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5 Steps to a 5 AP Psychology, 2010-2011 Edition - Laura Lincoln Maitland [126]

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the phallic stage, the erogenous zone moves to the genital region and stimulation of the genitals becomes a source of pleasure. Masturbation and the fantasy life of the child set the stage for the Oedipus complex. The Oedipus complex is named after the king of Thebes, Oedipus, who, having been abandoned as an infant, killed his father and married his mother without knowing they were his parents. The Oedipus complex (called the Electra complex in girls) is a conflict between the child’s sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and fear of punishment from the same-sex parent. Resolution of the conflict leads to identification with the same-sex parent. The boy represses his sexual desire for his mother because of castration anxiety, fear that his dominant rival—his father—will remove his genitals, and he identifies with his father. Resolution of the Oedipus complex causes the superego to develop and guards against incest and aggression. The girl holds her mother responsible for her castrated condition and experiences penis envy, desire for a protruding sex organ that she wants to share with her father. The girl’s Electra complex gets modified, and she identifies with her mother to prevent loss of her mother’s love. From ages 6 to 12, Freud theorized that sexual feelings are repressed and sublimated during this latency period. Girls and boys transform the repressed sexual energy into developing social relationships and learning new tasks. If the child does not meet his/her own expectations or those of others, the child can develop into an adult with feelings of inferiority. Until puberty, the child is primarily narcissistic, obtaining pleasure from his/her own body.

• During adolescence, individuals pass into the final stage of maturity, the genital stage. The adolescent develops warm feelings for others, and sexual attraction, group activities, vocational planning, and intimate relationships develop too. This is a smooth period for those lucky enough to have little libido fixated in earlier stages, especially not during the phallic stage, according to Freud.

Critics (including neo-analysts, who were psychoanalysts that disagreed with parts of Freud’s theory and developed their own), now discount most of this theory. Some neo-analysts, also called neo-Freudians, were Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney.

Carl Jung’s Analytic Theory of Personality

A contemporary and colleague of Freud, Carl Jung rejected Freud’s sex theory. The son of a Swiss pastor, Jung became a psychiatrist. Jung believed that personality is shaped by the cumulative experiences of past generations extending back to our evolutionary past. He studied mythology, religion, ancient symbols and rituals, customs and beliefs of different societies, dreams, and symptoms of mentally ill patients in his search to understand the development of personality. According to Jung’s analytic theory of personality, the psyche—or whole personality—consists of interacting systems including the ego, the personal unconscious with its complexes; the collective unconscious with its archetypes, attitudes, and functions; and the self. The ego is the conscious mind, responsible for our feeling of identity and continuity.

The personal unconscious is similar to Freud’s preconscious and unconscious, a storehouse of all our own past memories, hidden instincts, and urges unique to us. It contains complexes, which are groups of associated, emotional, unconscious thoughts that significantly influence our attitudes, and associations that act as driving forces. The collective unconscious is the powerful and influential system of the psyche that contains universal memories and ideas that all people have inherited from our ancestors over the course of evolution. The inherited memories are archetypes or common themes found in all cultures, religions, and literature, both ancient and modern. Jung’s attitude of extraversion orients the person toward the external, objective world, whereas the attitude of introversion orients the person toward the inner, subjective world.

Jung believed

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