Chapter 1. Psychodynamic Theories of Personality

Short Description

What elements make up an individual's personality? Many theorists have sought answers to this question, but one of the earliest and most prominent sets of theories on the origins of personality descended from the work of Sigmund Freud.

Long Description

What elements make up an individual's personality? Many theorists have sought answers to this question, but one of the earliest and most prominent sets of theories on the origins of personality descended from the work of Sigmund Freud. The psychodynamic approach to psychology emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental forces as the underlying motivation for behavior. Freud himself believed that there was much more to personality than what meets the eye. This program summarizes Sigmund Freud's theories about the development of personality and introduces students to various Freudian terms and concepts.

According to Freud, three levels of consciousness—the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious—exist in every human mind. He believed that the unconscious is the source of our motivations, whether they are desire for food or sex, neurotic compulsions, or motives for skill acquisition. We are often driven to deny or resist becoming conscious of these experiences, which then may become available to us only in a disguised form. The iceberg analogy is used to illustrate how the bulk of mental matter is submerged in the depths of our unconscious, while only a small portion, the conscious matter, is exposed. The narrator then describes what Freud referred to as id, ego, and superego: the three components of personality that ideally work together but often come into conflict with one another. When conflict arises, we create defense mechanisms as a way to help us cope and maintain a sense of order in our minds.

Another important yet controversial concept Freud proposed was his theory of the psychosexual stages of development. He believed that biologically fundamental sexual desires surfaced in childhood and that these sexual desires present themselves in conscious behavior. During the third stage, the phallic stage, boys were thought to experience the Oedipus complex: the son-father competition for possession of the mother. Similarly, the Electra complex was thought to be the girls' experience of affection for their fathers.

Despite the fact that his theories are often criticized today, Freud's work helped influence much of modern research on personality and on the application of talk therapy.

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