Personality

1. Personality Psychoanalysis

2. What is personality…? • An individual’s pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Or…(Attitudes, behaviors, emotions)

3. Freud’s Psychoanalysis • Overview questions…”According to Freud…” • When is one’s personality established? • What is the ultimate influence in shaping personality? • What is the essential conflict that resides within each individual? • Stage theory: Continuous or discontinuous? • What is psychoanalysis?

4. Freud’s States of Conscious Conscious Preconscious Unconscious

5. A Closer Look

6. Exploring the Unconscious • Freud • Hypnosis • Dream Analysis • Free Association • Mental Dominoes of a patient’s past that explain the present

7. Freud's Personality Structure • Ego • Superego • Id

8. Id • Instincts / psychic energy • Two types • Eros: life instincts, driven by libido • Thanatos: Death instincts, driven by aggression • Pleasure principle- immediate gratification • Unconscious mind

9. Ego • Reality principle • Seeks emotional balance • Executive Mediator between Id and Superego • Part of conscious and unconscious mind • Constructs defense mechanisms to protect the conscious mind (from the threatening issues of the unconscious)

10. Superego • Age 5: sense of right and wrong (conscience) • Internalized ideals, morals, judgment • Part of conscious and unconscious mind

11. Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development • Freud believed that your personality developed in your childhood. • Believed that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages. • Conflicts during these stages effect your personality development • The id focuses it’s libido (sexual energy) on different erogenous zones in different stages

12. Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

13. Phallic Stage • Oedipus Rex: Boys sexually desire their mothers, father as rival • Electra Crisis: Girls sexually desire their fathers, mother as rival • Penis envy / castration anxiety • Identification: (defense mechanism) Boys emulate and attach themselves to their father (who threaten them- castration anxiety as rivals for their mother)

14. Fixation • Libido gets stuck in any one of psychosexual stages • Unresolved conflicts • Often over-gratification or under-gratification • Examples: • Oral fixations • Anal fixations (retentive and expulsive) • Genital fixation

15. Defense Mechanisms • Ego’s effort to protect the conscious mind from the threatening thoughts of the unconscious • IOW: Reduce anxiety by distorting reality • No awareness of occurrence

16. Freud’s Defense Mechanisms • Repression: • Major defense mechanism • Push out of conscious awareness • “Why we don’t remember incestuous feelings of phallic stage.”

17. Defense Mechanisms • Regression • Returning to an earlier stage when facing anxiety

18. Defense Mechanisms • Reaction Formation • Ego switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites • Being mean to someone you have a crush on… • The bully who’s not tough after all…

19. Defense Mechanisms • Projection • Disguise your own threatening impulses by attributing them to others • Thinking that your wife wants to cheat on you when really its you that wants to cheat on her. • After your girlfriend dumps you for someone else, you insist she still cares for you.

20. Defense Mechanisms • Rationalization: • self-adjusting explanations in place of real, more threatening reasons for your actions or events. • “I didn’t want to go to the prom with her.” • “I couldn’t go anyway, I have to babysit my kid brother.”

21. Defense Mechanisms • Displacement • Shifting an unacceptable impulse into a safer outlet • Kicking the dog • Confronting a teacher vs. rolling her yard

22. Defense Mechanisms • Sublimation • Channeling unacceptable impulses into more acceptable or socially approved activities

23. True or False? • According to Freudian theory, humans are driven by life instincts and by death instincts. • Dreams and Freudian slips are two ways to study unconscious wishes or impulses. • Individuals pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which id impulses of a sexual nature find a socially acceptable outlet. • Unresolved conflicts between id impulses and social restrictions during childhood continue to influence one’s personality in adulthood.

24. “Christmas Vacation” • Analyze the scene from a Freudian perspective. • Modern analysis • Natural byproduct of how our minds process information and direct action • Capture error: pass too near a well formed habit and it will capture your behavior. Examples? • Most actions carried out automatically by subconscious (conscious selection, unconscious action) Why…? • When attention lags, habitual response takes over • **Cognitive connections and linguistic pathways (existence of sexuality in situation activates memory)

25. Criticisms of Freud • Little empirical evidence supports it • No predictive value (only explains past behavior and source of problem) • Gender discriminatory (Freud’s assumption that men were superior to women) • Example: penis envy

26. Freud’s Legacy • Profound impact on psychology • Children are sexual creatures • Behavior shaped by unconscious thoughts • Early experiences are significant in shaping personality • Cultural impact (references in popular culture) • Id /ego • Unconscious • Penis envy • Anal retentive • Freudian slip • Freud today: 80% of pure Freudian therapists live within 20 miles of each other in N.Y. city

27. Psychodynamic Theories Alfred Adler Karen Horney Carl Jung Neo-Freudians

28. Alfred Adler • Social, (not sexual) issues as primary influence of childhood development • “Ego Psychologist”- focused on conscious role of the ego as primary force of behavior (Not the unconscious) • Inferiority complex: motivation by fear of failure • Superiority= desire to achieve • Birth order theory in shaping personality

29. Carl Jung • Stressed the unconscious • Two parts • Personal unconscious (Freudian view) = complex • Collective unconscious: passed down through species- similarities between all cultures • Archetypes = universal concepts • fear of the dark • Shadow as darker side of personality • Universal importance of circle in cultures

30. Karen Horney • Social forces in shaping childhood personality • Took issue with Freud’s male dominant view of “weak superegos and penis envy” • 1st woman to provide major academic challenge

31. Rorschach Inkblot Test http://theinkblot.com/step_1.htm • What do you see in this visual…?

32. Projective Tests • Psychological x-ray (window to the unconscious) • Ambiguous stimulus / interpretations of it… • Thematic Apperception Test: ambiguous pictures / create stories… (free association…) • Rorschach inkblot test: 10 inkblot images used to reflect inner feelings (unconscious)

33. Humanistic Psychology • What is humanistic psychology? • Man is innately good / innate need to fulfill potential • Anyone has potential for actualization at any time • Free will = 3rd Force (not deterministic) • Subjective experience and feelings • Self-concept / self esteem • Focus on health, life of fulfillment

34. Self-Concept • Global feelings about oneself • Develops through person’s involvement with others (esp. parents) • Positive self-concept = high self esteem • Central to humanistic psychology

35. Maslow and Rogers • People are motivated to reach full potential Abraham Maslow Carl Rogers

36. Maslow’s Hierarchy • Self-actualization • Completely knowing, accepting oneself • Open, spontaneous, loving, caring, problem centered… • Congruence between who we really are, who we think we are, and who we want to be… Thomas Jefferson Abraham Lincoln Albert Einstein Jane Addams Willliam James Albert Schweitzer Aldous Huxley Eleanor Roosevelt

37. Maslow’s List: 2% are Self-Actualized Why so few…? • Top of hierarchy, weakest of needs, most easily impeded • Jonah Complex: fear and doubt (courage to sacrifice lower needs for personal growth) • Environmental influence (ex.- “manliness”) • Childhood experiences (“freedom within limits” fosters growth)

38. Carl Rogers • Self-Theory • Environment: genuineness, acceptance, empathy • Unconditional Positive Regard (acceptance) • Must feel accepted for self-actualization

39. Real Versus the Ideal Self • Divide a sheet of paper into two equal columns. • Entitle the left side The Real Self, and the right side the Ideal Self. • Write for no more than 10 minutes on each side, attempting to portray an honest self assessment. • When finished, compare the differences between the two. Would you consider yourself self-actualized? If so, to what extent? Be prepared to discuss.

40. The Trait Perspective Trait • a characteristic of personality (combination of several) • Viewed as stable and motivate behavior in keeping with the trait • Nature! “You are who you are!” • Gordon Allport (1919) pioneer: defined personality in terms of specific traits / identifiable behavior patterns

41. Personality Inventory • a questionnaire (true-false or agree-disagree items) • designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors • used to assess personality by identifying specific traits • Objectively graded / assessesed • Factor analysis: statistical procedure used to identify clusters of questions (correlations between questions = basic (general) trait- ex: Extraversion

42. Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory • Myers-Briggs • Most popular inventory in corporate sector • 89 of 100 largest corporations : 2.5 million/year • Colleges: Career placement office

43. UNSTABLE Moody Touchy Anxious Restless Rigid Aggressive Sober Excitable Pessimistic Changeable Reserved Impulsive Unsociable Optimistic Quiet Active choleric melancholic INTROVERTED EXTRAVERTED Passive phlegmatic sanguine Sociable Careful Outgoing Thoughtful Talkative Peaceful Responsive Controlled Easygoing Reliable Lively Even-tempered Carefree Calm Leadership STABLE Eyesenck Personality Questionnaire • Hans Eyesenck: two primary personality factors as axes for describing personality variation

44. Clinically significant range 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Hypochondriasis (concern with body symptoms) Depression (pessimism, hopelessness) After treatment (no scores in the clinically significant range) Hysteria (uses symptoms to solve problems) Before treatment (anxious, depressed, and displaying deviant behaviors) Psychopathic deviancy (disregard for social standards) Masculinity/femininity (interests like those of other sex) Paranoia (delusions, suspiciousness) Psychasthenia (anxious, guilt feelings) Schizophrenia (withdrawn, bizarre thoughts) Hypomania (overactive, excited, impulsive) Social introversion (shy, inhibited) 0 30 40 50 60 70 80 T-score Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory • MMPI: Used to assess abnormal personality / emotional disorders

45. Empirically Derived Tests • Testing a pool of questions and then selecting those that discriminate between groups • MMPI

46. The Big Five (Personality traits)

47. Traits Stabilize with Age

48. Points to consider… • Traits / personality do reveal a pattern of behavior (& thoughts and feelings) • …but fail to predict behavior in all situations (we do not always act in accordance with out personality…) • Research shows that traits are easy to recognize…

49. Homework • Take an abridged version of the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory • Print results and bring to class • http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp • Quiz Thursday: Chapter 15, Personality

50. Social-Cognitive • Focus on the interaction between environment and patterns of thought