Chapter 1 The term personality comes from the Latin persona or the mask that people present to the outside world but psychologists see personality as much more that outward appearances Personality includes all those relatively permanent traits or characteristics that render some consistency to a person s behavior A theory is a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to formulate testable hypotheses Theory should not be confused with philosophy speculation hypothesis or taxonomy although it is related to each 6 criteria determined the usefulness of a scientific theory Is if falsifiable 1 Does the theory generate research 2 3 Does it organized and explain knowledge 4 Does it suggest practical solutions to everyday problems 5 6 Is it internally consistent Is it simple or parsimonious Each personality theorist has had either an implicit or explicit concept of humanity Concepts of human nature can be discussed from 6 perspectives 1 Determinism vs free choice 2 Pessimism vs optimism 3 Causality vs teleology 4 Conscious vs unconscious determinants 5 Biological vs social factors 6 Uniqueness vs similarities in people Chapter 2 Freud Freud identified 3 levels of mental life 1 Unconscious 2 Preconscious 3 Conscious Early childhood experiences that create high levels of anxiety are repressed into the unconscious where they may influence behavior emotions and attitudes for years Events that are not associated with anxiety but are merely forgotten make up the contents of the preconscious Conscious images are those in awareness at any given time Freud recognized 3 provinces of the mind 1 Id unconscious chaotic out of contact with the real world and in service of the pleasure principle 2 Ego the executive of personality in contact with the real world and in service of the reality principle 3 Superego serves the moral and idealistic principles and begins to form after Oedipus Complex is resolved All motivation can be traced to sexual and aggressive drives Childhood behaviors related to sex and aggression are often punished which leads to either repression or anxiety To protect itself against anxiety the go initiates various defense mechanisms the most basic of which is repression Freud outlined three major stages of development infancy latency and genital period but he devoted most attention to the infantile stage o The infantile stage is divided into 3 sub stages oral anal and phallic the last of which is accompanied by the Oedipus Complex During the simple Oedipal stage a child desires sexual union with one parent while harboring hostility towards the other Freud believed that dreams and Freudians slips are disguised as means of expressing unconscious impulses Chapter 3 Adler People begin life with both an innate striving force and physical deficiencies which combine to produce feelings of inferiority These feelings stimulate people to set a goal of overcoming their inferiority People who see themselves as having more than their share of physical deficiencies who experience pampered or neglected style of life overcompensate for these deficiencies and are likely to have exaggerated feelings of inferiority strive for personal gain and set unrealistically high goals People with normal feelings of inferiority compensate for these feelings by cooperating with others and developing a high level of social interest o Social interest or a deep concern for the welfare of other people is the sole criterion by which human actions should be judged The 3 major problems of life neighborly love work and sexual love can only be solved through social interest All behaviors even those that appear to be incompatible are consistent with a person s final goal Human behavior is shaped neither by past events nor by objective reality but rather by people s subjective perception of a situation Heredity and environment provide the building material of personality but people s creative power is responsible for their style of life All people especially neurotics make use of various safeguarding tendencies such as excuses aggression and withdrawal as conscious or unconscious attempts to protect inflated feelings of superiority against public disgrace The masculine protest the belief that men are superior to women is a fiction that lies at the root of many neuroses both for men and women Adlerian therapy used birth order early recollections and dreams to foster courage self esteem and social interest Chapter 4 Jung The personal unconscious is formed by the repressed experiences of one particular individual and is the reservoir of the complexes Humans inherit a collective unconscious that helps shape many of their attitudes behaviors and dreams Archetypes are contents of the collective unconscious Typical archetypes include persona shadow anima animus great mother wise old man hero and self The persona represents the side of personality that people show to the rest of the world Psychologically healthy people recognize their persona but do not mistake it for the whole of personality The anima is the feminine side of men and is responsible for many of their irrational moods and feelings The animus the masculine side of women is responsible for irrational thinking and illogical opinions in women The great mother is the archetype of fertility and destruction The wise old man archetype is the intelligent but deceptive voice of accumulated experience The help is the unconscious image of a person who conquers an evil foe but who also has a tragic flaw The self is the archetype of completeness wholeness and perfection The two attitudes of introversion and extraversion can combine with any one or more of the 4 functions thinking feeling sensation and intuition to produce 8 basic types A healthy middle life and old age depend of proper solutions to the problems of childhood and youth Jungian therapists use dream analysis and active imagination to discover the contents of patients collective unconscious Chapter 5 Klein Object relations theories assume that the mother child relationship during the first 4 or 5 months is the most critical time for personality development Klein believed that an important part of any relationship is the internal psychic representations of early significant objects such as the mother s breast or the father s penis Infants introject these psychic representations into their own psychic structure and then project them onto an external object that is another person These internal pictures are not