Sullivan Flashcards
Saw personality as an energy system (tensions and energy transformations)
Interpersonal theory
A potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness
Tensions
2 types of tensions
needs and anxiety
Tensions brought on by biological imbalance between a person and the physiochemical environment both inside and outside of an organism; conjunctive tension
Needs
The most basic interpersonal need
Tenderness
Needs: Arise from a particular area of the body
Zonal needs
Needs: overall well-being of a person
General needs
Excess energy transformed into consistent characteristic behaviors
Dynamisms
A type of tension that is disjunctive and have no consistent actions for its relief
Anxiety
The chief disruptive force blocking the development of healthy interpersonal relations
Anxiety
A complete absence of anxiety or tension
Euphoria
Energy transformation become organized as typical behavior patterms that characterize a person throughout a lifetime; akin to traits or habit patterns
Dynamisms
The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred; a feeling of living amog one’s enemies
Malevolence
The conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between 2 ppl of equal status
Intimacy
The isolating dynamism; a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship; powerful during adolescence
Lust
A consistent pattern of behaviors that maintains people’s interpersonal security by protecting them from anxiety
Self-system
The most complex dynamism
Self-system
The principal stumbling block to favorable changes in personality
Self-system
Reduce feelings of anxiety or insecurity that result from endangered self-esteem and inconsistency of our experiences with our self-system
Security operations
2 types of Security operations
Dissociation and selective inattention
Includes all experiences that we block from awareness
Dissociation
Involves blocking only certain experiences from awareness
Selective inattention
People acquire certain images of self and others throughout the developmental stages
Personifications
Personification: infant’s vague representation of not being properly fed
Bad-mother
Tender and cooperative behaviors of the mothering one; develop after bad-mother
Good-mother
Building blocks of self-personification
me personification
3 Me personifications
bad me (punishments) good me (rewards) Not-me (dissociate or selectively inattend)
Unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that children invent to protect self-esteem
Eidetic personification
3 levels of cognition
Prototaxic, parataxic, syntaxic
Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others
Prototaxic level
Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others; cause and effect relationship between 2 events that occur coincidentally
Parataxic level
Illogical conclusion that a cause and effect relationship exists between 2 events in close temporal proximity
Parataxic distortion
Experiences that can be accurately communicated to others
Syntaxic level
Threshold periods are more crucial than the stages themselves
Stages of development
A time when child receives tenderness from the mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic linkage with the mother
Infancy
Dual personifications of the mother fused into one; have imaginary playmate
Childhood
Attempts to act like or sound like significant authority figures
Dramatization
Strategies to avoid anxiety and fear-provoking situation by remaining occupied with an acitivity that has earlier been proved useful
Preoccupation
Begins with the need for peers of equal status and when one finds a single chum to satisfy need for intimacy
Juvenile era
At this time, children should learn how to compete, compromise and to cooperate
Juvenile era
A time for intimacy and process of becoming a social being; most crucial stage
Preadolescence
Mistakes made during earlier stages can be overcome during this period, but mistakes during this period are difficult to surmount during later stages
Preadolescence
Development during this stage is ordinarily marked by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender; turning point in personality development
Early adolescence
Fusion of intimacy and lust toward the same person happens at this period; self-discovery period
Late adolescence
At this stage, a person establishes a love relationship with at least one significant other person
Adulthood
All _____ has an interpersonal origin and can only be understood with reference to a person’s social environment.
Psychological disorders
