What is Personality?

1. What is Personality? • Personality • an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting • four basic perspectives • Psychoanalytic • Trait • Humanistic • Social-cognitive

3. Personality An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Each dwarf has a distinct personality.

4. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • From Freud’s theory which proposes that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality

5. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Psychoanalysis • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts • techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

6. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Free Association • in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious • person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

7. What is the iceberg analogy of consciousness?

8. Levels of Consciousness: Iceberg theory • 1. Conscious mind – like the top of the iceberg, only a small portion of our mind is accessible to us. • 2. Preconscious mind – material that is unconscious, but can be easily brought into awareness. Moves back & forth easily between conscious & unconscious. • 3. Unconscious mind – is completely outside of our awareness (could produce anxiety if made conscious).

9. The iceberg is a good analogy because very little is visible on the surface but lots more is visible under water.

10. Ego Conscious mind Unconscious mind Superego Id Personality Structure • Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

11. What are Freud’s parts of personality? • 1. Id – “pleasure principle” unconsciousanimalistic impulses that want to be gratified, without regard to potential punishment. • 2. Ego “reality principle” – moderates between the id and superego. • 3. Superego – the “moral principle” of our personality which tells us right from wrong our conscience

13. The Ego moderates between the Id and the Superego.

14. What are ego Defense Mechanisms? • Ways we protect ourself from painful emotions.

15. Defense mechanisms • 1. Repression: “motivated forgetting” • We press unpleasant thoughts into unconscious • E.g., a child who is molested, may suppress the traumatic event so that he/she has no memory for the event.

16. 2. Rationalization – we convince ourselves that our sins aren’t that bad You run over a person and tell yourself “I’m sure he would have died soon anyway.” • You steal and say, “Well, I spend a lot of money at this store!”

17. Everybody else is doing it! New Orleans looting after Katrina

18. 3.Regression • Dealing with problems by “regressing” or going backward in terms of maturity. • We act immature to deal with stress • Ex: Soldiers crying for “mommy” • Ex: Fighting couples acting immature.

19. 4. Displacement-Taking your anger out on something or someone • E.g., After being grilled by your boss, you go home & yell at your partner or the dog/cat. • Peeing on the teacher’s car.

20. 5. Projection – You attribute your negative characteristics to another person. • When people project their own faults onto others, they generally do not deny that they themselves possess those faults. • E.g., Your partner tells you how selfish you are, when they are in fact selfish.

21. 6. Reaction Formation – acting the opposite of how you feel. • You do the opposite of how you feel to defend your own doubts. • E.g., A person who doubts his faith may act like a religious zealot to defend his religion.

23. 7. What is Denial?

24. Denial, not “The Nile!!!!”

25. Denial- refusing to believe the truth • We refuse to accept horrible news, even with evidence to the contrary. • E.g., you hear a friend has died & won’t believe it’s true.

26. 8. Sublimation –Making something bad about yourself into something positive. • Don’t mix up with displacement (kicking dog) • E.g., Aggressive impulses are transformed into the urge to engage in competitive sports. • Most desirable way of dealing with unacceptable id impulses.

28. What are Freud’s psychosexual stages? • Oral (0-1) (fixation- chewing on stuff) • Anal (2-3) • Phallic (4-5) • Latency (6-12) • Genital (puberty and older)

29. Oral Stage

30. Oral Stage • The pleasure center is the mouth. Freud said the pleasure center moves around the body as we develop. • Freud said if we are not gratified at this stage we will be fixated at this stage. • Adults who are fixated at this stage like to do things with mouth for pleasure (smoking, eating, chew gum, bite nails, other things.)

31. What is fixation? • Being stuck in a stage of development

32. Anal Stage

33. Anal stage • Adults who were not gratified at this stage can be anally repulsive or anally retentive. • Anal retentive are overly-neat and organized (Type A personality) • Anal repulsive are overly messy and irresponsible.

35. Phallic stage • Genitals are the pleasure zone. • Oedipal complex – boys have erotically tinged preference for their mother – compete with their father for mother’s attention

36. What is the Oedipus complex? • Boys prefer mothers and compete with their fathers for mother’s attention. Age 3-6

37. Phallic stage cont. . . • Not resolving the Oedipal conflict may result in boy not identifying with father, thus not develop a conscience. • Electra complex (girls’ equivalent to Oedipus) • Also. . . Girls have penis envy and blame and resent their mothers for their anatomical deficiency.

38. The latency period “the cooties stage” begins sometime around the age of six and ends when puberty starts to begin. Freud believed that in this phase the Oedipus complex was dissolved and set free, resulting in a relatively conflict-free period of development. In this phase, the child begins to make connections to siblings, other children, and adults. This phase is typified by a solidifying of the habits that the child developed in the earlier stages. • Latency – “cooties stage” - sexuality is hidden (latency = hidden) Children in same sex groups. Boys hang with father. Girls with mother.

39. Genital stage (puberty ++) • Libidinal energy is not focused on your own genitals (like in the phallic stage) but on other people’s genitals. • Fixation in earlier stages will hinder this stage.

40. Neo-Freudians • Alfred Adler • importance of childhood social tension • Karen Horney • sought to balance Freud’s masculine biases • Carl Jung • emphasized the collective unconscious

41. Who was Carl Jung? • He was a psychoanalyst who disagreed with Freud. • 1. collective unconscious • 2. archetypes

42. Carl Jung • Less emphasis on social factors. • Focused on the unconscious. • We all have a collective unconscious: a shared/inherited well of memory traces from our species history.

43. Carl Jung • Archetypes – certain symbols/literary characters that we all recognize • Ex: wise old man, witches, messiah

44. Alfred Adler • Childhood is important to personality. • But focus should be on social factors- not sexual ones. • Our behavior is driven by our efforts to conquer inferiority and feel superior. • Inferiority Complex (We strive to be superior) • First to study birth order

45. What are Criticisms of Freud’s theory?: • 1.   Freud had no scientific data to support his theories. Theories aren’t scientific. • 2.   Freud’s theories (unconscious mind, etc.) cannot be observed. • 3.   Theory explains behavior (post-hoc) after the fact. • 4.    Observations not representative of population (very sexist and not multicultural).

46. What are Pros (good) of Freud’s theory • 1. childhood experiences are important in development. • 2. Information outside of awareness does influence us. • 3. Defense mechanisms—good descriptions of some of our behaviors.

47. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective • Important within its historical context • Researchers find little support that defense mechanisms disguise sexual and aggressive impulses • History does not support Freud’s idea that sexual repression causes psychological disorder

48. Humanistic Psychology • In the 1960’s people became sick of Freud’s negativity and trait psychology’s objectivity. • Along came psychologists who wanted to focus on “healthy” people and how to help them strive to “be all that they can be”. Freud studied the ill, humanists studied the well.

49. Abraham Maslow’s Self Actualizing Person • Hierarchy of Needs • Ultimately seek self- actualization (the process of fulfilling our potential). • Maslow developed his ideas by studying what he termed “healthy people”.