WEEK 11 - Theoretical perspectives of personality Flashcards
What is personality?
A cluster of traits that are relatively stable and long-lasting tendencies that influence behaviour across environments
What is the nomothetic area of personality?
Understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics
What is the ideographic area of personality?
Understanding how various parts of a person come. together as a whole.
What is Freud’s psychodynamic approach and the three core assumptions?
Personality model
- Psychic determinism
- Symbolic meaning
- Unconscious motivation
What did Freud mean by psychic determinism?
We are controlled by our underlying drives and conflicts, which shape our behaviour. Although hidden, can be discovered through Freudian slips and dreams.
In the psychodynamic approach to personality, what is symbolic meaning?
All actions (even minor) reveal our underlying drives
What is unconscious motivation?
We are mostly unaware of our motivations
How may the psychodynamic theory explain Freudian slips?
- Parapraxis
Error in speech, memory or physical action which freud believed to be caused by the unconscious mind - Psychological conflict bubbling to the surface
Thoughts are subconsciously repressed and unconsciously released
What is Freud’s topographic model 3 types of mental processes?
Conscious: Rational, goal directed, centre of awareness
Preconscious: Could become conscious at any time (eg knowledge base)
Unconscious: Irrational, not logic based, repressed and inaccessible
- Still plays a role in behaviour
In Freud’s topographic model, What does opposing motives suggest?
Opposing motives = ambivalence
- Different aspects of consciousness have conflicting feelings or motives
In Freud’s topographic model, how is resolution described?
Resolution = compromise formations
Developed to maximise fulfilment of conflicting motives
What is Freud’s drive (Instinct) model?
- Based on Darwin’s work, Freud suggested human behaviour is motivated by two drives:
Aggressive drive
Sexual drive
Describe Freud’s developmental model.
Libido follows a developmental course during childhood.
- Stages of psychosexual development
- Fixed progression of change from stage to stage
- Notion of fixation at a particular libidinal stage
In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the oral stage?
- 0-18 months
- Dependency
In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the anal stage?
- 2-3 years
- Orderliness, cleanliness, control, compliance
In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the phalic stage?
- 4-6 years
- Identification with parents (Especially same sex) and others
- Oecilpus complex, establishment of conscience.
In Freud’s psychosexual stage of development, what is included in the latency stage?
- 7-11 years
- Sublimination of sexual and aggressive impulses