childhood problems and their resultant tensions
have reverberations in adult behavior/personality
• Karen Horney
o Tried to rebut Freud’s masculine biases
▪ Penis envy
▪ Women have weak superegos
▪ Jung: collective unconscious
• Archetypes
o Assessing Unconscious Processes
▪ Projective tests
• Designed to present subjects with ambiguous stimuli that
they will project their own feelings/unconscious drives
onto
o Eliminates conscious pretensions
• Rorschach test
o Not good for detailed narratives of past experience
o Better for detecting underlying hostility or anxiety
o Evaluating Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective and Modern Views of
the Unconscious
▪ Childhood development
• Not as parent-influenced as it is peer-influenced
• Gender identity is fixed earlier than 5 or 6, parents’
sexes regardless
• No testable predictions—only retroactive judgments
▪ Modern Takes on Repression
• Little evidence for repression after traumatic experience
▪ Modern View of the Unconscious
• Projection has been redubbed ‘false consensus effect’
o Overestimate the extent to which others share our
beliefs
• Terror-management theory
o Fear of mortality and vulnerability
This study source was downloaded by 100000852681095 from CourseHero.com on 12-15-2022 20:18:03 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/9703521/Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging-Psychodynamic-Theories-Notes/
Chapter 13: Personality
Psychodynamic Theories
• Freud
o Personality Structures
▪ Personality arises from conflict between impulse and restraint
• Three conflicting forces: id, ego, superego
• Id: basic urges—pleasure principle
• Ego: uses ‘reality principle’ and conscious
deliberation/foresight to achieve goals of
id
o Attempts to reconcile conflicting demands of id and
superego
• Superego: moral sense, develops age 4-5
o Personality Development
▪ Psychosexual stages
• Early development stages that children go through
• Focus on specific erogenous zones
Stage Focus
Oral (0-18 months) Mouth related
Anal (18-36 months) Bowel/bladder elimination—demands for
control
Phallic (3-6 years) Genitals—electra/Oedipus complexes
develop
Latency (6-puberty) Dormant sexual feelings
Genital (puberty on) Maturation of sexual interests
• Phallic stage
o Beginning of Oedipus complex
▪ Identification with ‘rival parent’ (if
you can’t beat em, join em)
▪ Cause of individual’s gender identity
• Fixation
o Unresolved conflicts during some psychosexual
stage could lead to overindulgence or over-
prioritizing of that zone-related pleasure-
seeking behavior
o Defense mechanisms
▪ Anxiety results from membership in a society
• Defense mechanisms developed to distort reality to reduce
anxiety
▪ Repression—underlies all the other defense mechanisms
(see below)
• Regression—resort to earlier psychosexual stage to
recover some old familiar comfort
• Reaction formation
This study source was downloaded by 100000852681095 from CourseHero.com on 12-15-2022 20:18:03 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/9703521/Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging-Psychodynamic-Theories-Notes/
, Opposite
o
• Projection—attributing one own’s problems
and dispositions to another
• Rationalization
• Displacement—transfers feelings and impulses to a
less threatening, more acceptable object
• Denial
o The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
▪ Neo-Freudians place less emphasis on sex/aggression as being
determinants of all behavior
▪ Alfred Adler and Karen Horney
• Social not sexual relations during childhood
determine personality
• Adler: inferiority complex
o Childhood problems and their resultant tensions
have reverberations in adult behavior/personality
• Karen Horney
o Tried to rebut Freud’s masculine biases
▪ Penis envy
▪ Women have weak superegos
▪ Jung: collective unconscious
• Archetypes
o Assessing Unconscious Processes
▪ Projective tests
• Designed to present subjects with ambiguous stimuli that
they will project their own feelings/unconscious drives
onto
o Eliminates conscious pretensions
• Rorschach test
o Not good for detailed narratives of past experience
o Better for detecting underlying hostility or anxiety
o Evaluating Freud’s Psychoanalytic Perspective and Modern Views of
the Unconscious
▪ Childhood development
• Not as parent-influenced as it is peer-influenced
• Gender identity is fixed earlier than 5 or 6, parents’
sexes regardless
• No testable predictions—only retroactive judgments
▪ Modern Takes on Repression
• Little evidence for repression after traumatic experience
▪ Modern View of the Unconscious
• Projection has been redubbed ‘false consensus effect’
o Overestimate the extent to which others share our
beliefs
• Terror-management theory
o Fear of mortality and vulnerability
This study source was downloaded by 100000852681095 from CourseHero.com on 12-15-2022 20:18:03 GMT -06:00
https://www.coursehero.com/file/9703521/Magnetic-Resonance-Imaging-Psychodynamic-Theories-Notes/
