Download Freud

Freud
in
Perspective
Freud’s Model
• Superego (introjected social
norms)
• Ego (Self image)
• Id (Instinctual desires of sex and
aggression -- largely
unconscious)
All of mans misery stems
from the conflict between:
Civilization
and
Man’s basic aggressiveness
(This argument is developed in Freud’s
book “Civilization and Its Discontents”.)
1) Thanatos (death instinct,
aggression) is bound to
Eros (life instinct, libido is
sexual energy, sex)
2) Aggression and civilization
are incompatible.
Man’s outward aggression is
introjected (internalized) as the
superego directed against the ego.
Civilization’s norms are introjected
and their violation are punished
by the feeling of guilt.
Neurosis is the result of this conflict.
Psychosexual-Stage Assumptions
– Critical events that occur in every child’s life.
– Each stage involves an erogenous zone: part of the body that involve
sexual pleasure.
– At each stage, there is a conflict between pleasure and reality.
– Resolution of conflict determines personality.
– If needs are either undergratified or overgratified, people become
fixated at a particular stage.
The personality is formed in the first few years of
life as the child resolves the first 3 psychosexual
stages of development.
• Oral (0 - 18 months)
Sucking, biting,
chewing
• Anal (18 - 36 months) Toilet training
• Phallic (3 - 6 years)
• Latency (6 - puberty)
Incestuous sexual
feelings
repressed sexuality
• Genital (puberty on)
mature sexuality
Oral stage
•
0 to 18 months
•
Erogenous zone is mouth.
 Gratification through sucking and swallowing.
•
Oral fixation has two possible outcomes.
 Oral receptive personality.

Preoccupied with eating/drinking.

Reduce tension through oral activity.

eating, drinking, smoking, biting nails

Passive & needy; sensitive to rejection.
 Oral aggressive personality

Hostile & verbally abusive to others.
Anal Stage
» 1 1/2 to 3 years.
» Erogenous zone is the anus.
» Conflict surrounds toilet training:
» active seeking for tension-reduction vs. self-mastery
» Anal fixation has two possible outcomes.
» Anal retentive personality: stingy, compulsive, stubborn, perfectionist.
» Anal expulsive personality: lack of self control, messy, careless.
Phallic Stage
» 3 to 6 years.
» Erogenous zone is the genitals.
» Ambivalence of love relationships
» Oedipus/ Electra complex:
» Child is sexually attracted to the opposite sex parent and wish to
replace the same sex parent.
Latency Stage
» 6-11 years
» Sexual interest is inactive and sublimated into socially
acceptable goals such as school work, play and sports
» Problems in earlier stages are repressed and culturally
appropriate schemes of disgust for inappropriate love
objects are learned
Genital Stage
» 11 years on
» Reawakening of sexual activity
» Individual either deals with id impulses constructively or
replays earlier conflicts
» Reproduction, sexual intimacy
Latent
versus
Manifest
Title
Title
Title
Catharsis:
Recalling the experience that
caused a neurosis.
Primary Process = unconscious
processes of the id (dreams, freeassociation, right brain, irrational)
Secondary process = conscious
processes of the ego (rational)
Title
Defense Mechanisms
•
In order to sustain repression and
minimize anxiety, the ego employs
several defense mechanisms.
These mechanisms help
maintaining the stability and
sanity of the individual, although
they sap a considerable amount
of mental energy in the process
• Repression
•
•
•
•
•
•
Denial
Displacement
Projection
Rationalization
Reaction formation
Sublimation
REPRESSION
(Motivated Forgetting)
• Abrupt and involuntary
removal of any threatening
impulse, idea or memory
from awareness.
Title
Title
DENIAL
(Motivated Negation)
• Blocking of external events
from entry into awareness,
when perception of such
stimuli is symbolically or
associatively related to
threatening impulses.
DISPLACEMENT
(Redirection of Impulse)
• Redirection of impulses,
usually aggressive ones,
onto a substitute target
when the appropriate
target is too threatening.
Title
PROJECTION
(Displacement Outward)
• Attributing of one’s own
unacceptable impulses,
wishes or thoughts to
another person or object
Title
RATIONALIZATION (Explaining
Away)
• Offering a socially
acceptable and apparently
more or less logical
explanation for an act or
decision actually produced
by unconscious impulses.
REACTION FORMATION (Believing
the Opposite)
• Transformation of
unacceptable impulses into
their opposites and more
acceptable forms.
SUBLIMATION
(Acceptable Substitutes)
• Transformation of an
impulse into a socially
productive and acceptable
form
Love as Sublimated Sex
• Sexuality is a reminder of our animalistic nature and as
such it reminds us of our vulnerability to death
• Sexual desire is sublimated into a profound human
emotional experience: romantic love
• Love and friendship transforms sex from an animal act to a
symbolic human experience
• Sex becomes a meaningful part of one’s cultural worldview
and therefore less threatening
Study 1
5.2
5.14
5.11
appeal of sex
5
4.8
4.6
4.49
mortality salience
4.46
4.4
4.2
4
low
high
Neuroticism / Reactivity
control
death accessibility
Study 2
1.8
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1.57
1.17
1.31
0.82
low
high
Neuroticism / Reactivity
physical
romantic
Defense Mechanisms
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Repression
Denial
Intellectualization
Reaction formation
Rationalization
Displacement
Projection
Identification
Sublimation