lec 9 personality Flashcards
What is personality?
An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
What are psychodynamic theories? who are the proponents?
Adler, Horney, Jung
view personality with a focus on the unconscious mind and the importance of childhood experiences.
What is psychoanalysis theory? Proponent?
Freud
-attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts.
What is the unconscious according to Freud?
a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.
What is free association?
A method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind.
What is the id?
strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
What is the ego?
-partly conscious, ‘executive’
-mediates b/w demands of id, superego, and reality
What is the superego?
-partly conscious
-internalized ideals and standards for judgment
What are psychosexual stages?
The childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
What is the Oedipus complex?
A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.
What is identification?
The process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.
What is fixation?
lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage.
What are defense mechanisms?
The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
What is repression?
The basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.
What is the collective unconscious?
Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.
What is terror-management theory?
A theory of death-related anxiety that explores people’s emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death.
What is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)?
A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through stories about ambiguous scenes.
What is a projective test?
A personality test that provides ambiguous images designed to trigger projection of people’s inner dynamics.
What is the Rorschach inkblot test?
A projective test designed by Hermann Rorschach that seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretation of inkblots.
What are humanistic theories? who are the proponents?
-Rogers, Maslow
Theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.
What is the hierarchy of needs?
Maslow’s five levels of human needs, beginning with physiological needs, often visualized as a pyramid.
What is self-actualization?
One of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic needs are met and self-esteem is achieved.
What is self-transcendence?
The striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond the self.
What is unconditional positive regard?
A caring, accepting, and nonjudgmental attitude believed to help clients develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.
