Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Life
- Impacted by Darwin; set out to be a biologist who proved evolution
- Father of psychoanalysis
- Psychosexual stages of development
- Defense mechanisms
- Oedipus complex
- Dream analysis
Joseph Breuer
- Respected, successful, and sophisticated
- Physician in Vienna
- Anna O
- Real name was Bertha Pappenheim
- Patient of Breuer in 1889
- Epiletpic?
- Symptoms improved by talking about her problems while under hypnosis
- Helped her deal with emotionally-charged events from past
- Procedure
- “Chimney sweeping”
- “The talking cure”)
- Freud & Breuer write book together
Wilhelm Fliess
- Emma Eckstein
- February 1895
- Nose surgery
Theory
- Deterministic
- Internal motivation
- Terms from physics
- Self-contained system
- Psychic energy
- Based on case histories
- Good writing
- Behavior caused by opposing forces
- Conscious processes
- Unconscious process
ID
- Most basic component of personality
- Develops the earliest
- Neonate is only an id
- Relies on the pleasure principle
- Operates like a reflex
- Provides psychic energy
- Primary process = makes image of what desires
- Can’t distinguish between images and reality; completely unconscious
EGO
- Controls motor and sensory functions of body
- Allows child to interact with reality
- Reality principle
- Object substitution = Finds objects in reality to satisfy id
SUPEREGO
- Created by ego
- Learning right from wrong
- Can’t tell reality from images (imagined)
- Punishes you for bad idea
- Punishes you for bad action
- Composed of
- Conscience = what you should not do
- Ego ideal = what you should do
- Fights with id = anxiety
Ego balances id and superego
- Ego fights anxiety by keeping impulse out of consciousness
- Freudian slips show what is behind the defenses
- Several techniques = defense mechanisms
Defense Mechanisms
- Denial = don’t admit it’s real
- Displacement = kick the dog, not the wife
- Projection = see my faults in you
- Rationalization = there’s a good reason
- Reaction Formation = act in the opposite
- Repression = don’t think or feel
- Regression = go back to when it was safe
- Compensation = make-up for a deficiency
- Intellectualization = detachment
- Sublimation = redirect undesirable impulses (most constructive approach)
5 Psychosocial Stages
- Fixation
- Too much libido tied to a particular stage
- Too much or too little gratification
- 1. Oral Stage
- Healthy
- Writers, artists and entertainers who use fantasy creatively
- Too little gratification
- Dependence
- Tends to withdraw into fantasy
- Regresses more readily
- Too much gratification
- Hostility and biting sarcasm
- Healthy
- 2. Anal Stage
- Harsh toilet training
- Excessively orderly or compulsive individuals
- Compulsive behavior to control impulses
- Counting, cleaning and checking
- Obsessive = repetitive thoughts to control guilt and anxiety.
- 3. Phallic Stage
- Fixation
- Hyper-emphasis on competition, sexuality and power
- Physical appearance
- Emphasized to seduce, manipulate and control
- Oedipal Period: Boys
- Sexual desire aimed at mother as main love object
- Fears father
- Castration anxiety
- Electra Period: Girls
- Sexual desire aimed at father – male genitalia
- Resents mother
- Penis envy
- Fixation
- 4. Latency Stage
- Healthy development
- Tranquil, wholesome home-life
- Without too much emotion or sexuality
- Disturbed latency
- Impulse control problems
- Repressed latency
- Rigid upbringing
- “Out of touch” with feelings
- 5. Genital Stage
- Lust is blended with affection.
- Achievement
- Balance love and work
Goal: observing ego
Ability to look at oneself honestly & make changes