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Assessment
The first comprehensive theory of personality was developed by Sigmund Freud about
100 years ago. After working with hypnosis to help patients suffering from hysteria,
Freud came to understand the power of unconscious influences on behavior.
Personality can be divided into conscious, preconscious, and unconscious parts.
Also--- personality can be divided into the id, ego, and superego.
Psychological activity is powered by psychic energy, called libido.
Intrapsychic conflict creates tension, and the goal of human behavior is to return to a
tensionless state.
Freud's theory---a healthy personality is one in which the ego controls id impulses and
superego demands. To do this, ego often uses defense mechanisms--which include
repression--in which traumatic information is pushed out of awareness.
Other defense mechanisms include sublimation, displacement, reaction formation, denial,
intellectualization, and projection. With the exception of sublimation, the ego uses these
defense mechanisms at a cost.
Psychosexual stages of development.
Freud maintained that young children pass through stages of development characterized
by the primary erogenous zone for each stage. Children pass through oral, anal, and
phallic stages on their way to healthy sexual expression in the genital stage.
Excessive trauma during these early years may cause psychic energy to become fixated.
An important step in the development of adult personality takes place with the resolution
of the Oedipus complex at the end of the phallic stage.
Psychoanalysts developed several methods for getting at unconscious material.
Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious." He interpreted the symbols in
his patients' dreams to understand unconscious impulses.
Freudian psychologists use projective tests, free association, and hypnosis to get at this
material.
Clues about unconscious feelings also may be expressed in Freudian slips, accidents, and
symbolic behavior.
Freud developed the first system of psychotherapy, called psychoanalysis. Most of the
time in this lengthy therapy procedure is spent bringing the unconscious sources of the
clients' problems into awareness.
A Freudian therapist actively interprets the true (unconscious) meanings of the clients'
words, dreams, and actions for them. One of the first signs that psychoanalysis is
progressing is resistance, in which a client stops cooperating with the therapeutic process
in order to halt the therapist's threatening efforts to bring out key hidden material.
Many Freudian psychologists rely on projective tests to measure the concepts of interest
to them.
test takers are asked to respond to ambiguous stimuli, such as inkblots. Because there are
no real answers, responses are assumed to reject unconscious associations.
Srengths of the Freudian approach is the tremendous influence Freud had on personality
theorists.
Freud developed the first system of psychotherapy and introduced many concepts into the
domain of scientific inquiry.
Critics point out that many of Freud's ideas were not new and that many aspects of his
theory are not testable.
Others criticize his use of biased data in developing his theory.
Many of those who studied with Freud also disliked his emphasis on instinctual over
social causes of psychological disorders and the generally negative picture he painted of
human nature.