PSY 312: INTRODUCTION TO

PERSONALITY THEORIES

LECTURE 4

SIGMUND FREUD PART TWO

CHAPTER THREE

LECTURER: MS NURAAN ADAMS

 LECTURE OUTCOMES

• Grasp the important role that Freud allocates to defence mechanisms in explaining human
behaviour.

• Understand Freud’s psychosexual theory in explaining the development of the person.

• Grasp Freud’s view of psychopathology and psychotherapy.

• Critically evaluate the relevance of Freud’s theory for modern day psychology.
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS

• Ego’s way to defend itself against conflict between forbidden drives and moral codes, which causes neurotic
and moral anxiety.
• Most people use more than one at a time.
• NB: they function at unconscious level – person not aware of their functioning.
• Psychological problems stem from sexual and death (aggressive) drives.
Repression and Resistance:
• Repression: Drives/wishes/memories unacceptable to superego are pushed down into the unconscious.
• BUT repressed drives & wishes retain energy – thus threaten to become conscious.
• Resistance = process of trying to stop the above.
• All other defence mechanisms aimed at keeping repressed and anxiety provoking psychic material
unconscious and thus to bolster the working of repression and resistance.
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS
Projection
• Attempt to keep unconscious and threatening material unconscious.
• Ascribes unconscious drives and wishes to another person, thereby ignoring those impulses within
themselves.
Reaction formation
• Attempt to keep forbidden desires unconscious by adopting a fanatical stance against such desires.
• Gives impression that person desires the exact opposite.
Rationalisation
• Attempts to explain own behaviour by providing reasons which sound rational, but which are not
the real reasons for this behaviour.
• Less threatening to blame someone or something else for one’s failures than to blame oneself.
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS
Displacement
• All previously mentioned defence mechanisms are ineffective in eradicating anxiety because
the drive energies remain.
• Anxiety remains and ego becomes preoccupied with using defence mechanisms which leads
to a “weak ego”.
• Relatively successful solution: finding a substitute for the object that society’s moral codes
forbid using as a substitute object for drive satisfaction (substituting thumb for breast).
• However, substitutes are never quite as satisfying as the original object and thus some
residue drive energy remains.
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS
Sublimation
• Most effective form of displacement and thus most effective defence mechanism.
• Finding displaced objects and actions which are regarded by society as culturally valuable.
• Lower drives are therefore, raised to something “sublime”.
• E.g. Sexual drives could be sublimated by producing works of art.
• Aggressive drives sublimated by transferring the energy into acceptable aggressive activity
as in sport or heroic deeds in war.
 DEFENCE MECHANISMS
Fixation & Regression
• Fixation: when psychological development becomes partly stuck at a particular stage.
• Too much drive energy remains invested in objects of that particular stage.
• Three possible reasons:
1. Too much pleasure at certain stage.
2. Too little drive satisfaction at certain stage.
3. Next stage perceived as too threatening.
• Regression: total/partial return to earlier age at which the individual fixated.
Identification
Person represents him/herself as another person because of an unconscious desire to be like that
person.
 DREAMS AND PARAPRAXES
• Dreams result from repression of desires which, due to influence of superego, can only be
fulfilled in a distorted way during sleep.
• Dreams thus represented in a disguised form, repressed desires, fears and conflicts.
• Parapraxes are everyday “mistakes” or “accidents” caused by underlying unconscious sexual
and/or aggressive desires that conflict with superego, bumping into a table, forgetting what we
wanted to do, hitting a finger with a hammer, saying something we did not intend.
• Thus, form of self-punishment resulting from guilt.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
ORAL STAGE
• Birth – 1 year of age.
• Mouth serves as the erogenous zone = source of sexual drive energy.
• Child gains pleasure through the mouth, lips and tongue by sucking and swallowing.
• This satisfies not only the hunger drive but also the sexual drive.
• Child also develops in terms of the death drive (aggression); previously directed only against the
self; now directed outward.
• Mother becomes the primary object of this aggression.
• In the later oral stage (8 months plus) pleasure is gained through biting the mother while feeding.
• Mother now begins weaning the child; which the child views as punishment, and an excess of
aggressive drive energy remains.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
ORAL STAGE
• Weaning from the breast brings frustration of the oral sexual drive and is experienced by baby as
punishment – copes with frustration by using displacement.
• Substitute objects, e.g. dummy, pillow, thumb.
• However, these do not provide the same amount of satisfaction as the original object and therefore there is
excess sexual drive energy that remains.
• The ego and superego start developing during this stage – baby starts to learn from experience.
• Parental punishment and reward teaches child which types of behaviours are allowed and not allowed.
• This lays foundation for the first moral rules to be absorbed into the superego.
• Fixation or partial fixation can occur due to excessive cuddling and motherly love.
• Results in the “oral personality type”: dependence on others, narcissism, excessive optimism or
pessimism, jealousy and envy OR opposite characteristics as a result of reaction formation (defense
mechanism) (a.k.a selfishness, self-loathing, pessimism and exaggerated generosity).
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
ANAL STAGE
• 1 year – 2 years.
• Erogenous zones: anal area.
• Sexual pleasure in excretion and retaining excretion.
• Toilet training is pivotal as the manner in which parents handle it, influences personality
profoundly.
• Aggressive urges now change – can use excretion for aggressive purposes, e.g. excreting at
wrong time or refusal to excrete to punish parents.
• Can hurt self by retaining excretion, but at the same time derive a form of sexual pleasure –
masochism.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
ANAL STAGE
• Toilet training during this stage particularly important for the incorporation of society’s rules.
• Superego thus undergoes further development as result of parents’ punishment and reward in the
context of toilet training.
• Fixation/partial fixation in this stage – anal personality: excessive neatness, thriftiness, obstinacy,
or their opposites.
• Fixation can also lead to development of sadism and masochism and obsessive-compulsive
neuroses.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
PHALLIC STAGE
• 3 years – 6 years.
• Erogenous zones: penis/clitoris.
• However source of sexual drive energy no longer purely physical but relates also to deep and
complex psychic wishes related to the parents
• Boys: penis is the main source of drive energy.
• Masturbation (fondling of genitals is pleasurably experienced) and sexual desires for mother;
would like to take on his father’s sexual function.
• But the boy realizes he cannot replace the father in a sexual manner – develops jealousy and even
hatred of his father.
• Boy’s masturbation, desire of mother, and aggression towards father lead to punishment, which
boy experiences as castration anxiety.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
PHALLIC STAGE
• Boy tries to cope with all this by using repression and identification.
• Represses sexual and aggressive desires and castration anxiety.
• Identifies with his father (wishes to be life his father).
• Boy wants to be as big, strong, and manly as his father and thus enjoy the love and respect of his
mother.
• Therefore, imitates father’s behaviour, especially the moral codes of society that are represented
by the father.
• Through this identification, the superego attains its final development.
• “Repression of the Oedipus complex is the first great achievement of the superego and the final
stage in its development”.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
PHALLIC STAGE
• Electra complex: a developmental stage where the girl envies her lack of a male sexual organ
(penis envy), which eventually leads to identification with her mother and her own gender role.

• She will develop a sexual desire for her father because she hopes to acquire a penis from him.

• She will develop a sense of hatred for her mother whom she blames for the defect of not having a
penis.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
PHALLIC STAGE
• Fixation/partial fixation can lead to sexual adaptation problems in general and especially
homosexuality.
• Plays a big role in the development of many mental disorders, because the superego undergoes
its major development during this stage.
• Superego can emerge weak/overly strict.
• Causes for overly strict superego:
1. Father was too strict.
2. Father is often or permanently absented.
3. Father was not strict enough.
 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
LATENCY STAGE
• 6 years – 12 years.

• Sexual interests are repressed and displaced to substitutive activities, such as learning and peer
group activities.

• Concerned predominantly with development of gender roles.

• Play mainly with children of same sex to consolidate sex-role behaviour.

 PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES:
GENITAL STAGE

• Beginning of puberty – onwards.

• Physiological changes increase sexual drive energy.
• Repression no longer effective – new ways of coping: displacement and sublimation.
• Strive to experience as much drive satisfaction without the guilt as possible.
• Men fall in love with women like mother – wife = substitute for mother, conversely the same
with women and their fathers and the desire to have a son (as a symbolic substitute for the penis
she lacks).
• Aggressive urges satisfied through work and sport.
• Start of romantic relationships.
 OPTIMAL DEVELOPMENT
• So-called “genital character” serves as the ideal.
• Dynamic viewpoint:
• Characterized by the fact that the genital stage of development is attained without fixations on pre-genital
stages.
• Thus, no regression to pre-genital stages.
• Structural viewpoint:
• Ideal personality has strong ego and a superego that is not overly strict.
• Dynamic viewpoint:
• The genital character’s ego is capable of effective reality testing.
• Can make use of the most effective defence mechanism, sublimation.
• This implies that these people can satisfy their sexual and aggressive urges in socially acceptable and
appreciated ways, meaning that they can have a satisfactory sexual relationship with someone of the
opposite sex and will find fulfilment in their work.
• Freud summarized these attributes as the ability to love and to work.
 PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
• Freud regards his psychoanalytical theory as an explanation for both normal and abnormal
behaviour; therefore, he views abnormal behaviour as merely an extreme and exaggerated form
of normal behaviour.
• Freud views psychological disorders as an imbalance in the structure of personality. Basically,
the ego is too weak to handle the conflict between the id and Superego effectively.
• Fixation – unresolved problems are repressed and allows for excessive drive energy to
remain.
• Ego too weak – has not developed sufficient rational skills for drive satisfaction and uses
ineffective defence mechanisms.
• Superego too strict or too weak.