Individual - John Flashcards
Psychoanalytic theory of personality: Freudian Model of Human Behaviour
- Motivated by basic biological instincts
- Unconscious motivation
- Behaviour is goal directed
- Importance of development
Biological perspective of personality
- Basic human motivation: sex and aggression
- Closely follows Darwin’s theory
- Freud believed that everything humans do can be understood as manifestations of the life and death instincts
- Later termed libido (life) and thanatos (death)
Freud’s view of the human mind: The mental Iceberg
Conscious level:
- Thoughts
- Perceptions
Preconscious level:
- Memories
- Stored knowledge
Unconscious level:
- Fears
- Irrational wishes
- Violent motives
- Immoral urges
- Selfish needs
- Unacceptable sexual desires
- Shameful experiences
What is Id
A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strived to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and be aggressive
What is Id
A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that strived to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce, and be aggressive
- Operates on pleasure principle
- Not constrained by reality
- Immediate gratification
What is ego
Largely conscious, ‘executive’ part of personality that mediates the demands of id, superego and reality
- Operates on reality principle
- Satisfying id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
What is superego
- Internalised ideals and societies norms that provide standards for judgement behaviour and suture aspirations
- Internalises values, morals, and ideals of society
- Not bounded by reality
Unconscious motivation in individuals
- Control their sexual and aggressive urges by placing them in the unconscious
- Takes on a life of their own and become the motivated unconscious
How is behaviour goal directed?
- Nothing happens by chance or accident
- Everything we do, think, say and feel is an expression of our mind
Focus and neurotic behaviour in adulthood: Oral stage
Pleasure centres on the mouth sucking, chewing, biting
- Smokers
- Nail biters
- Finger chewers
- Thumb suckers
Neurotic behaviour in adulthood: Oral stage
- Smokers
- Nail biters
- Finger chewers
- Thumb suckers
Focus and neurotic behaviour in adulthood: Anal stage
Pleasure focuses on bowl and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control - where ego develops
Early or harsh potty training = anal retentive personality:
- Hate mess
- Obsessively tidy
- Punctual
- Respectful of authority
- Stubborn
- Tight-fisted
Liberal toilet training regime = anal repulsive personality:
- Wants to share thing
- Messy
- Disorganised
- Rebellious
Focus and neurotic behaviour in adulthood: Phallic stage
Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous feelings - where superego develops
- Oedipus complex
Focus of latency stage
Dormant sexual feeling
Focus of genital stage
Maturation of sexual interest
How to reveal the unconscious
- Hypnosis
- Free association: speaking whatever comes into your mind without censoring your thoughts. Psychoanalysts must be able to recognise the subtle signs that something important has just been mentioned
- Dream analysis: uncovering unconscious material in a dream by interpreting the content of it. Consists of manifest content (what the dream actually contains) and latent content (what the elements of the dream actually represent)
- Projective techniques: uses the idea that what a person sees in an ambiguous figure reflects his or her personality
Tests to reveal the unconscious
- Thermatic appreciation test: said to reveal repressed motives and needs
- Rorschach ink blot test:said to reveal repressed motives and needs
Defense mechanisms
- Unconscious psychological processes designed to avoid or reduce the conscious experience of anxiety
- -> id vs. superego; individual vs. society
- -> surplus energy results in anxiety
- Projection
- Sublimation
- Repression
- Regression
- Rationalisation
- Compensation
- Identification
- Displacement
- Withdrawal
- Day-dreaming
- Sympathy
Useful in coping with unexpected or disappointing events but can also make it worse
Defense mechanisms: Repression
- Unconscious
- Motivated forgetting
- Process of preventing unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or urges from reaching conscious awareness
- Forerunner of all other defense mechanisms
Defense mechanisms: Denial
- Unconscious
- Motivated
- Insisting that things are not what they seem
Defense mechanisms: Displacement
Threatening impulse is channeled to a non-threatening one
Defense mechanisms: Rationalisation
Generating acceptable reasons for outcomes that might otherwise appear socially unacceptable
Defense mechanisms: Reaction formation
In an attempt to stifle an unacceptable urge, displaying a flurry of behaviour that indicates the opposite impulse
Defense mechanisms: Projection
Seeing in others those traits and desires that we find most upsetting in ourselves
Defense mechanisms: Sublimation
Channeling unacceptable sexual or aggressive instincts into socially desired activities
What is the goal of psychoanalysis of the personality
- Identify unconscious thoughts and feelings
- Enable the person to deal with the unconscious urges realistically and maturely
- Offers an interpretation of the psychological causes of the problems
- Interpretations bring insight
- Resistance may occur as a defense
Trait theories of personality
- Traits are habitual patterns of behaviour, thought, and emotions - relatively stable over time
- Differ among individuals but we all share traits to different degrees
- Can assess to what extent and individual displays a trait. That is the categories are continuous, we all have them to a greater or lesser extent
4 humours and 4 elements
Hippocrates (400BC) and Galen (140/150 AD)
Excess of bodily fluids
Fire: Yellow bile (choleric)
- Irritable
Air: Blood (sanguine)
- Optimistic
Water: Phlegm (phlegmatic)
- Calm
Earth: Black bile (melancholy)
- Depressed
William Sheldon (personality)
- Suggested that body type corresponded to psychological profiles
3 body types:
- Ectomorph
- Endomorph
- Mesomorph
Psychological profiles of endomorphs
- Relaxed
- Sociable
- Tolerant
- Comfort-loving
- Peaceful
Psychological profiles of mesomorphs
- Assertive
- Vigorous
- Combative
Psychological profiles of ectomorphs
- Fragile
- Restrained
- Non-assertive
- Sensitive
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
- Questionnaire designed to measure how people perceive the world and make decisions
- Based on typological theories proposed by Carl Jung (1921)
- During WW2, believed that personality preferences would help women who were working for the first time to identify the jobs where they would be ‘most comfortable and effective’
- Today the publisher calls it ‘the world’s most widely used personality assessment’ with as many as two million assessments administered annually
- Series of forced-choice questions
- Establishes types and not traits
Strengths and limitations of personality types
- Over-simplistic as overlooks the multi-dimensional and continuous nature of personality
- By considering profiles a degree of complexity can be generated. 16 combinations is more than most people can deal with
- Some say that individual differences may be qualitative not quantitative
- Alternatively all possess the same traits - to a great er or lesser extent
- A strength of the type approach is its simplicity and person-centred relevance
