1 1 Personality Chapter 13 PSY 12000.003 Exam 3 Results • Top Score: 50 (by two students) • Mean: 42.3 • Median: 43 • Mode: 44 • SD = 9.5 • N = 46 • Top Cumulative Score = 143 2 Personality 3 Personalities seep out in almost everything we do. Philippe Halsan – Jump Book 4 Personality An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting, across time and situations. Each dwarf has a distinct and dominant personality trait. Theories of Personality • View of the causes and motives underlying personality and personality development 1. The Psychodynamic Approach 2. The Humanistic Approach 3. The Trait Approach 4. The Social-Cognitive Approach Personality Theories: History • Grand Theories (Freud, Jung, Adler) – Attempted to explain all behavior • Most theories at this time contained a: – Core (what we have in common) – Periphery (what makes us different, and what sorts of differences are important) • Often, grand theories are highly influential, yet difficult to test. 62 Psychodynamic Perspective • “A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.” -Sigmund Freud 7 8 Psychodynamic Perspective In his clinical practice, Freud encountered patients suffering from nervous disorders. Their complaints could not be explained in terms of purely physical causes. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Culver Pictures 9 Psychodynamic Perspective Freud’s clinical experience led him to develop the first comprehensive theory of personality, which included the unconscious mind, psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Culver Pictures Psychoanalysis • Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating disorders by exposing and interpreting unconscious tensions. 10 11 Model of Mind The mind is like an iceberg. It is mostly hidden, and below the surface lies the unconscious mind. The preconscious stores temporary memories. 12 Exploring the Unconscious A reservoir (unconscious mind) of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Freud asked patients to say whatever came to their minds (free association) in order to tap the unconscious. http://www.english.upenn.edu3 13 Dream Analysis Another method to analyze the unconscious mind is through interpreting manifest (what we remember) and latent (what it means, symbolically) contents of dreams. The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791) Dream Analysis • “Learn to communicate with your subconscious mind which speaks to you in symbols through your dreams while providing practical insight into our emotional and mental state by analyzing hidden meanings.” 14 15 Personality Structure Personality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve conflicts between our biological impulses (id) and social restraints (superego). ID • The Id unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification (Pleasure Principle) 16 United States of Tara: “Gimme” Ego • The ego functions as the “executive” and mediates the demands of the id and superego (Reality Principle). • Seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways 17 “Where id was, there ego shall be.” -Freud Superego • The superego provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations. • Moral compass • Focuses on how we ought to behave 184 19 Id, Ego and Superego The Id unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification (Pleasure Principle). The ego functions as the “executive” and mediates the demands of the id and superego (Reality Principle). The superego provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations. 20 Personality Development Freud believed that personality formed during the first few years of life divided into psychosexual stages. During these stages the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive body areas called erogenous zones. 21 Psychosexual Stages Freud divided the development of personality into five psychosexual stages. 22 Oedipus Complex A boy’s sexual desire for his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father. A girl’s desire for her father is called the Electra complex. Males: Fear of castration Females: Penis envy These fears/anxieties result in identification of same sex parent (but motivation is stronger for males because they have something to lose). 23 Identification Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parent. Through this process of identification, their superego gains strength that incorporates their parents’ values. From the K. Vandervelde private collection 24 Defense Mechanisms The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality. 1. Repression banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. 2. Regression leads an individual faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage.5 25 Defense Mechanisms 3. Reaction Formation causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings of purity when they may be suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex. 4. Projection leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. 26 Defense Mechanisms 5. Rationalization offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. 6. Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqc1_v2Nj70 The Neo-Freudians • Although Freud was controversial, he attracted many followers • Many of them accepted Freud’s basic ideas (id, ego, superego; unconscious; defense mechanisms) • But, they differed in two ways: – More emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and coping with the environment – Doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations 27 28 The Neo-Freudians Like Freud,
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