Individuals and Groups: Freud Lecture Notes PDF

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Freud Lecture Notes from Week One of Individuals and Groups...

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I&G : FREUD 1a) The Big Picture ●

Personality researchers are interested in: -

what it means to be a person - human nature

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individual differences between people

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the uniqueness/organisation of each person [ie. their moods, actions, and characteristics that make them individual]

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‘Salient’ factors [prominent features/characteristics of someone] & reputation

Freud’s metaphor of the mind: 1) Structural model -

Id: Pleasure seeking ‘creature’, it has drives, is impatient, irrational etc. It simply wants to survive, pursue pleasure and avoid pain.

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Ego: With development, age and experience, your ego is developed which is a part of the ‘id that has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.’ ●

Where you become aware of yourself, and no longer pursue just the pleasure principle, you operate according to the reality principle.

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Pursue the path of greatest advantage rather than the path of least resistance.

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Superego: or the eye looking over you and telling you how things should be the perfection principle.

2) Topographical model -

Conscious: Content in your brain right now & the things you are taking in right now [noise, sight, etc] and the knowledge associated with it.

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Pre-conscious: What is somewhere in your mind, but not available to consciousness at this moment until you are prompted or triggered to bring it in.

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Unconscious: Content that is in your mind and is doing stuff, but you can’t easily access it - reached through means such as therapy or introspection but most of the time you are not aware of it’s operation.

Both of these models make a very complex model of the human psyche - it’s not a serial process of doing one thing and then another, it’s happening all at once.

Key to Freudian notion is the notion of energy: -

Energy can not be created or destroyed, and therefore Freud believed this must be the same for psychic energy. ●

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The energy that pushes us and motivates us.

Stems from instincts: ●

States of excitements, located at various centres in the body and it depends at one’s stages of development.

Inherited instincts: ●

Life instincts: (energy = eros) - The instincts and energies that drive us to keep ourselves alive and thriving. 1) Ego instinct = survival of the self, self-preservation aim. ➔ Evolutionarily, we have inherited characteristics that lead us to do things that are good for our survival, and avoid things that seem to be warning signs. 2) Sexual instinct (energy = libido) ➔ Species preservation aim

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Death instinct: (energy = thanatos) -

“The aim of all life is death” : Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

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Adaptation by Freud , post WW1, to answer the questions of “Why do we go to war?”, “Why do we keep doing these clearly self-destructive things?” etc. ➔ So he speculated that there was a death instinct running alongside the life instinct, so while we are trying to survive and thrive, there is a part of us that has a morbid fascination about the idea of non-existence.

The root of the problem:

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Trauma: a threat to the ego and potentially to our ongoing life [pain, fear of death, being told we are worthless, etc] ●

Occurs when instinct expression is, or threatens to be, harmful to the self.

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Stored in our psyche somewhere and it gets triggered throughout life. -

ie. through Anxiety (reminders of previous trauma)

1b) Defences ●

Primary defence mechanism: Repression -

Primary repression ➔ You become aware on some level that something in your environment is threatening and stops it from getting into consciousness, ie. sexual or violent urges. ➔ Unwanted material turned away before reaching awareness. ➔ Can ‘leak’ into consciousness in disguised ways.

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After-expulsion/Repression proper ➔ Where we become aware, and it causes distress, but we deal with it in some way by getting rid of it. ●

ie. putting it into the unconscious or reinterpreting it

Repression plus other defences are ranked from ‘mature’ and ‘adaptive’ (ie. altruism , humour) to ‘pathological’ (ie. psychotic denial, delusional projection.)

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Freudian Denial ➔ Engaging in a potentially ego-threatening experience or behaviour without conscious awareness of doing so:

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No threat is experienced

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Honest denial of experience as they do not recognise it

Splitting and Projection ➔ Threatening experiences (ie. thoughts, feelings, actions) are “split” from the ego and seen as located in and coming from “bad” people. -

The world can be split into good and bad parts and we can project this split by making us be good and others bad, so our ego and sense of self isn’t threatened.

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Freudian Rationalisation ➔ We give a good account of a bad instinct:

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ie. if someone was to say they are anti-immigration but gives good reading for their stance and beliefs.

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Freudian Displacement ➔ Impulses that are ego-threatening are not recognised and are redirected to less threatening targets. ●

ie. hating authority figures but redirecting that anger and hatred to someone not as powerful or ego-threatening.

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Altruism ➔ In basic terms: you take something sad or ego threatening, like the sense of loss or tragedy, and rather than confronting it, you try and provide the support that you would have wanted to other people. ●

Used as a defence mechanism, people seek “pleasure from giving to others what people would themselves like to receive.”

➔ Altruism in TMT: ●

In Terror Management Theory, the ego-threat of morality awareness, when we are made aware of the inevitably of death, it can trigger anxiety. -

We deal with this by becoming ‘good members of a good society’.

1c) Development ●

Psycho-sexual stages: -

Different areas of the body are important at different stages ●

These are the erogenous zones: primary sites of energy and instinct satisication or frustration, leading to pleasure of pain.

1) Oral Stage - 0-1 y/o -

Initially ‘all id’

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Erogenous zone = mouth : sucking, feeling, tasting, biting. ➔ The area that excitement and also threat comes from. ➔ We learn about the world largely through our mouth.

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Mother as original ‘love object’ ➔ Typical caregiver and therefore the source of all good things, all life sustaining things. ➔ Also is the source of pain, and throughout your life, you may continue to blame everything on your mother throughout your life.

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Key ‘task’ = weaning

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Key ‘lesson’ = Trust in self and world

2) Anal Stage - 1-3 y/o -

Ego is beginning to develop.

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Erogenous zone = anus ➔ Passing or withholding (and playing with, etc.) faeces. ➔ Source of stimulation and excitement.

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Parents as key sources of pleasure or pain in response to the infant’s actions. ➔ Learn that our parents react in a certain way to actions, and Freud believes that this is about exerting control over themselves and their environment.

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Key Task = Toilet Training

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Key Lesson = Control ➔ You are learning what is in and what is not in your control and you learn an appropriate level of control over the world.

3) Phallic Stage - 3-5 y/o -

Erogenous zone = genitals ➔ Physical and intellectual stimulation

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The original ‘love triangle’

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Key Task = Resolution of the Oedipal Complex

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Key Lessons = Sexual and gender orientation ➔ Children begin to learn that some people have different genitals and they begin to wonder about them as well as the roles of gender.

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Oedipal Complex within the Phallic Stage

During this stage, children experience an unconscious feeling of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy and envy toward their same-sex parent.

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Increasing respect for father as provider and defender and increasing resentment of parents’ relationship with each other -

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Mother tended to the man’s wishes, as he is the authoritative figure.

Same-sex parent becomes seen as an aggressive rival due to the power they have - castrtion anxiety among boys. ●

Believes they will be castrated due to being a rival, as they did to ‘mother’

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Mother is viewed as the potential sex object.

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Anxiety is resolved by viewing the father, or the power figure within the family, as a role model rather than a rival and identifies the need to find a mother substitute.

4) Latency - 6-12 y/o -

No special erogenous zones

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Repressed libidinal energy (limited sexual urges or desires)

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Key Task = Social Interaction outside the family

5) Genital stage (adolescence) -

Erogenous zone = genitals ●

Now genuinely sexualised, and hormone driven teenager way.

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Key Task: Establishing a family or a relationship

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Key Lesson = Learning your identity, sexually and as a person

Erikson’s age-related ‘crises’/tasks

1d) Personalities -

Crucial, but often ignored: ●

For Freud, personality and behaviour are the result of interplay between the expression and inhibition instincts. -

However society thinks of the individual or reacts to our actions, will impact the lessons that they learn when they explore the world and their identity.

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Instincts are universal, but forms of instinct expression and inhibition vary developmentally, situationally and culturally. -

May vary based on your gender but on your upbringing and your cultures reactions to certain aspects of life that may define you.

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Personality development ●

As a person moves through the psychosocial stages, social (usually parental) rewards and punishments for particular forms of instinct expression change. -

If you have strict parents, the lessons you are going to be learning from them are going to have an impact on what may lead to my anxiety, or defence mechanisms that impact your personality development.

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If social treatment is experienced as too harsh or too comfortable, habitual forms of instinct expression can get locked in an immature stage or you can regress.

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Experience impacts personality ●

The superego acts as almost your devil and angel scenario, it can be harsh and expect perfection, but it tells you what kind of person you should be based on your morals that you have experienced and been taught.

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Ego is your sense of self and throughout your life and growth, it can be quashed or supported. -

If you have been brought up in a certain way, it will affect your ego and your sense of self and therefore impact your personality.

Ego Strength: -

Resilient Personality: ➔ Well-adjusted, the ego can satisfy the needs of the id, the superego, and reality. ➔ Typically do really well in lots of ways within life.

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Under-controlled: ➔ If the id is too strong, wanton self-gratification rules. ➔ Pursuing pleasures without too much self-regulation from an internalised authority and without too much concern for the constraints of reality, these types of people tend to not do very well in school, and tend to end up in prison.

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Over-controlled ➔ If the superego is too strong, the person is rigidly judgemental. ➔ Typically do very well in limited aspects of life as they are highly driven people that do not tolerate not succeeding, tend to be unhappy.

Oral Character/Personality

The Anal Triad Co-occurring traits relating to the idea of people wanting excessive control, and their need to have things in a certain order.

1) Anal retnetive: are rigid, ‘tight’, ‘clenched’ and over controlled. Tend to be demanding, risk averse, rule loving etc. 2) Anal expulsive: are sadistic, and under controlled. They have too little control over their instincts and the way that they control them....