CHAPTER 11
Personality is the psychological qualities that bring continuity to an individual’s thoughts and actions in different situations and at different times. Our traits and sense of self are affected by both nature and nurture, but personality is also a process that produces choices and actions.
Psychodynamic, humanistic, and cognitive theories provide insight into understanding individuals as developing, changing beings—as a developmental process shaped by our internal needs and cognitions and by external pressures from the social environment.
Theories of traits, types or temperaments provide information about a person’s current personality characteristics.
What Forces Shape our Personalities
Psychodynamic Theories
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory----The unconscious is the psychic domain of which the individual is not aware, but which is the storehouse of primitive and repressed impulses.
Drives and instincts
Eros is the unconscious force that drives people toward acts that are sexual, life-giving, and creative
Thanatos is the unconscious force that drives people toward aggressive and destructive behaviors.
Libido refers to the concept of psychic energy that drives individuals to experience sensual pleasure.
Freudian slip—accidental speech or behavior that reveals
An unconscious desire
Early Childhood Experiences
Psychosexual stages are successive, instinctive patterns of associating pleasure with stimulation of specific bodily areas at different times of life: Oral 1st yr—oral stimulation of sucking, eating—overcome dependency;
Anal 1-3—bladder and bowel function—toilet training and self control;
Phallic3-6—stimulation of genitals—resolves Oedipus comples;
Latency 6-12—repression of sexual and aggressive desires—learning
modesty;
Genital 12-on—mature sexual relationships—establish new relationship
with parents
The Oedipus complex is a largely unconscious process whereby boys displace an erotic attraction toward their mother to females of their own age, and at the same time, identify with their fathers.
Females develop penis envy and this desire to have a penis usually results in their attraction to males.
Fixation occurs when psychosexual development is arrested at an immature stage.
Personality Structure
Id: the primitive, unconscious part of the personality that houses fundamental drives and stores repressed memories. Pleasure Principle.
Ego: the conscious, rational part of the personality, charged with keeping peace between the id and the superego. Reality Principle.
Superego: the storehouse of an individual’s values, including moral attributes learned from parents and society; roughly the same notion as the conscience. Morality Principle.
Ego Defenses
Mechanisms are mental strategies employed to reduce the experience of conflict or anxiety.
Repression—unconscious process that excludes unacceptable thoughts and feelings from awareness and memory.
Projection—unconscious process by which we rid ourselves of tension as we attribute our own impulses and fantasies to something or someone else.
Denial-deny a problem exists
Rationalization-give socially acceptable reasons for actions based in unacceptable motives
Reaction Formation-act in opposition to their true feelings
Displacement-Shift reaction from real source to safer individual/object
Regression-adopt immature, juvenile behavior
Sublimation-gratifying sexual or aggressive desires in ways that are socially acceptable
Carl Jung
Jung believed Freud overemphasized sexuality at the expense of other unconscious impulses eg spirituality.
Jung explains the concept of unconscious mind being in 2 parts: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Within the collective unconscious is the concept of archetypes.
Personal unconscious—that portion of the unconscious corresponding roughly to the Freudian id.
Collective unconscious—a reservoir for instinctive memories, including the archetypes, which exist in all people, tying together countless generations of human history.
Archetypes—ancient memory images in the collective unconscious; they appear and reappear in art, literature, myths, and folk tales around the world.
Animus and anima—representing the masculine and feminine sides of our nature.
Shadow—the archetype representing the destructive and aggressive tendencies that we don’t want to recognize in ourselves.
Extraversion involves turning one’s attention outward toward others.
Introversion focuses on inner experience such as one’s own thought and feelings—less outgoing and sociable than the extraverts.
Karen Horney
Disputes the Oedipus complex and says that women want the same opportunities and rights that men enjoy with the differences between males and females resulting from socially defined roles not unconscious urges.
Humanistic Theories
Optimistic about the core of human nature, seeing personality being driven by needs to adapt, learn, grow, and excel rather than by unconscious conflicts and defenses against anxiety. Mental disorders are seen as stemming from unhealthy situations, low self-esteem, and unmet needs rather than unhealthy individuals.
Abraham Maslow
Ingredients of the health personality rather than the mere absence of illness.
Self-actualizing personalities are healthy individuals who have met their basic needs and are free to pursue an interest in higher ideals such as truth, justice and beauty.
Theory of hierarchy of needs offers an explanation of maladjustment: physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem, self-actualization.
Carl Rogers
Fully-functioning person has a self-concept that is both positive and congruent with reality.
Incongruence occurs when a negative emotional experience affects one’s ability to perceive accurately a threat to self-esteem.
People need others in their lives who can give unconditional positive regard—love or caring without conditions attached.
Cognitive Theories
Social Learning and Personality
Albert Bandura focuses on observational learning, the process of learning new responses by watching others’ behavior.
Reciprocal determinism is a process in which the person, situation, and environment mutually influence each other.
Locus of Control
Internal locus of control—people believe they can control their life events.
External locus of control—people believe life events are controlled by an outside power.
What Patterns are Found in Personality
Some theories attribute personality to stable patterns known as traits, types, and temperaments.
Traits are stable personality characteristics that are presumed to exist within the individual and guide thoughts and actions under various conditions. Some believe personality is largely determined by genes.
“Big Five” Traits: extraversion—social adaptability v introversion, agreeableness—conformity and likeability v coldness and negativity, neuroticism—anxiety and emotionality v emotional stability, openness to experience—curiosity and independence v closed-mindedness, and conscientiousness—dependability and perseverance v impulsivity and irresponsibility .
Temperment—basic inherited personality dispositions that are
Apparent in early childhood and that establish the tempo
And mood of the individual’s behaviors