Chapter 14: Personality Flashcards
Personality
the distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that characterize a person’s responses to life situations
Characteristics of Personality
- Seen as components of identity that distinguish that person from other people
- Behaviours viewed as being caused primarily by internal rather than environmental factors
- Behaviours seem to fit together in a meaningful fashion, suggesting an inner personality that guides and directs behaviour
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
personality is an energy system
Psychic Energy
- generated by instinctual drives, this energy powers the mind and constantly presses for either direct or indirect release
- buildup of sexual energy can be discharged directly through sexual activity, or indirectly through fantasies or artistic depictions
Mental Event Categories
- Conscious: events that we are presently aware of
- Preconscious: memories, thoughts, feelings, images that we are unaware of at the moment, but can be recalled
- Unconscious: dynamic realm of wishes, feelings, and impulses that lie beyond our awareness
Different Aspects of Personality (Freud’s parts of the mind)
- Id: primitive and unconscious part of the personality that contains the instincts
- > Operates according to the pleasure principle (seeks immediate gratification or release, regardless of rational considerations or reality)
- Ego: executive of personality that is partly conscious between impulses of id, prohibitions of superego, and dictates of reality
- > Operates according to reality principle (tests reality to decide when the id can safely discharge impulses)
- Superego: moral arm of personality that internalizes standards and values of society
- > Rewards compliance with pride, and non-compliance with guilt
When are the Id and Superego formed?
Young childhood
When is the Ego formed?
Later in childhood, adolescence
Iceberg Analogy
- id is below the water (unconscious), while ego and superego are mostly above water (conscious)
- ego is mostly above water, while superego has portions both above and under
Unconscious Conflict
-interaction of id, ego, and superego results in constant struggle, causing anxiety
Reality Anxiety
-ego’s fear of real world threats
Neurotic Anxiety
-ego’s fear of id’s desires
Moral Anxiety
-ego’s fear of guilt from superego
Defense Mechanisms
-unconscious processes by which the ego prevents the expression of anxiety-arousing impulses
Repression
-ego uses some of its energy to prevent anxiety-arousing memories from entering consciousness
Sublimation (displacement)
-completely masking the sinister underlying impulses through other forms (art, sports, etc.)
Rationalization
-urge reinterpreted in acceptable terms
Projection
-own urges seen in others (“I hate you” becomes “You hate me”)
Isolation
-memories allowed back into consciousness without motives or emotions
Regression
-mentally returning to an earlier, safer state
Conversion
conflict converted into physical symptom (developing blindness so as not to see an anxiety-arousing situation)
Psychosexual Stages
- stages of development in which psychic energy is focused on certain body parts
- Oral (0-2), Anal (2-3), Phallic (4-6), Latency (7-puberty), Genital (puberty+)
- Deprivation or overindulgences in a stage can result in fixation, in which instincts are focused on a particular theme