THEORY OF CHARACTER FORMATION Flashcards
Certain character traits can be explained historically as the permanent transmutations of primitive instinctual impulses by _______________ influences.
ENVIRONMENTAL
For example, stinginess, pedantry, and orderliness are derivatives of anal erotic instinctual forces.
Since the patient’s character, in its typical mode of reaction, becomes the resistance against the uncovering of the unconscious (character resistance), it can be proven that during the treatment, this function of the character mirrors its _______________.
ORIGIN
The causes of a person’s typical reactions in everyday life and in the treatment are the same as those which not only determined the formation of the character in the first place but consolidated and preserved the mode of reaction once it had been established and shaped into an automatic mechanism independent of the conscious will.
The character consists in a _______________ change of the ego which one might describe as a hardening.
CHRONIC
This hardening is the actual basis for the becoming chronic of the characteristic mode of reaction; its purpose is to protect the ego from external and internal dangers. It merits the designation “armoring”.
The armor’s mode of reaction always proceeds according to the ____________________ principle.
PLEASURE-UNPLEASURE PRINCIPLE
In unpleasurable situations, the armoring _______________; in pleasurable situations, it _______________.
- Unpleasurable –> CONTRACTS
- Pleasurable –> EXPANDS
The degree of character flexibility, the ability to open oneself to the outside world or to close oneself to it, depending upon the situation, constitutes the difference between a reality-oriented and a neurotic character structure.
What are some examples of pathologically rigid armoring?
- AFFECT BLOCKED COMPULSIVE CHARACTERS
- SCHIZOPHRENIC AUTISM
Both tend toward catatonic rigidity.
The character armor is formed as a chronic result of the clash between _______________ demands and an outer world which frustrates those demands.
INSTINCTUAL
The expression and the sum total of the impingements of the outer world on instinctual life, through accumulation and qualitative homogeneity, constitute a _______________.
HISTORICAL WHOLE (PATHO-HISTORIOGRAPHY)
It is around the __________ that this armoring is formed, around precisely that part of the personality which lies at the boundary between biophysiological instinctive life and the outer world.
EGO
Hence we designate it as the character of the ego.
The formation of the character commences as a definite form of the overcoming of the _______________ conflict.
OEDIPAL
The conditions which lead precisely to this kind of resolution are special, i.e., they relate specifically to the character.
If we consider what is common to neurotic conditions, we find extremely intense genital desires and a relatively weak ego which, out of fear of being punished, seeks to protect itself by _______________.
REPRESSIONS
The repressions lead to damming up of the impulses, which in turn, threatens the simple repressions with breakthroughs of repressed impulses.
The economically necessitated hardening of the ego takes place on the basis of three processes:
1.) It identifies with the frustrating reality as personified in the figure of the main suppressive person.
2.) It turns against itself the aggression which it mobilized against the suppressive person and which also produced the anxiety.
3.) It develops reactive attitudes toward the sexual strivings, i.e., it utilizes the energy of these strivings to serve its own purposes, namely to ward them off.
The first process gives the armoring its meaningful contents.
The second process probably binds the most essential element of aggressive energy, shuts off a part of the mode of motion, and thereby creates the inhibiting factor of the character.
The third process withdraws a certain quantity of libido from the repressed libidinal drives so that their urgency is weakened. Later this transformation is not only eliminated; it is made superfluous by the intensification of the remaining energy cathexis as a result of the restriction of the mode of motion, gratification, and general productivity.
Describe, in summary, the pathophysiology of a neurotic character from its reaction basis (the character armoring). This would be a personality whose character structure precludes the establishment of a sex-economic regulation of energy which constitutes the precondition of a later neurotic illness.
The reaction basis of the neurotic character means that it went too far and allowed the ego to become rigid in a way which precluded attainment of a regulated sexual life and sexual experience. The unconscious instinctual forces are thus deprived of any energetic release, and the sexual stasis not only remains permanent but continually increases. Next, we note a steady development of the character reaction formations (e.g., ascetic ideology, etc.) against the sexual demands built up in connection with the contemporary conflicts in important life situations. Thus, a cycle is set up; the stasis is increased and leads to new reaction formations in the very same way as their phobic predecessors. However, the stasis always increases more rapidly than the armoring until, in the end, the reaction formation is no longer adequate to keep the psychic tension in check. It is at this point that the repressed sexual desires break through and are immediately warded off by symptom formations (formation of a phobia or its equivalent).
The formation of the character depends not merely upon the fact that instinct and frustration clash with one another but also upon the way in which this happens; the stage of development during which the character-forming conflicts occur; and which instincts are involved.
The result of character formation is dependent upon:
- The phase in which the impulse is frustrated;
- The frequency and intensity of the frustrations;
- The impulses against which the frustration is chiefly directed;
- The correlation between indulgence and frustration;
- The sex of the person chiefly responsible for the frustrations;
- The contradictions in the frustrations themselves.
All these conditions are determined by the prevailing social order with respect to education, morality, and the gratification of needs; in the final analysis, by the prevailing economic structure of the society.
The goal of a future prophylaxis of neuroses is the formation of characters which not only give the ego sufficient support against the inner and outer world but also allow the sexual and social ____________________ necessary for psychic economy.
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
Every frustration of the kind entailed by present-day methods of education causes a withdrawal of bioenergy into the ego and, consequently, a strengthening of ____________________.
SECONDARY NARCISSISM
In the language of modern bioenergetics: the continual frustration of primary natural needs leads to chronic contraction of the biosystem (muscular armor, sympatheticotonia, etc.). The conflict between inhibited primary drives and the armor gives rise to secondary, antisocial drives (sadism, etc.); in the process of breaking through the armor, primary biological impulses are transformed into destructive sadistic impulses.
The energetic withdrawal into the ego and strengthening of secondary narcissism itself constitutes a character transformation of the ego inasmuch as there is an increase in ego _______________.
EGO SENSITIVITY
This is expressed as shyness and a heightened sense of anxiety.
In the presence of increased ego sensitivity, with accompanying shyness and hyperanxiety, if, as is usually the case, the person responsible for the frustration is loved, an _______________ attitude, later an identification, is developed toward that person.
AMBIVALENT
In addition to the suppression, the child internalizes certain character traits of this person–as a matter of fact, precisely those traits directed against his own instinct. What happens, then, is essentially that the instinct is repressed or coped with in some other way.
The effect of the frustration on the character is largely dependent upon __________ the impulse is frustrated.
WHEN
If it is frustrated in its initial stages of development, the repression succeeds only too well. Although the victory is complete, the impulse can be neither sublimated nor consciously gratified.
For example, the premature repression of anal eroticism impedes the development of anal sublimations and prepares the way for severe anal reaction formations.
When can an impulse NOT be completely repressed?
At the HEIGHT of its development
A frustration at this point is much more likely to create an indissoluble conflict between prohibition and impulse.
If a fully developed impulse encounters a sudden, unanticipated frustration, it lays the groundwork for the development of an _______________ personality.
IMPULSIVE
In this case, the child does not fully accept the prohibition. Nonetheless, he develops guilt feelings, which intensify the impulsive actions until they become compulsive impulses. So we find, in impulsive psychopaths, an unformed character structure that is the opposite of the demand for sufficient armoring against the outer and inner world. It is characteristic of the impulsive type that the reaction formation is not employed against the impulses; rather the impulses themselves (predominantly sadistic impulses) are enlisted as a defense against imaginary situations of danger, as well as the danger arising from the impulses. Since, as a result of the disordered genital structure, the energetic economy is in a wretched state, the sexual stasis occasionally increases the anxiety and, with it, the character reactions, often leading to excesses of all kinds.
Just as the impulsive type is characterized by the cleavage between fully developed instinct and sudden frustration, the ____________________ type is characterized by an accumulation of frustrations and other instinct-inhibiting educational measures from the beginning to the end of his instinctual development.
INSTINCT-INHIBITED
The character armoring which corresponds to it tends to be rigid, considerably constrains the individual’s psychic flexibility, and forms the reaction basis for depressive states and compulsive symptoms (inhibited aggression).
The sociological significance lies in the docile, undiscriminating character created.
The __________ and _______________ of the person mainly responsible for one’s upbringing are of the greatest importance for the nature of one’s later sexual life.
SEX and CHARACTER
In a system of education built upon family units, the parents function as the main executors of ____________________.
SOCIAL INFLUENCE
Because of the usually unconscious sexual attitude of the parents toward their children, it happens that the father has a father has a stronger liking for and is less prone to restrict and educate the _______________.
DAUGHTER
While the mother has a stronger liking for and is less prone to restrict and educate the son.
This rule is acted out due to quite a number of reasons, some of which are not discussed here.
Because of the unconscious familial dynamic (in which the parents are the chief representatives of social influence toward their children), the sexual relationship determines, in most cases, that the parent of the _______________ sex (the identifying parent) becomes most responsible for the child’s upbringing.
SAME SEX
The process by which a drive is turned against the self and is taken over by the ego. The drive’s cathexis is turned into a counter-cathexis against the drive’s unconscious goal.
DRIVE INVERSION
