PLEASE REMEMBER…

1. PLEASE REMEMBER… • TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONES! • DON’T TALK DURING THE LECTURE. I HAVE BEEN GETTING COMPLAINTS AGAIN. IF I HAVE TO STOP LECTURING I WILL, BUT YOU’LL STILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MATERIAL I WOULD HAVE COVERED!

2. Personality and Its AssessmentChapter 12

3. Personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits, dispositions, or characteristics that leads to some consistency in a person’s behaviour What Is Personality? LOBJ 12.1

4. Psychodynamic Theories • Psychodynamic theories focus on how unconscious processes direct day-to-day behavior • The most famous of these approaches was the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud • Freud was an Austrian physician who developed his theory while treating people with physical and mental problems

5. Psychodynamic Theories • From his work with these patients, Freud began to formulate a theory that centered on early childhood experiences and fantasies

6. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory rests on several assumptions: Human experience takes place on three levels of consciousness Human functioning is influenced by three basic structures of the mind The foundation of personality is shaped by Psychodynamic Theories LOBJ 12.3

7. Parental punishment of a child’s sexual and aggressive behavioursresults in repression of part of these experiences and leads to psychological conflict Conflict creates anxiety, and people protect themselves against anxiety with defence mechanisms (will cover in lab next week; take your book to lab! LOBJ 12.5) Psychodynamic Theories LOBJ 12.3

8. Freud: Structures of the Mind • The idis the source of a person’s instinctual energy either sexual or aggressive and works by the pleasure principle • The ego seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in accordance with reality • The superego provides an egoideal and a conscience

9. Development of Personality LOBJ 12.4 • Freud argued that people pass through five stages of personality development that are associated with conflicts with erogenous zones

10. First stage is the oral stage From birth to age 2, the infant’s instincts focus on the mouth as the primary pleasure center Adults who remain attached to the oral stage or revert to it during intense anxiety display traits of an “oral” personality that include biting objects, smoking, or overeating Development of Personality

11. Development of Personality • Stage two is the anal stage (age 2 to 3) • Children learn to control the immediate gratification they obtain through defecation • They learn to respond to some of parents’ and society’s demands • Adults who had difficulty in the stage tend to have problems with orderliness (or lack of it)

12. The third stage is the phallic stage (age 4 – 7) During this stage children pass through what Freud termed the Oedipus complex that involves unconscious wishes to have sexual intercourse with one parent During the Oedipus complex the child wants to replace the other parent This rivalry produces castration anxiety During the same stage girls develop penis envy The Oedipus complex is resolved by identifying with the same sex parent This leads to acquisition of a superego Development of Personality

13. The fourth stage is latency (from age 7 to puberty) During latency, sexual urges are inactive (latent) Energy devoted to other things Stage five is the genital stage Begins with the onset of puberty Failure to pass through earlier stages successfully may lead to unresolved conflicts throughout adulthood Development of Personality

14. Sex and Aggression LOBJ 12.4 • Freud felt behaviour was energized by two basic instinctual drives • The drive toward life, expressed through sexual energy • The drive toward death, expressed through aggression • Freud’s theory focused mainly on the energy of the sexual instinct, libido

15. Relevant today? LOBJ 12.6 • The father of psychoanalytical theory. • Major ground breaking ideas for the 1900s • Became popular in the 20s and 30s • Hitchcock was fascinated with Freud’s theory • Some of his ideas stand today • Controversial today, many don’t consider his theory to be valid, others are hard core Freudians • Have to know about it to understand society, culture, and where psychology has come from

16. Alfred Adler was one of the original members of Freud’s Vienna Psychoanalytic Society before having a falling out with Freud  Adler acknowledged the role of heredity and environment in furnishing the building materials of personality Adler called the ability to shape our own personality creative power We are by nature selfish and social. We are also conscious, not mainly unconscious. We need not be the victims of primitive drives. We are self-conscious and capable of improving ourselves and the world around us. Our main concerns in life are a vocation, communal living, and love. We are by nature unified. Adler and Individual Psychology LOBJ 12.7

17. Maybe the first “feminist” theorist (early 1900s) He deplored the inferior status of women and blamed men’s aggressiveness Men force inferior roles on women There is no biological inferiority to justify women’s inferior status Penis envy! Ha! “All our institutions, our traditional attitudes, our laws, our morals, our customs, give evidence of the fact that they are determined and maintained by privileged males for the glory of male domination…Nobody can bear a position of inferiority without anger and disgust…That women must be submissive is…(a) superstition…. (Adler, 1927) Adler and Feminism