118 Psychodynamic Models of Personality
psychoanalysis are unique to the psychodynamic framework:
No other theories of personality accept these three premises
in their purest form.
Primacy of the Unconscious
Psychodynamic theorists contend that the majority of psy-
chological processes take place outside conscious awareness.
In psychoanalytic terms, the activities of the mind (orpsyche)
are presumed to be largely unconscious, and unconscious
processes are thought to be particularly revealing of personal-
ity dynamics (Brenner, 1973; Fancher, 1973). Although
aspects of theprimacy of the unconsciousassumption remain
controversial (see Kihlstrom, 1987; McAdams, 1997), re-
search on implicit learning, memory, motivation, and cog-
nition has converged to confirm this basic premise of
psychoanalysis (albeit in a slightly modified form). Many
mental activities are only imperfectly accessible to con-
scious awareness—including those associated with emotional
responding, as well as more mundane, affectively neutral
activities such as the processing of linguistic material (see
Bornstein & Pittman, 1992; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;
Schacter, 1987; Stadler & Frensch, 1998). Whether uncon-
scious processes are uniquely revealing of personality dy-
namics is a different matter entirely, and psychologists remain
divided on this issue.
It is ironic that the existence of mental processing outside
awareness—so controversial for so long—has become a cor-
nerstone of contemporary experimental psychology. In fact,
in summarizing the results of cognitive and social research on
automaticity, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) recently concluded
that evidence for mental processing outside of awareness is
so pervasive and compelling that the burden of proof has
actually reversed: Rather than demonstrate unconscious in-
fluences, researchers must now go to considerable lengths to
demonstrate that a given psychological process is at least in
part under conscious control. This conclusion represents a
rather striking (and counterintuitive) reversal of prevailing
attitudes regarding the conscious-unconscious relationship
throughout much of the twentieth century.
Psychic Causality
The second core assumption of psychodynamic theory is
that nothing in mental life happens by chance—that there
is no such thing as a random thought, feeling, motive, or be-
havior (Brenner, 1973). This has come to be known as the
principle of psychic causality,and it too has become less con-
troversial over the years. Although few psychologists accept
the principle of psychic causality precisely as psychoanalysts
conceive it, most theorists and researchers agree that cogni-
tions, motives, emotional responses, and expressed behaviors
do not arise randomly, but always stem from some combina-
tion of identifiable biological and/or, psychological processes
(Rychlak, 1988).
Although few psychologists would argue for the existence
of random psychological events, researchers do disagree
regarding the underlying processes that account for such
events, and it is here that the psychodynamic view diverges
from those of other perspectives. Whereas psychoanalysts
contend that unconscious motives and affective states are key
determinants of ostensibly random psychological events, psy-
chologists with other theoretical orientations attribute such
events to latent learning, cognitive bias, motivational conflict,
chemical imbalances, or variations in neural activity (e.g., see
Buss, 1991; Danzinger, 1997). The notion that a seemingly
random event (e.g., a slip of the tongue) reveals something im-
portant about an individual’s personality is in its purest form
unique to psychoanalysis.Critical Importance of Early ExperiencesPsychoanalytic theory is not alone in positing that early de-
velopmental experiences play a role in shaping personality,
but the theory is unique in the degree to which it emphasizes
childhood experiences as determinants of personality devel-
opment and dynamics. In its strongest form, psychoanalytic
theory hypothesizes that early experiences—even those oc-
curring during the first weeks or months of life—set in motion
personality processes that are to a great extent immutable (see
Emde, 1983, 1992). In other words, the events of early child-
hood are thought to create a trajectory that almost invariably
culminates in a predictable set of adult character traits (Eagle,
1984; Stern, 1985). This is especially of events that are out-
side the normal range of experience (i.e., very positive or very
negative).
The psychodynamic hypothesis that the first weeks or
months of life represent a critical periodin personality de-
velopment contrasts with those of alternative theories (e.g.,
cognitive), which contend that key events in personality
development occur somewhat later, after the child has ac-
quired a broad repertoire of verbal and locomotive skills.
Freud’s notion of a critical early period in personality devel-
opment—coupled with his corollary hypothesis that many of
the most important early experiences involve sexual frustra-
tion or gratification—was (and is) highly controversial. It
helped create a decades-long divergence of psychoanalysis
from mainstream developmental psychology, which has only
recently begun to narrow (Emde, 1992).