Module 38: Classic Perspectives on Personality

Question 1

Personality

Answer 1

An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Question 2

Psychodynamic Theories

Answer 2

Theories that view personality with a focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences.
- View human behavior as an interaction between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Question 3

Psychoanalysis

Answer 3

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions.

Question 4

Unconscious

Answer 4

According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.

According to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.

Question 5

Free Association

Answer 5

In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

Question 6

What was Freud’s view of personality?

Answer 6

• Believed personality arises from conflict between impulse and restraint
• – Between pleasure-seeking biological urges and internalized social controls over these urges
• Arises from our efforts to resolve this basic conflict.

Question 7

Id

Answer 7

A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification.
- Newborn babies are only Id —> cry out wanting satisfaction, not caring about the world’s conditions and demands

Question 8

Ego

Answer 8

The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, the superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain.
- Toddlers respond to the real world

Question 9

Superego

Answer 9

The part of the personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the conscience) and for future aspirations.

• Around age 4 or 5
• The voice of our moral compass
• Forces ego to consider ideal along with real —> how we ought to behave

Question 10

Psychosexual Stages

Answer 10

The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

Question 11

Oral

Answer 11

• 0 - 18 months
• Pleasure centers on the mouth - sucking, biting, chewing
• Dependency

Question 12

Anal

Answer 12

• 18 - 36 months

- Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Question 13

Phallic

Answer 13

• 3 - 6 years
• Pleasure zone is the genitals
• Cope with incestuous sexual feelings

Question 14

Latency

Answer 14

• 6 to puberty

- Phase of dormant sexual feelings

Question 15

Genital

Answer 15

• Puberty and on

- Maturation of sexual interests

Question 16

Oedipus Complex

Answer 16

According to Freud, a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father.

• Phallic stage
• Eventually cope with these feelings by repressing them and trying to become like the rival parent

Question 17

Identification

Answer 17

The process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos.

Question 18

Fixation

Answer 18

In personality theory, according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

• Orally deprived might fixate at this stage
• – Could exhibit passive dependence

Question 19

Why do we feel anxiety?

Answer 19

• Must control sexual and aggressive impulses war

- – Ego fears losing control of id-superego

Question 20

Defense Mechanisms

Answer 20

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

Question 21

Repression

Answer 21

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories.

Question 22

Regression

Answer 22

Retreating to an earlier psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.
- Little boy sucks his thumb in the car on his way to his first day of school

Question 23

Reaction Formation

Answer 23

Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

- Repressing angriness —> displays exaggerated friendliness

Question 24

Projection

Answer 24

Disguising one’s own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
- Thief thinks everyone is a thief.

Question 25

Rationalization

Answer 25

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions.
- A student might blame a poor exam score on the instructor rather than their own lack of preparation

Question 26

Displacement

Answer 26

Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.
- Little girl kicks the dog after her mother puts her in time out

Question 27

Denial

Answer 27

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.

- Partner denies evidence of his loved one’s affair

Question 28

Alfred Adler

Answer 28

• Psychodynamic
• Childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation
• Inferiority complex
• – Behavior driven by efforts to overcome childhood feelings of inferiority

Question 29

Karen Horney

Answer 29

• Psychodynamic
• Childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation
• Childhood anxiety triggers desire for love and security

Question 30

Carl Jung

Answer 30

• Psychodynamic
• Childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personality formation
• Said we have a collective unconsciousness consisting of archetypes

Question 31

What did the psychodynamic theorists believe?

Answer 31

The unconscious and conscious minds interact. Childhood experiences and defense mechanisms are important.

Question 32

Collective Unconscious

Answer 32

Carl Jung’s concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history
- Archetypes

Question 33

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 33

A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
- Provide a map of unconscious motives

Question 34

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 34

The most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

Question 35

Humanistic Theories

Answer 35

Theories that view personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth.

Question 36

Hierarchy of Needs

Answer 36

Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base with physiological needs that must first be satisfied before people can fulfill higher-level safety needs and then psychological needs.
- People motivated by this

Question 37

The pyramid

Answer 37

• Physiological
• Personal safety (security)
• Love, be loved, love ourselves
• Self-esteem
• Ultimately seek —> self-actualization

Question 38

Self-actualization

Answer 38

One of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential.

Question 39

Self-transcendence

Answer 39

The striving for identity, meaning, and purpose beyond self.

Question 40

Carl Roger’s Person-Perspective Theory

Answer 40

• People are basically good —> have self-actualizing tendencies
• – Unless put in a growth-inhibiting environment, we will all strive for growth and fulfillment

Question 41

What does a growth-promoting social climate provide?

Answer 41

• Acceptance
• Genuineness —> open with our own feelings, drop facade, transparent and self-disclosing
• Empathy

Question 42

Unconditional Positive Regard

Answer 42

A caring, accepting, nonjudgmental attitude, which Carl Rogers believes would help people develop self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Question 43

Self-concept

Answer 43

All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, “Who am I?”
- According to Maslow and Rogers is a central feature of personality