Psychoanalytical Perspective

Who founded psychoanalysis?

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Terms in this set (12)

Sigmund Freud
- he saw personality and behavior as a result of interaction between conflicting psychological forces
- these forces operated at three different levels of awareness (conscious, unconscious, preconscious)

What does psychoanalysis stress the importance of?

- unconscious forces
- sexual and aggressive instincts
- early childhood experiences

What happened to make Freud add aggression as a second powerful human instinct? What was his original, fundamental human motive?

Freud went through some bad times in his life
- He got cancer, one of his daughters died, and the devastation of WWI laid heavily on his mind
- His original fundamental human motive was sexuality

How are unconscious mental processes revealed?

Through dreams and free associations (when a patient spontaneously reports all thought, feelings, and mental images as they come to mind)

What is consciousness? (forces of awareness)

Consists of the thoughts, motives, feelings, and sensations that a person is currently aware of or is remembering

What is preconscious? (forces of awareness)

Thoughts, motives, memories, and information that can voluntarily be brought to mind

What is unconsciousness? (forces of awareness)

Consists of thoughts, feelings, memories, motives, and drives that are blocked from conscious awareness
- Freud believed that the unconscious permeated through into the conscious level
- he used free association and dream interpretation to reach the unconscious level of his patients
- Freud also believed that the unconscious can be revealed through unintentional actions -- Freudian slips

What are the components of personality?

Freud described the mind as consisting of three distinct components
1. the id
2. the ego
3. the superego

What is the id?

The source of mental energy and drive
- includes all basic human needs and desires
- it operates on the pleasure principle = the desire to maximize pleasure while minimizing pain, achieve immediate gratification and minimize discomfort
- irrational, illogical, impulsive demension of personality

Where is the psychological energy of the id derived from?

One of two conflicting instinctual drives:
1. the life instinct (eros)
- biological urges to perpetual one's life
- libido = sexual energy/motivation
2. the death instinct (Thanatos)
- destructive energy, aggressive, reckless