Psychodynamic Perspectives

13.1 Freud’s Conception of Personality

• Personality: the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave

• Character: value judgments of a person’s moral and ethical behavior

• Unconscious Mind: level of the mind in which thoughts, feelings, memories, and other information are kept that are not easily or voluntarily brought into consciousness

• Id: part of the personality present at birth and completely unconscious

• Pleasure Principle: principle by which the id functions; the desire for the immediate satisfaction of needs without regard for the consequences

• Ego: part of the personality that develops out of a need to deal with reality; mostly conscious, rational, and logical

• Reality Principle: principle by which the ego functions; the satisfaction of the demands of the id only when negative consequences will not result

• Superego: part of the personality that acts as a moral center

• Conscience: part of the superego that produces guilt, depending on how acceptable behavior is

• Psychological Defense Mechanisms: unconscious distortions of a person’s perception of reality that reduce stress and anxiety

13.2 Stages of Personality Development

• Psychosexual Stages: five stages of personality development proposed by Freud and tied to the sexual development of the child

• Fixation: disorder in which the person does not fully resolve the conflict in a particular psychosexual stage, resulting in personality traits and behavior associated with that earlier stage

• Oral Stage: the first stage in Freud’s psychosexual stages, occurring in the first 18 months of life in which the mouth is the erogenous zone and weaning is the primary conflict

• Anal Stage: the second stage in Freud’s psychosexual stages, occurring from about 18 to 36 months of age, in which the anus is the erogenous zone and toilet training is the source of conflict

• Phallic Stage: the third stage in Freud’s psychosexual stages, occurring from about 3 to 6 years of age, in which the child discovers sexual feelings

• Oedipus Complex/Electra Complex: situation occurring in the phallic stage in which a child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent and jealousy of the same-sex parent. Males develop an Oedipus complex whereas females develop an Electra complex

• Latency: the fourth stage in Freud’s psychosexual stages, occurring during the school years, in which the sexual feelings of the child are repressed while the child develops in other ways

• Genital Stage: the final stage in Freud’s psychosexual stages; from puberty on, sexual urges are allowed back into consciousness, and the individual moves toward adult social and sexual behavior

13.3 The Neo-Freudians

• Psychoanalysis: an insight therapy based on the theory of Freud, emphasizing the revealing of unconscious conflicts; Freud’s term for both the theory of personality and the therapy based on it

• Neo-Freudians: followers of Freud who developed their own competing psychodynamic theories

• Personal Unconscious: Jung’s name for the unconscious mind as defined by Freud

• Collective Unconscious: Jung’s name for the memories shared by all members of the human species

• Archetypes: Jung’s Collective, universal human memories

• Basic Anxiety: anxiety created when a child is born into the bigger and more powerful world of older children and adults

• Neurotic Personalities: personalities typified by maladaptive ways of dealing with relationships in Horney’s theory

13.4 Current Thoughts on Freud and the Psychodynamic Perspective

• Much less relevant in today’s society, the unconscious mind still doesn’t have supportive research

The Behavioral and Social Cognitive View of Personality

13.5 Learning Theories

• Habits: in behaviorism, sets of well-learned responses that have become automatic

• Social Cognitive Learning Theorists: theorists who emphasize the importance of both the influences of other people’s behavior and of a person’s own expectancies on learning

• Social Cognitive View: learning theory that includes cognitive processes such as anticipating, judging, memory, and imitation of models

• Reciprocal Determinism: Bandura’s explanation of how the factors of environment, personal characteristics, and behavior can interact to determine future behavior

• Self-Efficacy: individual’s expectancy of how effective his or her efforts to accomplish a goal will be in any particular circumstance

• Locus of Control: the tendency for people to assume that they either have control or do not have control over events and consequences in their lives

13.6 Current Thoughts on the Behavioral and Social Cognitive Learning Views

• Expectancy: a person’s subjective feeling that a particular behavior will lead to a reinforcing consequence

The Third Force: Humanism and the Humanistic Perspective

13.7 Carl Rogers and the Humanistic Perspective

• Humanistic Perspective: the “third force” in psychology that focuses on those aspects of personality that make people uniquely human, such as subjective feelings and freedom of choice

• Self-Actualizing Tendency: the striving to fulfill one’s innate capacities and capabilities

• Self-Concept: the image of oneself that develops from interactions with important significant people in one’s life

• Self: an individual’s awareness of his or her own personal characteristics and level of functioning

• Positive Regard: warmth, affection, love, and respect that come from significant others in one’s life

• Unconditional Positive Regard: referring to the warmth, respect, and accepting atmosphere created by the therapist for the client in person-centered therapy; positive regard that is given without conditions or strings attached

• Conditional Positive Regard: positive regard that is given only when the person is doing what the providers of positive regard wish

• Fully Functioning Person: a person who is in touch with and trusting of the deepest, innermost urges, and feelings

13.8 Current Thoughts on the Humanistic View of Personality

• It ignores some of the negatives of human life, also hard to test scientifically

Trait Theories: Who Are You

13.9 Allport and Cattell: Early Attempts to List and Describe Traits

• Trait Theories: theories that endeavor to describe the characteristics that make up human personality in an effort to predict future behavior

• Trait: a consistent, enduring way of thinking, feeling, or behaving

• Surface Traits: aspects of personality that can easily be seen by other people in the outward actions of a person

• Source Traits: the more basic traits that underlie the surface traits, forming the core of personality

• Introversion: dimension of personality in which people tend to withdraw from excessive stimulation

13.10 Modern Trait Theories: The Big Five

• Five-Factor Model (Big Five): model of personality traits that describes five basic trait dimensions. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN)

• Extraverts: people who are outgoing and sociable

• Introverts: people who prefer solitude and dislike being the center of attention

13.11 Current Thoughts on the Trait Perspective

• Trait-Situation Interaction: the assumption that the particular circumstances of any given situation will influence the way in which a trait is expressed

Personality: Genetics and Culture

13.12 The Biology of Personality: Behavioral Genetics

• Behavioral Genetics: field of study devoted to discovering the genetic bases for personality characteristics

13.13 Current Findings on the Heritability of Personality

• How much some trait within a population can be attributed to genetic influence, and the extent individual genetic variation impacts differences in observed behavior

Assessment of Personality

13.14 Interviews, Behavioral Assessments, and Personality Inventions

• Direct Observation: assessment in which the professional observes the client engaged in ordinary, day-to-day behavior in either a clinical or natural setting

• Rating Scale: assessment in which a numerical value is assigned to specific behavior that is listed in the scale

• Frequency Count: assessment in which the frequency of a particular behavior is counted

• Interview: method of personality assessment in which the professional asks questions of the client and allows the client to answer, either in a structured or unstructured fashion

• Personality Inventory: paper-and-pencil or computerized test that consists of statements that require a specific, standardized response from the person taking the test

• Halo Effect: tendency of an interviewer to allow positive characteristics of a client to influence the assessments of the client’s behavior and statements

13.15 Projective Tests

• Projective Tests: personality assessments that present ambiguous visual stimuli to the client and ask the client to respond with whatever comes to mind

• Rorschach Inkblot Test: projective test that uses 10 inkblots as the ambiguous stimuli

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): projective test that uses 20 pictures of people in ambiguous situations as visual stimuli

• Subjective: referring to concepts and impressions that are only valid within a particular person’s perception and may be influenced by biases, prejudice, and personal experiences