Personality - Psychodynamic

KLUCKMAN & MURRAY (1953) all people are like all others, some others, no others.
1. enduring psychological qualities that effect thinking etc..
PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACHES
1. FREUD
  1. the mind is an energy system, limited energy, energy blocked and expressed differently. catharsis = freeing emotions through talking. release energy.
    1. people not born innocent but born with sexual and aggressive drives, the role of society is to curb these drives. social norms.
      1. ID = pleasure principle, SUPEREGO = the opposite, morality. the EGO = resolves conflict between the two, reality principle
        life instinct: libido, sexual energy. death instinct: thanatos, e.g. suicide, drive to die.
  2. conscious, preconscious and unconscious
    1. UNCONSCIOUS: Bargh and Barndollar (1996) primed for achievement or affiliation found performance up / down
      1. PSYCHOANALYTIC view: unsonscious irrational, illogical, sexual, aggressive
      2. COGNITIVE view: rational, logical, any content
      3. motivated unconscious: motivated to banish traumatic thoughts from awareness. thoughts in unconscious influence ongoing conscious
    2. DREAMS
      1. content of dreams revealed mind contains unconscious contents. manifest content: storyline. latent: unconscious drives / emotions
        symbolisation e.g. penis = snake
    3. implicit vs. explicit
  3. DEFENSE MECHANISMS
    1. anxiety painful state can't tolerate it for very long so use defense mechanisms
      1. DENIAL - avoid recognising threat. 'can't happen to me'
      2. PROJECTION: unacceptable, internal changed to external. projects negative self features onto someone else.
      3. REACTION FORMATION: defends against unacceptable impulse by recognising and expressing its opposite.
      4. REPRESSION: thoughts / wishes are diminished from consciousness
  4. PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
    1. erogenous zones, sexual gratification. oral, anal, phallic, latent, genital.
      1. PHALLIC: (4-5) genital excitement. boy has fear of losing penis, castration anxiety. oedipus complex, kill father, marry mother. girls have penis envy
        resolution through identifying with same-sex parent
2. ERIKSON - lifespan development through 8 stages. not just child development. enhanced freud.
  1. Erikson believed in psychoSOCIAL stages. such as trust vs. mistrust, etc. resolve crisis to move onto next stage
POST FREUD
1. PROJECTIVE TESTS - respond to ambiguous stimuli and responses reveal personality. emphasises unconscious
  1. RORSCHACH INKBLOT TEST - ambiguous inkblots, can either suggest good or bad psychological functioning
    1. APA have said that projective tests aren't valid or reliable. TAT works, RIT doesn't
  2. THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST (TAT) - cards with scenes, asked to make up a story based on scenes. personality projected onto stimuli.
2. ALFRED ADLER
  1. Adler focused on social urges and conscious thought, compared to freud who focused on sexual urges / unconscious.
    1. focus on bodily inferiorities and how people compensate for them. e.g. stutter, more likely to become great speaker. all experience childh inferiority
    2. inferiority complex, strive for superiority. birth order effects, first borns conscientious, later borns rebel.
3. CARL JUNG
  1. libido is general life energy, not necessarily sexual. we dont rely on past, we are forward looking.
  2. collective unconscious - cumulative experience of past generations, collective unconscious is universal, compared to personal unconscious
EVALUATION:
1. DESCRIPTION: good desc. of personality development, wide phenomena, good des. of complexity, defense mechanisms described psychological functioning
  1. good and useful description of unconscious, however drawing conclusions / descriptions based on neurotic individuals not useful
2. EXPLANATION: confusing expl. of NORMAL PS developm. expl. of pathology stronger, psychosexual overstress sex drives, good expl. of defense mechanisms,
3. EMPIRICAL VALID: no solid conclusions that problems in adulthood arise from childhood, case studies and only noted findings important to him not valid
  1. some methods unclear / problematic
  2. consistently measure ego it must exist, scales can measure differences in ego strength. and universals found / cross cultural validity
4. TESTABLE CONCEPTS: subliminal persuasion shows evidence for the unconscious, people with eating disorders ate more after subliminal distressing messag
  1. tested that area of the brain found that links dreams to goal-seeking consistent with theory. evidence has been found since, but later perationalised
5. COMPREHENSIVENESS: freud theory is comprehensive, addresses normal and abnormal behaviour, psycho processes underlying both are shown. ground breaking
6. PARSIMONY: very parsimonious theory, not a huge number of concepts and all are relevant (to abnormal and normal)
7. HEURISTIC VALUE: enormous impact, still much researched today, still provokes debate, influenced other disciplines
8. APPLIED VALUE: huge advances in treatment of mental patients, more humane treatment, led to couns and therapy. psychoanalysis effective for mild condi

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Personality - Psychodynamic

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	Created by becky.waine over 11 years ago