Chapter 12

1. Chapter 12

2. What is in this chapter? • The Objectives for this chapter are to explore the following concepts: • What is personality? • Is personality unconscious or conscious? • Is personality something that we work at? • How do we determine someone’s personality? • Can horoscopes predict personality? • Do our friends influence our personality? • In the future can we create more positive personalities in our communities?

3. What is Personality? • Personality • an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting aka…consistent tendency • Distinctiveness: additional central concept to personality that explains people’s unique responses to situations • basic perspectives • Psychoanalytic • Humanistic • Trait

4. Personality Development

5. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Freud’s theory proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality • Biology determines personality development

6. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Psychoanalysis:theory & techniques of Freud • Psychodynamic perspective • Freud’s theory of personality 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

7. Psychodynamic Personality Structure • Preconscious: temporary storage region of items typically in the unconscious so we can bring them into conscious awareness; Ex. Forgotten memories that we can easily recall • Unconscious: region containing our thoughts, wishes, feelings, memories of which we are unaware • Divided into 3 parts:1. Id 2. Ego 3. Superego

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

9. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Central technique used in Psychoanalysis • Dream Analysis: is the “Royal Road” to the unconscious • Free Association • a method of exploring the unconscious (the majority of the mind that lies below the water as an iceberg) • person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

10. Psychodynamic Personality Structure • Id: basic drives to survive, reproduce, and aggress • Acts on the pleasure principle: seeking immediate gratification • Ego: partly contains our conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, & memories; mediates btwn the id & superego • act on the reality principle: seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in REALISTIC ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain or destruction • Superego: Our sense of right and wrong and considers the IDEAL; strives for perfection and judges actions leading to pride or guilt; what people OUGHT to do

11. The Relationship among Id, Ego and Superego • Id • Ego • Superego • A pleasure seeking person dominated by the Id • A guilt-ridden person dominated by the Superego • A psychologically healthy person dominated by the Ego

12. Freud’s Psychosexual Instinct Theory of Personality and of Human Development • Freud: “Sexualanatomy/biology is destiny”. • The “fuels” of human motivational development and human personality: • Eros -- the life force. • Thanatos -- the death force. • Libido -- the sex drive that fuels eros. • Erogenous zones-- sensitive body areas

13. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages Stage Focus Oral Pleasure centers on the mouth-- (0-18 months) sucking, biting, chewing Anal Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder (18-36 months) elimination; coping with demands for control Phallic Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with (3-6 years) incestuous sexual feelings Latency Dormant sexual feelings (6 to puberty) Genital Maturation of sexual interests (puberty on) Personality Development

14. Psychosexual Personality Development • 1. Oral Stage (Age 0 - 1.5) • Erogenous Zone in Focus:Mouth • Gratifying Activities: Nursing - eating, as well as mouth movement, including sucking, gumming, biting and swallowing.

15. Personality Development Key Concepts • Identification • How we develop our personality • children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos • Fixation • a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

16. Psychosexual Personality Development Interaction with the Environment: • To the infant, the mother's breast not only is the source of food and drink, but also represents her love. • Because the child's personality is controlled by the id and therefore demands immediate gratification, responsive nurturing is key. • Both insufficient and forceful feeding can result in fixation in this stage.

17. Symptoms of Oral Fixation: • Smoking • Constant chewing on gum, pens, pencils, etc. • Nail biting • Overeating • Drinking • Sarcasm ("the biting personality") and verbal hostility

18. Psychosexual Personality Development 2. Anal Stage (Age 1.5 - 3) • Erogenous Zone in Focus:Anus • Gratifying Activities: • Bowel movement and the withholding of such movement

19. Interaction with the Environment: • The major event at this stage is toilet training, a process through which children are taught when, where, and how excretion is deemed appropriate by society. • Children at this stage start to notice the pleasure and displeasure associated with bowel movements. • Through toilet training, they also discover their own ability to control such movements. • Along with it comes the realization that this ability gives them power over their parents. • That is, by exercising control over the retention and expulsion of feces, a child can choose to either grant or resist parents' wishes.

20. Anal Fixation • Anal-Expulsive Personality: • If the parents are too lenient and fail to instill the society's rules about bowel movement control, the child will derive pleasure and success from the expulsion. • Individuals with a fixation on this mode of gratification are excessively sloppy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant.

21. Anal-Retentive Personality: • If a child receives excessive pressure and punishment from parents during toilet training, he will experience anxiety over bowl movements and take pleasure in being able to withhold such functions. • Individuals who fail to progress pass this stage or are FIXATED at this stage are obsessively clean and orderly, and intolerant of those who aren't. • They may also be very careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, conforming and passive-aggressive.

22. 3. Phallic Stage (Age 4 - 5) • Erogenous Zone in Focus:Genital • Gratifying Activities:genital fondling and exploration • Self love

23. Interaction with the Environment: • Probably the most challenging stage in a person's psychosexual development. • The key event at this stage is the child's subconscious feeling of romantic attraction toward the parent of the opposite sex, together with jealousy and fear of the same-sex parent.

24. In boys, this situation is called the "Oedipus Complex" (aka the Oedipal Complex), named after the young man in a Greek myth who killed his father and married his mother, unaware of their true identities.

25. Boys, in the midst of their Oedipus Complex, often experience intense "castration anxiety", which comes from the fear of punishment from the father for their desire for the mother.

26. In girls, it is called the "Electra Complex". • Girls' Electra Complex involves "penis envy". the girl believes that she once had a penis but that it was removed. In order to compensate for its loss, the girl wants to have a child by her father.

27. Success or failure in the Oedipus conflict is at the core of either normal psychological development or psychological disorder. • If a child is able to successfully resolve the conflict, he or she will have learned to control their envy and hostility and begin to identify with and model after the parent of their own sex. • and are ready to move on to the next developmental stage.

28. Phallic Fixation: • For men:Anxiety and guilty feelings about sex, fear of castration, and narcissistic personality. • For women:It is implied that women never progress past this stage fully and will always maintain a sense of envy and inferiority

29. 4. Latency (Age 5 - puberty) • Erogenous Zone in Focus: None • Interactions with the Environment: This is a period during which sexual feelings are suppressed to allow children to focus their energy on other aspects of life. • This is a time of learning, adjusting to the social environment outside of home, absorbing the culture, forming beliefs and values, developing same-sex friendships, engaging in sports, etc • Lasts five to six years, until puberty, upon which children become capable of reproduction, and sexuality is re-awakened.

30. 5. Genital Stage (From puberty on) • Erogenous Zone in Focus: Genital • Gratifying Activities: genital stimulation and heterosexual relationships • Interaction with the Environment: This stage is marked by a renewed sexual interest and desire, and the pursuit of relationships. • Fixations: This stage does not cause any fixation. According to Freud, if people experience difficulties at this stage, and many people do, the damage was done in earlier oral, anal, and phallic stages. These people come into this last stage of development with fixations from earlier stages. • Attractions to the opposite sex can be a source of anxiety at this stage if the person has not successfully resolved the Oedipal (or Electra) conflict at the phallic stage.

31. Synopsis of Freudian Stages • Psychosexual stages according to Freudian…. • “Sexual” means…. • Any pleasure-giving urge

32. Freudian:Defense Mechanisms • Defense Mechanisms • the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by preventing threatening impulses from being consciously recognized and unconsciously distorting reality • Repression • the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness • Underlies all other defense mechanisms • If incomplete, memories show in our dreams & slips of the tongue

33. Defense Mechanisms • Regression • defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated • An excessive fixation contributes to this • Ex. Baby talk or bedwetting of older sibling upon the arrival of a new infant; thumb-sucking once in school

34. Defense Mechanisms • Reaction Formation • defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites • people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings • Ex. Overly protective parents

35. Defense Mechanisms • Projection • defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others • Rationalization • defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions

36. Defense Mechanisms • Displacement • defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person • as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet

37. Defense Mechanisms cont. • Denial :The process of refusing to admit that there is a problem • Sublimation:The process of channeling emotional energy into constructive or creative activities

38. Assessing the Unconscious • Projective Test • a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics • Most aligned with the psychoanalytic perspective • Ex. House-Tree-Person, Draw-A-Person, & Incomplete Sentence tests • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes • Developed by Henry Murray

39. Assessing the Unconscious--TAT

40. Questions to Ask • 1. What event(s) led up to this moment? • 2. What is happening right now? • 3. What is the subject(s) thinking or feeling? • 4. What do you think will be the outcome or resolution?

46. Assessing the Unconscious • Rorschach Inkblot Test • the most widely used projective test • a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach • seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

47. Assessing the Unconscious--Rorschach

48. Questions to Ask • 1. What do you see? • 2. What determined it; color, shape, texture, shading? • 3. is it positive or negative? • 4. moving or still • 5. how clear/vague? • 6. category; human, sexual, animal, fantasy, inanimate, nature, other.