Personality Theories & Therapy Philosophies Flashcards
Sheldon’s Body Types
Endomorphy: soft and spherical
Mesomorphy: hard, muscular, and rectangular
Ectomorphy: thin, fragile, lightly muscled
William Sheldon
Early theory of personality
Defined biological variables related to behavior
Characterized people by body type and related then to personality types
Humanism
Developed in the mid 1900s in opposition to psychoanalysis and behaviorism; believe that people should be considered as wholes rather than in terms of S/R (beh.) or instinct (psychoanalysis).
Includes Maslow and Rogers.
Timeline of Treatment
1500s: asylums; shackled, no beds, no heat, etc.
1792: Pinel placed in charge of Paris asylum; removed shackles, improved conditions greatly
Mid-Late 1800s: Dorothea Dix; reformer in U.S.
1938: Cerletti and Bini introduced use of electroshock
1935-1955: prefrontal lobotomies to treat schizophrenia
1950s: antipsychotic drugs introduced; changed atmosphere in psychiatric hospitals; stopped lobotomies and electroshock
General paresis
disorder characterized by delusions of grandeur, mental deterioration, eventual paralysis, and death; eventually was discovered that general paresis was due to brain deterioration by syphilis.
Emil Kraepelin
published a textbook; noted that some symptoms occurred together regularly enough that the patterns could be considered a specific disorder; described the disorders and classified them by integrating clinical data; precursor to DSM
Psychodynamic Theory of Personality and Abnormal Psychology and Treatment Models
Freud, Jung, Adler, Horney, Anna Freud, Erikson, Object-Relations theory (Klein, Winnicott, Mahler, Kernberg)
Psychodynamic (Psychoanalytic) Theory
postulate existence of unconscious internal states that motivate the overt actions of an individual and determine personality
id
everything psychological that’s present at birth; pleasure principle.
Primary process (id’s response to frustration regarding the goal to gain satisfaction now, rather than later; example: hungry but no food available –> use primary process to generate a memory image of food to alleviate frustration)
Wish-fulfillment: the mental image resulting from primary process
ego
ego operates according to reality principle (taking into account objectivity as it guides or inhibits the activity of the id and the pleasure principle)
The give and take of ego with reality promotes growth of psychological processes
Secondary process
Superego
similar to id in that it is separate from reality; moral branch of personality, strives for perfection.
Two subsystems: conscience and ego-ideal
Conscience develops based on punishments
Ego-ideal is based on reward/approval
Instinct
innate psychological representation of bodily excitation (need).
Two types: Eros and Thanatos (life and death instincts)
Life instincts strive for survival (hunger, thirst, sex); form of energy by which life instincts perform their work is “libido”
Death represent unconscious wish for ultimate state of rest
Defense mechanisms (summary)
The ego’s recourse to releasing excessive pressures due to anxiety.
Two common characteristics of all def. mech.: deny (falsify or distort) reality & operate unconsciously
Eight Types of Defense Mechanisms
Repression: unconscious forgetting
Suppression: deliberate forgetting
Projection: attributes urges to others
Reaction formation: repress with opposite wish
Rationalization: socially acceptable explanation
Regression: revert to earlier stage of dev.
Sublimation: transform urges into accepted beh.
Displacement: frustration projected onto different object/person than that causing the frustration
Carl Jung
libido as psychic energy in general (not rooted in sexuality); identified ego as conscious mind
Identified two unconscious parts: personal and collective (system shared among all humans made up of archetypes, thoughts images with emotional element)
Jungian archetypes
Persona: mask adopted by person in response to demands of social convention
Anima and animus: (F/M) help us understand gender
Shadow: animal instincts that humans inherited through evolution
Self: person’s striving for unity; point of intersection between collective unconscious and conscious (self described as a circle “mandala”, reconciler of opposites)
Extroversion/Introversion
Jung: two major orientations of personality, both present but one is usually dominant
Extroversion: oriented toward external, objective world
Introversion: orientation toward inner, subjective world
Four psychological functions (Jung)
Thinking, feeling, sensing, intuiting
One of the four is more differentiated than the others
Alfred Adler’s Theory
Immediate social imperatives of family and society influence unconscious factors; inferiority complex
Inferiority Complex
individual’s sense of incompleteness, sense of imperfection, physical inferiorities, as well as social disabilities.
Striving toward superiority drives the personality; when socially oriented, enhances personality
Creative self
Adler; force by which each individual shapes his/her uniqueness, making personality
Style of life
Adler; manifestation of creative self, describes person’s unique way of achieving superiority
Molded by family environment
Fictional Finalism
Adler; individual is motivated more by his/her expectations of future than by past experiences
Human goals are based on subjective/fictional estimate of life’s values rather than objective data from past
Comparing Freud, Jung, Adler
Freud: inborn instincts motivate behaviors
Jung: Inborn archetypes govern behavior
Adler: motivated by striving for superiority
Karen Horney
Suggested 1 of 10 needs governs neurotic personality
Ways neurotic needs differ from healthy needs:
1. Higher intensity
2. Indiscriminate in application
3. At least partially disregard reality
4. Tendency to provoke intense anxiety
Horney’s theory of development
Helplessness –> anxiety
Child uses three strategies to overcome this anxiety:
1. Moving toward people (for security/positive gain)
2. Moving against people (fighting)
3. Moving away from people
Healthy people use all three strategies; threatened child will use one exclusively, carries over into adulthood
Anna Freud
Modified and extended father’s work; more direct investigation of conscious ego and its relation to environment, unconscious, and superego.
Founder of ego psychology
Augmented understanding of ego defense mechanisms
Erik Erikson
Ego psychologist
Expanded on Freud’s stages to cover lifespan
Showed how neg experiences could result in pos results on personality.
Object-Relations Theory
Psychodynamic theory of personality
“Object:” refers to symbolic representation of significant part of child’s personality
Concerned with the creation and dev. of these internalized objects in children
(Klein, Winnicott, Mahler, Kernberg)
Psychoanalysis
psychotherapy; developed by Freud
Intensive, long-term treatment for uncovering repressed memories, motives, & conflicts stemming from problems in psychosexual development
Deal with repressed conflict, free up energy for further devlopment