L2 - History of The Self Flashcards
1
Q
What are the foundational theories on emergence of self hood intertwined with? (GRAM)
A
- Anxiety
- Growth and possibility
- Responsibility and attribution
- Motivation and attention
2
Q
What is anxiety and growth?
A
- Knowledge that some notions are more important, basic expectations of how people will meet our needs
- Values effect attachment expectations and aesthetic expectations
3
Q
What are just world expectations?
A
- Mental models become more elaborate
- Understanding others have different mental models
- We have differentiated preferences: growing sense of morality and we get smarter
4
Q
What is consistency motivation?
A
- Does exp match expectation?
- Experience of arousal to kick start different thought processes
- Leads to an uncomfortable queasy feeling
5
Q
Who was Soren Kierkegaard?
A
- Philosopher and theologian
- Talked about perceptions of self and wrote about religion, ethics and philosophy
- Father of Existentialism
- Meaningful life in absurd reality
- Focused on the concept of anxiety
- Wrote under pseudonyms so they were free to write without sanctions
6
Q
Anxiety: the soul of social psychology: (where does it stem from?)
A
- Starts with biblical accounts e.g humans expelled from paradise for disobeying God
- Tension of meeting needs and knowing what needs are: in original sin where we live in a world of anxiety
- The notion of contamination was not a consequence of the decision but the posing of the possibility that they had to choose between paradise or knowledge
7
Q
What does prohibition imply for us?
A
- We are individual selves who are free
- Who must make choices
- We gradually become aware of our own freedom
- Nostalgia from where we were in childhood where someone met all of our needs
8
Q
What is the dizziness of freedom?
A
- A lot to take in when we have more choices
- Responsibility of the consequences of choice
- Choices to be moral or immoral and will choices define/violate identity
9
Q
What is anxiety
A
- Awareness of ourselves and our own potential
- Tells us we can grow and change
- Can see it as more adaptive or maladaptive
10
Q
How is anxiety adaptive?
A
- Relief of closing other doors of possibilities
- Create our own identity
- Take responsibility
- Determines subsequent possibilities
- New anxiety = new growth = new confidence = new anxieties
- Allows growth and change
11
Q
How is anxiety maladaptive?
A
- Behave like we have no freedom
- Re-construe reality in a way where you cannot act another way
- Story of Abraham and his son (to kill) where he doesn’t know why and to trust god
12
Q
What are the ethical spheres in anxiety?
A
- Sum total of customs and laws
- Finite, changing and uncertain (how customs change over time)
- Leads to choices and anxiety
13
Q
What are the absolutes in anxiety?
A
- God/fate/nature
- Infinite, unchanging and certain
- No choices = no anxiety
- Serves a higher purpose = puts you above everything and is maximally selfish
14
Q
Who is Friedrich Nietzsche?
A
Combined with the big three psychologists and combines philosophy, psychology and philogy
15
Q
What are the two kinds of morality/universal archetypes?
A
- Knights and Priests and the rest of us are sheep because we are controlled by the prior forces
- Both groups avoid anxiety because they have an absolute commitment to a worldview
- They are most powerful and have most freedom (aristocrats)
16
Q
What are priestly Aristocrats:
A
- Free to impose their motivational biases on society
- Repress impulses
- Avoid failures and retreat from the world = do not grow
- Devotion to external standards
17
Q
What were the sheep?
A
- Less free BECAUSE we are constrained by reality
- Controlled by knights and priests
18
Q
What is being human with anxiety?
A
- Balance the competing motivational system
- Called behavioural approach and behavioural inhibition system
19
Q
What was the story of job? (Paradoxical)
A
- A paradox of civilisation
- More safe = more anxious = feel like you don’t deserve it = as hardship becomes more rare
- Experience more anxiety when we experience hardships
- When hardship is common = we do not ask why
20
Q
What did Freud say?
A
- Civilisation has increasingly met needs and personal safety
- But we get more anxious
- What if the social forces that increase our physical wellbeing also increase our anxiety?
- Being better at self-control = aggression turned inward
21
Q
What is the psychodynamic self?
A
- Id: source of all motivation = sex and aggression, basic needs we are born with
- Pleasure principle and inconsistent with our behaviours
- Ego: referee, reality principle = enact motivations and serve society and takes demands and consequences into action, sublimation: channeling basic info into other goals
- Superego: Values imparted by society that guide and evaluate our behaviour
22
Q
What is the super ego made of?
A
- Ego ideal: goals and aspirations which are consistent with behaviour = pleasure
- Conscience - restroctions and prohibitions = Inconsistent with behaviour = anxiety
23
Q
Self-Control in anxiety:
A
- Balance the competing influencing systems = neuroticism
- You punish yourself through guilt
24
Q
Who was Albert Camus?
A
- Father of absurdism
- World is irrational and has no inherent meaning
- Stop looking for meaning and start creating it
25
Q
Nostalgia for unity:
A
- Undeniable and indestructible need to feel like reality makes sense
- Predictable and purpose
- Everything is unified with everything else
- Feel like it used to be that way and we were pulled away
- Oceanic feeling = memory where self and (m)other was indistinguishable
26
Q
Feeling of the absurd?
A
You feel the irrationality of the world, our need to make sense of the world through our mental models
27
Q
What is nihilism?
A
- Absolute denial of any meaning
- Unity is restored = everything is worthless = despair and stagnation
- Quiets anxiety
28
Q
What Is dogmatism?
A
- Absolute assertion of found meaning - this is the way
- Unity is restores and everything makes sense
- Oppression and stagnation
- Quiets anxiety
29
Q
What is the myth of sisyphys:
A
- Punished for escaping the underworld
- Condemned to eternal pointless existence (rock)
- Still free to choose how he interprets the situation = no absolute progress = ends up enjoying it = ability to choose how we perceive reality
