Freud Autoritharian Personality
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- Date Submitted: 06/18/2011 06:28 AM
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Freud's theory, the role of the unconscious and the development of the authoritarian personality The report aims to: Summarise the principal features of Freud’s theory of personality; Identify the meaning of key concepts of Freud’s personality theory, namely repression and the unconscious; Explain how Freud's theory may account for the development of authoritarian personality.
Background Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is widely regarded as the father of psychoanalytic movement. For much of his working life Freud lived in the Austrian capital Vienna. Near the end of his life he moved to London, where he died in 1939. Freud’s great contribution to psychology is the idea that, in human beings, outward behaviour and observable personality characteristics are determined by events that take place in the unconscious – the aspect of personality which is not accessible to conscious awareness. Psychoanalysis, the approach to psychology which Freud helped to establish, ‘explores the ways in which human behaviour and thinking is influenced by unconscious processes’ (McAvoy, 2010, p.22). Freud used psychoanalytic concepts to explain normal personality development but also to treat patients who came to him with various psychological problems. Many psychotherapeutic and counselling approaches in use today are based on ideas first introduced by Freud (Reber and Reber, 2001a) Freud and personality Freud’s theory of personality is based on two basic assumptions (McAvoy, 2010): 1) 'Underlying outward personality and dispositions are elements of the unconscious 2) Infant and early childhood experiences are particularly important in personality formation Freud and the unconscious • According to Freud, the unconscious consists of impulses, desires, memories, images and wishes that are believed to be too anxiety-provoking to be allowed to enter consciousness (Reber and Reber, 2001b). These troubling impulses, desires, etc. are kept in the unconscious by the psychological mechanism of...
Background Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is widely regarded as the father of psychoanalytic movement. For much of his working life Freud lived in the Austrian capital Vienna. Near the end of his life he moved to London, where he died in 1939. Freud’s great contribution to psychology is the idea that, in human beings, outward behaviour and observable personality characteristics are determined by events that take place in the unconscious – the aspect of personality which is not accessible to conscious awareness. Psychoanalysis, the approach to psychology which Freud helped to establish, ‘explores the ways in which human behaviour and thinking is influenced by unconscious processes’ (McAvoy, 2010, p.22). Freud used psychoanalytic concepts to explain normal personality development but also to treat patients who came to him with various psychological problems. Many psychotherapeutic and counselling approaches in use today are based on ideas first introduced by Freud (Reber and Reber, 2001a) Freud and personality Freud’s theory of personality is based on two basic assumptions (McAvoy, 2010): 1) 'Underlying outward personality and dispositions are elements of the unconscious 2) Infant and early childhood experiences are particularly important in personality formation Freud and the unconscious • According to Freud, the unconscious consists of impulses, desires, memories, images and wishes that are believed to be too anxiety-provoking to be allowed to enter consciousness (Reber and Reber, 2001b). These troubling impulses, desires, etc. are kept in the unconscious by the psychological mechanism of...