There are four perspectives on psychology students need to know for the IB standard and higher level exams. They are the...

behavioral perspective

cognitive perspective

humanistic/phenomenological perspective

psychodynamic perspective

REA's Problem Solvers references:

1-15, 1-16, 7-5, 7-11, 10-13, 10-14, 10-15, 12-2, 13-8, 13-9, 13-10, 13-13, 13-14, 13-15, 13-16,

13-19, 14-11, 14-14, 14-17, 14-18, 14-21, 14-29, 14-33, 14-44, 14-45, 14-55, 15-3, 15-4, 15-35, 16-2, 16-36 & 20-8

Structure of the mind

Sigmund Freud believed there were three levels to consciousness or the mind:

conscious: events, memories and information that we are aware of

preconscious: memories that can easily be recalled

unconscious: thoughts, memories, emotions and impulse we are not aware of

Freud believed the unconscious influences behavior even though it is beyond our awareness. They include aggressive and sexual drives as well as conscious events that were so threatening to us that they are relegated to the unconscious.

Expression of our unconscious becomes the substance of dreams and has been used to explain bizarre behaviors.

Carl Jung was Freud's handpicked successor in the field of psychodynamic theory. He differed from Freud on several fundamental issues:

Jung also believed that our personality or mind was made up of three constructs. He differed, however, from Freud's concepts of the id, ego and superego. Jung's three components were:

conscious ego: our consciousness awareness of ourselves and how we present our self

to the outside world; Freudian defense mechanisms are employed to preserve ego integrity

personal unconscious: motives and behaviors that are unique to the individual hidden

away in the unconscious

collective unconscious: racial memory; our understanding of mankind's past;

our intuitive tendencies toward universal, reoccurring symbols called archetypes

 

Jung also believed that what most people felt were coincidence were actually acts of synchronicity. This is the term he used to define an individual's unconscious awareness of a greater understanding in the world, sort of a tapping into the consciousness of the universe.

Psychosexual and psychosocial stages of development

Freud believed that everyone progressed through five stages of psychosexual development. These stages are:

oral stage (0-1 years): achieves libidinal satisfaction from oral activities such as

eating and sucking

anal stage (1-3 years): autonomy is developed through bladder and bowel control

phallic stage (3-6 years): the child comes to develop a sexual attachment to

the opposite sexed parent and to see the same sexed parent as a rival for those affections

Oedipus Complex: boys want to possess the mother and see their father as a sexual rival; the boy ultimately develops "castration anxiety" or their fear that his father will remove his penis; the boy then represses this fear, identifies with the father and develops his superego

Electra Complex: girls want to possess the father and see their mother as a sexual rival; the girl sees the father as superior because her mother does not have a penis; Freud is unclear on how girls resolve this but feels that girls search for a substitute for this organ in wanting to have a baby; girls do not develop a clear moral identity because of this and, consequently, their superegos never fully develop

latency period (6-puberty): a period of sexual rest for both sexes where sex-role

identities develop

genital stage (puberty on): a reawakening of sexual urges and a desire for heterosexual

relationships

Individuals constantly strive to present their best self and reduce anxiety. Freud called this preserving ego integrity. To do this, individuals employ a variety of defense mechanisms. Some of the more common ones are:

repression: involuntary memory loss about something anxiety-producing

suppression: voluntarily not thinking about something anxiety-producing

denial: not facing up to the reality of a situation

rationalization: making up excuses for our actions

displacement: rechanneling aggression in a negative way; taking our frustrations out

on a substitute person or object

sublimation (also called compensation): rechanneling aggression in a neutral or

positive way

projection: putting onto others our own tendencies, motives or traits

reaction formation: behaving outwardly that opposite of how we inwardly feel

fantasy: escaping reality through daydreaming or using the imagination

procrastination: putting off something anxiety-producing until a later time

fixation: becoming stuck at a specific stage of psychosexual development because it is

safer for ego integrity

regression: returning to an earlier stage of psychosexual development; individuals

usually regress to a stage they previously fixated on

identification: adopting the characteristics of someone more powerful or successful

to attain a goal

Erik Erikson believed that individuals went through eight crises throughout their lives in which a positive or negative resolution to the crisis occurred. These are called the "Eight Ages of Man," and make up Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development. The stages are:

trust versus mistrust (0 - 1): the infant develops a sense of trust in the world if his

or her needs are met

autonomy versus doubt (1 - 3): the toddler develops a sense of independence through

bladder and bowel control (coincides with Freud's anal stage; Anna Freud was Erikson's therapist during his psychological training)

initiative versus guilt (3 - 5 1/2): the child learns to initiate actions, especially during

play, indicating a move to cognitive, not just physical independence

industry versus inferiority (5 1/2 - 12): the child competes against his or her peers in

producing acceptable work in school

identity versus role-confusion (adolescence): the teenager develops a sense of identity,

strives for more self-understanding and establishes goals for the future

intimacy versus isolation (young adulthood): a feeling of belonging either with a close

group of friends or through marriage

generativity versus stagnation (middle adulthood): generativity is Erikson's term for a

concern for future generations; in this stage adults assist their growing children or the community to make the world a better place for them in the future

integrity versus despair (later adulthood): the individual looks back over their life and

assesses whether is was a positive or negative existence

Personality constructs

Sigmund Freud believed that our personality was made up of three constructs:

the id: the child within us; the primitive, unconscious part of our mind that seeks

expression of wishes and emotions (called the pleasure principle)

the ego: uses the reality principle to satisfy the id and superego safely and effectively

in the real world; the mediator that develops with experience and is the rational

part of our mind

the superego: society's values and morals; our conscience; the parent within us which

is guided by the idealistic principle

Freud believed that all action was due to certain innate biological drives he called instincts. Instincts have four qualities: its source, impetus, aim and object. Tension results from both internal and external sources. Darwin's theories are based on this and Freud extended them to explain a wide variety of human activities.

Our instincts, collectively, comprise our id. These needs create inner tension that result in behaviors. The ego satisfies these needs realistically. The superego contains the ideal way to satisfy these needs. Freud's model is primarily biological in nature. Freud believed that "anatomy is destiny." The fact that girls fail to fully resolve their Electra Complex and experience "penis envy," leads them develop feelings of inferiority, weak morals and jealousy. Neo-Freudians have refined these ideas; Erik Erikson still embraced anatomical differences but felt that men were more motivated to achieve while women were more motivated by a need to be accepted by others.

Carl Jung also believed that our personality or mind was made up of three constructs. He differed, however, from Freud's concepts of the id, ego and superego. Jung's three components were:

conscious ego: our consciousness awareness of ourselves and how we present our self

to the outside world; Freudian defense mechanisms are employed to preserve ego integrity

personal unconscious: motives and behaviors that are unique to the individual hidden

away in the unconscious

collective unconscious: racial memory; our understanding of mankind's past;

our intuitive tendencies toward universal, reoccurring symbols called archetypes

Jung also examined personality types and temperaments. He believed that personality traits lay along a continuum and individuals tended to fall somewhere along this continuum. The opposite ends of this continuum he called polar opposites. His four basic personality continuums involve the following:

Alfred Adler believed that individuals possess innate positive motives that are the primary determinant of our personality. Our major goal was the achievement of perfection. We would strive to overcome personal and social obstacles through compensation. Adler later modified his theories and believed that individuals attempted to overcome feelings of inferiority, what he termed the inferiority complex. Later, he revised his theories again and focused on how the individual strives for personal and social perfection. To help us achieve this, we develop fictional finalisms which are goals we set to guide our behaviors.

Karen Horney thought that basic anxiety was a greater motivating force than our libido. This may develop in children whose parents are overly oppressive, indifferent or inconsistent in their child-rearing. In coping with these, individuals develop one of three neurotic trends, irrational approaches to dealing with this anxiety. Horney believed that, in interacting with others, we tend to develop into the following types:

compliant type: moving toward others in attempts to be submissive

aggressive type: moving against others in attempts to gain power

detached type: moving away from others to avoid being hurt

Horney focused on cultural determinants of behavior and, as such, believed that the individual could change throughout the life cycle.

Methodology

Psychoanalysis is the result of applying science and medicine in the treatment of abnormal behavior. Freud developed this through a combination of observation and experimentation. His observations are from his clinical treatment of patients which did not allow to conduct systematic experimentation.

The most well-known psychodynamic theorist if Sigmund Freud. Freud focused on the power of inner forces as motivators to shape personality. He believed that these unconscious motivations could be examined through the use of psychoanalysis, which includes three main techniques:

free association: allowing the patient to say whatever comes to mind

dream analysis: attempts to examine the latent (hidden) content of a dream through

examining its manifest (remembered) dream elements

hypnosis: a state of suggestibility induced by the therapist (learned through

his studies with Jean Martin Charcot)

Most of Freud's theories came from case studies. These include autobiographical material, dream analysis and free association. Through his association with his mentor, Josef Breuer, Freud's psychodynamic theory is based on a few key findings of Breuer's that Freud elaborate on:

1) Underlying symptoms can be relieved through the expression of the "strangulated affect,"

or bring these unconscious motives to the surface. The process of purging these

emotions is called catharsis.

2) The symptoms someone displays have an emotional logic and the key

to psychoanalysis is to unlock the mysteries of these symptoms.

3) A lot of abnormal behaviors are a result of emotionally abrasive experiences in our

childhood. They unconsciously grow into abnormal behaviors as the person gets older. This is based on psychic determinism, or the assumption that our early life determines our behavior and unconscious reactions.

Freud believed we all had certain drives and instincts which guide our behavior. These include...

eros: the life instinct which seeks to preserve the species; tied to the libido

libido: our sexual energy

thanatos: our desire to return to the womb; manifested in aggressive and destructive behavior

 

Freud believed that the "aim of all life is death." By this he meant that there is a constant conflict throughout life of the eros (life instinct) and thanatos (death instinct). It was the ultimate aim of an instinct to return the organism to a state of nothingness, to death. This idea replaced the pleasure principle as the overriding motivation in Freud's system.

 

Neo-Freudians refined and developed Freud's theories. They did not agree that our libido guided the majority of our actions but found other sources for our motives.

Application in the area of therapies such as psychoanalysis and a range of psychotherapies

Freud believed the goal of psychoanalysis was to reconstruct the patient's personality. To do this, the individual's unconscious wishes, impulses and conflicts had the be examined and dealt with at the conscious level. Treating the symptoms will not alleviate the disorder; the psychanalyist must find the cause of the problem, otherwise it will seek expression in some other form than the disorder treated. Psychoanalysis involves seeing a therapist for one to two years, four to five times per week; this can be quite expensive.

Because most problems stem from childhood, the patient frequently sees his or her therapist in the role of a parent and behaves accordingly. The act of have warm feelings for one's therapist is called positive transference. Feelings of anger or hostility toward one's therapist is called negative transference. When the therapist begins to project his or her feelings onto the patient, countertransference is occurring.

Freud was the first to consider dreams meaningful. He believed it was unconscious thought processes at work. When something causes an emotional response in an individual during wakefulness, it is stored in their unconscious. When they are asleep, the content of dreams revolve around these emotions. These emotions usually involve the primary sex drive, aggression or repressed memories.

Freud believed childrens' dreams were often wish fulfillments; adult dreams are more complex. The dream content that is remembered is called the manifest content; the hidden content of the dream that is quite different from what is remembered is the latent content. The process of converting information from the latent to the manifest content is called the dream work. The goal of dream analysis is to get from the manifest content to the latent content. This is difficult because unconscious wishes are disguised in four ways:

condensation: when people or objects have characteristics of several different

people or objects

displacement: dream content that is overemphasized is usually of little importance

while the small details that frequently cannot be remembered are of more importance

symbolization: common meanings of dream elements for most people

(e.g. water can mean rebirth, brothers and sisters can be seen as small animals, etc.)

secondary elaboration: reordering of the dream elements to form a coherent storyline

A censorship system at the border of the conscious mind determines which dream elements will be remembered and which will not. The main purpose of dreaming is to allow the dreamer a compromise between gratification of expressing their emotions and keeping unconscious drives hidden.

Neurotic anxiety, according to Freud, occurs when there is a fear that a previously punished impulse will be expressed. Punishment is associated with a wishful impulse. Because there is a continued desire to express that impulse, anxiety ultimately follows.

Freud believed that depression is anger turned against oneself. If in early development, a child receives too much or too little oral gratification, the infant may fixate at the oral stage of development; because of these they can become overly dependent individuals. Freud also believed that when mourning the loss of a loved one, the individual introjects the lost person into themselves. Because we may harbor negative feelings towards those we love, the mourner becomes the object of their own hate and anger. Usually the individual will recall memories of the loved one to separate themselves from them. Depression can result when an overly dependent person adopts an ongoing process of introjection and never divorces the loved one from themself. "Symbolic loss" occurs when an individual becomes depressed but has not lost a loved one. Three criticisms of this explanation are: 1) the fact that hate but not love is introjected, 2) the fact that Freud never specified what appropriate oral gratification was, and 3) symbolic loss was tacked on as an explanation to general depression.

Alcoholism is seen as a result of fixation at the oral stage of development.

Fetishes serve as a defense mechanism. They reduce anxiety about normal sexual contacts.

Dissociative disorders are seen as the result of massive repression of unacceptable impulses or wishes. In adulthood, these urges are finally expressed, breaking down previous defenses against them. A new defense is established by breaking off awareness from a part of their personality (through amnesia, fugue or multiple personalities).

Conversion reactions are due to unresolved Oedipal or Electra impulses. The preoccupation with the same sexed parent is repressed and re-emerges later. These libidinal impulses are converted into physical symptoms.

Freud believed that obsessive-compulsive disorder is due to unresolved conflicts that occurred during the anal stage of development.

The development and psychological consequences of civilisation

See Civilization and Its Discontents 

Theories of art, literature, humor, other human pursuits, gender issues and politics

Some of the more notable Jungian archetypal characters found in literature are:

hero: saves the day; defeats evil; protects the weak

mother: surrounds, encompasses and protects the individual; can be both a person

or an institution

shadow: the dark side of our nature; our hidden, bad tendencies we do not like

to acknowledge

trickster/magician: plays sly pranks and malicious tricks; usually represented as

half man, half animal

child-god: an individual who has powers or knowledge beyond their years

anima: the projection of femininity from a man's collective unconscious; seeing in others

our own opposite sexed characteristics

animus: the projection of masculinity from a woman's collective unconscious; seeing in

others our own opposite sexed characteristics

persona: the Greek word for "mask;" the different faces we put on in different environments

Jung believed in mandala symbolism, our striving for completeness or wholeness. "Mandala" is the Sanskrit word for "circle" or desire for wholeness is represented in art through complete symbols such as the circle.

Perceptual defense occurs when a stimulus is totally or partially blocked from consciousness. Freud believed this was because it caused anxiety in the person.

Several criticisms have emerged from Freud's theories although psychoanalysis as a therapeutic technique is still very much used today. Some of the criticisms are as follows:

Many feel Freud's emphasis on sex and the libido was his reaction to living and working at a time when these ideas and feelings were not subjects of discussion.

Freud's concept of the Oedipus Complex has not been seen in cross-cultural studies. Likewise, results of studies on early parent-child relationships have been inconclusive.

Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic technique has been criticized because patients need to be somewhat healthy, motivated and skilled at expressing their thoughts and emotions before treatment begins. It is also very time-consuming and expensive.