Q: How did Sigmund Freud\'s treatment of psychological disorders lead to his view of the unconscious mind?

a patient might have lost all feeling in a handâyet there is no sensory nerve that, if damaged, would numb the entire hand and nothing else. Freud\'s search for a cause for such disorders set his mind running in a direction destined to change human self-understanding.Might some neurological disorders have psychological causes? Observing patients led Freud to his belief that beneath our awareness is a larger unconscious mind, a dwelling place of largely unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories

Q: What was Freud\'s view of personality?

n Freud\'s view, human personalityâincluding its emotions and strivingsâ arises from a conflict between impulse and restraintâbetween our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges. Freud believed personality arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflictâto express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or pun- ishment.To understand the mind\'s dynamics during this conflict, Freud proposed three interacting systems: the id, ego, and superego

Question 1

personality

Accepted Answer

an individual\'s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Question 2

Psychodynamic theories

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of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interac- tion between the conscious and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts. view person- ality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.

Question 3

Psychodynamic theories are descended from Freud\'s psychoanalytic theory

Accepted Answer

Freud\'s theory of personality and the associated techniques for treating psychological disorders. Freud\'s work was the first to focus clinical attention on our unconscious mind.

Question 4

How did Sigmund Freud\'s treatment of psychological disorders lead to his view of the unconscious mind?

Accepted Answer

a patient might have lost all feeling in a handâyet there is no sensory nerve that, if damaged, would numb the entire hand and nothing else. Freud\'s search for a cause for such disorders set his mind running in a direction destined to change human self-understanding.Might some neurological disorders have psychological causes? Observing patients led Freud to his belief that beneath our awareness is a larger unconscious mind, a dwelling place of largely unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories

Question 5

unconscious

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according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feel- ings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Question 6

free association

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in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Question 7

Basic to Freud\'s theory was his belief that the mind

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is mostly hidden

Question 8

What was Freud\'s view of personality?

Accepted Answer

n Freud\'s view, human personalityâincluding its emotions and strivingsâ arises from a conflict between impulse and restraintâbetween our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges. Freud believed personality arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflictâto express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or pun- ishment.To understand the mind\'s dynamics during this conflict, Freud proposed three interacting systems: the id, ego, and superego

Question 9

id

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a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

Question 10

ego

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the largely conscious, \"executive\" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality prin- ciple, satisfying the id\'s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.

Question 11

superego

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the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ide- als and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

Question 12

What developmental stages did Freud propose?

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He concluded that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages, during which the id\'s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones (TABLE 12.1). Each stage offers its own challenges, which Freud saw as conflicting tendencies.

Question 13

Phallic Stage

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Freud believed that during the phallic stage, for example, boys seek genital stimu- lation, and they develop both unconscious sexual desires for their mother and jeal- ousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival. Given these feelings, he thought, boys also experience guilt and a lurking fear of punishment, perhaps by castration, from their father. Freud called this collection of feelings the Oedipus complex after the Greek legend of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Some psychoanalysts in Freud\'s era believed that girls experi- enced a parallel Electra complex.

Question 14

psychosexual stages

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the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id\'s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Question 15

Oedipus [ED-uh-puss] complex

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accord- ing to Freud, a boy\'s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Question 16

identification

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the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents\' values into their developing superegos.

Question 17

fixation

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accordingtoFreud,alingeringfocus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psycho- sexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Question 18

defense mechanisms

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in psychoanalytic theory, the ego\'s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Question 19

How did Freud think people defended themselves against anxiety?

Accepted Answer

As members of social groups, we must control our sexual and aggressive impulses, not act them out. But some- times the ego fears losing control of this inner id-superego war.The presumed result is a dark cloud of unfocused anxiety that leaves us feeling unsettled but unsure why. actics that reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality. All defense mechanisms function indi- rectly and unconsciously. Just as the body unconsciously defends itself against disease, so also does the ego unconsciously defend itself against anxiety

Question 20

repression

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in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feel- ings, and memories.

Question 21

defense mechanisms

Accepted Answer

Regression Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. A little boy reverts to the oral comfort of thumb sucking in the car on the way to his first day of school. Reaction formation Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Repressing angry feelings, a person displays exaggerated friendliness. Projection Disguising one\'s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. \"The thief thinks everyone else is a thief\" (an El Salvadoran saying). Rationalization Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one\'s actions. A habitual drinker says she drinks with her friends \"just to be sociable.\" Displacement Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more accept- able or less threatening object or person. A little girl kicks the family dog after her mother sends her to her room. Denial Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities. A partner denies evidence of his loved one\'s affair.

Question 22

Which of Freud\'s ideas did his followers accept or reject?

Accepted Answer

neo-Freudians, accepted Freud\'s basic ideas: the personality structures of id, ego, and superego; the importance of the unconscious; the shaping of personality in childhood; and the dynam- ics of anxiety and the defense mechanisms. But they broke away from Freud in two important ways. First, they placed more emphasis on the conscious mind\'s role in inter- preting experience and in coping with the environment.And second, they doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations. Instead, they tended to emphasize loftier motives and social interactions.

Question 23

Alfred Adler

Accepted Answer

Adler (who had proposed the still- popular idea of the inferiority complex) himself struggled to overcome childhood illnesses and accidents, and he believed that much of our behavior is driven by efforts to con- quer childhood inferiority feelings that trigger our strivings for superiority and power.

Question 24

horney

Accepted Answer

Horney said childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security. She also coun- tered Freud\'s assumptions, arising as they did in his conservative culture, that women have weak superegos and suffer \"penis envy,\" and she attempted to balance the bias she detected in his masculine view of psychology.

Question 25

Carl JungâFreud\'s disciple-turned-dissenter

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placed less emphasis on social factors and agreed with Freud that the unconscious exerts a powerful influence. But to Jung [Yoong], the unconscious contains more than our repressed thoughts and feelings. He believed we also have a collective unconscious

Question 26

collective unconscious

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CarlJung\'scon- cept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species\' history.

Question 27

projective test

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apersonalitytest,suchas the Rorschach, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one\'s inner dynamics.

Question 28

Rorschach inkblot test

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the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to iden- tify people\'s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Question 29

what modern they agreed upon

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with Freud and with much support from today\'s psychological science, is that much of our mental life is unconscious.With Freud, they also assume that we often struggle with inner conflicts among our wishes, fears, and values, and that childhood shapes our personality and ways of becoming attached to others.

Question 30

What are projective tests, how are they used, and what are some criticisms of them?

Accepted Answer

The first requirement would be some sort of a road into the unconscious, to unearth the residue of early childhood experiences, to move beneath surface pretensions and reveal hidden conflicts and impulses. Objective assessment tools, such as agree-disagree or true-false questionnaires, would be inadequate because they would merely tap the conscious surface. scious surface. Projective tests aim to provide this \"psycho- logical X-ray,\" by asking test-takers to describe an ambiguous stimulus or tell a story about it. The clinician may presume that any hopes, desires, and fears that people see in the ambiguous image are projections of their own inner feelings or conflicts.

Question 31

How do today\'s psychologists view Freud\'s psychoanalysis?

Accepted Answer

But both Freud\'s admirers and his critics agree that recent research contradicts many of his specific ideas.Today\'s developmental psychologists see our development as lifelong, not fixed in childhood.They doubt that infants\' neural networks are mature enough to sustain as much emotional trauma as Freud assumed. Some think Freud overestimated parental influence and underestimated peer influence.They also doubt that conscience and gender identity form as the child resolves the Oedipus complex at age 5 or 6.We gain our gender identity earlier and become strongly masculine or feminine even without a same-sex parent present.And they note that Freud\'s ideas about childhood sexuality arose from his skepti- cism of stories of childhood sexual abuse told by his female patientsâstories that some scholars believe he attributed to their own childhood sexual wishes and conflicts

Question 32

What is the most serious problem with Freud\'s theory?

Accepted Answer

It offers after-the-fact expla- nations of any characteristic (of one person\'s smoking, another\'s fear of horses, another\'s sexual orientation) yet fails to predict such behaviors and traits.

Question 33

Modern Research Challenges the Idea of Repression

Accepted Answer

et, many contend that repression, if it ever occurs, is a rare mental response to terrible trauma. Even those who witnessed a parent\'s murder or survived Nazi death camps have retained their unrepressed memories of the horrorome researchers do believe that extreme, prolonged stress, such as the stress some severely abused children experience, might disrupt memory by damaging the hippo- campus, which is important for processing conscious memoriesBut the far more common reality is that high stress and associated stress hormones enhance memory (see Chapter 8). Indeed, rape, torture, and other traumatic events haunt survi- vors, who experience unwanted flashbacks.They are seared onto the soul.

Question 34

How has modern research developed our understanding of the unconscious?

Accepted Answer

â¢ the schemas that automatically control our perceptions and interpretations (Chapter 6). â¢ the priming by stimuli to which we have not consciously attended (Chapters 6 and 8). â¢ the right-hemisphere activity that enables the split-brain patient\'s left hand to carry out an instruction the patient cannot verbalize (Chapter 2). â¢ the implicit memories that operate without conscious recall, even among those with amnesia (Chapter 8). â¢ the emotions that activate instantly, before conscious analysis (Chapter 10). â¢ the stereotypes that automatically and unconsciously influence how we process information about others (Chapter 13).

Question 35

What are three values that Freud\'s work in psychoanalytic theory has contributed? What are three ways in which Freud\'s work has been criticized?

Accepted Answer

Freud first drew attention to (1) the importance of childhood experiences, (2) the existence of the unconscious mind, and (3) our self-protective defense mechanisms. Freud\'s work has been criticized as (1) not scientifically testableâdrawing on after-the-fact explanations, (2) focusing too much on sexual conflicts in childhood, and (3) based upon the idea of repression, which has not been supported by modern research

Question 36

Which elements of traditional psychoanalysis do modern-day psychodynamic theorists and therapists retain, and which elements have they mostly left behind?

Accepted Answer

Today\'s psychodynamic theories still rely on the interviewing techniques that Freud used, and they still tend to focus on childhood experiences and attachments, unresolved conflicts, and unconscious influences. However, they are not likely to dwell on fixation at any psychosexual stage, or the idea that resolution of sexual issues is the basis of our personality.

Question 37

freudian psychodynamic

Accepted Answer

the unconscious parts of the self

Question 38

psychodynamic psychoanalytic

Accepted Answer

these theories of human personality focus on the inner forces that interact to make us who we are  in this view behavior as well as human emotions and personality develop in a dynamic interplay between conscious and unconscious processes including various motives and inner conflicts

Question 39

sigmund freud\'s life

Accepted Answer

started his career as a physician  he decided to explore how mental and physical symptoms could be caused by purely psychological factors  he became aware that many powerful mental processes operate in the unconscious without our awareness  this insight grew into a theory of the structure of human personality and its development  his name for his theory and his therapeutic technique psychoanalysis

Question 40

psychoanalysis

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he used creative techniques such as free association encourage the patient to speak whatever comes to mind the therapist then interprets any potential unconscious wishes hidden in the clients hesitations slips of the tongue and dreams

Question 41

ego

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rational self to resolve tension between our id

Question 42

id

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based in biological drives

Question 43

superego

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society\'s rules and constraints

Question 44

the unconscious

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in frauds view a reservoir of thoughts wishes feelings and memories that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable

Question 45

we are anxious about our unacceptable wishes and impulses

Accepted Answer

and we repress this anxiety with the help of the strategies below

Question 46

psychodynamic theorists

Accepted Answer

adler horney and jun accepted Freud\'s ideas about: -the importance of the unconscious and childhood relationships in shaping personality  -the id ego superego  structure of personality  -the role of the defense mechanisms in reducing anxiety about uncomfortable ideas

Question 47

psychodynamic theorists differed from Freud in a few ways

Accepted Answer

adler and horney believed that anxiety and epersonality are a function of social not sexual tensions in child hood  collective unconscious containing images from our species experiences

Question 48

carl jung

Accepted Answer

highlighted universal themes in the unconscious

Question 49

alfred adler

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focused on the fight against feelings of inferiority as a theme at the core of personality although he may have been projecting from his own experience

Question 50

karen horney

Accepted Answer

criticized the freudian portrayal of women as weak and subordinate to mean  she highlighted the need to feel secure in relationships

Question 51

unfalsifiability

Accepted Answer

he developed theories that are hard to prove or disprove can we test to see if there is an id

Question 52

post factor explanations

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hindsight bias rather than predictions: whether or not a situation makes you anxious or not you could either be fixated or repressing

Question 53

baised observations

Accepted Answer

he based theories on his patients which may give him an incentive to see them as unwell before his treatment

Question 54

How did humanistic psychologists view personality, and what was their goal in studying personality?

Accepted Answer

Maslow proposed that we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs (Chapter 10). If our physi- ological needs are met, we become concerned with personal safety; if we achieve a sense of security, we then seek to love, to be loved, and to love ourselves; with our love needs satisfied, we seek self-esteem. Having achieved self-esteem, we ultimately seek self- actualization (the process of fulfilling our potential) and self-transcendence (meaning, purpose, and communion beyond the self).

Question 55

humanistic theories

Accepted Answer

view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy per- sonal growth.

Question 56

self actualization

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accordingtoMaslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one\'s potential.

Question 57

unconditional positive regard

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accord- ing to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

Question 58

carl rogers

Accepted Answer

Fellow humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers agreed with much of Maslow\'s thinking. Rogers believed that people are basically good and are, as Maslow said, endowed with self-actualizing tendencies.

Question 59

Rogers (1980) believed that a growth-promoting climate required three conditions:

Accepted Answer

Genuineness: When people are genuine, they are open with their own feelings, drop their facades, and are transparent and self-disclosing. â¢ Acceptance: When people are accepting, they offer unconditional positive regard, an attitude of grace that values us even knowing our failings. It is a profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that we are still accepted. In a good marriage, a close family, or an intimate friendship, we are free to be spontaneous without fearing the loss of others\' esteem. â¢ Empathy: When people are empathic, they share and mirror other\'s feelings and reflect their meanings.\"Rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy,\" said Rogers.\"Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.\"

Question 60

How did humanistic psychologists assess a person\'s sense of self?

Accepted Answer

Humanistic psychologists sometimes assessed personality by asking people to fill out questionnaires that would evaluate their self-concept. One questionnaire, inspired by Carl Rogers, asked people to describe themselves both as they would ideally like to be and as they actually are.When the ideal and the actual self are nearly alike, said Rogers, the self-concept is positive.Assessing his clients\' personal growth during therapy, he looked for successively closer ratings of actual and ideal selves. however many psychologists and researchers believed that these standardized tests resulted in depersonalization and would rather subject patients to undergoing intimate conversations

Question 61

self concept

Accepted Answer

all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, \"Who am I?\"

Question 62

How have humanistic theories influenced psychology? What criticisms have they faced?

Accepted Answer

They have also influencedâsometimes in ways they did not intendâmuch of today\'s popular psychology. Is a positive self-concept the key to happiness and success? Do acceptance and empathy nurture positive feelings about oneself? Are people basically good and capable of self-improvement? Many people answer Yes,Yes, and Yes. Respond- ing to a 1992 Newsweek Gallup poll, 9 in 10 people rated self-esteem as very important for \"motivating a person to work hard and succeed.\" Given a choice, today\'s North American collegians say they\'d rather get a self-esteem boost, such as a compliment or good grade on a paper, than enjoy a favorite food or sexual activity Humanistic psychologists have countered by saying that a secure, nondefensive self- acceptance is actually the first step toward loving others. Indeed, people who feel intrin- sically liked and acceptedâfor who they are, not just for their achievements

Question 63

criticisms

Accepted Answer

First, said the critics, its concepts are vague and subjective. Consider Maslow\'s description of self-actualizing people as open, spontaneous, loving, self-accepting, and productive. Is this a scientific description? Isn\'t it merely a description of the theorist\'s own values and ideals? The only question which matters is, \'Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?\'\" (quoted by Wallach & Wallach, 1985). This emphasis on individualismâ trusting and acting on one\'s feelings, being true to oneself, fulfilling oneselfâcould lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, and an erosion of moral restraints

Question 64

How did humanistic psychology provide a fresh perspective?

Accepted Answer

This movement sought to turn psychology\'s attention away from drives and conflicts and toward our growth potential, with a focus on the way healthy people strive for self-determination and self-realization, which was in contrast to Freudian theory and strict behaviorism.

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