Psychology / Unit 9: Personality and Psychological Disorders
9.1 Psychodynamic and Humanistic Theories
Notes
Personality is a person's lasting pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving.
- Freud (psychodynamic): the mind has the conscious, preconscious and unconscious. Personality has three parts: the id (pleasure-seeking urges), ego (reality-based mediator) and superego (conscience). Defense mechanisms (such as denial, projection, repression) reduce anxiety. Many of Freud's ideas are hard to test scientifically.
- Neo-Freudians: Jung (collective unconscious), Adler (inferiority and striving for superiority).
- Humanistic theories focus on growth. Carl Rogers: unconditional positive regard and a healthy self-concept; Maslow: self-actualization.
Practice
In Freud's theory, which part of personality acts as the conscience?
The superego holds moral standards.
A student who is angry at a friend accuses the friend of being angry at him. This defense mechanism is:
Projection means attributing your own feelings to someone else.
Carl Rogers believed that people grow best when they receive:
Acceptance without conditions helps a healthy self-concept.
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