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Key elements of theory• The Structure of personality
• The Psychosexual stages of development
• The importance of the unconscious mind, relationships and early experience in later psychological functioning.
The Structure of Personality• Personality is divided into three parts: the
id is active at birth, the ego and the super ego develop, one after the other, during childhood.
• The id it is our unconscious life energy or libido, our instinct to survive, it works on the pleasure principle wanting instant gratification.
• The ego is the rational and conscious part of our personality and works on the reality principle.
• The superego is last to develop it is our conscience and moral director.
• Unconscious conflict between the id, ego and superego may result in psychological disorders
• The unconsciousmind is often represented as an iceberg. Everything abovethe water represents conscious awareness, while everything below the water represents the unconscious.
Ego Defence Mechanisms
• Unconscious defences such as Repression, Displacement and Denial are used to protect our ego from conflict and anxiety that we are unable to deal with in our childhood.
• Read through Table 1. Defence mechanisms – on page 239. Discuss how these mechanisms might work in real life, coming up with an example you can share with the class for each one.
• They have given you examples of displacement and denial to help give you the idea.
• Through these mechanisms the cause of the conflict or anxiety removed from our conscious awareness.
• Stress in later life may act to bring the dormant conflict/anxiety to consciousness, which in turn may lead to psychological abnormality
Psychosexual Stages• We develop gradually through psychosexual stages:
oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage and latency period.
• The id looks for gratification in different bodily areas during these different stages
• If we are frustrated/deprived or over-indulged within any of these stages we may become fixated in that stage leading to stage appropriate behaviour being displayed in adult behaviour.
Oral Stage
• His only excusefor smoking wasthat he had beenweaned too earlyin the oral stageof development.
Anal Stage
• Toilet training toosoon or too latecan have consequences laterin life…Anal retention =Overly orderedAnal expulsion =Overly messy
In the Elektra complex Freud proposed that penis envy leads daughters to develop more
affection for the father
Latency period
• Between the phallic stage and puberty there are no real psycho sexual changes.
• At puberty sexual feelings become directed towards potential partners.
The importance of the unconscious mind
• The unconscious isresponsible for defence mechanisms and storage of repressed anxieties
Relationships and early experience can also affect later psychological
functioning.
• Both of these can be the cause of anxiety and fixations e.g. adult phobias may result from early experience.