Specialized in nervous disorders.

Faced patients whose disorders made no neurological sense.

Might some neurological disorders have psychological causes?

Freud told patients to relax and say whatever came to mind, no matter how embarrassing or trivial.

Freud believed free association would allow him to follow a chain of thought leading into the patient’s unconscious, where painful unconscious memories (often from childhood) could be retrieved and released.

Freud’s theory of personality and the associated treatment techniques

Our thoughts and actions come from unconscious motives and conflicts.

Our conscious awareness is the part that floats above the surface.

Beneath our awareness is the larger unconscious mind with its thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

Some of our unconscious thoughts are temporarily stored in a preconscious area, where they are outside our awareness but accessible.

We repress (or forcibly block from our consciousness) unacceptable passions and thoughts because they would be too unsettling to acknowledge.

Although we are not consciously aware these troublesome feelings and ideas, they influence us and sometimes express themselves in disguised forms.

The work we choose Our free associations Our beliefs Our habits Our dreams Our slips of the tongue or pen

“Good morning, beheaded – uh, I mean, beloved.”

Do you feel others around you know “the real you”? Why or why not?

What types of things do people keep hidden from casual friends and acquaintances? Why?

What types of things do they share?

Freud believed human personality arises from a conflict between:

Impulse and Restraint| |Aggressive, InternalizedPleasure-seeking, social controlsBiological urges over these urges

Personality is the result of our efforts to resolve this basic conflict. › To express these impulses in ways that

bring satisfaction without bringing guilt or punishment.

To understand the conflict, Freud proposed three interacting systems in the mind:

Id› Unconsciously strives to satisfy basic

drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress.› Operates on the pleasure principle

Seeks instant gratification

› Example: Devil Pluto

Ego› Operates on the reality principle.› Contains our partly conscious perceptions,

thoughts, judgments, and memories.› The executive mediator.

Seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways that will bring long- term pleasure.

› Example: Pluto himself

Superego› The voice of our moral compass or

conscience that forces the ego to consider the ideal.

› Focuses on how we ought to behave. Strives for perfection, judging actions

and producing positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt.

› Example: Angel Pluto

Freud’s stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones.

Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months

Pleasure centers on the mouth• sucking, biting, chewing

Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months

Pleasure centers on the mouth• sucking, biting, chewing

Anal 18-36 months

Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months

Pleasure centers on the mouth• sucking, biting, chewing

Anal 18-36 months

Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Phallic 3-6 years

Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings

Oedipus complex Freud believed boys develop unconscious

sexual desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival.

Further boys experience guilt and fear of castration by their father.

Children eventually cope with the threatening feelings by repressing them and identifying with(trying to become like) the rival parent.

Freud believed

› identification with the same-sex parent provides our gender identity (our sense of being male or female).

› early childhood relations influence our identity, personality, and frailties.

Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months

Pleasure centers on the mouth• sucking, biting, chewing

Anal 18-36 months

Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Phallic 3-6 years

Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings

Latency 6 years to puberty

Dormant sexual feelings

Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months

Pleasure centers on the mouth• sucking, biting, chewing

Anal 18-36 months

Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Phallic 3-6 years

Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings

Latency 6 years to puberty

Dormant sexual feelings

Genital puberty on Maturation of sexual interests

Conflicts unresolved during earlier stages could surface as maladaptive behavior in adult years.

At any point in the oral, anal, and phallic stages, strong conflict could lock, or fixate, the person’s pleasure-seeking energies in that stage.

Oral Stage › Always putting

objects in the mouth, chain smoking, overeating

› Perhaps the result of abrupt or early weaning

Anal Stage› If potty training occurred too early:

Overly neat and fussy about organization and details.

› If potty training was not encouraged or allowed to happen haphazardly: Overly slovenly and messy

As members of society, we must control our sexual and aggressive impulses, not act them out.

Sometimes the ego fears losing control resulting in anxiety that leaves us feeling unsettled by unsure why.

The ego protects itself with defense mechanisms – tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality.

Defense mechanisms function indirectly and unconsciously, reducing anxiety by disguising some threatening impulse.

What do you think about Freud’s theories? Agree/Disagree? Why?

› The unconscious mind› Personality structure – id, ego, superego› Psychosexual stages› Defense mechanisms

What ideas of Freud’s did they accept?

How did they differ in their ideas?

Accepted Freud’s ideas of:› Personality structure – id, ego, superego› Importance of unconsciousness› Shaping of personality in childhood

Differed from Freud by:› Placing more emphasis on the conscious

mind’s role in interpreting and coping with the environment

› Doubting sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations

Agree with Freud that› Much of our mental life is unconscious› We often struggle with inner conflicts

among our wishes, fears, and values› Childhood shapes our personality

Disagree that sex is the basis of personality.

How do we do that?

Objective assessments such as agree-disagree and true-false questionnaires would only tap the conscious.

Projective tests› People are presented with ambiguous

stimuli and asked to interpret it. Describe it. Tell a story about it.

Examples:› Pictures (Thematic Apperception Test)› Inkblots (Rorschach)

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Rorschach inkblot test

Based on responses, clinicians would determine things about their patients.

› When shown a daydreaming boy, you imagine he’s fantasizing about an achievement. Perhaps you are projecting your own goals.

› When shown an inkblot, you see predatory animals or weapons. Perhaps you have aggressive tendencies.

Do you think these tests are reliable?

Do you think these tests are reliable?

No.

Evidence to contradict Freud

› Developmental psychologists see our development as lifelong, not fixed in childhood.

› We gain our gender identity earlier and become strongly masculine or feminine even without a same-sex parent present.

Evidence to contradict Freud

› Research disputes Freud’s belief that dreams disguise and fulfill wishes.

› There is little support that defense mechanisms disguise sexual and aggressive impulses. Although people do seem to defend

themselves against anxiety to enhance their self-esteem.

Evidence to contradict Freud

› Psychoanalytic theory assumes the mind represses offending wishes, and if we recover and resolve childhood conflicts, emotional healing will follow.

› Today’s researchers contend that repression is a rare response to terrible trauma.

Problems as a Scientific Theory:› Rests on few observations.› Offers few testable hypotheses.› Offers after-the-fact explanations of

characteristics and behavior.› Fails to predict behaviors and traits.

Rate the degree to which you agree or disagree with the following statement from 1-5:

1=strongly agree2=agree3=neutral4=disagree5=strongly disagree

Barack Obama is a good president.

Estimate the percentage of people in the class that you believe share your opinion.

The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors.

Examples: People who cheat on their taxes or break speed limits tend to think many others do too.

People tend to see their bad habits and attitudes in others.

What defense mechanism does this sound like?

People tend to see their bad habits and attitudes in others.

What defense mechanism does this sound like?

Projection