# Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Psychology I · Individual Differences · https://tryals.app/learn/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives

## The Unconscious Roots of Character

Freud's structural model of the **id**, **ego**, and **superego** suggests that personality reflects the stable balance struck among these three systems. A chronically dominant superego produces a rigid, moralistic personality, while a poorly restrained id yields impulsive, self-indulgent patterns.

Building on this tradition, **Carl Jung** proposed the dimension of **introversion versus extraversion**. **Introverts** direct their psychic energy inward toward their own thoughts, whereas **extraverts** direct it outward toward people and external activity. This distinction was later absorbed directly into the modern Big Five model.

| Theorist | Contribution to personality theory |
|---|---|
| Jung | Introversion versus extraversion |
| Horney | Basic anxiety and three neurotic trends |

## Neurotic Trends and Common Pitfalls

**Karen Horney** challenged Freud's assumptions and proposed that early childhood insecurity produces a pervasive **basic anxiety**. People manage this anxiety through one of three **neurotic trends**:

| Trend | Behavioral Pattern |
|---|---|
| Moving TOWARD | Excessive need for approval and affection |
| Moving AGAINST | Excessive need for control and dominance |
| Moving AWAY | Excessive need for independence and self-sufficiency |

> **Common pitfall:** Assuming the introversion-extraversion dimension originated with the Big Five. It actually traces back to Jung's earlier psychoanalytic work, showing how ideas migrate between theoretical traditions.

## Practice questions

6 of this lesson's 12 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Jung, Horney and Adler all trained in Freud's circle and all broke with him. What did their departures have in common?

A. Each abandoned clinical practice for academic research
B. Each replaced sexual drive with something social or cultural
C. Each rejected the existence of unconscious mental processes
D. Each argued that personality is fixed at birth

**Answer:** B. Each replaced sexual drive with something social or cultural

**Why:** The unconscious survived; the libido theory did not. Each successor kept the depth-psychological frame and replaced its motor with something interpersonal.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/jung-horney-and-adler-all-trained-in-freuds-circle-and-all-broke

### 2. Select every statement that is TRUE about psychoanalytic views of personality.

A. Freud tied personality to the balance among id, ego, and superego.
B. The Big Five invented the concept of introversion-extraversion.
C. Horney's three neurotic trends are moving toward, against, and away from people.
D. Someone whose conscience never stops speaking becomes rigid and moralistic.
E. Jung introduced the introversion-extraversion dimension.

**Answer:** A. Freud tied personality to the balance among id, ego, and superego.; C. Horney's three neurotic trends are moving toward, against, and away from people.; D. Someone whose conscience never stops speaking becomes rigid and moralistic.; E. Jung introduced the introversion-extraversion dimension.

**Why:** The id/ego/superego balance, Jung's dimension, Horney's three trends, and the superego-dominant personality are all true. The Big Five did NOT invent introversion-extraversion (Jung did) - the one false option.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/select-every-statement-that-is-true-about-psychoanalytic-views-of

### 3. Extraversion is one of the Big Five, arrived at by factor-analysing thousands of trait descriptions. The concept itself came from Jung, whose method was clinical intuition. Why is that origin worth knowing rather than a historical footnote?

A. Because it establishes that Jung's wider theory of psychological types is empirically supported.
B. Because a construct can be proposed weakly and later vindicated.
C. Because it shows factor analysis merely rediscovers what clinicians already knew, so the statistical work was unnecessary.
D. Because it means extraversion should be interpreted according to Jung's original definition rather than the modern one.

**Answer:** B. Because a construct can be proposed weakly and later vindicated.

**Why:** The trajectory separates two things that get conflated: where a hypothesis comes from and what justifies it. Clinical observation is a fine way to generate ideas and a poor way to test them, and the factor analyses had no interest in Jung. The test could have failed, and for the rest of his typology it did, so we know which of his ideas was good, and why.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/extraversion-is-one-of-the-big-five-arrived-at-by-factor-analysing

### 4. Freud's defence mechanisms are largely absent from modern personality theory, yet **projection** and **rationalisation** appear constantly in cognitive research under other names. What happened?

A. The terms were retained but their meanings were reversed
B. The observations survived and the theory around them did not
C. They were absorbed unchanged, so the theory did survive after all
D. Modern research has shown the phenomena do not occur

**Answer:** B. The observations survived and the theory around them did not

**Why:** The behaviours were real and the machinery was not. Rationalisation reappears as motivated reasoning, projection as false consensus, described in testable terms and detached from the drive theory. Clinicians noticing something is compatible with their explanation of it being wrong.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/freuds-defence-mechanisms-are-largely-absent-from-modern-personality

### 5. Horney argued that a child who feels unsafe develops basic anxiety, and copes by moving toward, against, or away from people. Why did she regard these as strategies rather than as character defects?

A. Because the three trends are found in everyone equally, so none of them distinguishes a person.
B. Because each is a reasonable solution to the family that produced it.
C. Because she rejected Freud's clinical framework entirely, and with it the idea that personality can go wrong.
D. Because she held that all personality traits are learned, so nothing about a person can be a defect.

**Answer:** B. Because each is a reasonable solution to the family that produced it.

**Why:** Horney treated these as intelligible responses rather than symptoms: compliance works in a hostile household, aggression works where assertion gets heard, withdrawal works where neither does. What makes a trend neurotic is exclusivity rather than content, one move applied everywhere, including where it is no longer required. That relocates the problem to a solution that outlived its problem.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/horney-argued-that-a-child-who-feels-unsafe-develops-basic-anxiety

### 6. Although extraversion is one of the Big Five dimensions today, the introversion-extraversion distinction actually originated decades earlier with Jung.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** True. Jung first articulated introversion-extraversion within psychoanalysis, and it was later absorbed into the Big Five. Assuming the concept began with the modern Big Five is the named pitfall.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/psychology-i/psychoanalytic-perspectives/although-extraversion-is-one-of-the-big-five-dimensions-today-the