Personality Flashcards
Who developed the psychodynamic/psychoanalytic theory is it?
Freud; Theories focus on inner forces that interact with experiences
What is free association?
Theory developed by Freud that encourages the patient to speak freely about whatever comes to mind.
What is ego?
Part of personality structure; largely conscious “executive” part of personality that mediates among the demands of id, superego, and reality
What is the reality principal?
“rational self” that satisfies id’s desires that bring pleasure
What is id?
Part of personality structure; Unconscious psychic energy that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives; operates on pleasure principal
What is the superego?
Part of the personality structure that represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscious) and for future aspirations
What are the psychosexual stages and who developed them?
Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
Freud
What is the oedipus complex?
Young boys develop unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and see their father’s as rivals, producing guilt and fearing castration, therefore resolving by identifying with their fathers and no longer seeing them as rivals
What are Freud’s theories of defense mechanisms?
Regression, reaction formation, rationalization, displacement, denial
What was the unconscious process accruing to Freud?
Reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.
Who were the main Neo-Freudians and what did they all believe?
Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Karen Horney;
Anxiety and personality are functions of social, not sexual experiences and they believed in the collective unconscious
What were the critiques of Freud?
Unfalsifiability (theories hard to prove or disprove), unrepresentative sampling (based his research on people with psychological problems), biased observations, hindsight bias
What was the humanistic theory and who came up with it?
View personality with a focus on the potential for healthy personal growth;
Rogers and Maslow
What were the flaws with the humanistic perspective?
Belief that evil is a social phenomenon, all people have good intentions, pursuit of self-actualization promotes self-centeredness rather than self-transcendence.
How can one assess traits?
Personality inventory (questionnaires assessing more than one thing at one time), MMPI (most widely used personality test; specializes in emotional disorders), empirically derived test (such as MMPI-testing items then selecting those that discriminate between groups)
