Chapter 15 Personality outline A Personality an individual s characteristic patterns of thinking feeling and acting B Psychoanalytic Perspective a Sigmund Freud first comprehensive theory of personality i Includes ideas about an unconscious region of the mind psychosexual stages and defense mechanisms b Used Free Association involves telling a person to relax and saying whatever comes to mind no matter how embarrassing etc i A way of exploring the unconscious mind First tried hypnosis but it wasn t consistent among his patients c Freud believed mind was like an Iceberg Conscious Mind Unconscious Mind d Freud also believed the unconscious slips through in disguised forms beliefs habits etc i Freudian Slip Ex Please do not give me any Bills Financially distressed patients who didn t want any large pills C Personality Structure a Freud s view Human personality comes from conflict between aggressive pleasure seeking biological impulses and internalized social restraints The 3 Interacting Personalities 1 Id unconscious energy striving to satisfy basic drives to survive reproduce and aggress Operates on Pleasure Principle If not constrained by reality it seeks immediate gratification D Personality Development 2 Ego mediates among demands of id and superego Operates on Reality Principle seeks to gratify id s impulses in realistic ways while avoiding pain and punishment 3 Superego the voice of conscious that forces ego to consider not only real but also the ideal how one should behave Strives for perfection judging actions etc As a result of id and superego often opposing one another the ego often becomes known as the Personality Executive id s pleasure seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive areas of the body Erogenous Zones During Phallic Stage boys develop both an unconscious sexual desire for their mothers and jealousy hatred for their fathers rivals This collection of feelings is called the Oedipus Complex Girl Electra Complex Children cope with these threatening feelings by identifying with the rival parent Identification children incorporates many of their parents values Identification with the same sex parent provides our Gender Identity Our sense of being male female Fixation a lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an early psychosexual stage as a result of unresolved childhood conflict Ex A person orally overindulged deprived might fixate at the oral stage and may therefore later on seek oral gratification through smoking or eating excessively E Defense Mechanisms a Freud proposed the ego protects itself with Defense Mechanisms protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality i Repression Banishes anxiety arousing thoughts and feelings from consciousness Incomplete Repression when repressed urges seep out in dreams and or slips of the tongue ii Regression retreating to an earlier more infantile stage of development Ex Child sucking their thumb on the first day of school iii Reaction Formation The ego makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposite Timidity Daring iv Projection disguised threatening impulses by attributing them to others v Rationalization When we unconsciously generate self justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real reasons for our actions vi Displacement diverts sexual or aggressive impulses towards an object or person that is psychologically more acceptable than the one that aroused the feelings F Neo Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists a They accepted Freud s basic ideas Personality structure the importance of unconscious the childhood shaping personality and dynamics of anxiety and defense mechanisms b Yet they veered away in 2 ways i Placed more emphasis on the conscious mind s role in interpreting experience and coping with the environment ii They doubted sex and aggression were all consuming motivations 1 Alfred Adler Believed that much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority Trigger striving for power and superiority 2 Karen Horney said childhood anxiety triggers our desire for love and security a She also attempted to counter and balance his biased masculine views of psychology Freud s assumption that women have weak superegos and penis envy b Both believed that childhood SOCIAL tensions NOT sexual were important for personality formation 3 Carl Jung Believed we have a Collective Unconscious a common shared inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species history G Assessing unconscious processes a Projective Tests Present an ambiguous stimulus and then ask test takers to describe it or tell a story about it i Designed to trigger projections of one s inner dynamics b Thematic Apperception Test TAT introduced by Henry Murray that shows ambiguous pictures and then people make up a story about them expressing the person s inner feelings and interests through the stories c Rorschach Inkblot Test the most widely used projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach involves a set of 10 inkblots and assumes that what we see in the inkblots reflect our inner feelings and conflicts H Humanistic Perspective a Humanistic psychologists focused more on the ways healthy people strive for self determination and self realization b 2 Theorists i Abraham Maslow proposed we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs Physiological needs security to love to be loved to love ourselves self esteem Self Actualization 1 Self Actualization the process of fulfilling our potential He studied healthy people as opposed to clinical patients and based his description off of those who seemed notable for their rich and productive lives ii Carl Rogers Believed that a growth promoting climate required genuineness acceptance and empathy 1 Genuine being transparent and self disclosing helps nurture our growth 2 Acceptance people also nurture our growth by presenting an attitude that values us even knowing our failings Unconditional Positive Regard 3 Empathy we are nurtured by sharing and mirroring our feelings and reflecting our meaning c Criticisms I The Trait Perspective and peer reports b Often assessed through questionnaires by which people reported their self concept by comparing their actual self with their ideal self i Concepts are vague and subjective its values individualist and self centered and assumptions are naively optimistic a Trait a characteristic pattern of behavior as assessed by self report inventories b Factor Analysis the statistical procedure to identify clusters of