Inner Drives

Inner Drives

1. Structural Model of Personality

   • Superego; Control ids impulses (sex & aggression), conscience punishes ego for giving in to id through guilt
     • -Embodiment parental & societal values, ideals, standards -Ego ideal: rules for good behaviour & expectations -Conscience: rules for bad behaviour & punishments -Feel emotion (pride, guilt)
   • Ego; develops from id & ensures impulses of id expressed in acceptable manner
     • -Reality principle – constrains id into reality -Secondary process thinking, develops strategies/techniques deal urges -No moral sense -All 3 lvls (conscious)
   • Id; satisfy basic urges, needs, and desires
     • - Pleasure principle, immediate gratification -Primary process thinking, thinking without logical rules -Unconscious level -Basic life instincts
       • Death instincts: Thanatos – aggression
       • Life instincts: Eros – Libido Enter lower state excitation, life preservation

2. Types of Anxiety

   • Objective; Fear, response to real external threat
     • -Confrontation large aggressive man with knife -Control of ego threatened by external factor
   • Neurotic; Direct conflict between id & ego, danger ego lose control unacceptable desire of id
     • -Man worrying excessively he might blurt out unacceptable thought/desire in public -Threat comes from within
   • Moral; Direct conflict between ego & superego
     • -Woman with bulimia running 3km to make up for eating "forbidden food" -People with low self esteem, feel worthless/ashamed usually suffer from overly powerful superego challenging them to higher expectations

3. Types of Defence Mechanisms

   • Repression; Preventing unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or urges, from reaching conscious awareness to avoid anxiety that would have arisen if unacceptable material made conscious
     • -Remember pleasant memories, forget unpleasant -Choir example of abused little boys
   • Denial; Due to extreme anxiety provoking situation, one might insist that things are not the way they seem
     • -Man who's wife left him still placing table set for her insisting she is due to come back -Tendency to blame external factors (bad luck etc.) to avoid personal responsibility - fundamental attribution error
   • Displacement; A threatening or unacceptable impulse is channeled or redirected from its original source to a non threatening target
     • -Woman having argument with her boss goes home and displaces anger on husband, ego keeps her in check since boss could make her work life hard -Domino effect, woman displaced onto husband, husband displaced to kids, so on -Displacement takes place outside of conscious awareness
   • Rationalisation; Generating acceptable reasons for outcomes that might otherwise appear socially unacceptable (common amongst educated people)
     • Student received bad grade on exam, blames unclear directions from teacher
   • Reaction Formation; Observation of traits and desires we find most upsetting in ourselves, others become target of virtue by having traits we intensely dislike in ourselves
     • -People who call others stupid, may harbor insecurity towards their own intelligence -False consensus effect - assumption that many others are similar to them
   • Projection; In attempts stifle expression of unacceptable urge, person displays behaviour indicating the opposite impulse
     • Woman with her boss cant displace anger so she might react overly kindly to him
   • Sublimination; Channeling of unacceptable sexual or aggressive behaviour into socially desired activities
     • Going out to chop wood in times of anger vs getting angry

4. Psychosexual Stages

   • Oral; Pleasure = mouth & sucking, eating, and biting during feeding (sexual pleasure)
     • - 0-18 months -withdrawing breast -pleasure vs dependency -oral fix; smoking, nail bitting
   • Anal; Pleasure= anus (retention & expulsion (poop)
     • -1.5-3 years -pleasure from pooping -wrong potty training -> future conseq.
   • Phallic; observation diff. bet. men &women (Oedipus complex vs Electra)
     • - 3-5 yrs -fix. causes inferiority complex 4 girls (stage nvr resolv.), boys grow out of theirs
   • Latency; Repression infantile memories of sexual & forbidden activity -> unconscious
     • -6 to early teens -attent. shift 2 intelectual & social pursuit -sex & agg urges less -ego skills tested
   • Genital; Genuine love for others & adult sexual satisfaction
     • -Late teens 7 adulthood -excessive stress prev. stages = fix. -ideal devel. stage rarely achieved

5. Freudian Slip

   • unintentional speech error revealing subcons. feeling