Study discussions

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t most of us fail to appreciate the extent to which his ideas have become part of our thinking. For example, if you are like most adults in this culture, you freely accept the idea that what you do is sometimes influenced by an unconscious part of your mind. Most of us have said something like “I must have done that unconsciously” or pondered what sort of hidden psychological meaning might be behind a friend or loved one’s unusual behavior. Although Freud was not the first to talk about the unconscious, no one before or since has placed so much emphasis on unconscious processes in explaining human behavior. Similarly, when we wonder whether our dreams reveal inner fears and desires, we are espousing an idea Freud popularized. Although people have interpreted dreams for thousands of years, Freud was the first to incorporate dream interpretation into a larger psychological theory.

References to Freudian theory permeate our culture. As one writer put it, “Freud’s theories of the subconscious mind … have had a dramatic impact on contemporary film, theater, novels, political campaigning, advertising, legal argument and even religion” (Fisher, 1995, p. 25A). English students learn Freudian psychology when studying the themes in great literature; theology students debate Freud’s views on religion. Even our language has not escaped. It is not uncommon to hear people mention Freudian slips, denial, libido, repression, and other Freudian concepts in everyday conversations. But perhaps the most telling tribute to Freud’s impact is that nearly every major theorist covered in this book has felt compelled to use Freud’s works as a point of comparison for their own ideas about the nature of personality.

FREUD DISCOVERS THE UNCONSCIOUS

LO 3.1 Discuss some of the early experiences and discoveries that laid the foundation for Freud’s theory.

How did a Viennese neurologist come to change the way we think of humankind? There is little in Freud’s early history to indicate greatness awaited him. Although Freud was a respected member of the medical community, his interests began to drift. In 1885 he went to Paris to study with another neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot was experimenting with early versions of hypnosis and its use in curing what were then believed to be unusual physical problems. Shortly thereafter, Freud returned to Vienna and began work with a prominent physician, Joseph Breuer. Like Charcot, Breuer was using hypnosis to treat hysteria. Patients suffering from hysteria display a variety of physical symptoms, such as blindness, deafness, an inability to walk or to use an arm, and so on. Physicians of that day treated hysteria as if it were a physically based illness. However, Breuer and Freud developed another interpretation.

Their discussions about one of Breuer’s patients, Anna O. (real name, Bertha Pappenheim), probably set the direction for the rest of Freud’s career. Anna O. experienced several hysterical symptoms, including paralysis of her left arm, hallucinations, and the ability to speak only in languages other than her native tongue of German. Under hypnosis, Anna O. would talk about her daydreams and hallucinations and about past traumatic events. During her final hypnosis session, she discussed her dying father and some associated hallucinations about a black snake. After this session, the paralysis in her arm was gone, and she could once again speak German.

In 1895 Freud and Breuer published Studies in Hysteria, in which they presented the case of Anna O. and discussed their use of hypnosis to treat hysteria. Freud continued to use hypnosis with patients exhibiting hysteria, but he soon grew disillusioned with its limitations and began looking for alternative methods. Slowly he recognized the importance of allowing patients to say whatever came into their mind. He discovered that, even without hypnosis, under the right circumstances patients would describe previously hidden material that seemed related to the causes and cure of their symptoms. Refinement of this technique, called free association, was a significant step in the development of Freud’s theory.

One startling discovery Freud reported in his early patients was that memories uncovered during free association often concerned traumatic sexual experiences, many of which supposedly had occurred in early childhood. He concluded these early sexual experiences were responsible for the hysterical symptoms expressed by his adult patients. At this point, Freud was well along the way in his transition from neurologist to psychologist. He continued to

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work with patients with hysteria and wrote about his observations and the development of his theories, convinced he was on the threshold of important psychological discoveries.

However, Freud’s writings sold poorly at first, and his ideas were largely rejected by the academic and medical communities. Freud’s open discussion of infantile sexuality and omnipresent sexual motives did not sit well with the puritanical standards of Victorian Europe. And his approach to treatment was so radical many physicians considered it absurd. Nonetheless, Freud continued his work and his writing and soon developed a small following of scholars who traveled to Vienna to study with him. These scholars formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, with Freud as its great figurehead and leader. Later, many members of the society would come to disagree with Freud and leave the ranks to develop their own personality theories and form their own professional organizations. However, as described in Chapter 5, the flavor of their theories remained unmistakably Freudian.

Gradually, Freud’s ideas gained acceptance within the growing field of psychology. In 1909, Freud was invited to the United States to present a series of lectures on psychoanalysis at Clark University. For Freud, the occasion marked the beginning of international recognition. However, resistance to psychoanalysis by academic psychologists kept Freud’s theory out of American textbooks for another quarter of a century (Fancher, 2000). Freud continued to develop his theory and write about psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. Many consider Freud the most influential psychologist in the history of the field. A Time magazine cover story at the end of the 20th century featured a picture of Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, identifying the two as “The Century’s Greatest Minds.”

Sigmund Freud

1856–1939

Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

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Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic). In 1860 his family moved to Vienna, where Freud spent virtually the rest of his life. Freud’s ambition to amount to something important surfaced early. He enrolled in medical school at the University of Vienna determined to make an important discovery and thereby a name for himself.

Freud began his quest while working in his instructor’s medical laboratory. But immediate scientific breakthroughs were not forthcoming, and he soon became discouraged at his chances for advancement. In addition, he had fallen in love with Martha Bernays and wanted to earn enough money to marry her and give her a comfortable lifestyle. So, upon completing his degree, Freud left the lab and went into private practice.

During his subsequent 4-year engagement to Bernays (they were finally married in 1886), Freud won a research grant to travel to Paris to observe Jean-Martin Charcot’s work with hypnosis. It was during this time that he began to develop his ideas about the power of the unconscious mind. His work with Joseph Breuer, observations of his own patients, and a great deal of introspection led to his 1900 book, The Interpretation of Dreams. Although it took several years to sell the 600 original printings, the book’s publication was the first step toward achieving the widespread recognition Freud had sought back in medical school.

Something about Freud has attracted the attention of numerous biographers. The most complete of these is the three-volume biography by Ernest Jones (1953–1957). Although he sought fame, Freud was, in many ways, a private person. Consequently, most biographers have glued together the facts we have about Freud’s life with a large amount of speculation. Perhaps the most interesting part of this speculation concerns the extent to which Freud’s description of human personality reflects his own personality and life experiences. Not surprisingly, Freud’s relationship with his parents is of particular interest. Although his father had several children from an earlier marriage, Sigmund was his mother’s first child and the apple of her eye. His mother was only 21 when he was born and almost as close in age to her son as she was to her husband. Biographers agree that an especially close relationship was formed. Freud’s mother sometimes referred to him as her “Golden Sigi.” In contrast, Freud’s relationship with his father appears to have been cold, if not occasionally hostile. Freud arrived late to his father’s funeral, something he later identified as clearly unconsciously motivated. Freud struggled with guilt feelings over his relationship with his father many years after his father’s death.

It is not difficult to see how Freud’s description of the Oedipus complex—sexual attraction for the mother and competitive hostility toward the father—may have been a kind of projection of his own feelings toward his parents. Freud hints at this insight at many places in his writings. Indeed, he often relied on his own introspection to test the accuracy of his clinical intuition. He is reported to have reserved a half hour each night for this self-analysis.

Freud’s marriage was a long and relatively happy one, producing six children. The youngest child, Anna, held a special place in her father’s heart. She followed in his professional footsteps, eventually taking over a leadership role in the psychoanalytic movement and becoming a respected psychoanalytic theorist in her own right. Freud created a situation filled with interesting Oedipal possibilities when he conducted Anna’s psychoanalysis himself.

Freud and his family fled from their home and Nazi persecution when Germany invaded Austria in 1938. They escaped to London, where Freud died of cancer the following year.

THE FREUDIAN THEORY OF PERSONALITY

LO 3.2 Describe the major concepts in Freud’s theory of personality.

We begin our examination of Freud’s influential perspective by looking at classic Freudian theory. Contemporary advocates of the psychoanalytic approach vary in the degree to which they agree with Freud’s initial descriptions of personality. Most accept key psychoanalytic concepts, such as the importance of unconscious thoughts. But modern psychoanalytic psychologists typically back away from other aspects of Freudian theory, such as his

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description of infantile sexuality. Nonetheless, you need to understand what Freud proposed before deciding which parts make sense to you and which parts to jettison.

The Topographic Model

Freud originally divided personality into three parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. This division is known as the topographic model. The conscious contains the thoughts you are currently aware of. This material changes constantly as new thoughts enter your mind and others pass out of awareness. However, the conscious can deal with only a tiny percentage of all the information stored in your mind. You could bring other thoughts into consciousness fairly easily if you wanted to. For example, what did you have for breakfast? Who was your third-grade teacher? What did you do last Saturday night? This large body of retrievable information makes up the preconscious.

Although many people consider the material in the conscious and preconscious to be fairly exhaustive of the information in their minds, Freud described these as merely the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of our thoughts, and the most important from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, are found in the unconscious. This is material to which you have no immediate access. According to Freud, you can bring unconscious thoughts into consciousness only under certain extreme situations. Nonetheless, this unconscious material is responsible for much of your everyday behavior.

The Structural Model

Freud soon discovered the topographic model provided a limited description of human personality. He therefore added the structural model, which divides personality into the id, the ego, and the superego. Just as we often say, “One part of me wants to do one thing, and another part wants to do something else,” Freud maintained that our personalities are made up of parts often not at peace with one another.

Freud proposed that at birth there is but one personality structure, the id. This is the selfish part of you, concerned only with satisfying personal desires. Actions taken by the id are based on the pleasure principle. That is, the id is concerned only with what brings immediate personal satisfaction regardless of physical or social limitations. When babies see something they want, they reach for it. It doesn’t matter whether the object belongs to someone else or that it may be harmful.

However, relying only on reflexive action would leave our pleasure impulses frustrated most of the time. Therefore, Freud proposed that the id also uses wish fulfillment to satisfy its needs. That is, if the desired object is not available, the id will imagine what it wants and thereby at least temporarily satisfy the need. As discussed later in this chapter, Freud argued that our dreams are a type of wish fulfillment. Freud also maintained that our impulsive need for pleasure does not disappear as we age. Rather, these id impulses are ever-present but usually held in check by the other parts of a healthy adult personality.

As shown in Figure 3.1, the id is buried entirely in the unconscious and therefore outside of our awareness. Indeed, because many id impulses center on themes of sexuality and aggression, it is probably good that we are not aware of this unconscious material.

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Description

Figure 3.1 Relationship of the Id, Ego, and Superego to the Three Levels of Awareness

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The second part of personality in the structural model, the ego, gradually develops during the first 2 years of life. The actions of the ego are based on the reality principle. That is, the ego takes into consideration the realities of the world. Because id impulses tend to be socially unacceptable, they are threatening to us. The ego’s job is to keep these impulses in the unconscious. Unlike the id, your ego moves freely among the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious parts of your mind.

However, the ego’s function is not simply to frustrate the aims of the id. Freud maintained that human behavior is directed toward reducing tension, such as the tension we feel when impulsive needs—even unconscious ones—are unmet. Very young children might be allowed to grab what they want and thereby reduce tension. But as their egos develop, they learn the physical and social limits on what they can and cannot do. The ego tries to satisfy the id’s desires, and thus lessen tension, but in a way that considers the consequences of the action.

About the time a child turns 5 or 6 years old, the third part of the personality structure is formed. The superego represents society’s—and, in particular, the parents’—values and standards. The superego places more restrictions on what we can and cannot do. If you see a $5 bill sitting on a table at a friend’s house, your id impulse might be to take the money. Your ego, aware of the problems this could cause, attempts to figure out how to get the $5 without being caught. But even if there is a safe way to take the money, your superego will not allow the action. Stealing is a violation of society’s moral code, even if you don’t get caught.

The primary weapon the superego brings to the situation is guilt. If you take the money anyway, you’ll probably feel bad about it later and may lose a few nights’ sleep before returning the $5 to your friend. However, the superego does not merely punish us for moral violations after the fact. Even thinking about doing something wrong can trigger feelings of guilt, thereby keeping most of us in line with societal standards. People often think of the superego in terms of what we often call a conscience.

Like forces pulling at three corners to form a triangle, the desires of the id, ego, and superego complement and contradict one another. In the healthy individual, a strong ego does not allow the id or the superego too much control over the personality. But the battle is never ending. In

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each of us, somewhere below our awareness, there exists an eternal state of tension between a desire for self-indulgence, a concern for reality, and the enforcement of a strict moral code.

Libido and Thanatos

The topographic model provides the playing field, and the structural model provides the characters. But what sets the system in motion? Freud maintained that human behavior is motivated by strong internal forces he called Triebe, roughly translated as drives or instincts, which he divided into two major categories. He identified the life or sexual instinct as libido and the death or aggressive instinct as Thanatos. Although Freud originally maintained these forces were in opposition, he later suggested the two often combine, thus intertwining much of what we do with both erotic and aggressive motives.

Freud attributed most human behavior to libido, the life or sexual instinct. However, he used this description in a broad sense. Sexually motivated behaviors not only include those with obvious erotic content but also nearly any action aimed at receiving pleasure. Thanatos includes what Freud saw as a death instinct—the desire to die and return to the earth. However, this unconscious motive is rarely expressed in the form of obvious self-destruction. Most often, the death instinct is turned outward and expressed as aggression against others.

Freud was greatly influenced by the scientific thought of his day. Among the ideas he adapted from other sciences was the notion of a limited amount of energy. Energy within a physical system does not disappear but exists in finite amounts. Similarly, Freud argued we each have a finite amount of psychic energy that more or less powers the psychological functions. This means energy spent on one part of psychological functioning is not available for other uses. Thus, if the ego expends large amounts of energy to control the id, it has little energy left to carry out the rest of its functions efficiently. One goal of Freudian psychotherapy is to help troubled clients release unconscious impulses being held in check, thereby freeing up energy for daily functioning.

Defense Mechanisms

Freud’s description of the material in our unconscious minds can be a bit unsettling. Classic psychoanalytic cases involve such unconscious themes as hatred for one’s parents, aggression toward one’s spouse, incestuous thoughts, memories of traumatic childhood experiences, and similar notions too threatening to bring into awareness. The ego reduces or avoids anxiety by keeping this material out of consciousness. However, people occasionally experience what Freud called neurotic anxiety. These are vague feelings of anxiety sparked by the sensation that unacceptable unconscious thoughts are about to burst through the awareness barrier and express themselves in consciousness.

Fortunately, the ego has many techniques at its disposal to deal with unwanted thoughts and desires. These are known collectively as defense mechanisms. Freud touched on each of these concepts at various places in his works. However, descriptions of many of the defense mechanisms were developed more completely by some of his followers, in particular, by Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter, who also became a psychoanalyst. Here are a few of the most common defenses used by the ego.

Repression

Freud called repression “the cornerstone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests” (1914/1963, p. 116). It is clearly the most important of the defense mechanisms. Repression is an active effort by the ego to push threatening material out of consciousness or to keep that material from ever reaching consciousness. For example, one night a boy sees his father physically assault his mother. When later asked about the experience, the child insists he never saw anything of the sort. The boy may not be lying. Instead, he may have found the scene too horrifying to accept and therefore simply repressed it out of consciousness. Freud maintained that each of us uses repression, for we all have material in our unconscious mind we would rather not bring into awareness. As useful as this seems, it is not without cost. Because repression is a constant, active process, it requires that the ego constantly expend psychic energy. When required to repress a large number of unacceptable thoughts, our egos are left with little psychic energy. And without a strong ego, the battle for a stable personality can be lost.

Sublimation

Unlike repression, which drains our ability to function, the more we use sublimation, the more productive we become. Thus, psychoanalysts often refer to sublimation as the only truly successful defense mechanism. When using sublimation, the ego channels threatening

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unconscious impulses into socially acceptable actions. For example, we can express aggressive id impulses by playing an aggressive style of hockey or football. In this case, sublimation is a win-win-win option. The id expresses its aggressive impulses, the ego doesn’t have to tie up energy holding back those impulses, and society admires athletes for their aggressive play.

According to Freud, participation in aggressive sports allows the expression of unconscious aggressive impulses in a socially acceptable manner. Rugby players might be engaging in sublimation with each tackle.

©iStockphoto.com/vm

Displacement

Like sublimation, displacement involves channeling our impulses to nonthreatening objects. Unlike sublimation, these displaced impulses don’t lead to social rewards. For example, as the result of mistreatment by her spouse, a woman might carry around a great deal of unconscious anger. If expressing that anger toward the spouse is problematic or dangerous, she might instead direct her emotions toward her coworkers or children. Freud maintained that many of our seemingly irrational fears are in fact symbolic displacements. He once speculated that a fear of horses expressed by a client’s son was really a displaced fear of the father, who was symbolized in the child’s mind as the powerful horse.

Denial

When we use denial, we refuse to accept that certain facts exist. This is more than saying we do not remember, as in repression. Rather, we insist that something is not true despite all evidence to the contrary. A widower who loved his spouse deeply may act as if the spouse were still alive long after the death. He may set a place for the spouse at the table or tell

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friends the spouse is just away visiting relatives. To the widower, this charade is more acceptable than admitting consciously that his spouse has died. Obviously, denial is an extreme form of defense. The more we use it, the less we are in touch with reality and the more we have difficulty functioning. Nonetheless, in some cases the ego will resort to denial rather than allow certain thoughts to reach consciousness.

Reaction Formation

When using reaction formation, we hide from threatening unconscious ideas or urges by acting in a manner opposite to our unconscious desires. Thus, a young woman who constantly tells people how much she loves her mother could be masking strong unconscious hatred for the mother. People who militantly get involved with antipornography crusades may hold a strong unconscious interest in pornography. It is as if the thought is so unacceptable that the ego must prove how incorrect the notion is. How could someone who professes so much love for her mother really hate her deep inside?

Intellectualization

Another way the ego handles threatening material is to remove the emotional content from the thought before allowing it into awareness. Using intellectualization—that is, by considering something in a strictly intellectual, unemotional manner—we can bring previously difficult thoughts into consciousness without anxiety. Under the guise of pondering the importance of wearing seat belts, a woman might imagine her spouse in a gruesome automobile accident. A Freudian therapist might guess this woman holds some unconscious hostility toward her spouse.

Projection

Sometimes we attribute an unconscious impulse to other people instead of to ourselves. This defense mechanism is called projection. By projecting the impulse onto another person, we free ourselves from the perception we are the one who actually holds this thought. The woman who thinks everyone in the neighborhood is committing adultery may be harboring sexual desires for the married person living next door. The man who declares the world is full of distrustful and cheating people may unconsciously recognize he is distrustful and a cheater.

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Among the most controversial aspects of Freud’s theory is his description of the psychosexual stages of development. Freud argued that our adult personalities are heavily influenced by what happens to us during the first 5 or 6 years of life. Each child is said to progress through a series of developmental stages during these years, and the chief characteristic of each stage is the child’s primary erogenous zone. As the child passes through the psychosexual stages, a small amount of psychic energy is used up resolving the challenges of each stage. If all goes as it should, most of us still have an adequate amount of psychic energy left to operate a healthy personality by the time we become adults. But sometimes things go awry. Some children have a difficult time moving through a particular stage (or, for a few, find the stage excessively satisfying and wish to stay there). The result is fixation, the tying up of psychic energy. Not only does this leave less energy available for normal adult functioning, people tend to act in ways characteristic of the stage at which the energy is fixated.

The first stage in Freud’s model is the oral stage. During this period, which spans approximately the first 18 months of life, the mouth, lips, and tongue are the primary erogenous zones, that is, the source of pleasure. You need only watch a 6-month-old for a few minutes to realize that everything must go into the mouth. Traumatic weaning or feeding problems during this stage can result in fixation and the development of an oral personality. Like a child, adults with an oral personality tend to be dependent on others, although fixation that occurs after teething may instead result in excessive levels of aggression. People with an oral personality often express an infantile need for oral satisfaction. They may smoke or drink excessively and are constantly putting their hands to their mouth.

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According to Freud, adult oral personalities develop when traumatic childhood experiences cause the fixation of an excessive amount of psychic energy at the oral stage of development. Smoking, drinking, and excessive eating are characteristic of an oral personality.

skynesher via Getty Images

At about 18 months old, children enter the anal stage of development, and the anal region becomes the most important erogenous zone. Not coincidentally, this is the time most children are toilet trained. Traumatic toilet training can result in fixation and an anal personality. An adult with an anal personality can be orderly and rigid. But someone with an anal personality can also be stubborn or even generous, depending on how the toilet training progressed.

Next comes the phallic stage, approximately ages 3 to 6, when the penis or clitoris becomes the most important erogenous zone. The key development during the phallic stage comes toward the end of this period when children experience the Oedipus complex, named for the Greek mythological character who unknowingly marries his mother. Freud argued that children this age develop a sexual attraction for their opposite-sex parent. Young boys have strong incestuous desires toward their mothers, whereas young girls have these feelings toward their fathers.

Needless to say, the children are not without their share of anxiety about this development. Boys develop castration anxiety, a fear their father will discover their thoughts and cut off their penis. If the boy has seen his sister’s genitals, he is said to conclude this fate has already befallen her. Girls, upon seeing male genitals, are said to develop penis envy. This is a desire to have a penis, coupled with feelings of inferiority and jealousy because of its absence.

How do boys and girls resolve this conflict? Eventually the children repress their desire for their opposite-sex parent, whom they realize they can never have as long as the other parent is

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around. Then, as a type of reaction formation, children identify with the same-sex parent. Resolving the Oedipus complex serves several important functions. By identifying with the same-sex parent, boys begin to take on masculine characteristics and girls acquire feminine characteristics. Moreover, adopting the parents’ values and standards paves the way for the emergence of the superego. However, Freud warned that Oedipal desires are never fully eliminated. Rather, they are merely repressed and have the potential to influence our behavior later in life. Businessmen who aggressively go after rivals are said to be expressing Oedipal urges left over from their earlier competition with their father.

After resolving the Oedipus complex, the child passes into the latency stage. Sexual desires abate during these years, and boys and girls are largely uninterested in each other. A look at any playground will verify that boys play with other boys and girls play with other girls. But all that changes with puberty. Erogenous urges return and are focused in the genital region. If a child has progressed to this genital stage without leaving large amounts of libido fixated at earlier stages, normal sexual functioning is possible.

Getting at Unconscious Material

If Freud is correct about the nature of the unconscious, it would appear he created a problem for himself. If the most important psychological material is buried in a place outside of awareness, how can we study it? Moreover, how can psychotherapists help their clients when the keys to understanding the clients’ problems are unavailable for inspection? Not surprisingly, Freud had an answer to this dilemma. Unconscious impulses do not simply disappear when they are pushed out of consciousness. Rather, they are often expressed in a disguised or altered form. If psychologists know what to look for, they can catch a glimpse of unconscious thoughts by observing seemingly innocent behaviors. The following are seven techniques a Freudian psychologist might use to get at unconscious material.

Dreams

Freud called dreams the “royal road to the unconscious.” In 1900, he published The Interpretation of Dreams, presenting for the first time a psychological theory to explain the meaning of these nighttime dramas. According to Freud, dreams provide id impulses with a stage for expression. They are, in fact, a type of wish fulfillment; our dreams represent the things we desire. This is not to say that we want the unpleasant and frightening things we sometimes dream about to literally come true. Freud drew a distinction between the manifest content of a dream (what the dreamer sees and remembers) and the latent content (what is really being expressed). Overt expression of many unconscious desires would be difficult to face upon waking. That’s why they were repressed in the first place. However, these unacceptable images can safely surface in our dreams in symbolic forms. Dreams involving penises, sexual intercourse, and vaginas might be threatening to the dreamer. But we would have no problem with a dream about fountains, airplane rides, or caves. “The dreamer does know what his dream means,” Freud wrote. “Only he does not know that he knows it, and for that reason thinks he does not know it” (1916/1961, p. 101).

Freud identified many common dream symbols. A house represents the human body, one’s parents are disguised as a king and queen, children appear as small animals, birth is associated with water, a train journey is a symbol for dying, and clothes and uniforms represent nakedness. Predictably, the vast majority of Freudian dream symbols are sexual. For example, male genitals are said to be represented by objects with a similar shape. Common phallic symbols are sticks, umbrellas, trees, knives, rifles, pencils, and hammers. Female genitals are symbolically represented by bottles, boxes, rooms, doors, and ships. Sexual intercourse is hidden in such activities as dancing, riding a horse, and climbing.

Projective Tests

We have all played the game of finding images in cloud formations. One person might describe a sailboat, another sees the Cowardly Lion, and a third can just make out a couple dancing the tango. Of course, there are no real pictures in the clouds. So where are these images coming from? The answer, from a Freudian perspective, is that these responses are projections of material in the perceiver’s unconscious mind. The images we see in vague objects like clouds represent another way of getting at unconscious material. Projective tests present test takers with ambiguous stimuli and ask them to respond by identifying objects, telling a story, or perhaps drawing a picture. The responses are said to provide insights into what is going on in the unconscious. Some of the projective tests often used by psychologists are reviewed later in this chapter.

Free Association

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Try this exercise. Find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed and won’t disturb anyone else and take a few minutes to clear your mind of thoughts. Then allow whatever comes into your mind to enter. Say aloud whatever thoughts come to mind, even if they are not what you expect and even if you are a little embarrassed by what comes out. Let one thought flow naturally to the next. If you find surprising, uncensored ideas entering your awareness, you may be experiencing free association. Clients undergoing psychoanalysis typically are encouraged to use free association to temporarily bypass the censoring mechanism the ego employs. Ordinarily we block distasteful, seemingly trivial or silly thoughts to protect ourselves from this material or to keep from sounding foolish. But if we can slip by the ego’s roadblocks and obstacles, even for a moment, glimpses into the unconscious may be possible.

However, free association of some material is not easy. The ego has invested considerable energy to repress threatening thoughts and is not likely to let them just ease into consciousness. Occasionally clients slip into long silences. Sometimes they report that nothing comes to mind or endlessly describe unimportant details in an effort to avoid unconscious revelations. But when clients give expression to whatever enters their awareness, both client and therapist may find that what emerges is enlightening.

Freudian Slips

We all occasionally make slips of the tongue. A husband might refer to his wife by her birth name even though she no longer uses it or say her mind is really her “breast” feature. These slips can be embarrassing and funny, but to Freud they represented unconscious associations that momentarily slipped out. The husband who uses the birth name may unconsciously wish he had never married this person. We call these misstatements Freudian slips.

Hypnosis

Freud’s early experiences with hypnosis told him there was more to the human mind than what we can bring into awareness. He came to believe the ego was somehow put into a suspended state during a deep hypnotic trance, which allowed the hypnotist to bypass the ego and get directly to unconscious material. If we accept that hypnosis is a pipeline to the unconscious, it is easy to see how the procedure would be a valuable tool for psychoanalysts. Yet Freud was quick to acknowledge some drawbacks. Chief among these is that not all clients are responsive to hypnotic suggestion. Moreover, as we will see in Chapter 4, not all psychologists agree with Freud’s description of hypnosis as a pathway to the unconscious.

Accidents

Suppose you are having an argument with a friend and you “accidentally” knock off a shelf an irreplaceable statue belonging to that friend. The statue shatters beyond repair. You apologize, saying you did not mean to do it. But is this really an accident? In Freud’s view, many apparent accidents are in fact intentional actions stemming from unconscious impulses. Freud might argue you were expressing an unconscious desire to hurt your friend when you broke their prized possession. Clients who claim to accidentally forget their regular therapy appointment might be displaying what Freud called resistance. Consciously, the clients believe they simply did not remember the appointment. Unconsciously, there has been a deliberate effort to thwart a therapist who may be close to uncovering threatening unconscious material. To Freudian psychologists, many unfortunate events are accidents in the sense that people do not consciously intend them, but not in the sense that they are unintended.

Symbolic Behavior

Just like the objects we dream, many of our daily behaviors can be interpreted by Freudian psychologists as symbolic representations of unconscious desires. Symbolic actions pose no threat to the ego because they are not perceived for what they are. An excellent example is found in the case of a client who held a great deal of hostility toward his mother, although he would not consciously acknowledge these feelings. To the therapist, the unconscious hostility was expressed through an interesting doormat the client purchased for his home. The doormat was decorated with images of daisies. Not coincidentally, the client’s mother had a favorite flower, the daisy. She had daisies on her dishes and pictures of daisies all around the house. In short, the daisies symbolized the mother. The good son enjoyed rubbing his feet and stomping on the daisies—symbolically acting out hostility toward his mother—every time he entered the house.

When we apply Freud’s dream symbols to everyday acts, we can see psychologically significant behavior seemingly everywhere. What can we say about the woman who joins the rifle team? The man who explores caves? The person who constantly borrows pencils without returning them? It is interesting to note that Freud was a habitual cigar smoker who, despite painful

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operations for cancer of the jaw, continued to smoke until his death. Although the cigar is an obvious phallic symbol, Freud reportedly answered a query about his habit by saying, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

APPLICATION: PSYCHOANALYSIS

LO 3.3 Identify some of the key elements of psychoanalysis.

Not only was Freud the father of psychoanalytic theory, but he was also the first person to outline and advocate a system of psychotherapy. During his early years with Breuer, Freud recognized that many disorders were psychological rather than physical in origin. Through his experimentation with hypnosis, he came to believe the causes of these disorders were buried in a part of the mind not easily accessible to awareness. Slowly Freud developed various methods to get at this material, beginning with hypnosis and gradually changing to free association. As he gained insights into the causes of his clients’ disorders and the structure and functioning of human personality, Freud developed a system of psychotherapy called psychoanalysis.

The primary goal of psychoanalysis is to bring crucial unconscious material into consciousness where it can be examined in a rational manner. However, once the unconscious material surfaces, it must be dealt with in such a way that it does not manifest itself in some new disorder. The therapist and the client work together to help the ego exercise appropriate control over id impulses and/or an oppressive superego. In some ways, the therapist and the client are like explorers searching through the client’s mind for crucial unconscious material. But the therapist also is like a detective, who must evaluate cryptic messages about the underlying cause of the disorder as the client unconsciously, and sometimes cunningly, works to mislead and frustrate the therapist.

Typically, clients in psychoanalysis lie on a couch while the therapist sits behind them, out of sight. The client is encouraged to speak freely, without any distractions from the room or the therapist that might inhibit free association. Unfortunately, the process of digging through layers of conscious and unconscious material, as well as avoiding the obstacles and misdirection thrown in by the threatened ego, is a lengthy one. Clients usually require several therapy sessions a week for a period of perhaps several years. Consequently, traditional psychoanalysis is expensive and limited to those who can afford it.

The bulk of time spent in psychoanalysis is devoted to getting at the crucial unconscious material causing the disorder. Because the ego has devoted so much energy and is so strongly motivated to repress the material, this part of therapy can be difficult. Freud used several tactics to get into the unconscious, including free association, dream interpretation, and hypnosis. Unlike other systems of psychotherapy, in psychoanaly