AP Psych: Personality - Psychoanalytic and Humanistic
Anal stage
18-36 months; Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control
Phallic stage
3-6 years; pleasure zone is in the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings
Latency stage
6 to puberty; Dormant sexual feelings
Intellectualization
A defense mechanism that uses reasoning to block out emotional stress and conflict
Personality
A person's characteristic pattern of thinking, acting, and feeling
Projective test
A personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one's inner dynamics
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
Terror-management theory
A theory of death-related anxiety; explores people's emotional and behavioral responses to reminders of their impending death; proposed by Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski
Oedipus complex
According to Freud, a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Fixation
According to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved
Unconscious
According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories; according to contemporary psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware
Unconditional positive regard
According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Self-concept
All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?"
Oral stage
Between 0-18 months; Pleasures centers on the mouth (biting, sucking, chewing)
Collective unconscious
Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history; Jung said that the collective unconscious explains why, for many people, spiritual concerns are deeply rooted and why people in different cultures share certain myths and images, such as mother as a symbol of nurturance
Sublimation
Channeling one's frustration toward a different goal
id
Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. Operates on the pleasure principle, requiring immediate satisfaction
Denial
Defense mechanism by which people refuse to believe or even to perceive painful realities
Rationalization
Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions
Sigmund Freud
Focused on the study of the unconscious and proposed the Psychoanalytic theory
Humanistic approach
Focuses on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment
Humanistic psychology
Focuses on the way "healthy" people strive for self-determination and self-realization; studied people through their own self-reported experiences and feelings
Psychoanalysis
Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; treats psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious motives
Roy Baumeister
Him and his colleagues found that people tend to see their foibles and attitudes in others, what Freud called projection and is now called the false consensus effect
Carl Rogers
Humanistic psychologist; agreed with much of Maslow's thinking; believed that people are generally good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies
Free association
In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
Defense mechanisms
In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
Type B
More relaxed and easygoing
Carl Jung
Neo-Freudian; Freud's disciple turned dissenter; put less emphasis on social factors and agreed that the unconscious exerts a powerful influence; believed the unconscious contained more than our repressed feelings and thoughts, but also a collective unconscious
Karen Horney
Neo-Freudian; agreed that childhood was important, but that childhood social tension, not sexual tension, was crucial in personality development; said childhood anxiety, caused by the dependent child's sense of helplessness, triggers our desire for love and security; Countered Freud's assumptions that women have weak superegos and suffer "penis envy"
Alfred Adler
Neo-Freudian; proposed the still popular inferiority complex; agreed with Freud that childhood was important, but rather childhood social tension, not sexual tension, are crucial for personality formation
Self-actualization
One of the ultimate psychological needs on Maslow's pyramid that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential
Psychoanalytic Theory
Proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality
Abraham Maslow
Proposed that we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs; if our physiological needs are met, we become concerned with personal safety; if we achieve a sense of personal safety, we seek to love, be loved, and love ourselves; with our love needs satisfied, we seek self-esteem
Projection
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
Reaction formation
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus, people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings
Regression
Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
Displacement
Psychoanalytic 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
Genital stage
Puberty onwards; Maturation of sexual interest
Psychosexual stages
The childhood stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) during which, according to Freud, the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
ego
The largely conscious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud, mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in ways that will bring pleasure rather than pain
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
superego
The part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirations
Libido
The psychoanalytic term for the energy associated first with the sexual instincts and later with the life instincts.
False consensus effect
The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors
Preconscious
The things we can be aware of if we think of them
Type A
These people are easily angered and feel time pressure; they are competitive and ambitious; higher risk for heart disease
Conscious
Things we are aware of
Identification
the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos