4.10 Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Perspectives

Freud's Model of the Mind

Sigmund Freud proposed personality arises from unconscious conflicts. The mind has three parts: the id (primitive desires, pleasure principle), the ego (mediates reality, reality principle), and the superego (morals, conscience). Most mental activity occurs in the unconscious, hidden from awareness but influencing behavior through slips, dreams, and symptoms.

Defense Mechanisms

When the ego faces anxiety from id-superego conflict, it uses defense mechanisms to protect itself. Examples: repression (pushing thoughts into the unconscious), denial, projection (attributing your feelings to others), displacement, rationalization, and reaction formation. These operate unconsciously and distort reality to reduce anxiety.

Psychosexual Stages & Neo-Freudians

Freud's psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) suggest fixation at any stage shapes adult personality. Neo-Freudians like Carl Jung (collective unconscious, archetypes), Alfred Adler (inferiority complex), and Karen Horney (challenged Freud's view of women, emphasized social/cultural factors) built on but revised his ideas.

Key terms

Id

The unconscious part of personality driven by primitive desires and the pleasure principle.

Defense mechanism

Unconscious ego strategy to reduce anxiety by distorting reality (e.g., repression, denial, projection).

Repression

Pushing anxiety-provoking thoughts or memories into the unconscious mind.

Carl Jung

Neo-Freudian who proposed the collective unconscious and universal archetypes.

Psychosexual stages

Freud's five stages of childhood development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital); fixation shapes adult personality.

Try an AP-style question

Which defense mechanism?

1. Projection
2. Displacement
3. Denial
4. Sublimation