Personality from the inside: Freud and the neo-Freudians

Transcript

RyanA four-year-old has just become a big brother. A new baby is home from the hospital, getting all the attention. And suddenly this proud, potty-trained, cup-drinking four-year-old wants a bottle again. He wants to be carried. He talks like a baby.

SoheeEvery parent has seen some version of that. And Sigmund Freud had a name for it.

RyanWelcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Ryan.

SoheeI'm Sohee. Today we start personality theory with the psychodynamic tradition: Freud, then the four neo-Freudians who broke away from him. Adler, Erikson, Jung and Horney.

RyanFirst, what are we even explaining? The OpenStax psychology textbook defines personality as the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel and behave in specific ways.

SoheeAnd the word comes from the Latin persona, a mask worn by an actor in the ancient world. Freud's perspective was the first comprehensive theory of personality, explaining both normal and abnormal behavior.

RyanA bit of context. Freud was a medical doctor, not a psychologist. There was no psychology degree when he trained. But he was the first to systematically study and theorize the unconscious mind in the way we associate with modern psychology.

SoheeEarly on he worked with a physician, Josef Breuer, and was intrigued by one of Breuer's patients, known as Anna O. Talking about her experiences seemed to relieve her symptoms. She called it the talking cure.

RyanFreud compared the mind to an iceberg. He said only about one-tenth of the mind is conscious, and the rest is unconscious, mental activity we're unaware of and unable to access.

SoheeAnd unacceptable urges are kept in the unconscious through repression. Freud thought slips of the tongue were those urges slipping out. Though the textbook notes linguists today find slips tend to happen when we're tired, nervous or not at our best cognitively.

RyanNow the structure. Three interacting systems: id, ego and superego.

SoheeThe id is unconscious, present from birth, and holds our most primitive drives, like hunger, thirst and sex. It operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification.

RyanThe superego develops as a child interacts with others and learns the social rules for right and wrong. It's our conscience, our moral compass. It strives for perfection and judges us, leading to pride or, when we fall short, guilt.

SoheeAnd the ego is the rational part, what Freud considered the self. Its job is to balance the id and the superego in the context of reality. It operates on the reality principle, helping the id get what it wants in a realistic way.

RyanFor Freud, a strong ego that can balance those demands means a healthy personality. Imbalances cause trouble. Someone dominated by the id might be narcissistic and impulsive. A dominant superego might leave someone controlled by guilt. And if the superego is weak or absent, a person might become a psychopath.

SoheeWhich brings us to defense mechanisms. Freud believed anxiety results from the ego's inability to mediate between the id and superego. So the ego uses defense mechanisms, unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety.

RyanThree features to remember. We're unaware we're using them. They distort reality. And according to Freud, everyone uses them, though overuse may be a problem.

SoheeThe textbook defines four. Repression: anxiety-causing memories are blocked from consciousness. Reaction formation: expressing feelings, thoughts and behaviors opposite to your inclinations.

RyanRegression: acting much younger than your age. And that's our four-year-old who wants a bottle after the new baby arrives. That's the textbook's own example.

SoheeAnd projection: refusing to acknowledge your own unconscious feelings and instead seeing them in someone else. The textbook also lists rationalization, displacement and sublimation as other defenses.

RyanPause and think. A woman feels a strong attraction to a married coworker, which she can't admit to herself. Instead, she becomes convinced he's always flirting with her. Which defense?

SoheeProjection. Her own unacknowledged feeling is seen in him. Reaction formation would look different, like being conspicuously cold and critical toward him.

RyanNext, the psychosexual stages. Freud believed personality develops in early childhood through stages, and if a child doesn't get proper nurturing in a stage, they can become stuck, or fixated, there.

SoheeOral stage, birth to 1 year. The mouth is the focus, and the conflict is weaning. Fixation might show up in adults as smoking, drinking, overeating or nail biting.

RyanAnal stage, 1 to 3 years. The conflict is toilet training. Harsh training might produce an anal-retentive personality: stingy, stubborn, with a compulsive need for order. Overly lenient training might produce an anal-expulsive personality: messy, careless and disorganized.

SoheePhallic stage, 3 to 6 years, and the Oedipus complex in boys. Here's a detail that trips people up. The Electra complex, often attributed to Freud, was actually proposed by his protégé, Carl Jung. Freud later rejected it.

RyanThen the latency period, from about 6 to puberty. It isn't considered a stage, because sexual feelings are dormant while children focus on school, friends and hobbies. And finally the genital stage, from puberty on.

SoheeAnd the honest summary. The textbook says most of Freud's ideas have not found support in modern research. But his contributions remain: he pointed out that much of our mental life is shaped by early childhood and happens outside awareness.

RyanNow the neo-Freudians. They generally agreed that childhood experiences matter, but they deemphasized sex and focused more on the social environment and the effects of culture on personality.

SoheeAlfred Adler was the first major theorist to break away from Freud. He founded individual psychology, which focuses on our drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority.

RyanHis key concept is the inferiority complex: feelings that you lack worth and don't measure up to others or to society. Adler believed childhood feelings of inferiority drive people to strive for superiority, and that this striving is behind all our thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

SoheeAdler also emphasized social connection. He named three fundamental social tasks: occupational tasks, societal tasks like friendship, and love tasks. And he believed conscious motivation was more important than unconscious motivation.

RyanHe's also known for birth order theory. Older children compensate for losing attention by becoming overachievers, youngest children may be spoiled. But the textbook notes research hasn't conclusively confirmed his birth order hypotheses.

SoheeErik Erikson proposed a psychosocial theory, in which personality develops throughout the lifespan. That's a departure from Freud's view that personality is fixed early. Erikson emphasized social relationships rather than sex, across eight stages, each a conflict or developmental task.

RyanCarl Jung developed analytical psychology. He split from Freud over two things. He didn't accept the sexual drive as the main motivator, and he thought Freud's personal unconscious was incomplete.

SoheeSo Jung added the collective unconscious, a universal version of the personal unconscious holding memory traces common to all of us. He called these ancestral memories archetypes, like the hero, the maiden, the sage and the trickster.

RyanBut his most important contribution, according to the textbook, is extroversion and introversion. Almost all personality models now include them. Extroverts draw energy from being around others. Introverts draw energy from inner psychic activity.

SoheeJung's types are the basis of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. And he described the persona, a mask we consciously adopt, a compromise between our true self and what society expects.

RyanA criticism to know. There's no evidence that archetypes are biologically based, and symbolic information isn't encoded in the genome.

SoheeFinally, Karen Horney, one of the first women trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst. She rejected penis envy. She said any jealousy is most likely cultural, due to the greater privileges men often have. And she suggested men may have womb envy.

RyanHorney focused on basic anxiety, which can come from unmet needs, like loneliness and isolation in childhood. And she described three coping styles.

SoheeMoving toward people relies on affiliation and dependence. Moving against people relies on aggression and assertiveness. Moving away from people centers on detachment and isolation.

RyanAnd they become neurotic strategies when used rigidly and compulsively.

SoheePause and think. Match the concept to the theorist. Collective unconscious. Inferiority complex. Moving against people. Personality developing across the whole lifespan.

RyanJung, Adler, Horney and Erikson.

SoheeRecap time. Freud: an iceberg mind, with id on the pleasure principle, ego on the reality principle, and superego as conscience. Defense mechanisms are unconscious and distort reality.

RyanPsychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital. Fixation comes from problems at a stage. Most of it lacks modern research support.

SoheeAdler: inferiority and striving, social tasks, birth order. Erikson: lifespan psychosocial stages. Jung: collective unconscious, archetypes, introversion and extroversion. Horney: cultural not biological sex differences, basic anxiety, toward, against and away.

RyanIf you've ever caught yourself rationalizing a skipped study session, don't worry. Freud would say we all do it. Notice it kindly, and get back to the next question.

SoheeThanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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