Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
24 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
Outline Freud's theory of personality |
Personality developed out of an interaction between innate drives and early life experience. |
|
|
How does the ID affect personality? |
Your personality is ruled by the ID which is driven by the pleasure principle. |
|
|
What is the pleasure principle? |
An innate drive to seek immediate satisfaction. |
|
|
What does the infant do after the stage of the ID's development? |
Realises that immediate satisfaction isn't attainable and the ego is driven by the reality principle. |
|
|
What is the reality principle? |
The idea that the child needs to accomodate the needs of the environment. |
|
|
What emerges after the ego? What does this do? |
The superego emerges and this allows the child to learn what's right and what's wrong. This is the morality principle. |
|
|
What is the morality principle? |
Knowing what's right from wrong |
|
|
What is Freud's main assumption which has lead to the psychodynamic approach? |
Abnormal behaviour is caused by conflicts in the unconscious mind. These conflicts can be traced back to early childhood experiences as these supposedly made people more prone to mental health problems. |
|
|
What happens if you have a dominant superego? |
You could develop OCD as individuals restrict themselves from socially acceptable pleasures - ALL pleasures. |
|
|
If the ID is dominant what happens? |
You would have immoral behaviour such as rape and your actions could lead to developing a psychological disorder. |
|
|
What is the function of the Ego? |
It balances the ID and the Super Ego |
|
|
We all go through psychosexual stags in childhood. Fixation at any of these stages could lead to psychological disorders. What are the stages? |
Anal, Phallic and Genital |
|
|
Fixation at the anal stage leads to... |
An anal-expulsive personality could develop in which the individual has a messy, wasteful, or destructive personality. This is because parents are meant to praise their child after using the toilet at the correct time, however incorrect responses or no recognition, especially to accidents can lead to this personality type. |
|
|
Fixation at the phallic stage leads to... |
At this stage children understand that boys and girls have different genitalia. Can lead to oedipus and electra complexes. |
|
|
What drives behaviour? |
psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behaviour |
|
|
Fixation at the oral stage can lead to... |
Eating disorders, smoking, aggression, alcoholism |
|
|
What is an oedipus complex? |
Freud also believed that boys begin to view their fathers as a rival for the mother’s affections. The Oedipus complex describes these feelings of wanting to possess the mother and the desire to replace the father. However, the child also fears that he will be punished by the father for these feelings, a fear Freud termed castration anxiety. |
|
|
What is the electra complex? |
The term Electra complex has been used to described a similar set of feelings experienced by young girls. Freud, however, believed that girls instead experience penis envy. |
|
|
What are ego defence mechanisms? |
They're used to balance the demands of ID and super ego by distorting the reality to protect the ego from distress, however the model suggests that if it overused this can lead to abnormal behaviour. |
|
|
One strength of the psychodynamic approach |
Revolutionary theory - Freud was the first to conduct research into the unconscious processes and repressed material in our mind. This has enabled further research to be conducted into the effects of childhood experiences such as sexual abuse on pathology. |
|
|
Criticism of it being abstract |
E.g. it is difficult to define the research as it often refers to the processes taking place in the unconscious mind therefore there is no way to know for certain that they are ocuring. In addition, these explanations of the approach have limited empirical support so they evidence can only be obtained by case studies. |
|
|
What is the problem with only using case studies as evidence? |
Individual differences. |
|
|
Criticism of being sexist |
Theory is less suited for women - given in a victorian period it was conduced where women weren't considered as equals and therefore this shows sexual bias and the results cannot be approved - out dated - invalid |
|
|
Criticism of being unfalsifiable |
Difficut to prove/disprove because if an individual behaves in a manner predicted by Freud, this supports his theory. However, if the theory is contradicted some say this is the consequence of the person behaving this way due to their ego defence mechanisms. |
