Holt's Chapter 14 Flashcards
Define personality.
Academics still debate over the concrete definition of personality, however, broadly speaking, it can be described as distinctive ways of thinking, feeling and reacting in different life situations which are unique to the individual
What are the three characteristics which define personality?
Consistency
Stability
Uniqueness to the individual
What constitutes a scientific theory to be “useful”?
Provides a comprehensive framework from which facts can be learned
The theory must allow (with a certain degree of accuracy) to predict future events
The theory must stimulate the discovery of new knowledge
What did Sigmund Freud believe to be the root of people’s problems, and what form of therapy did he use to treat his patients?
Freud believed that the culprit behind most people’s problems was their repressed painful memories and experiences which were hidden in our subconscious.
His psychoanalytic therapy involved leading his patients to re-experience their experiences in a safe environment, which improved their symptoms.
He often used psychoanalytic techniques such as hypnosis, dream analysis and free association
What is a Freudian slip?
A Freudian slip is an unintentional verbal error which happens when a person is speaking about one thing, and accidentally mentions another, which supposedly exposes subconscious desires
What was Freud’s input on personality? What did he theorize about personality? What were his conceptual structures of personality?
Freud believed that adult personalities are simply the result of how well we dealt with our psycho-sexual stages as children.
The Freudian iceberg theory is Freuds 3 layer theory of personality. We have the conscious which is our immediate awareness of our surroundings, our precociousness which is available to our awareness, so things like names of friends, addresses and recollection of our previous thoughts. Then our unconscious which has no contact with reality and we have no recollection of what it contains.
ID:
- innermost core of our personality
- source of all psychic energy (libido)
- totally uncoscious and cannot be accessed
- completely irrational and animalistic
- operates via the pleasure principle
EGO:
- has contact with reality and is conscious
- operates according to the reality principle
- job is to test reality and check where the ID can safely discharge with minimal repercussions
In pursuit of having sex with a woman (urges emerging from the ID), the ego would attempt to seek consent from the woman (reality principle) instead of allowing the ID to sexually assault the woman (pleasure principle).
SUPEREGO:
- moral arm of our personality
- develops by the age of 4 or 5
- contains our traditional values of family and society
- develops through the identification process (resulting from the phallic psycho-sexual stage) which is where the person adopts the traits of their parent of the same sex
- like the EGO, it strives to control the ID except it attempts to permanently silence it
The dynamics of personality involve a never-ending struggle between the instincts and drives in the ID fighting for control through it’s release
What happens when the EGO is incapable of controlling the ID?
The EGO begins developing defense mechanisms, which are unconscious mental operations (or constructions, with George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs) which distort the person’s reality to accommodate them.
Academics are highly critical of Freudian concepts, however, defense mechanisms are still believed in modern psychology, albeit under different names, such as repression being referred to as motivated forgetting
Psychodynamic Ego Defense Mechanisms:
-Repression: Forgetting painful memories or events
-Denial: denying that something is happening or will happen
-Displacement: repressing dangerous impulses or behaviour (anger) until it can be released upon a safer target or a safer environment (abused kid is a bully)
Intellectualization: avoiding uncomfortable emotions by focusing on the facts and logic behind a particular event
Projection: projecting something you dislike about yourself (usually socially reprehensible)
Reaction Formation: doing the exaggerated opposite of what you’re driven to do (usually socially reprehensible too, such as school crushes bullying each other)
Sublimation: repressed impulses being released in socially acceptable behaviour (such as a teenage girl with a pathological craving for attention stemming from childhood neglect, creating embarrassing tik toks and receiving attention and praise, or a man with a proclivity towards anger pursuing a career in a violent sports)
What is Psychosexual development?
Psychosexual development is the time period in a child’s life through which the ID has a focus on the erogenous areas of the body.
Improper psychosexual development can lead to fixation which is when the psychosexual development halts and the person remains in focus of that particular theme
Regression is the psychodynamic ego defense mechanism in which the person psychologically retreats to earlier psychosexual stages
