Theories_of_Personality 7th Ed Feist

Feist−Feist: Theories of

Personality, Seventh

Edition

II. Psychodynamic

Theories

2. Freud: Psychoanalysis © The McGraw−Hill^69
   Companies, 2009

Key Terms and Concepts

• Freud identified three levels of mental life—unconscious, preconscious,
  and conscious.


• Early childhood experiences that create high levels of anxiety are
  repressed into the unconscious,where they may influence behavior,
  emotions, and attitudes for years.


• Events that are not associated with anxiety but are merely forgotten make
  up the contents of the preconscious.


• Consciousimages are those in awareness at any given time.


• Freud recognized three provinces of the mind—id, ego, and superego.


• The idis unconscious, chaotic, out of contact with reality, and in service
  of the pleasure principle.


• The egois the executive of personality, in contact with the real world, and
  in service of the reality principle.


• The superegoserves the moral and idealistic principlesand begins to form
  after the Oedipus complex is resolved.


• All motivation can be traced to sexual and aggressive drives. Childhood
  behaviors related to sexand aggressionare often punished, which leads to
  either repressionor anxiety.


• To protect itself against anxiety, the ego initiates various defense
  mechanisms,the most basic of which is repression.


• Freud outlined three major stages of development—infancy, latency, and a
  genital period—but he devoted most attention to the infantile stage.


• The infantile stage is divided into three substages—oral, anal,and phallic,
  the last of which is accompanied by the Oedipus complex.


• During the simple Oedipal stage,a child desires sexual union with one
  parent while harboring hostility for the other.


• Freud believed that dreamsand Freudian slipsare disguised means of
  expressing unconscious impulses.

Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 63