Module 44

Personality: an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. This unit is all about you! We emphasize you, the individual! We will look at two main theories: A. Psychoanalytic Theory B. Humanistic Approach

(1856 – 1939) Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis. Widely considered one of the greatest psychologist of all time. Influenced our understanding of personality, clinical psychology, human development, and abnormal psychology. Suffered from cancer of the jaw and friend helped with suicide.

Psychoanalytic Theory: First theory on personality. Attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. Treated patients by exploring the unconscious region of the mind. Theory included psychosexual stages and defense mechanisms for dealing with anxiety.

Freud thought our mind was like an iceberg with most of our thoughts hidden.

Free Association: A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing. Freud thought free association would allow him to explore patient’s unconscious.

Three levels of the mind: Conscious: includes everything we are aware of. Preconscious: contains information and feelings we can easily recall. Unconscious: contains wishes, impulses, memories, and feelings we are unaware of.

Repress: to block from our conscious because they are too disturbing to acknowledge. Freud thought these repressed thoughts influenced our daily lives. Freudian Slip: an error in speech or writing that really isn’t an error, but an unconscious thought. Ex. Calling your boyfriend by your ex-boyfriend’s name.

Freud believed personality is a battle between our pleasure seeking impulses and the social restraints against them. We seek to satisfy ourselves without feeling guilty. There were three parts of our mind involved in this battle: the id, ego, and superego.

Id: Unconscious part of our mind that exists to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Exists entirely in the unconscious, so we are never aware of it. Our true hidden animalistic wants and desires. Works on the pleasure principle (avoid pain and seek instant gratification).

Ego: Part of mind that negotiates between the id and reality. Mostly in our unconscious mind. Guided by the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in realistic ways. This is what everyone sees as our personality. The ego keeps our id in check!

Superego: composed of the conscience that punishes us by making us feel guilty, and the ego- ideal that rewards us by making us feel proud of ourselves. Ego-ideal: the inner image of oneself that you would like to become. Your perfect self which the ego aspires to.

Superego exists partly in the conscious and partly in the unconscious. Makes the ego consider not only reality, but how you ought to behave. Opposite of id, so ego has to mediate between the id and the superego.

Id Superego Ego

Scenario: You see money on the floor in my classroom! Id: Goes and grabs the money. Ego: Asks if anyone dropped some money, but will keep it if no one claims it. Superego: Turns in the money to the teacher.

Psychosexual Stages: The childhood stages of development during which, the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on the erogenous zones. There are conflicts in each stage and if the conflict is not successfully resolved, the result is fixation.

Fixation: unresolved conflict within a certain stage. Your id will continue to focus on that stage until conflicts are resolved. Ex. Thumb sucking may be an oral fixation. It triggers relaxation and often relieves stress.

Stage: Oral (0 – 18 months) Pleasure: sucking, biting, chewing Conflict: Weaning from the bottle or breast. Fed too much: Oral-dependent personalities are gullible, overeaters, and passive. Not fed enough: Oral-aggressive personalities are sarcastic and argumentative.

Fixation at oral stage results in issues with dependency or aggression. Success means you learn to trust people and your environment. Unsuccessful stage results in oral fixation which can result in problems with drinking, eating, smoking, or nail biting.

Stage: Anal (18 – 36 months) Pleasure: pooping and peeing! Conflict: Toilet training Too much pressure: Anal-retentive personalities are orderly, obsessively neat, stingy, and stubborn. Too little pressure: Anal-expulsive personalities are messy, disorganized, and lose their temper.

Anal stage is about controlling behavior and urges. A child needs to learn certain boundaries so there is no confusion as what is overstepping the boundaries.

Stage: Phallic (3 – 6 years) Pleasure: touching of genitals Conflict: a desire to possess opposite sex parent. Children begin to discover the differences between males and females. Boys develop sexual desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred of father.

Oedipus Complex: A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for his father, the rival. Boys fear that they will be punished for these feelings (castration anxiety). Electra Complex: The girl’s equivalent of the Oedipus complex. Girls experience penis envy.

Eventually child identifies with the same-sex parent and resolves this stage. Fixation may result in problems with authority or relationship problems. Mamma’s boy or Daddy’s little girl.

Stage: Latency (6 – puberty) Pleasure: Individual accomplishments, not sex related Sexuality is dormant. Child learns to adapt to real world and infantile amnesia occurs. Focus on academics and athletics. Same-sex friendships develop.

Stage: Genital stage (Puberty on) Pleasure: intercourse and intimacy with another person. No conflict to resolve – this is the final stage. Improper transitioning to genital stage may result in failure to form heterosexual relationships in the future.

The ego fights a battle between the id and superego. If it is losing, it experiences anxiety, which results in defense mechanisms Defense mechanisms: extreme measures that protect the ego from threats. Operate unconsciously and deny, falsify, or distort reality.

Repression: unconscious forgetting; the pushing away of threatening thoughts, feelings, and memories into the unconscious mind. The most frequently used and powerful defense mechanism. Ex. People who have been abused may deny having it ever happening because they have repressed the memories.

Regression: retreat to an earlier level of development characterized by more immature, pleasurable behavior. Ex. Again, in abused victims, they may act child-like in reaction to the abuse.

Rationalization: making unconscious excuses; offering socially acceptable reasons for our inappropriate behavior. Ex. “I got an F in AP Biology because it’s such a hard class! I’m just not ready for college level work”

Projection: attributing our own undesirable thoughts, feelings, or actions to others. Ex. When you’re mad at your friend, you might think they’re verbally attacking you when you have a conversation.

Displacement: shifting unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions from a more threatening person or object to another less threatening person or object. Ex. Punching the wall when you’re angry.

Reaction formation: acting in a manner exactly opposite to our true feelings. Ex. You’re sad that your grandmother passed away, but you are acting happy-go-lucky.

Sublimation: the redirection of unacceptable sexual or aggressive impulses into more socially acceptable behaviors. Ex. You have a lot of anger, so you take up boxing.

Denial: the inability to face reality or admit an obvious truth. There may be overwhelming evidence that something is true, but the person will still deny it because its too uncomfortable to face. Ex. Drug addicts may deny that they have a problem.

Others: Acting out: engaging in actions instead of reflecting on feelings. Affiliation: turning to other people for support. Avoidance: refusing to deal with situation. Humor: joking about situation. Compensation: overachieving in one area to compensate for another.

Analytic theory emphasizes the influence of our ancestors on our personality with the collective unconscious. Collective unconscious: a shared, inherited collection of memories from our species’ history.

Emphasizes social interest as the primary determinant of personality. We strive for superiority and try to compensate for inferiority complexes. Inferiority Complex: lack of self- worth and feelings of not measuring up to society’s standards.

Horney attacked Freud’s male bias and suggested the male counterpart for penis envy is womb envy, the inability of men to carry children. She thought females were more envious of the male’s social status.

Today, psychologists do not use Freud’s terms (id, ego, phallic, etc.) on their patients. They delve into your unconscious and try to pull out manifest content (actual content) and then talk about latent content (hidden meaning).

Projective Tests: personality tests that provides you with a stimulus and ask you to describe it. It attempts to delve into your unconscious. We will discuss two such tests: A. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) B. Rorschach Inkblot Test

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Giving the subject an ambiguous picture and asking them what is occurring. Picture can have multiple meanings and the story given by the subject gives the psychologist insight into the unconscious.

Rorschach Inkblot Test: A set of 10 inkblots designed to identify people’s feelings when they are asked to interpret what they see in the inkblot. Most widely used projective test. Designed by Hermann Rorschach.

There is no universally accepted way to score or interpret these tests. They are neither reliable (consistency of results) nor valid (predicting what it’s suppose to predict). Although there is controversy over its use, it is still widely used.

Today’s research contradicts Freud: We are lifelong learners, not fixed in childhood. Freud overestimated parental influence and underestimated peer influence. We gain our identity earlier and can become strongly masculine or feminine even without a same-sex parent present.

Today’s research contradicts Freud: Repression is a rare mental response to trauma. Biggest criticism of Freud is that he explains actions after they happen. (Smoking, fears, etc.) He does not predict behavior.