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Psychodynamic Theories
Many psychologists have proposed theories that try to explain the origins of
personality. One highly influential set of theories stems from the work of Austrian
neurologist Sigmund Freud, who first proposed the theory of
psychoanalysis. Collectively, these theories are known as psychodynamic
theories. Although many different psychodynamic theories exist, they
all emphasize unconscious motives and desires, as well as the importance of
childhood experiences in shaping personality.
Sigmund
Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Freud developed a technique that he
called psychoanalysis and used it to treat mental disorders. He
formed his theory of psychoanalysis by observing his patients. According to
psychoanalytic theory, personalities arise because of attempts to resolve
conflicts between unconscious sexual and aggressive impulses and societal
demands to restrain these impulses.
The Conscious, the Preconscious, and the Unconscious
Freud believed that most mental processes are unconscious. He proposed
that people have three levels of awareness:
- The conscious contains all the information that a person is paying attention to at any given time.
- The preconscious contains all the information outside of a person’s attention but readily available if needed.
- The unconscious contains thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories of which people have no awareness but that influence every aspect of their day-to-day lives.
Freud believed that information in the unconscious emerges in slips of
the tongue, jokes, dreams, illness symptoms, and the associations people
make between ideas.
The Id, the Ego, and the Superego
- Id: a reservoir of instinctual energy that contains biological urges such as impulses toward survival, sex, and aggression. The id is unconscious and operates according to the pleasure principle, the drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The id is characterized by primary process thinking, which is illogical, irrational, and motivated by a desire for the immediate gratification of impulses.
- Ego: the component that manages the conflict between the id and the constraints of the real world. Some parts of the ego are unconscious, while others are preconscious or conscious. The ego operates according to the reality principle, the awareness that gratification of impulses has to be delayed in order to accommodate the demands of the real world. The ego is characterized by secondary process thinking, which is logical and rational. The ego’s role is to prevent the id from gratifying its impulses in socially inappropriate ways.
- Superego: the moral component of personality. It contains all the moral standards learned from parents and society. The superego forces the ego to conform not only to reality but also to its ideals of morality. Hence, the superego causes people to feel guilty when they go against society’s rules. Like the ego, the superego operates at all three levels of awareness.
Conflict
Freud believed that the id, the ego, and the superego are in constant
conflict. He focused mainly on conflicts concerning sexual and aggressive
urges because these urges are most likely to violate societal rules.
Anxiety
Internal conflicts can make a person feel anxious. In Freud’s view,
anxiety arises when the ego cannot adequately balance the demands of the id
and the superego. The id demands gratification of its impulses, and the
superego demands maintenance of its moral standards.
Defense Mechanisms
To manage these internal conflicts, people use defense mechanisms.
Defense mechanisms are behaviors that protect people from
anxiety. There are many different kinds of defense mechanisms, many of which
are automatic and unconscious:
- Repression: keeping unpleasant thoughts, memories, and feelings shut up in the unconscious.
- Reaction formation: behaving in a way that is opposite to behavior, feelings, or thoughts that are considered unacceptable.
- Projection: attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to someone else.
- Rationalization: using incorrect but self-serving explanations to justify unacceptable behavior, thoughts, or feelings.
- Displacement: transferring feelings about a person or event onto someone or something else.
- Denial: refusing to acknowledge something that is obvious to others.
- Regression: reverting to a more immature state of psychological development.
- Sublimation: channeling unacceptable thoughts and feelings into socially acceptable behavior.
Psychosexual Stages of Development
Freud believed that personality solidifies during childhood, largely
before age five. He proposed five stages of psychosexual development: the
oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the
genital stage. He believed that at each stage of development, children gain
sexual gratification, or sensual pleasure, from a particular part of their
bodies. Each stage has special conflicts, and children’s ways of managing
these conflicts influence their personalities.
If a child’s needs in a particular stage are gratified too much or
frustrated too much, the child can become fixated at that stage of development.
Fixation
is an inability to progress normally from one stage into
another. When the child becomes an adult, the fixation shows up as a
tendency to focus on the needs that were over-gratified or
over-frustrated.
| Stage | Age | Sources of pleasure | Result of fixation |
| Oral stage | Birth to roughly twelve months | Activities involving the mouth, such as sucking, biting, and chewing | Excessive smoking, overeating, or dependence on others |
| Anal stage | Age two, when the child is being toilet trained | Bowel movements | An overly controlling (anal-retentive) personality or an easily angered (anal-expulsive) personality |
| Phallic stage | Age three to five | The genitals | Guilt or anxiety about sex |
| Latency Stage | Age five to puberty | Sexuality is latent, or dormant, during this period | No fixations at this stage |
| Genital stage | Begins at puberty | The genitals; sexual urges return | No fixations at this stage |
During
his lifetime, Freud had many followers who praised his theory, but his ideas,
particularly his emphasis on children’s sexuality, also drew criticism. Some of
Freud’s followers broke away from him because of theoretical disagreements and
proposed their own theories. These theorists are called neo-Freudians. Some
important neo-Freudians were Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and object-relations
theorists.
Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Until the 1910s, Carl Jung was a follower and close friend of
Freud’s. Like Freud, Jung believed that unconscious conflicts are important in
shaping personality. However, he believed the unconscious has two layers: the
personal unconscious, which resembled Freud’s idea, and the
collective unconscious, which contains universal memories of
the common human past.
Jung called these common memories archetypes. Archetypes are
images or thoughts that have the same meaning for all human beings. Jung said
that archetypes exist in dreams as well as in art, literature, and religion
across cultures.
Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology
Alfred Adler, another follower of Freud and a member of his
inner circle, eventually broke away from Freud and developed his own school of
thought, which he called individual psychology. Adler believed that
the main motivations for human behavior are not sexual or aggressive urges but
strivings for superiority. He pointed out that children naturally feel weak and
inadequate in comparison to adults. This normal feeling of inferiority drives
them to adapt, develop skills, and master challenges. Adler used the term
compensation to refer to the attempt to shed normal feelings of
inferiority.
However, some people suffer from an exaggerated sense of inferiority,
or an inferiority complex, which can be due either to being
spoiled or neglected by parents. Such people overcompensate,
which means that rather than try to master challenges, they try to cover up
their sense of inferiority by focusing on outward signs of superiority such
as status, wealth, and power.
Object-Relations Theories
The object-relations school of psychoanalysis emerged in the 1950s, led by
a group of psychoanalysts that included D. W. Winnicott and Melanie Klein. The
term object relations refers to the relationships that people have
with others, who are represented mentally as objects with certain attributes.
Object-relations theorists believe that people are motivated most by attachments
to others rather than by sexual and aggressive impulses. According to these
theorists, the conflict between autonomy and the need for other people plays a
key role in shaping personality.
Criticisms of Psychodynamic Theories
Freud’s original ideas have little popularity today, but many
psychologists do adhere to neo-Freudian ideas. However, other psychologists
criticize psychodynamic theories for various reasons:
- Some critics argue that psychodynamic theories are not falsifiable (see pages 8-–9) and therefore unscientific. In response to this criticism, proponents of psychodynamic theories point out that empirical evidence does support some psychodynamic concepts. For example, empirical research shows that there are unconscious mental processes, that people have mental representations of other people, and that people use unconscious defense mechanisms to protect themselves from unpleasant emotions such as anxiety.
- Other critics argue that psychodynamic theories are made by generalizing from a small number of patients to the whole human population. Relying only on case studies can lead to faulty conclusions.
- Still others argue that most psychodynamic theories are not based on studies that fol low people from childhood to adulthood. Instead, psychodynamic theorists listen to descriptions o f an adult patient’s past and draw conclusions about the relevance of childhood experiences. However, as described on pages 172–174, memories are not always reliable.
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