Personality Theory Flashcards
Behavioral
Define psychoanalysis
- a procedure & theory of personality/mind
The three conceptual approaches most influential to contemporary psychoanalytic thought
- modern structural theory
- Self Psychology
- Object Relations Theory
Most Imp areas of convergence
- Continuum concept: mental disorders lie on a continuum
- early childhood development (adults re-enact early childhood experiences and fantasy)
- Unconscious mental processes on determining behavior
- Approach to treatment
- Significance of theory and clinical data
Define Personality
- the enduring inner characteristics of individuals that organize behavior
- accounts for consistent patterns of behavior
- mediate person’s behavior with the world
- systematically organized and do not operate randomly
The human personality is a system that seeks and creates meaning
Freuds ultimate mission
- find biological basis of human behavior, personality, and mind
- believes sex keeps psychology in biological terms
Define Transference
- an instance of unconscious organizing activity (ex. relating past instances to the present.. or holding everyone accountable for someone else’s mistake)
Define countertransference
- feelings/ attitudes evoked in the physician by the patient’s transference ( physician demonstrating a certain attitude, or feeling based on the pt personality)
Define Defense Mechanism
- coping styles; automatic psychological processes that protect the individual against anxiety and awareness of internal or external dangers or stressors.
- operate to maintain equilibrium, and at an unconscious level
Define Continuum Approach
- a defense mechanism that organizes the defenses
- MOST mature and adaptive defenses: serves to protect from anxiety and negative feelings without a significant social cost (ex. sublimation, suppression, altruism, humor..
- LESS mature or adaptive: protects from distress but with significant social cost (projection, splitting, acting out)
- BE SURE TO VIEW PPT/HANDOUT FOR EXAMPLES *
Define Common Defense among medical patients…
- Stress that comes with routine doctor’s visits, medical conditions. and/or hospitalization
- medical content represents fertile ground to observe defense mechanism (repression, denial, undoing, regression, idealization)
- BE SURE TO VIEW PPT/HANDOUT FOR EXAMPLES*
Define defenses of highly educated (from the physician)…
- using the minds higher functions to ward off distress
(intellectualization, rationalization, isolation of affect) - BE SURE TO VIEW PPT/HANDOUT FOR EXAMPLES*
Acting out
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by actions rather than reflections or feelings. Defensive acting out is not synonymous with bad behavior because it requires evidence that the behavior is related to emotional conflicts.
Altruism
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by dedication to meeting the needs of others. Unlike the self-sacrifice sometimes characteristic of reaction formation, the individual receives gratification either vicariously or from the response of others.
Denial
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by refusing to acknowledge some painful aspect of external reality or subjective experience that would be apparent to others. The term psychotic denial is used when there is gross impairment in reality testing.
Devaluation
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by attributing exaggerated negative qualities to self or others
Displacement
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by transferring a feeling about, or a response to, one object onto another (usually less threatening) substitute object.
Help-Rejecting Complaining
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by complaining or making repetitious requests for help that disguise covert feelings of hostility or reproach toward others, which are then expressed by rejecting the suggestions, advice, or help that others offer. The complaints or requests may involve physical or psychological symptoms or life problems.
Humor
Deal with emotional conflict or external stressors by emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of the conflict or stressors.
Idealization
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by attributing exaggerated positive qualities to others.
Intellectualization
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by the excessive use of abstract thinking or the making of generalizations to control or minimize disturbing feelings.
Isolation of Affect
The splitting-off of the emotional components from a thought. Example: A medical student dissects a cadaver without being disturbed by thoughts of death. Isolation may be temporary (affect postponement). Example: A bank teller appears calm and cool while frustrating a robbery but afterward is tearful and tremulous.
Projection
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by falsely attributing to another his or her own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts.
Rationalization
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self-serving but incorrect explanations.
Reaction Formation
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by substituting behavior, thoughts, or feelings that are diametrically opposed to his or her own unacceptable thoughts or feelings (this usually occurs in conjunction with their repression).
Regression
By another anxiety-evading mechanism known as regression, the personality may suffer a loss of some of the development already attained and may revert to a lower level of adaptation and expression
Repression
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by expelling disturbing wishes, thoughts, or experiences from conscious awareness. The feeling component may remain conscious, detached from its associated ideas.
Self-Observation
Deal with emotional conflict or stressors by reflecting on his or her own thoughts, feelings, motivation, and behavior, and responding appropriately.
Splitting
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by compartmentalizing opposite affect states and failing to integrate the positive and negative qualities of the self or others into cohesive images. Because ambivalent affects cannot be experienced simultaneously, more balanced views and expectations of self or others are excluded from emotional awareness. Self and object images tend to alternate between polar opposites: exclusively loving, powerful, worthy, nurturant, and kind – or exclusively bad, hateful, angry, destructive, rejecting, or worthless.
Sublimation
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by channeling potentially maladaptive feelings or impulses into socially acceptable behavior (e.g., contact sports to channel angry impulses)
Suppression
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by intentionally avoiding thinking about disturbing problems, wishes, feelings, or experiences.
Undoing
Deal with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by words or behavior designed to negate or make amends symbolically for unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or actions.
