Psychodynamic & Humanistic Perspectives on Personality

Defense Mechanisms

Freud said anxiety is the price we pay for living in a civilized society.

Defense mechanisms: protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

There are 7 defense mechanisms

1. Repression

Banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness. According to Freud, the most frequently repressed thoughts were of an unacceptably erotic nature.

Freud believed repression was the basis for all the other anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms.

The aim of the psychoanalysis was to draw repressed, unresolved childhood conflicts back into consciousness to allow resolution and healing.

2. Regression

Allows an anxious person to retreat to a more comfortable, infantile stage of life.

3. Denial

Lets an anxious person refuse to admit that something unpleasant is happening.

Thoughts of invincibility.

4. Reaction Formation

Reverses an unacceptable impulse, causing an anxious person the express the opposite of the anxiety-provoking unconscious feeling.

Example: To keep the “I hate him.” thoughts from entering consciousness, the ego generates an “I love him” feeling.

5. Projection

Disguises threatening feelings of guilty anxiety by attributing the problem to others.

Example: “I don’t trust him” really means, “I don’t trust myself.”

Rationalization

Displaces real, anxiety-provoking explanations and replaces them with more comforting justifications for actions.

Rationalization makes mistakes seem reasonable and often sounds like an excuse.

7. Displacement

Shifts and unacceptable impulse toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

Example: company owner who becomes upset and yells at the manager, who yells at the clerk, who goes home and yells at the kids, who end up kicking the dog.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

1. Oral Stage

Lasts through first 18 months of life.Pleasure comes from chewing, biting and

sucking.Weaning can be a conflict in this stage.

2. Anal Stage

Lasts from 18 months to 3 years. Gratification comes from bowel and bladder

function.Potty training can be a conflict in this stage.

3. Phallic Stage

Lasts from age 3 to age 6The pleasure zone shifts to the genitals.Freud believed boys felt love for their

mothers and hatred, fear, or jealousy for their fathers.

Viewing dad as a rival for mom’s love, the boy fears punishment from his father during this stage.

4. Latency Stage

Lasts from age 6 to puberty.Girls learn to do “girl-like” things and boys

learn “boy-like” behaviors.This is called identification process.Shows us what it means to be male or female.

5. Genital Stage

Starts at puberty.Person begins experiencing sexual feelings to

others.

Interference & Motivated Forgetting

Interference

A retrieval problem that occurs when one memory gets in the way of another.

Example: two radio stations battling with frequency.

Proactive Interference

When an older memory disrupts the recall of a newer memory.

Example: Remembering last years locker combination proactively interferes with remembering this years combination.

Retroactive Interference

When a more recent memory disrupts the recall of an older memory.

Example: Your memory of your class schedule for this year has overwhelmed the schedule you followed last year.

Motivated Forgetting

Forgetting unwanted memories either consciously or unconsciously.

Example: forgetting through the process of repression.

Works Cited

Broeker, Charles T. “Thinking About Psychology The Science of Mind and Behavior.