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