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