1. Warm-Up Describe your personality. Why do you think you are this way?
OBJ: SWBAT identify and describe aspects of Freud’s structure of personality and theory of psychosexual development.
Relevance: Today we are learning about this because Freud’s theories are widely used by psychologists exploring human personality.

2. Personality
Unique, relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving
Preferences – for how you handle situations, your sense of humor, or your expectations of others
“You have a strong need for other people to like & admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity, which you have not turned to your advantage…disciplined & controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome & insecure inside…at times, you’re extraverted, affable, & sociable; at other times, you’re introverted, wary, & reserved”
Pop psychologists have littered the self-help aisle with books designed to tell you about yourself based on your food choices (you are what you eat), color preferences (if you like red, you’re said to be emotional), handwriting (short, clipped strokes mean that you’re stingy) and body shape (‘round’ people are outgoing party animals). They are not alone…there is a booming business for astrological predictions – both horoscopes and palm readers and crystal ball gazers…
Within the psychological domain, we’ll discuss four approaches to personality: psychoanalysis, the cognitive-social approach, the humanistic approach, and the trait approach.
Each perspective contains a set of theories that share certain assumptions about human nature – how personality forms and then develops; whether people are inherently good or bad, the relative importance of biological and environmental factors; and the question of stability and change.

3. Freud’s Structure of Personality
Conscious—Acute
awareness
Preconscious—Just
under awareness;
easily known
Unconscious—Well
below awareness;
Difficult to know
but very influential
Superego
Consciousness
Ego Id
Underlying psychoanalysis is the assumption that personality is shaped largely by forces that act within a person’s unconscious. To illustrate, Freud compared the human mind to an iceberg. Like the small tip of the iceberg that can be seen above the water, the conscious part of the mind consists of all that a person is aware of at a given moment. Below the surface is the vast region of the unconscious, which contains thoughts, feelings, and memories that are hidden from view. Part of this region lies just beneath the surface, in an area Freud called the preconscious.
Preconscious material is not threatening, just temporarily out of awareness and easy to bring to mind. The rest of the unconscious, however, is a deep, dark sea of secret urges, wishes, and drives. According to Freud, the mind keeps these unacceptable impulses out of awareness. Still they rumble, make waves, and surface for air – in our dreams, our slips of the tongue, the jokes we tell, the people we’re attracted to, and the anxieties we feel.

4. Id, Ego, and Superego
Watch this short video on Freud’s structure of personality.
Write down 3 interesting facts as we are watching the movie.

5. How the iceberg works Id Superego Functions on ‘pleasure principle’
Immediate gratification of needs to reduce tension & discomfort regardless of consequences
Superego
Functions on ‘idealistic principle’
Our moral guide/conscience
Influenced by internalizing our parents’ values & the voice of society
Works against the Id by inflicting guilt
ID: I WANT IT AND I WANT IT NOW!!!!
SUPEREGO: The restraint. Two components – both our conscience as well as our ideal of who we ideally want to be.

6. How the iceberg works (cont.)
Ego
Functions on ‘reality principle’
Serves to balance the demands the Id and the Superego
Assesses what is realistically possible in satisfying the Id and/or Superego (i.e., what society will deem acceptable)
Ego uses defense mechanisms to protect itself
Personality is result of the battle for control between id, ego & superego
Ego: A master of compromise, a part of us that tries to satisfy our needs without offending our morals.

7. Defense Mechanisms Denial Repression Rationalization
Denying the anxiety outright
Repression
Blocking out/prevention of anxiety – forcing anxiety back into unconscious
Rationalization
Creating false reasons or explanations for anxiety in the form of a shortcoming
Denial: Anxiety-filled external events not only are forgotten but also are barred from awareness in the first place. See no evil, hear no evil!! Denial is common among terminally ill patients and in families that sometimes refuse to admit that a loved one is dying. It is also characteristic of smokers who refuse to recognize the health risks of their habit, husbands and wives who ignore signs of marital conflict, and politicians who manage to over look corruption that takes place right under their noses.
Repression occurs when anxiety-provoking thoughts and memories are ‘forgotten’ and pushed out of awareness. Freud believed that people repress unacceptable sexual and aggressive urges, traumas, and guilt feelings.
Rationlization involves making excuses for one’s failures and shortcomings. The fox in Aesop’s fable who refused the grapes he could not reach because ‘the were sour’ used rationalization. So do failing students who say they don’t really care about their grades, gamblers who justify their massive losses as entertainment costs, and scorned lovers who find fault with those who reject them.

8. Defense Mechanisms (cont.)
Projection
Seeing in others unacceptable feelings that reside in one’s own unconscious
Displacement
Acting out your anxiety on an innocent party
Scapegoating

9. Defense Mechanisms (cont.)
Reaction formation
Reversing the nature of the anxiety so that it feels like its opposite nature
Exaggerated love for someone you unconsciously hate
Sublimation
Channeling anxiety into socially-acceptable activities
Focusing sexual energy into art, music, etc.

10. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Periods of development
Sexual focus
Implications for adult personality
Fixation
Oral (Birth to 1½ yrs)
Gratification is centered around the mouth (e.g., breast-feeding, sucking, biting)
Anal (1½ to 3 yrs)
Gratification is centered around the pleasure of defecation; toilet-training is issue for resolution and development
According to Freud, his clinical work led him to draw two conclusions about human development: that personality is shaped in the first few years of life, and that the resolution of ‘psychosexual’ conflicts is the key contributor. He went on to propose that all children pass through an odyssey of psychosexual stages of development, with each stage defined by a different ‘erogenous zone’ a part of the body that’s most sensitive to erotic stimulation.
First is the oral stage, a time when the baby’s mouth is the pleasure-seeking center of attention. Oral activity begins with the sucking of nipples, thumbs, and pacifiers, then moves on to biting, chewing, cooing, and other oral activities. In this stage, the infant is totally dependent on caretakers, feeding is a key activity, and weaning is the major source of conflict.
Next comes the anal stage. Here the baby derives pleasure in the sensation of holding in and letting go of bodily feces. There is a regular and enjoyable cycle of tension buildup and release. In this stage, however, toilet training brings the parent (saying WAIT) and the child (I don’t want to) into sharp conflict.

11. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Stages
Phallic (3 to 6)
Gratification manifests itself through masturbation; resolution for development lies in identification w/ same-sex parent
Oedipus Complex
Boys have unconscious jealous love for mother and desire to kill the father; fear of castration by father leads to resolution with acceptance of/identification with father and internalization of father’s values
Strong superego results in this resolution
Electra Complex
Girls discover that they do not have a penis and desire one (“penis envy”); they direct their anger toward the mother for not providing a penis; jealous of mother forefather
Gradual realization that these desires are self-defeating; identification with mother results
Between ages three and six, the child enters the phallic stage, a time when pleasure is felt in the genital area. In this stage, children become fascinated with the body and can often be seen playing with their own sex organs in public, a habit that once again brings them into conflict with their parents. To Freud, the single most dramatic conflict in psychosexual development takes place at this point!
There’s a famous Greek tragedy in which the hero, an abandoned infant who goes on to become King Oedipus, returns as a young man to kill his father and marry his mother, both without realizing who they are. According to Freud, this legend exposes an unconscious human wish he called the oedipal complex – a tendency for children to become sexually attracted to the parent of the opposite sex and to develop feelings of jealousy and rage toward the rival parent of the same sex.
Freud’s theory of male development is clear: The young boy wants his mother and hates his father for standing in the way. Because the father is bigger and more powerful, however, the boy develops castration anxiety, a fear that the father will retaliate by cutting off his son’s prized genitals. For defensive reasons, the boy represses his sexual urge for his mother and tries to emulate the father. As a result, the boy becomes less anxious, derives partial satisfaction of his repressed wish for his mother, and adopts his father’s moral values.
Even Freud admitted that his theory for girls was less clear. At some point, he says, the girl notices that her father has a penis but that she and her mother do not. Unconsciously, the girl blames and resents the mother for this deficiency, develops penis envy, and seeks to become daddy’s little girl. Eventually, she realizes the futility of these feelings, represses her envy, and identifies with her mother.
For both boys and girls, then, the identification part of the process is important: It means that the superego springs full blown from the Oedipus complex.

12. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Stages
Latency (6 to puberty)
Sexual urges are repressed and transformed into socially acceptable activities, such as schoolwork and peer activities
Genital (puberty – adulthood)
Successful resolution and development into a mature sexual relationship
How to remember: (start at 1:00)
Once Oedipal complexes are resolved, the child enters a long latency period, which lasts roughly from 6 to 12. In these middle years of childhood, sexual impulses lie dormant, as boys and girls concentrate on friends of the same sex and schoolwork. As parents come to appreciate, this is a time of calm between storms.
Indeed, it precedes the fourth and final stage – the genital stage. Starting at puberty, boys and girls emerge from their latency shells and feel the stirring of adult like sexual urges for the first time. Once again, the ego must cope with an undeclared state of war between biological drives and social prohibitions.
According to Freud, one must pass successfully through all psychosexual stages in order to form a healthy personality and enjoy mature adult relationships. If children receive too much or too little gratification at an earlier stage, they become stuck or fixated at that stage. This fixation is then responsible for abnormalities in personality.

13. Criticisms of Freud Sexist Description rather than prediction
Freud’s theory was thought to be sexist against women (e.g., “penis envy”, underdeveloped superego)
Description rather than prediction
Subjective description, solely by Freud, and “after the fact” on a relatively small sample of patients, including himself!
His patients were mostly females from upper classes
Unverifiable concepts
How the heck can you directly confirm, disconfirm, or even observe the Oedipus Complex?!
Feels more mythical than scientific
Too many hypotheses for reactions to anxiety
A second criticism of psychoanalysis is that it does not meet acceptable standards of science. From the start, Freud based his whole theory on observations he made of his Vienna patients, hardly a representative group of human beings. He then proceeded to use the theory to explain family dynamics, mental illness, love and attraction, homosexuality, war, religion, and the course of human history. Of course, after-the-fact explanations are easy, very much like betting on a horse after the race has been run. But can Freud’s theory predict these kinds of events in advance?
This leads us to the third criticism…A number of these concepts are almost impossible to test. When carefully controlled research is possible, it generally fails to support many of Freud’s propositions. One important example concerns the assumption that personality is completely formed inn the first few years of life. In light of recent research, we now know that although early childhood experiences are formative, and can have a lasting impact on us, development is a lifelong process.
Freud’s theory that childhood conflicts cause people to become fixated at certain psychosexual stages has also not stood the test of time. Research has shown that although oral, anal, and phallic personality types can be identified, they don’t necessarily arise from difficulties experienced in weaning, toilet training, masturbation, or other psychosexual experiences.
Freud also had so many hypotheses about both our possible reactions to anxiety and possible ways of having personality flaws that it seems amazing that any of us are able to function successfully.

14. But… Freud’s theory…. Was rich and comprehensive in description
1st comprehensive theory of personality: every personality theory since can be seen as a reaction to Freud
Sparked psychoanalysis
Many still believe that psychoanalysis is the best treatment for mental illness
Was controversial and stretched the boundaries for creativity
Freud: “I am actually not a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador—an adventurer…with all the curiosity, daring, and tenacity characteristic of a man of this sort.”
Why do you think his theory is still popular today? What do you like about it and why?

15. DOL Given and exit card, SWBAT:
Write 3-5 sentences describing the structure of personality.
Write a definition for 3 of the 5 stages of psychosexual development.