Chapter 13 Personality

1. Chapter 13Personality

2. Personality • Personality • Personality is an elusive concept. • Some psychologists have developed “grand theories” of personality. • Others have tried to identify personality types and describe why an individual classified as a certain “personality type” behaves in certain ways. • In this chapter, we will examine the ways of understanding personality and also discuss the ways of and problems in measuring this concept.

3. Module 13.1 • Personality Theories

4. Personality • Personality derives from the Latin word persona, which translates into English as “mask.” • In psychology, personality is defined as the consistent ways in which one person’s behavior differs from that of others, especially in social contexts.

5. FIGURE 13.1 Philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau held opposing views of human nature. Psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers also held conflicting views. Freud, like Hobbes, stressed the more negative aspects of human nature; Rogers, like Rousseau, the more positive aspects.

6. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, developed the first psychodynamic theory of personality. • Psychodynamic theory relates personality to the interplay of conflicting forces within the individual. • The individual may not be aware of some of the internal forces that are at work influencing thought and behavior.

7. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Although Freud’s theory had an enormous impact on society during the 20th century, his influence within psychology is waning. • His theory is very difficult to test empirically. • Although many psychologists find nothing useful in the Freudian paradigm, its tenets are still utilized by some mental health practitioners.

8. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Freud’s search for the unconscious • Medicine was not Freud’s first choice of career; he wished to be a professor of anthropology, but could not obtain a position due to discrimination against Jews in 19th-century Austria. • He was influenced by the psychiatrist Josef Breuer, who encouraged patients to recall and discuss the details of traumatic early life experiences in order to relieve the physical complaints that were apparently a manifestation of the unreleased emotions associated with these events.

9. FIGURE 13.2 Freud believed that psychoanalysis could bring parts of the unconscious into the conscious mind, where the client could deal with them.

10. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Freud’s search for the unconscious • Breuer and Freud referred to this process as catharsis, the therapeutic release of pent-up emotional tension. • Freud later expanded this “talking cure” into a method of explaining the workings of personality, based on the interplay of conscious and unconscious internal forces, and called it psychoanalysis.

11. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • The unconscious mind contains memories, emotions and thoughts, some of which are illogical or socially unacceptable. • These thoughts and feelings influence our behavior although we cannot talk about them and may not even be aware of them. • Psychoanalysis brings these thoughts to consciousness to achieve catharsis and help the patient overcome irrational and dysfunctional impulses.

12. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Freud noticed that some patients were less seriously affected by their early childhood traumas than others were. • He developed a series of interesting hypotheses for the “excessive anxiety” that some patients seem to manifest.

13. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • He proposed that excessive anxiety might be due to: • Lack of sexual gratification • Masturbation • Traumatic sexual experiences from early childhood

14. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • He stood by the “seduction hypothesis” for a number of years, putting together the evidence for sexual abuse in childhood from patients’ dream reports, slips of the tongue, and other indirect evidence. • Some patients had no recollections of such events, but Freud nonetheless stood by his interpretations.

15. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Freud later abandoned the seduction hypothesis, claiming that his patients had “misled” him (rather than his interpretations and insistence might have been wrong). • He now took the position that his patience had sexual fantasies as young children and never came to terms with their anxiety and guilt over those fantasies.

16. Personality • Freud and the psychodynamic approach • Freud developed the concept of the Oedipus complex. • He concluded that children wish to have sex with their opposite sex parent but realize that it is forbidden. • He chose the name based on an ancient Greek play by Sophocles in which the protagonist murders his father and marries his mother. • Like many other constructs proposed by Freud, there is little reliable empirical evidence to support the notion of an “Oedipus complex.” Freud rarely distinguished between his results and his evidence.

17. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • Freud also developed a framework to explain the development of personality over the course of childhood and adolescence. • This framework is known as the Stages of Psychosexual Development.

18. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • Freud based his theory on what he perceived to be the changing nature of the individual’s psychosexual interest and pleasure. Psychosexual pleasure refers to all the strong and pleasurable sensations of excitement that arise from body stimulation. • He believed that how we manage this aspect of our development influences nearly all aspects of our personality.

19. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • Freud proposed that people have a libido, a psychosexual energy (from the Latin word for “desire”). • Over the course of the lifespan, the preferred channel for gratifying this desire changes. • There are five stages, each with its own way for seeking gratification of libidinous desires. • If normal development is blocked, a person may become fixated and continue to be preoccupied with gratification of the libido in a manner typical of an earlier time of life.

20. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • The Oral Stage (The first year of life) • The infant derives intense psychosexual pleasure from stimulation of the mouth, particularly from breastfeeding but from oral contact with other objects as well. • Oral fixation might involve problems with eating, drinking, substance use, and issues of dependence on/independence from others.

21. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • The Anal Stage (About 1 to 3 years old) • The child derives intense psychosexual pleasure from stimulation of the anal sphincter, the muscle that controls bowel movements. This is partly related to toilet training, which usually occurs at this stage. • Anal fixation might involve problems with extreme stinginess or need to maintain strict order. Sometimes the opposite is true, and the person is very wasteful and messy.

22. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • The Phallic Stage (About 3 to 6 years of age) • The child derives intense psychosexual pleasure from stimulation of the genitals, and becomes attracted to the opposite-sex parent. • Phallic fixation might involve fear of being castrated (in boys) or “penis envy” in girls.

23. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • The Latent Period (About 6 years to adolescence) • The child in this period suppresses his or her psychosexual interest. Children in this age group tend to play mostly with same sex peers. • There is some evidence that the “latent period” is a cultural artifact. Children in some non-industrialized societies do not experience a period of “latency.”

24. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • The Genital Stage (Adolescence and beyond) • The individual in this period has a strong sexual interest in other people. If he or she has completed the other stages successfully, primary psychosexual satisfaction will be gained from sexual intercourse. • The individual who is fixated in an early period of development has little libido left for this stage.

25. Table 13.1 Freud’s stages of psychosexual development.

26. Personality • Freud’s psychosexual stages of development • Evaluation of Freud’s stages • As with the rest of Freudian theory, these stages are difficult to test empirically. • Research that has been done on the psychosexual stages has been inconclusive. • Although the personality attributes for people who are “fixated” at certain stages do seem to correlate, there is no evidence that they result from the difficulties that Freud hypothesized occur at those ages (i.e. “penis envy” in the Phallic Stage).

27. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • According to Freud, there are three components to personality. • Id, the part that is comprised of all of our biological drives that demand immediate gratification. • Ego, the rational, negotiating, and decision-making component of the personality. • Superego, the internalized values and rules we receive from our parents and society.

28. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • Freud believed that these components were like “warring factions” struggling for control of the personality and behavior of the individual. • Sometimes these struggles cause psychological distress. • Psychologists treat this model as a metaphor; most do not believe that it represents the actual structure of mind.

29. Concept Check: Your friend Patricia tells you that she believes that men have all the advantages in the “sexual arena.” Freud would say that she…. Is fixated in the phallic stage or suffers from “penis envy”

30. Concept Check: Your friend Oscar can’t seem to go more than 30 minutes without lighting up a cigarette. Freud would say that he… Is fixated in the oral stage.

31. Concept Check: Your friend Annie can’t seem to hang on to a cent. She spends her money wildly. Her roommates are always threatening to call the health department because she never cleans up after herself and her room always looks like a “pigsty.” Freud would say that she… Is fixated in the anal stage.

32. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • The model of personality that Freud created involves conflicts and anxiety over unpleasant impulses and thoughts. • Freud proposed the existence of defense mechanisms that function to relegate these unpleasant thoughts and feelings to the unconscious. • Most of the time, these mechanisms function as healthy ways to suppress anxiety. • They are only viewed as problematic if they prevent the person from effectively dealing with reality.

33. FIGURE 13.3 The ego, or “rational I,” has numerous ways of defending itself against anxiety, that apprehensive state named for the Latin word meaning “to strangle.” We use defense mechanisms to avoid unpleasant realities. They are part of an internal battle that you fight against yourself.

34. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • Common defense mechanisms… • Rationalization occurs when people “make excuses” and reframe unpleasant events as actually beneficial, or their actions as justifiable or rational (when the actions are arguably not so). • Repression is “motivated forgetting” of painful or unacceptable thoughts, feelings or memories. • Regression is an apparent return to a more juvenile way of thinking or acting. “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever!” -- (Anonymous)

35. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • Common defense mechanisms… • Denial is refusal to acknowledge a problem or believe any information that causes anxiety. • Displacement is the diversion of an unacceptable thought or impulse from its actual target to a less threatening object or person. • Reaction formation involves presentation of one’s thoughts or feelings as the extreme opposite of what they actually are. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” -- (W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III Scene ii)

36. Personality • Freud’s structure of personality • Common defense mechanisms… • Sublimation refers to the transformation of sexual or aggressive energies into acceptable and pro-social behaviors. • Projection is attributing one’s own undesirable characteristics or motives to other people. “It’s no secret that a liar won’t believe anyone else.” -- (U2, “The Fly” Achtung Baby 1991)

37. Concept Check: Name that defense mechanism! Your psychology professor, who smokes a pack of cigarettes every day, “forgets” to list nicotine on a handout you receive in class that lists addictive substances and drugs of abuse. Repression

38. Concept Check: Name that defense mechanism! Your ex-spouse, who cheated on you, writes a best-selling nonfiction book arguing that human beings are not naturally monogamous and have an instinctive need for variety. Rationalization

39. Concept Check: Name that defense mechanism! You are in love with your best friend’s new flame. The friendship is an old one and very valuable to you. You tell everybody that your friend’s new love interest is a terrible human being and you don’t understand the attraction at all. Reaction formation

40. Concept Check: Name that defense mechanism! Your boss yells at you. You come home and yell at your spouse. Your spouse yells at your child. Your child goes out to the yard and yells at the dog. Displacement

41. Personality • Freud’s legacy • It may seem as if all that has been emphasized about Freud is how weak his evidence was, and how wrong some of his conclusions likely are. • But he did make some enduring and useful contributions to psychology (although scholars do argue about the extent to which Freud alone was responsible for formulating the following notions).

42. Personality • Freud’s legacy • Humans apparently have a mental life that is at least partly unconscious. • People often have conflicting motives. • Childhood experiences contribute to the development of adult personality and social behavior. • Relationships with people in our family-of-origin have some impact on relationships we have with others throughout life. • Sexual development has an impact on psychological development.

43. Personality • Neo-Freudians • The Neo-Freudians were psychologists and others who adopted some parts of Freud’s theory and modified other parts. • Karen Horney believed that Freud exaggerated the role of sexuality in human behavior and motivation, and misunderstood the motivations of women and the dynamics of family relationships.

44. Personality • Neo-Freudians • Carl Jung created a version of psychoanalytic theory that put a greater emphasis on the continuity of human experience and the human need for spiritual meaning in life. • He proposed the existence of a “collective unconscious.” • Present at birth, the collective unconscious reflects the cumulative experiences of all of our ancestors. • The collective unconscious also contains archetypes. These are figures and themes that emerge repeatedly in human history and across world cultures.

45. Personality • Neo-Freudians • Alfred Adler founded the school of “individual psychology.” • The word “individual” refers to understanding the whole person, in contrast with the partitioned model of personality that was incorporated into the Freudian framework.

46. Personality • Neo-Freudians • Adler proposed that humans have a natural desire to seek personal excellence and fulfillment, a striving for superiority. We create a master plan for achieving this, called a style of life. • People who do not succeed may suffer from an inferiority complex, an exaggerated feeling of inadequacy, throughout their lives.

47. Personality • Neo-Freudians • Adler believed that a healthy striving for superiority involved concern for the needs and welfare of others. • He believed therefore that a psychologically healthy person also had a social interest, a sense of belonging and identification with other people. • Psychopathology, in Adler’s framework, involves the setting of inadequate goals, the adoption of a faulty style of life, and a lack of social interest.

48. Personality • The learning approach • Some psychologists believe that the whole concept of personality is questionable. • People frequently adopt a variety of behavioral styles that depend on the social context. • We exhibit one set of behaviors when we interact with our parents, another with our coworkers, and yet another with our friends. • The learning approach relates specific behaviors to specific experiences. Often the experiences from which we learn are those of other people in our environment.

49. Personality • The learning approach • For example, a gender role is a psychological aspect of being male or female (as opposed to your biological sex.) • A large amount of cross-cultural research suggests that components of the male and female gender roles are in fact learned. • Boys can be observed to imitate men, and girls to imitate women.

50. Personality • Humanistic psychology • Humanistic psychology deals with values, beliefs, and consciousness, including spirituality and guiding principles by which people live their lives. • Personality depends on what people believe and how they perceive and understand the world.