Ethnocentrism is the tendency we all have to see things from the perspective of our own culture.
egocentrism. - is the tendency to see our experiences, our lives, as being the standard for all people.
dogmatism. - A dogma is a set of ideas that the person who holds those ideas will not permit to be criticized.
hysteria (now called conversion disorder), which meant she had symptoms that appeared to be physical, but were not.
pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately.
The ego relates the organism to reality by means of its consciousness, and it searches for objects to satisfy the wishes that id creates to represent the organisms needs. This problem-solving activity is called the secondary process.
reality principle, which says "take care of a need as soon as an appropriate object is found."
There are two aspects to the superego: One is the conscience, which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented to the child. The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.
Freud saw all human behavior as motivated by the drives or instincts, which in turn are the neurological representations of physical needs. At first, he referred to them as the life instincts. These instincts perpetuate (a) the life of the individual, by motivating him or her to seek food and water, and (b) the life of the species, by motivating him or her to have sex. The motivational energy of these life instincts, the "oomph" that powers our psyches, he called libido, from the Latin word for "I desire."
Freud referred to a nirvana principle. Nirvana is a Buddhist idea, often translated as heaven, but actually meaning "blowing out," as in the blowing out of a candle. It refers to non-existence, nothingness, the void, which is the goal of all life in Buddhist philosophy.
anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy.
Freud mentions three different kind of anxieties: The first is realistic anxiety, which you and I would call fear. Actually Freud did, too, in German. But his translators thought "fear" too mundane! Nevertheless, if I throw you into a pit of poisonous snakes, you might experience realistic anxiety.
The second is moral anxiety. This is what we feel when the threat comes not from the outer, physical world, but from the internalized social world of the superego. It is, in fact, just another word for feelings like shame and guilt and the fear of punishment.
The last is neurotic anxiety. This is the fear of being overwhelmed by impulses from the id. If you have ever felt like you were about to "lose it," lose control, your temper, your rationality, or even your mind, you have felt neurotic anxiety. Neurotic is actually the Latin word for nervous, so this is nervous anxiety. It is this kind of anxiety that intrigued Freud most, and we usually just call it anxiety, plain and simple.
Defense mechanisms:
Denial involves blocking external events from awareness. If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it.
- denial in fantasy: This is when children, in their imaginations, transform an "evil" father into a loving teddy bear, or a helpless child into a powerful superhero.
Repression, which Anna Freud also called "motivated forgetting," is just that: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person, or event. This, too, is dangerous, and is a part of most other defenses.
Asceticism, or the renunciation of needs, is one most people haven't heard of, but it has become relevant again today with the emergence of the disorder called anorexia.
- restriction of ego. Here, a person loses interest in some aspect of life and focuses it elsewhere, in order to avoid facing reality.
Isolation (sometimes called intellectualization) involves stripping the emotion from a difficult memory or threatening impulse.
Displacement is the redirection of an impulse onto a substitute target.
- Turning against the self is a very special form of displacement, where the person becomes their own substitute target.
Projection, which Anna Freud also called displacement outward, is almost the complete opposite of turning against the self. It involves the tendency to see your own unacceptable desires in other people.
Altruistic surrender is a form of projection that at first glance looks like its opposite: Here, the person attempts to fulfill his or her own needs vicariously, through other people.
Reaction formation, which Anna Freud called "believing the opposite," is changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite.
Undoing involves "magical" gestures or rituals that are meant to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they've already occurred.
Introjection, sometimes called identification, involves taking into your own personality characteristics of someone else, because doing so solves some emotional difficulty.
Identification with the aggressor is a version of introjection that focuses on the adoption, not of general or positive traits, but of negative or feared traits. If you are afraid of someone, you can partially
Regression is a movement back in psychological time when one is faced with stress.
Sublimation is the transforming of an unacceptable impulse, whether it be sex, anger, fear, or whatever, into a socially acceptable, even productive form.
Psychosexual stage theory.
The oral stage lasts from birth to about 18 months. The focus of pleasure is, of course, the mouth. Sucking and biting are favorite activities.
The anal stage lasts from about 18 months to three or four years old. The focus of pleasure is the anus. Holding it in and letting it go are greatly enjoyed.
The phallic stage lasts from three or four to five, six, or seven years old. The focus of pleasure is the genitalia. Masturbation is common.
The latent stage lasts from five, six, or seven to puberty, that is, somewhere around 12 years old. During this stage, Freud believed that the sexual impulse was suppressed in the service of learning. I must note that, while most children seem to be fairly calm, sexually, during their grammar school years, perhaps up to a quarter of them are quite busy masturbating and playing "doctor." In Freud's repressive era, these children were, at least, quieter than their modern counterparts.
The genital stage begins at puberty, and represents the resurgence of the sex drive in adolescence, and the more specific focusing of pleasure in sexual intercourse. Freud felt that masturbation, oral sex, homosexuality, and many other things we find acceptable in adulthood today, were immature.
The Oedipal crisis
Each stage has certain difficult tasks associated with it where problems are more likely to arise. For the oral stage, this is weaning. For the anal stage, it's potty training. For the phallic stage, it is the Oedipal crisis, named after the ancient Greek story of king Oedipus, who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother.
castration anxiety, a slight misnomer for the fear of losing one's penis.
penis envy: The young girl, too, has noticed the difference between boys and girls and feels that she, somehow, doesn't measure up. She would like to have one, too,
Retain certain infantile or childish habits. This is called fixation. Fixation gives each problem at each stage a long-term effect in terms of our personality or character.
THERAPY
Relaxed atmosphere. The client must feel free to express anything.
Free association. The client may talk about anything at all.
Resistance. One of these clues is resistance.
Dream analysis. In sleep, we are somewhat less resistant to our unconscious and we will allow a few things, in symbolic form, of course, to come to awareness.
Parapraxes. A parapraxis is a slip of the tongue, often called a Freudian slip.
Other Freudians became interested in projective tests, such as the famous Rorschach or inkblot tests.
Transference occurs when a client projects feelings toward the therapist that more legitimately belong with certain important others
Catharsis is the sudden and dramatic outpouring of emotion that occurs when the trauma is resurrected.
Insight is being aware of the source of the emotion, of the original traumatic event.
source: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/freud.html
