5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition (53 page)

The Ego and Its Defenses

Sometimes overwhelmed by threats it is unable to control, the ego becomes flooded with anxiety and takes extreme measures to relieve the pressure so that it can continue functioning. These measures, called
defense mechanisms
, operate unconsciously and deny, falsify, or distort reality. Defense mechanisms include repression, regression, rationalization, projection, displacement, reaction formation, and sublimation. The most frequently used and most powerful defense mechanism,
repression
, is the pushing away of threatening thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind: unconscious forgetting.
Regression
is the retreat to an earlier level of development characterized by more immature, pleasurable behavior.
Rationalization
is offering socially acceptable reasons for our inappropriate behavior: making unconscious excuses.
Projection
is attributing our own undesirable thoughts, feelings, or actions to others.
Displacement
is shifting unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions from a more threatening person or object to another, less threatening person or object. Displacement is sometimes depicted in cartoons with the boss yelling at an employee, then the employee going home and yelling at the kids, then the kids taking it out on a toy or pet.
Reaction formation
is acting in a manner exactly opposite to our true feelings. Reaction formation is exemplified by the new mother who really wants to be back at work as a highly paid lawyer, but stays home instead, showering all of her attention on her child.
Sublimation
is the redirection of unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses into more socially acceptable behaviors. For example, home from a date with a sexy man she didn’t have sex with, Jan plays her flute.

Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development

For Freud, the first 5 years of life are critical for the formation of personality. In each stage of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, the pleasure center moves to a different area
of sensitivity, or erogenous zone, and an unconscious conflict occurs. Freud believed that if the conflict was not resolved well,
libido
or life energy would become
fixated
at the pleasure center of that stage and became a permanent part of the adult personality. To help prevent fixation, parents need to be sensitive to the young child’s needs in each stage, but not overly indulgent.

• Freud named stage 1 (0–1 year) the
oral stage
. During this stage, the infant receives pleasure and nourishment from the mouth and explores the world first by sucking, then later by biting and chewing. Pleasure derived from oral stimulation can lead to adult pleasure in acquiring knowledge or possessions. When the mother weans the child from her breast or the bottle, the conflict develops. If withdrawal causes especially traumatic separation anxiety in the infant, Freud thought it could lead to a fixation; either oral-dependent personality, characterized by gullibility, overeating, and passivity; or oral-aggressive personality, characterized by sarcasm and argumentativeness later in life.

• In stage 2 (1–3 years), the
anal stage
, the child obtains pleasure from defecation at the anus. When the child is being toilet trained, the conflict develops. Freud claimed that very strict and inflexible methods of toilet training may cause the child to hold back feces and become constipated. Generalized to other aspects of behaving, the anal-retentive personality is marked by compulsive cleanliness, orderliness, stinginess, and stubbornness. Alternately, such toilet training may cause the child to become angry and expel feces at inappropriate times, which may generalize to an anal-expulsive personality marked by disorderliness, messiness, and temper tantrums. If a child is praised extravagantly for bowel movements, the child may acquire the concept that producing feces is important, which can generalize to creativity and productivity.

• During stage 3 (3–5 years), the
phallic stage
, the erogenous zone moves to the genital region and stimulation of the genitals becomes a source of pleasure. Masturbation and the fantasy life of the child set the stage for the Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex is named after the king of Thebes, Oedipus, who, having been abandoned as an infant, killed his father and married his mother without knowing they were his parents. The Oedipus complex (called the Electra complex in girls) is a conflict between the child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and fear of punishment from the same-sex parent. Resolution of the conflict leads to identification with the same-sex parent. The boy represses his sexual desire for his mother because of
castration anxiety
, fear that his dominant rival—his father—will remove his genitals, and he identifies with his father. Resolution of the Oedipus complex causes the superego to develop and guards against incest and aggression. The girl holds her mother responsible for her castrated condition and experiences
penis envy
, desire for a protruding sex organ that she wants to share with her father. The girl’s Electra complex gets modified, and she identifies with her mother to prevent loss of her mother’s love. From ages 6 to 12, Freud theorized that sexual feelings are repressed and sublimated during this
latency
period. Girls and boys transform the repressed sexual energy into developing social relationships and learning new tasks. If the child does not meet his/her own expectations or those of others, the child can develop into an adult with feelings of inferiority. Until puberty, the child is primarily narcissistic, obtaining pleasure from his/her own body.

• During adolescence, individuals pass into the final stage of maturity, the
genital stage
. The adolescent develops warm feelings for others, and sexual attraction, group activities, vocational planning, and intimate relationships develop too. This is a smooth period for those lucky enough to have little libido fixated in earlier stages, especially not during the phallic stage, according to Freud.

Critics (including neo-analysts, who were psychoanalysts that disagreed with parts of Freud’s theory and developed their own), now discount most of this theory. Some neo-analysts, also called neo-Freudians, were Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney.

Carl Jung’s Analytic Theory of Personality

A contemporary and colleague of Freud, Carl Jung rejected Freud’s sex theory. The son of a Swiss pastor, Jung became a psychiatrist. Jung believed that personality is shaped by the cumulative experiences of past generations extending back to our evolutionary past. He studied mythology, religion, ancient symbols and rituals, customs and beliefs of different societies, dreams, and symptoms of mentally ill patients in his search to understand the development of personality. According to Jung’s analytic theory of personality, the psyche—or whole personality—consists of interacting systems including the ego, the personal unconscious with its complexes; the collective unconscious with its archetypes, attitudes, and functions; and the self. The ego is the conscious mind, responsible for our feeling of identity and continuity.

The
personal unconscious
is similar to Freud’s preconscious and unconscious, a storehouse of all our own past memories, hidden instincts, and urges unique to us. It contains complexes, which are groups of associated, emotional, unconscious thoughts that significantly influence our attitudes, and associations that act as driving forces. The
collective unconscious
is the powerful and influential system of the psyche that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution. The inherited memories are
archetypes
or common themes found in all cultures, religions, and literature, both ancient and modern. Jung’s attitude of extraversion orients the person toward the external, objective world, whereas the attitude of introversion orients the person toward the inner, subjective world.

Jung believed that the goal of personality development was to become individuated to realize the self.
Individuation
is the psychological process by which a person becomes an individual, a unified whole, including conscious and unconscious processes. The self is the middle of personality surrounded by all of the other systems of personality. A person who is individuated is complete, like the mandala of yin and yang, a circle that symbolizes the self with all the opposing forces in harmony.

Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology

Another contemporary of Freud, Alfred Adler, was also a Viennese psychiatrist. While Freud emphasized sex, and Jung emphasized ancestral thought patterns, Adler emphasized social interest as the primary determinant of behavior. He made consciousness the center of personality in his individual or ego theory of personality. Adler’s self is a personalized, subjective system that interprets and makes meaning from our experiences, trying to fulfill our unique style of life, the system principle by which the individual personality functions. Our creative self constructs our personality out of the raw material of heredity and experience. Adler believed that people
strive for superiority
to be altruistic, cooperative, creative, unique, aware, and interested in social welfare. He thought that we all try to compensate for
inferiority complexes
based on what we see as physical, intellectual, or social inadequacies. Social interest is the inevitable compensation for all of our natural weaknesses. Adler thought that birth order was an important factor controlling personality. He hypothesized that the oldest child (who is prepared for the appearance of a rival) is likely to develop into a responsible, protective person; the middle child is likely to be ambitious and well adjusted; and the youngest child is likely to be spoiled.

Karen Horney’s Psychoanalytic Theory

Although she never studied with Freud, Karen Horney is also considered a neo-Freudian. She brought a feminist perspective to psychoanalytic theory and sharply attacked the male bias she saw in Freud’s work. Her counterpart to Freud’s penis envy in females was the male’s womb envy or desire to procreate. She thought that males and females both are envious of attributes of the other sex, but that women were more envious of men’s societal status than their penises. Horney proposed that youngsters feel helpless and threatened, and learn to cope by showing affection or hostility toward others, or by withdrawing from relationships. Adults who use all three strategies are healthy, whereas according to her theory, using only one strategy leads to mental illness.

Unlike the deterministic psychoanalytic theories, Abraham Maslow’s and Carl Rogers’s more optimistic humanistic theories of personality stress the importance of our free will in determining who we want to be.

Abraham Maslow’s Holistic Dynamic Theory

Trained as a behaviorist in the 1920s, Maslow thought that behaviorism could not account for his observations of developing children. He asserted that we are born good and move toward self-actualization as our goal.
Self-actualization
is reaching toward the best person we can be. (See Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in
Chapter 12
.) Humanists think that society sometimes causes us to choose goals that lead us away from self-actualization. Self-actualizers who have met their deficiency needs and accept themselves and others have a realistic attitude, are autonomous, independent, creative, democratic, and have a problem-centered rather than self-centered approach to life.

Carl Rogers’s Self Theory

The key concept of Rogers’ self theory is the
self
, an organized, consistent set of beliefs and perceptions about ourselves, which develops in response to our life experiences. Experiences that are inconsistent with our self-concept cause us to feel threatened and anxious. If we are well adjusted, we can adapt by modifying our self-concept. Rogers believed that we are all born with a need for
unconditional positive regard
, for acceptance and love from others independent of how we behave, and positive self-regard from ourselves. When positive regard is not unconditional, conditions of worth dictate behaviors that cause us to approve or disapprove of ourselves. The difference between our
real self
, and what Rogers calls the
ideal self
, or what we think society wants, is called
incongruence
. To become
fully-functioning
(Rogers’ term for self-actualization), we must learn to accept ourselves (unconditional positive self-regard) and unite the real and ideal selves into one again.

B. F. Skinner was an influential behavioral psychologist of the last half century. He studied biology and psychology at Harvard where he obtained a Ph.D. in psychology. As a result of his observations of and experimental studies with pigeons, rats, people, and a variety of other organisms, Skinner developed his operant conditioning theory. (See Operant Conditioning in
Chapter 10
.) Skinner maintained that behavior is personality. The environment shapes who we become, and who we become is determined by the contingencies of reinforcement we have experienced. If we change someone’s environment, we change his/her personality. Psychoanalysts criticize Skinner’s theory for not taking into account emotions, and cognitivists criticize it for ignoring our thinking processes.

Both cognitive and social cognitive theories (also called social-learning theories) pay attention to the influence of our thoughts on our behavior, but the cognitive approach stresses the importance of our subjective experiences more than the social cognitive approach.