Chpt 10 Vocab 1-25

Front 1

personality

Back 1

an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

Front 2

free association

Back 2

in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Front 3

psychoanalysis

Back 3

Freud’s theory of personality and therapeutic technique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. Freud believed the patient’s free associations, resistances, dreams, and transferences—and the therapist’s interpretations of them—released previously repressed feelings, allowing the patient to gain self-insight.

Front 4

unconscious

Back 4

according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware

Front 5

id

Back 5

a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.

Front 6

ego

Back 6

the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

Front 7

superego

Back 7

the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

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psychosexual stages

Back 8

the childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Front 9

Oedipus: [ED-uh-puss] complex

Back 9

according to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father. (p. 482)

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identification

Back 10

the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.

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fixation

Back 11

(1) the inability to see a problem from a new perspective, by employing a different mental set. (2) according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Front 12

defense mechanisms

Back 12

in psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality

Front 13

repression

Back 13

in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness.

Front 14

regression

Back 14

psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.

Front 15

reaction formation

Back 15

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

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projection

Back 16

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

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rationalization

Back 17

psychoanalytic defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

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displacement:

Back 18

psychoanalytic defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

Front 19

sublimation

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psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people re-channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities

Front 20

denial:

Back 20

psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities.

Front 21

collective unconscious

Back 21

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

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projective test

Back 22

a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics.

Front 23

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Back 23

a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Front 24

Rorschach inkblot test

Back 24

the most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

Front 25

terror-management theory

Back 25

a theory of death-related anxiety; explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.