Chapter 15 - Personality

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

Question 2

Sigmund Freud

Answer 2

Focused largely on the role of our unconscious and our childhood experiences in determining our personality.

Question 3

Free Association

Answer 3

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial and embarassing.

Question 4

Psychoanalysis

Answer 4

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Question 5

Unconscious

Answer 5

The part of the mind that contains material of which we are unaware but that strongly influence our behavior.

Question 6

Id

Answer 6

The unconscious system of personality, consisting of basic sexual and aggressive drives, that supplies psychic energy to personality (devil)

Question 7

Ego

Answer 7

The unconscious division of personality that attempts to mediate between the demands of the id, the superego and reality (umpire)

Question 8

Superego

Answer 8

The division of personality that contains the conscience and develops by incorporating the perceived moral standards of society (angel)

Question 9

Psychosexual Stages

Answer 9

The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the Id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Question 10

Oedipus Complex

Answer 10

A boy’s sexual desire for his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

Question 11

Identification

Answer 11

Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parent. (superego gains strength that incorporates their parents value)

Question 12

Fixate

Answer 12

According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure - seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

Question 13

Defense Mechanisms

Answer 13

Certain specific means by which the ego unconsciously protects itself against unpleasant impulses or circumstances.

Question 14

Repression

Answer 14

defense mechanism: banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feeling and memories from consciousness.

Question 15

Regression

Answer 15

defense mechanism: individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.

Question 16

Reaction Formation

Answer 16

defense mechanism: causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites. (People may express feelings of purity when they may be suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex).

Question 17

Projection

Answer 17

defense mechanism: when people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others (hypocrite).

Question 18

Rationalization

Answer 18

defense mechanism: offers self-justifying explanations in the place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

Question 19

Displacement

Answer 19

defense mechanism: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses towards a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

Question 20

Collective Unconsciousness

Answer 20

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species history.

Question 21

Projective Tests

Answer 21

Open ended. More unstructured. (own interpretation of various ambiguous stimuli)

Question 22

TAT

Answer 22

Thematic Appreciation Test. A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Question 23

Rorscach Inkblot Test

Answer 23

Consists of a series of 10 cards with inkblot designs and a system for interpreting blotches.

Question 24

Alfred Adler

Answer 24

Inferiority Complex

Question 25

Karen Horney

Answer 25

Agreed that childhood was important, but that social not sexual tensions are crucial for personality formation.

Question 26

Carl Jung

Answer 26

Collective unconsciousness