Download The Phallic Stage

• We sometimes draw the symbols from
our distant past, but sometimes we draw
them from the “day residue,”= the
accumulation of events we experienced
on the day of the dream.
• A knife,umbrella, or tie
symbolizes the penis; a
pocket, tunnel, jug, or
gate symbolizes the
vagina in some books.
• Freudians believe that
different symbols can
mean different things to
different dreamers.
• Contrary to pop psych,
did not say that all
symbols mean the same
to everyone.
Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms
• When danger from outside world arises, the ego
experiences anxiety. The ego will try to minimize
anxiety via defense mechanisms: unconscious
maneuvers intended to minimize anxiety. Defense
mechanisms are essential for psychological health.
• Freud thought over reliance on one or two defense
mechanisms could cause problems.
Defense Mechanism Examples
• Repression – the most critical one, motivated forgetting of
emotionally threatening memories or impulses. Repression
is triggered by anxiety: We forget because we want to
forget. We repress unhappy memories of early childhood to
avoid the pain they produce. This repression leads us to
experience infantile amnesia, the inability to remember
anything prior to about age three.
• Denial – motivated forgetting of distressing external
experiences. We often observe denial in adolescence and
people with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
• Regression- Returning psychologically to a younger
and safer time
• Reaction-formation- transformation of an anxietyprovoking emotion into its opposite. The observable
emotion reflects the opposite emotion the person
feels unconsciously. OCD
• Projection – unconscious attribution of our negative
qualities onto others. People with paranoia are
projecting their unconscious hostility onto others.
They want to harm others, but because they can’t
accept these impulses they perceive others as
wanting to harm them.
Displacement we direct an
impulse from a
socially
unacceptable
target onto a
safer and more
socially
acceptable target.
• Rationalization -provides a reasonable
explanation for our unreasonable behaviors or for
failures.
• A related defense mechanism, intellectualization,
allows us to avoid anxiety by thinking about
abstract and interpersonal (impersonal) thoughts.
• Identification with the aggressor-the process of
adopting the characteristics of individuals we find
threatening: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Stockholm syndrome
• Sublimation- transforms a socially unacceptable
impulse into an admired goal.
• A man who set fires in childhood went on to
become chief of his local fire department.
Stages of Psychosexual Development
• Freud believed that we pass through stages, each
stage is focused on an erogenous zone.
• According to us, our genitals are our primary sexual
organs, according to Freud, other bodily areas are
sources of sexual gratification in early development.
• For Freud, sexuality begins in infancy.
• Individuals get fixated on a stage and have difficulty
moving on, this psychosexual stage may not have
been resolved.
STAGE
APPROXIMATE AGE
PRIMARY SOURCE OF SEXUAL PLEASURE
Oral
Birth to 12-18 months
Sucking and drinking
Anal
18 months to 3 years
Alleviating tension by expelling feces
Phallic*
3 to 6 years
Genitals (penis or clitoris)
Latency
6 to 12 years
Inactive sexual stage
Genital
12 years and beyond
Renewed sexual impulses; emergence of mature
romantic relationships
*Includes Oedipus and Electra complexes.
• The Oral Stage focuses on the mouth. Infants obtain sexual
pleasure by sucking and drinking. Freud believed that
adults who are orally fixated are prone to unhealthy “oral”
behaviors, like overeating, drinking excessively, or smoking.
• The Anal Stage children experience pleasure by
moving their bowels, but soon discover that they
can’t do so whenever nature calls. They must learn
to inhibit their urges and wait to move their bowels
in a socially appropriate place. If children’s toilet
training is either too harsh or too kind, they’ll
become fixated and prone to anal personalities—
excessive neatness, stinginess, and stubbornness.
To be rigid and perfectionistic.
• The Phallic Stage is importance in explaining
personality. The penis and clitoris become the
primary erogenous zones for pleasure. Children
develop a powerful attraction for the opposite-sex
parent, as well as a desire to eliminate the same-sex
parent as a rival. In boys, the phallic stage is termed
the Oedipus complex.
• The boy, who wants Mommy for himself,
wants to kill or rid himself of Daddy. The boy
fears that his father will castrate him as a
result. Finally, these castration anxieties lead
the boy to abandon this love. He then
identifies with the aggressor, that’s his father,
and adopts his characteristics. Nevertheless, if
children don’t resolve this complex, the stage
is set for psychological problems later in life.
In the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles, Oedipus blinds himself soon after
discovering that he’d unknowingly murdered his father and married his mother.
Freud was so influenced by this play that he referred to the supposed love of all
boys for their mothers as the Oedipus complex.
• In girls, Electra complex after the Greek character
who avenged her father’s murder by killing her
mother. Girls, like boys, desire the affections of the
opposite-sex parent. In girls, the phallic stage takes
the form of penis envy, in which the girl desires to
possess a penis, just like Daddy has. Girls believe
themselves inferior to boys because of their
“missing” organ.
• In the Latency Stage, sexual impulses are
submerged into the unconscious. Most boys
and girls find members of the opposite sex to
be “yucky”.
• The Genital Stage sexual impulses reawaken. If
development up to this point has proceeded
without problems, mature romantic relationships
occur. In contrast, if serious problems weren’t
resolved at earlier stages, establishing intimate love
attachments is difficult.
Evaluated Scientifically
• Very influential in thinking about personality, but
there are major criticisms
– Unfalsifiable
– Failed predictions
– Questionable conception of unconscious
– Unrepresentative samples
– Emphasis on shared environment
• Subliminally presented
stimuli, that is, stimuli
presented below the
threshold for
awareness, can affect
our behavior.
Unrepresentative samples
• Freud based his theories on atypical samples and
generalized them to the rest of humanity. Most of
Freud’s patients were upper-class, wealthy neurotic
Viennese women. Freud’s theories may therefore
possess limited external validity, that is,
generalizability, for people from other cultural
backgrounds.
• One of Freud’s best-known
patients, known as “Anna O.,” was
Bertha Pappenheim, who later
became the founder of social work
in Germany (she was even
honored with her own postage
stamp).
Emphasis on shared environment
• Freudians claim that the child emerging from the
phallic stage assumes the personality characteristics
of the same-sex parent. Nevertheless, as behaviorgenetic studies have shown, shared environment
plays limited role in adult personality.
Neo-Freudians
• Share with Freudian theory an emphasis on
– unconscious influences and
– the importance of early experience in shaping
personality.
• Differ from Freud’s theories in two key ways
– Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social, such as the
need for approval;
• More optimistic about personal growth, according
to Freud, personality doesn’t change after
childhood.
Neo-Freudians: Alfred Adler (1870–1937)
• For Viennese psychiatrist Alfred Adler, the principal
motive in human personality is the striving for
superiority. Our goal in life is to be better than
others. To accomplish this goal, we try to form our
distinctive style of life or build superiority over
others. Style of life means that each person’s
distinctive way of achieving superiority.
• Children who are pampered or neglected by their
parents are later at risk for an inferiority complex.
An inferiority complex refers to feelings of low
self-esteem that can lead to overcompensation for
such feelings.
• Many mental illnesses are unhealthy attempts to
overcompensate for the inferiority complex.
German dictator Adolph Hitler’s desire to dominate
others was due to a striving for superiority and an effort
to compensate for deep-seated inferiority feelings.
Neo-Freudians: Carl Gustav Jung
(1875–1961)
• Jung termed the personal unconscious to Freud’s
unconscious. For Jung, there’s also a collective
unconscious. It comprises the memories from our
ancestors across the generations.
• The collective unconscious contains many
archetypes, or cross-culturally universal symbols,
which explain the similarities across people in their
emotional reactions to many features of the world.
They include the mother, the goddess, the hero,
and the mandala.
A mandala symbol
Neo-Freudians: KAREN HORNEY (1885–1952)
• German physician Karen Horney was the first
feminist personality theorist. She viewed Freud’s
concept of penis envy as misguided. For Horney,
women’s sense of inferiority originates not from
their anatomy but their excessive dependency on
men from early age.
Karen Horney believed that Freud greatly
underemphasized social factors as causes of inferiority
feelings in many women.
• BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES
Behavioral Approaches
• Behaviorism is a theory of learning and a theory of
personality, also.
• Believe that differences in our personalities
originate from our learning histories.
• Freudians (the first few years of life are especially
critical in personality development) X Behaviorists
(Learning continues to shape our personalities
throughout the life span.)
• Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by
classical and operant conditioning.
• Personality consists of behaviors. These behaviors
are both overt (observable) and covert
(unobservable), such as thoughts and feelings.
• View personality as under the control of genetic
factors and contingencies in the environment, that
is, reinforcers and punishers.
• Like psychoanalysts, radical behaviorists are
determinists: They believe all of our actions
are products of preexisting causal influences.
• For radical behaviorists, like psychoanalysts,
free will is an illusion.
Although this person may perceive her decision to
either eat or not eat a piece of candy as under her
control, radical behaviorists would regard her
perception as an illusion.
Social Learning (Social Cognitive)
Theories
• Saw learning as important, but believe thinking to
play a crucial role as well. How we interpret our
environments affects how we react to them; if we
perceive others as threatening, we’ll typically be
hostile and suspicious.
• Albert Bandura (1986) emphasized reciprocal
determinism, a form of causation whereby
personality and cognitive factors, behavior, and
environmental variables mutually influence one
another.