Personality Psychology, Lecture 8 Self-Esteem, Narcissism, Attachment Style, and Repression

1. Personality Psychology, Lecture 8Self-Esteem, Narcissism, Attachment Style, and Repression Professor Ian McGregor

2. Lecture 8 Outline • Erikson’s Final Stages • The Learning Assumption (and video) • Adult Attachment Styles and Repression • Genetics and Parenting • Borderline and Narcissistic Personalities • Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem

3. Quiz Next Week • How is insecure attachment learned and how might it relate to the developmental theories of Rogers, Maslow, Freud, Erikson, Adler, and Horney? (5 marks) • How are emotion and goal regulation related to optimal and stunted psychosocial development? (3 marks) (total of four double spaced pages for both answers)

4. Erikson: Psychosocial Development • 1. Basic Trust • 2. Autonomy • 3. Initiative • 4. Industry • 5. Identity • 6. Intimacy • 7. Generativity • 8. Integrity

5. 5. Identity vs. Role Confusion • Adolescents and young adults try to figure out “Who am I?” They establish sexual, ethnic, and career identities, or are confused about what future roles to play. • Finding self, Piaget, genital, E, O, C, N • Erikson’s life • Marcia’s identity statuses • From success to integrity…the integrity shift • Related to self-realization and self-actualization of Horney, Rogers, and Maslow

6. Rogers: Client Centered Therapy • Reality and congruence • Responsibility: Non-directive (autonomy support). • Client growth motive—people want to be good! • Organismic valuing process • Actualizing tendency • Permission to explore and express feelings • Unconditional, non-evaluative positive regard • Compassionate perspective-taking—active listening • Fully functioning person • Open to wide experience and feelings • Present in the here and now (not remote or preoccupied) • Organismic trusting • Accepts freedom and responsibility for self-direction

7. Lady of Shalott(Tennyson, 1843, Waterhouse, 1888, 1894)http://charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/TENNLADY.HTML

8. 6. Intimacy vs. Isolation • Young adults seek companionship and love with another person or become isolated from others. • Caring for another; relatedness; widening circle of concern, coping with the “hell is others,” altruism, N, E, A,O,C • B-love, D-love, I-Thou, perspective-taking, therapeutic climate vs. Horney’s neurotic needs and self-absorption • Relationships and the dialogical self (values and worth). Identity negotiation. Positive illusions.

9. 7. Generativity vs. Stagnation • Middle-age adults are productive, performing meaningful work and raising a family, or become stagnant and inactive. • Caring for society and future; relatedness; still wider circle of concern, A, E, C (family…low O) • Goals beyond death, communal goals and shared reality, disidentification with personal goals (Eastern and Western wisdom traditions) • McAdams’ redemption narratives • Promotes Integrity vs. Despair (final stage)

10. Neoanalytic theories Related to Intimacy and Generativity • Horney’s Neurotic Needs and Coping Strategies • Basic anxiety and hostility • Moving toward, against, and away • “Splitting” and neurotic “striving for glory” • Either way, self-absorbed and unable to love others or be generative • Adler’s “social interest” • Socially useful types (versus ruling, leaning, avoiding) • Fromm’s “productive mode” (**not required for quiz) • Versus receptive, exploitive, hoarding, manipulating • Escapes : authoritarian, destructive, conformist

11. 8. Integrity vs. Despair • Older adults try to make sense out of their lives, either seeing life as a meaningful whole or despairing at goals never reached and questions never answered. • Maturity: self-actualization, integrated meaning • Must have capacity to care about and integrate with other people and society as well as within oneself • Consensus and shared reality

12. Despair value possible-self role goal attitude defining-memory role attitude group relationship value goal culture trait defining-memory trait possible-self culture group relationship

13. Integrity traits groups goals values roles relationships defining possible memories selves

14. Bowlby and Ainsworth: Attachment Theory

16. The Learning Assumption • Contingencies learned in childhood persist into adulthood • Harlow’s cloth and metalic mommies • Harlow was a colleague of Maslow for a time at Wisconsin-Madison • Low exploration, clingy, socially stunted, poor mothers • Motivation and Reward in Learning (Video by Neal Miller…search by keyword under streaming video on library search site) • http://theta.library.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/video.cgi?num=5498

17. Adult Attachment Style • I want to get closer to others than they seem to want to get to me—this sometimes seems to scare them away. I often worry about whether my partner truly cares for me. My relations are characterized by obsession, desire for union, emotional highs and lows, extreme sexual attraction, and jealousy. (Anxious) • I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others and find it difficult to trust others completely. Others seem to want to get closer to me than I want to get to them. (Dismissive) • I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don't worry too much about others' getting too close to me. My most important love experiences have been happy, friendly, and trusting. I am able to accept and support my partner despite my partners' faults.(Secure) • Dismissive (approach-motivation); Anxious (avoidance-motivation)

18. Adult Attachment Style Continued • Insecurity and distortion of reality after threat • Normally ok (i.e., first date) but under stress: • Anxious “move toward” others (35%) • Introjection, Altruistic Surrender, Turning Against the Self • Oral personality—security seeking • Exaggerated distress and intrusive thoughts • Dismissive “move away” from others under stress (15%) • Isolation (Intellectualization), Reaction Formation, Denial in Fantasy • Anal personality—control, power, superiority seeking • Repression and no apparent distress, denial of past traumas • Work groups: both disliked and ineffective over time • Preoccupied, lack of perspective-taking, compassion • Anxious x Dismissive relationships don’t work • Only one longitudinal study: r = .2. Bias? Traits?

19. Twin Studies on Attachment Style %Shared Environment (parents) %Non- Shared Environment (other relations) %Heredity (genetics)

20. Hope for Change, for Hope? • Attachment style affected by previous partner • 5 years with a secure security (choose carefully) • Practice noticing “bids” for emotional connection • Psychological therapy: insight and client centered • Notice feelings and body sensations (upside of N?) • Gut feelings vs. rational thought (Jordan’s ISE research)

21. Borderline and Narcissistic Personality • Neoanalytic origins: object relations • Inappropriate parental mirroring and validation • Insecure or grandiose self-preoccupation • Compromised ability to relate to others

22. Clinical Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Unstable relationships, self-image, and mood, and five or more of: • Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. • Unstable, intense relationships characterized by extremes of idealization and devaluation. • Unstable self-image or sense of self • Dangerous impulsivity (e.g., sex, eating, substances, driving) • Suicidal behavior, gestures, threats and self-mutilation • Mood reactivity and instability • Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness. • Difficulty controlling anger • Stress, paranoia, dissociative symptoms

23. Clinical Diagnosis of Narcissism • Five or more of the following: • grandiose sense of self-importance • preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love • believes that he or she is "special" and unique • requires excessive admiration • sense of entitlement • interpersonally exploitative • lacks empathy • often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her • arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

24. Narcissism Scale Sample Items • I am going to be a great person • I am an extraordinary person • I know I’m good because everyone keeps telling me that I am • Everybody likes to listen to my stories • I insist on getting the respect that is due me • The world would be a better place if I ruled it • Is Narcissism and addiction to self-esteem?

25. Action Identification Theory “SHIELDING THE SELF” WITH GRANDIOSE IDEALS System Concepts, Ideal Self-Guides Principles Programs Concrete Goals, Behavioral Acts “ESCAPING THE SELF” WITH DISTRACTING CONCRETE EXPERIENCES

26. Your Gut Feeling: What are the Most Beautiful Letters? http://selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca/

27. Implicit Self-Esteem (ISE) • Name-Letter Effect • Implicit Associations Test: • http://www.yorku.ca/ianmc/iat/iat.htm • Maternal over-protectiveness and unresponsiveness • Adult self-reports and parental reports associated with low implicit self-esteem • Narcissism, HESE/LISE, Dissmissive • Approach-motivation—self-idealization