Individual Differences: Lectures 10-13 Flashcards
The organisation of personality
Psychic ‘structures’ identified by Freud
Id
Ego
Super-ego (ego ideal)
The id
Primitive component of personality
Present from birth
Governed by the pleasure principle
Demands instant gratification
Food, sex, etc.
The ego
Ego channels energy of the id in constructive ways
Acts on information gathered through the perceptual system
Governed by the reality principle
“Like a man on horseback”
The superego
Moral branch of personality
Strives for perfection
Derived from parental moral standards
Two components
Ego-ideal (good, rewards)
Conscience (bad, punishment)
The development of personality
Latency stage (5-12 yrs) Genital stage (12 yrs onward) Phallic stage (3-5 yrs) Anal stage (1-3 yrs) Oral stage ( up to 1 year)
Stage theory of personality
Child moves through psychosexual stages depending on activity of erogenous zones
Libidinal energy transferred via ‘cathexis’ from one activity to the next
Fixation at any level determines adult personality
Oral stage (< 1 year)
Pleasure centred on feeding
Libidinal energy focused on caregiver
Development of trust
Fixation on oral stimulation
Leads to smoking, thumb-sucking, excess eating
Overindulgence: over-trusting, gullible adults
Underindulgence: Oral aggressive – exploitative, even sadistic adults
Anal stage (1-3 yrs)
Transfers sensual pleasure to anus
Potty training potential source of conflict
Fixation at anal stage due to carers’ demands
Anal retentive personality: hoarding behaviour, delay of gratification
Anal expulsive personality: Untidy, disorganised adults
Phallic stage (3-5 yrs)
Genitals new source of pleasure
Gratification from ‘masturbation’
Penis envy in girls, castration anxiety in boys
Oedipus complex, if unresolved, may lead to:
Promiscuity (seeking unrequited sexual gratification)
Choice of same-sex romantic partner (‘failure’ to identify)
Later development
Latency stage (5-12 yrs) as resting period Same-sex peer relations
Genital stage (12 yrs onward) Puberty: interest in opposite sex
Problems resulting from earlier fixation
Oral: failure to trust
Psychoanalytic theory after Freud
Freud died in 1939 (after moving to London)
By then, several ‘schools’ of psychoanalytic theory already established
Adler and Jung ‘split’ after disagreements
After WW2, ‘object relations’ school in UK inspired by Melanie Klein
Jacques Lacan then developed his own version of theory in France in 1950s onwards
Early individual difference research
Francis Galton: bloodlines’
Psychometrics (inc. correlation)
IQ tests
Spearman ‘g factor’ of intelligence
Combination of Darwinism and statistics
Approaches to personality
Trait theory in this tradition
Eysenck
Big Five
Humanistic approaches
‘Situational’ theory
Personality as shaped by social experience
Psychoanalytic theory
Seeks to explain how personality develops across the lifespan (though largely based on childhood)
Individual differences arise due to ‘fixation’ at critical periods
Addresses many criticisms of other personality theories
Considers developmental influences
Considers relationships with others (i.e., life history)
Person as reflexive: seeking meaning, understanding the self
Offers potential for change (if desired)
Western culture ‘saturated’ with psychoanalytic discourse (Frosh, 2012)
The interpretation of dreams
‘Freudian slips’ revealing ‘true’ beliefs/thoughts
Likewise, the first thing you say (‘free association’)
‘Phallic’ symbols revealing unconscious desires
Repressing thoughts/memories as ‘unhealthy’
Modern emphasis on ‘catharsis’ (‘letting it all out’)
Psychologists as ‘reading minds’, surreptitiously taking notes, etc.
Other imagery: couches, ‘shrinks’, the psyche
People as fixated: ‘anal’ about things, etc.
Governed by ‘drives’, e.g. libido,
Strong influence in film and cultural theory
e.g. viewer identification (with protagonists)
The Freudian project
Freud trained as a medic: strong belief in possibility of science, and psychoanalysis as a scientific practice
Believed that he could explain the causes of behaviour (but only ever worked backwards)
Wanted to be able to explain religion away as a psychological ‘impulse’
Brought sexuality into public and intellectual debate
Key ideas in Freudian theory: 1) The unconscious
3 systems of thought:
Conscious (in awareness)
Preconscious (accessible, but not yet in awareness)
Unconscious (inaccessible; repressed)
Material in unconscious seeps out in dreams, slips, symbols;
or can be teased out in psychoanalysis (‘the talking cure’)
Drives and impulses
Biological forces, represented as ideas
The sexual instinct, represented as pleasure
Psychosexual stages in childhood, depending on location of pleasure (‘erogenous zones’) Oral stage (<1): feeding, sucking, caregiver Anal stage (1-3): excretory functions Phallic stage (3-5): genitals, sexual identification with parent
Other drives to do with survival (thirst, hunger) and death (destruction)
Defence mechanisms
Unconscious processes protecting from intrusion of unconscious thoughts
Repression: ‘motivated forgetting’ (Frosh, 2012) – e.g. being ‘in denial’ about something Typically sexual (in Freud’s time)
Can be primary (immediate) or secondary (becomes repressed)
‘Object relations’ school
Primarily British, developing Kleinian ideas
Donald Winnicott
Influential British psychoanalyst
Idea of transitional object that represents mother (caregiver) when absent
Can evolve into cultural objects later in life
True vs. false self
Important Winnicottian idea
Mother/child bond important for stability
When mother anxious/stressed, child develops ‘false self’ to meet her needs rather than its own desires
Importance of symbolic space (objects representing mother) for development of creativity and ‘object permanence’
Jacques Lacan (1901-81)
French psychoanalyst who developed own theoretical tradition
Also saw ‘splitting’ as central to development
Primarily concerned with role of culture, particularly language, in childhood
The symbolic order
Language is essential to our understanding of the world
We become ‘subjected’ to language, it is not ours
Not just a representation of inner desires/’truth’
Language is performative, it does things and creates meaning
Don’t try ‘to understand more than what there is in the discourse of the subject’ (Lacan, 1954)
The real
This is what cannot be symbolised, what lurks beneath the surface
Enjoyment of horror films (the monster in the attic etc.) - recognised by audiences, works through remembered anxiety from infancy
Two important Lacanian concepts: The mirror stage
Child presented with specular image of self – first idea of ‘self’ as coherent entity
However this is a false image (mirror is only reflection)
The ego is created through external world, via language
Lacan’s reworking of Freud’s ego and superego
Mirror image as the other (a), or ‘ideal-ego’: what I would like to be
Initially the integrated self, later any object of desire, depending on fantasy (e.g. role modelling)
Watched over by the Big Other (A), or the ego-ideal: who (or what) I seek to impress
Initially the mother, later the ‘symbolic order’ – language, culture, law
Adler: importance of siblings
Rather neglected in Freud’s work
But birth order has huge implications
Eldest as ‘dethroned monarch’
Youngest likely to be spoiled
Middle children have best life chances?
Social interaction as key influence
Argued that sex and aggression arose from separate drives in childhood
Freud later agreed, but claimed it was his idea!
Influential concept of inferiority complex
This makes us reluctant to take risks and trust others
Or: overcompensate, developing an unhelpful superiority complex
Carl Jung
Broke with Freud over sex in 1914
Psychic structure of ego, personal unconscious and collective unconscious
Myths, fantasies from ancient cultures (devils, spirits, etc) as part of evolutionary history
Importance of archetypes
Persona: the ‘mask’ we adopt to cope with social interaction
Shadow: (largely) sinister aspects of personal unconscious
Anima/animus: Aspects of opposite gender
Self: potential for unique individuality
Personality types
First instance of ‘extroversion’ and ‘introversion’ – though as discrete types of person
Governed by outward/inward ‘flow of psychic energy’ (e.g. pleasure-seeking or sensitive)
Both types further differentiated as:
Thinking
Feeling
Intuitive
Basis of later Myers-Briggs personality type inventory (MBTI)
Karen Horney
Psychoanalysed by Karl Abraham when depressed after mother’s death
Unsatisfied by claims that sex was underlying cause of neurosis
‘Real self’ as product of good parenting
Neurosis arises from neglect, overindulgence, abuse etc.
Critique of Freud’s patriarchal model
‘Penis envy’ of young girl explained as sense of loss and inferiority
But neurosis not affected by gender
Social/cultural factors, esp. power, the main explanation
‘Womb envy’ more powerful influence
Object relations theory
Melanie Klein (1882-1960)
Austrian-born, but arrived in London in 1920s, before Freud
First psychoanalyst to work with young children
Focus on toy play and ‘phantasy’
Psychic Splitting
First important object: the mother’s breast
Either good (provides milk) or bad (doesn’t appear)
‘Splitting’ of functions allows child to perceive objects as independent (especially people) and understand contradiction
Projection of parts of the self into good objects, e.g. admired others (but no objects ever entirely ‘good’)
Some key Kleinian ideas
The importance of drives
The death drive (tendency to destruction) is particularly important, especially in fragile world of infancy
This is responsible for envy
Unlike in Freud, drives attach to specific objects
First envied object: the mother’s breast - at least when providing food
Rejecting breast becomes hated object
Defenses
‘Mental representations of reality’ formed in infancy and structuring adult experience
In infancy, taking in/pushing out: later, introjection/projection
Importance of splitting
Good/bad breast: envy is overwhelming, so splitting function helps to cope
Later in life, recurs when personal boundaries threatened (in crowds, rivalry, psychotic episodes)
Types
discrete categories into which we can place people
Traits
continuous dimensions: A person can be positioned along the dimension according to how much of the trait they possess
Nomothetic approach
People are like some other people
Idiographic approach
People are like no other people
Lexical hypothesis
Important traits should be revealed by most common words in natural language
Raymond Cattell (1950s-1970s)
Constitutional traits (genetic) vs. environment-mold traits (environmental) Ability, Temperament and Dynamic Traits Dynamic traits Attitudes Sentiments Ergs Common traits v unique traits
Surface traits
cluster together in many people/many situations
Source traits
underlying traits responsible for variance in surface traits
Hans Eysenck
Emphasised 3 basic dimensions of personality (‘supertraits’)
Extraversion-introversion
Neuroticism-stability
Psychoticism
The Big Five (Costa & McCrae, 1985)
Openness: curious, creative, open to new experiences
vs. narrow-minded, conventional
Conscientiousness: organised, disciplined, plans ahead
vs. careless, messy, impulsive
Extraversion: sociable, enthusiastic, loud
vs. introverted, reserved
Agreeableness: warm, sympathetic, easy-going
vs. quarrelsome, critical
Neuroticism: anxious, easily upset, tense
vs. calm, emotionally stable
Hartshorne & May (1928):
10,000 school students were put in a series of situations in which they had the opportunity to be dishonest
Students who were dishonest in one situation were not necessarily dishonest in the others – correlation was below 0.3
Summary of Individual Differences- Humanist
A personality trait is an enduring characteristic that predicts an individual’s behaviour and varies on a continuum
Theorists have disagreed on the number of core traits but most evidence, including factor analysis, converges on 5 (OCEAN; McCrae & Costa) that are related to behaviour and can be applied to predict health and work outcomes
Trait approaches have been criticised for focusing on description not explanation, and for assuming too much consistency across time, situations (i.e., situationism), culture, and people (i.e., nomothetic)
Carl Rogers
Clinical approach but potential for change
Problems caused by blocks to self-actualisation potential
Summary of Humanistic Part 2
Humanistic theorists view humans as innately good and motivated to grow and develop towards self-actualisation
Focus is on the individual and that people’s motivations and experiences are varied and create both uniqueness (individual differences)
Propose however that there are also some universal (common) motivations and needs that we all share and have in common.
Maslow proposed that needs are met (and thus drive motivation) in a hierarchical structure; his ideas were not readily testable but have been applied widely to business
Rogers proposed that self-actualisation can only happen given unconditional positive regard and thus self-acceptance, and applied his ideas to therapy and educational practice
The humanistic approach
Core features:
Positive view of human nature
Personal growth
Oriented toward present/future
Free will and personal responsibility
Phenomenological i.e., emphasis is on the individual
Maslow’s view on development
Childhood
Innate motivation to grow and develop (instinctoid tendencies)
Flourish when given choice and responsibility (+ rules)
Most societies inhibit development
Psychopathology
reflects unmet needs
Basic levels = more profound
Therapy: eclectic (including psychoanalysis!)
Contemporary Research
Conditional positive regard: Sociometer theory (Leary et al., 1995)
Self-esteem reflects belonging/liking from others
Conditions of worth: Contingencies of self-worth (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001)
Self-esteem depends on success in personally important domains
Motivation to meet contingencies can interfere with larger goals
Insecure attachment styles relate to more contingent self-esteem
Contingent self-esteem predicts depression symptoms
Self-congruence: Self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987)
Discrepancy between actual/ideal self relates to self-esteem and depression
Role of parenting – not well understood
Client-centred / Person-centred therapy
Goal: To provide environment in which client can get back in touch with true self (congruence), accept themselves and their emotions, and experience growth
Therapist must provide:
Unconditional positive regard
Empathy (reflect client’s own feelings and thoughts)
Genuineness / “real”ness
Allow client to lead discussions (therapist is just facilitator)
Summary of Humanistic Part 3
Humanistic theorists view humans as innately good and motivated to grow and develop towards self-actualisation
Focus is on the individual and that people’s motivations and experiences are varied and create both uniqueness (individual differences)
Propose however that there are also some universal (common) motivations and needs that we all share and have in common.
Maslow proposed that needs are met (and thus drive motivation) in a hierarchical structure; his ideas were not readily testable but have been applied widely to business
Rogers proposed that self-actualisation can only happen given unconditional positive regard and thus self-acceptance, and applied his ideas to therapy and educational practice
