Chapter 15: Personality

oral stage

(0-18 months, newborn to 1 year) Pleasure centers on the mouth - sucking, biting, chewing.

self-concept

(1) A sense of one's identity and personal worth. (2) All our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question, "Who am I?" If our self-concept is positive, we tend to act and perceive the world positively. If it is negative - if in our own eyes we fall short of our ideal self - said Rogers, we feel dissatisfied and unhappy.

anal stage

(18-36 months, 1 year to 3 years) Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control.

phallic stage

(3-6 years) Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous (intimate) sexual feelings.

latency stage

(6 to puberty) Dormant (inactive) sexual feelings.

genital stage

(puberty on) Maturation of sexual interests.

projective test

A personality test. For example, the Rorschach or TAT (series of ambiguous scenes), that provides ambiguous (open to or having several possible meanings) 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 throughout the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.

personality inventory

A questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits.

self-serving bias

A readiness to perceive oneself favorably.

factor analysis

A statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related items (called factors) on a test; used to identify different dimensions of performance that underlie's one total score. Taps basic components of intelligence (such as apatial ability or verbal skill).

Oedipus complex

According to Freud, a boy's sexual desires towared 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 and could surface as maladapted behavior in the adult years. Could possibly result in person seeking oral gratification by smoking, eating excessively, etc.

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. Part of the iceburg that is below the surface: contains thoughts wishes, feelings and memories of which we are unaware.

self-actualization

According to Moslow, the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one's potential. For example, if we achieve a sense of security, we then seek to love, to be loved.

unconditional positive regard

According to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person. This is an attitude of grace, an attitude that values us even knowing our failings. People nurture our growth by being accepting.

PERSONALITY

An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

Sigmund Freud

Austrian neurologist who originated psychoanalysis (1856-1939); Said that human behavior is irrational; behavior is the outcome of conflict between the id (irrational unconscious driven by sexual, aggressive, and pleasure-seeking desires) and ego (rationalizing conscious, what one can do) and superego (ingrained moral values, what one should do).

superego

Begins around the young age of 4 or 5, the part of personality that, according to Freud, represents internalized ideals and provides standards for judgment (the consience) and for future aspirations. The voice of conscience that forces the ego to consider not only the real but the ideal, and that focuses solely on how one ought to behave. It strives for perfection, judging actions and producing positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt.The "Superman". One of the three interacting systems of personality.

collective unconscious

Carl Jung's concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species' history. It is because of this 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 nurturing.

The "Big Five" Personality Factors

Conscientousness - organized, careful, disciplined Agreeableness - soft-hearted, trusting, helpful Neuroticism - calm, secure, self-satisfied Openness - imaginative, preference for variety, independent Extraversion - sociable, fun-loving, affectionate

id

Contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that, according to Freud, strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives. The id operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. If not constrained by reality, it seeks immediate gratification. Like a baby who cries like crazy because it wants milk now. The "Cookie Monster". One of the three interacting systems of personality.

rationalization

Defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions. "I drink with my friends just to be sociable"

FREUD'S PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES

Freud is convinced that the first few years is the time in which personality forms (personality development).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 (especially sensitive to sexual stimulation, as certain areas of the body).

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Freuds theory of personality and therapeutic (treatment) techinique that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. Freud believed the patient's free associations, resistances dreams, and transferences - and the therapist's interpretations of them - released previously repressed feelings, allowing the pateint to gain self-insight. Freud's psychoanalytic theory - the first comprehensive theory of personality, which included ideas about an unconscious region of the mind, psychosexual stages and defense mechanisms for holding anxiety at bay.

Carl Rogers

Humanistic psychologist that believed that a growth-promoting climate required three conditions - genuineness, acceptance, and empathy. Contributions: founded person-centered therapy, theory that emphasizes the unique quality of humans especially their freedom and potential for personal growth, unconditional positive regard, fully functioning person.

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 embarrasing. This, Freud believed, allowed him to retrace that line, following a chain of thought leading into the patient's unconscious, where painful unconscious memories, often from childhood, could be retrieved and released.

repression

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. For example, Freud believed that this explains why we do not remember our childhood lust for our parent of the other sex. It is often incomplete, that repressed urges seep out in dream symbols and slips of the tongue.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing or redirecting anxiety by unconsciously distorting (deforming) reality.

Carl Jung

Neo-freudian. Agreed with Freud that unconscious efforts exert a powerful influence, but it contains more than just our repressed thoughts and feelings -collective unconscious explains why there are similarities and differences in cultures.

self-esteem

One's feelings of high or low self-worth.

spotlight effect

Overestimating the others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us).

trait

People's characteristic behaviors and conscious motives. A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports.

projection

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impluses by attributing them to others. "He doesn't trust me" may be aprojection of the actual feeling "I don't trust him" or "I don't trust myself." The attribution of one's own attitudes, feelings, or desires to someone or something as a naive or unconscious defense against anxiety or guilt. The thief thinks that everyone is a thief.

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. "I hate him" means "I love him" - Helga G. Pataki.

regression

Psychoanalytic defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated. For example, a child feeling anxious about the first day of school would begin sucking his thumb. A homesick new college student may long for the security and comfort of home. (regresar - go back, return)

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. Students upset over an exam may snap at a roommate.

trait perspective

Stable and enduring behavior patterns or dispositions to feel and act.

learned helplessness

The hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.

ego

The largely consious, "executive" part of personality that, according to Freud mediates (settles) among the demands of the id, superego, and reality. The ego operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id's desires in realistic ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain or destruction. Thinks instead of acting on impulse. The ego contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories. A young child learns this in order to cope with the world. The "referee". The ego struggles to reconcile the id's demands and the superego's demands, both which oppose each other. It is the personality "executive," mediating the impulsive demands of the id, the restraining demands of the superego, and the real-life demands of the external world. One of the three interacting systems of personality.

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use), this test is now used for many other screening purposes.

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.

external locus of control

The perception that chance or outside forces beyond one's personal control determine one's fate.

internal locus of control

The perception that one controls one's own fate.

reciprocal determinism

The process of interacting with our environment. The interacting influences between personality and environmental factors.

social cognitive perspective

Views behaviors as influenced by the interaction between persons (and their thinking) and their social context. Much as nature and nurture always work together, so do persons and their situations.