PSYCH 341: Quiz 2 (Chs. 3-4)
Describe the role of subjective perceptions in Adler's theory of personality.
"People's subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality" People strive for superiority or success to compensate for feelings of inferiority, but the manner in which they strive is not shaped by reality but by their subjective perception of reality, that is, by their fictions, or expectations of the future. Fictionalism: This subjective, fictional final goal guides our style of life, gives unity to our personality. Vaihinger believed that fictions are ideas that have no real existence, yet they influence people as if they really existed. People are motivated not by what is true but by their subjective perception of what is true. Phyisical Inferiorities: Adler insisted that the whole human race is "blessed" with organ inferiorities. These physical handicaps have little or no importance by themselves but become meaningful when they stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority, which serve as an impetus toward perfection or completion. Physical deficiencies alone do not cause a particular style of life; they simply provide present motivation for reaching future goals.
Chapter 4: Analytic Psychology 1.Describe how Jung's experiences with women may have influenced his concept of personality.
(p. 103) Jung saw his mother as having two separate dispositions. On one hand, she was realistic, practical, and warmhearted, but on the other, she was unstable, mystical, clairvoyant, archaic and ruthless. An emotional and sensitive child, Jung identified more with his second side of his mother, which he called her No.2 or night personality. At age 3, Jung was separated from his mother, who had to be hospitalized for several months, and this separation deeply troubled him. For a long time after, he felt distrust whenever the word "love" was mentioned. years later he still associated "woman" with unrealistic ability, whereas the word "father" meant reliable-but powerless. He was married and also had a mistress. They each were in touch with his two different personalities.
Critique analytical psychology as a scientific theory.
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Discuss Jung's concept of dreams and how they reflect the unconscious.
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Discuss either pro or con as to the possible existence of a collective unconscious
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Discuss research on Jungian typology.
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Explain how seemingly contradictory behaviors may reflect a single goal of striving for superiority.
Because people are born with small, inferior bodies, they feel inferior and attempt to overcome these feelings through their natural tendency to move toward completion. The striving force can take one of two courses—personal gain (superiority) or community benefit (success). SEE CHART: p.82
List and describe 3 types of Adlerian safeguarding tendencies.
Protective devices to protect their exaggerated sense of self-esteem against public disgrace. Enable people to hide their inflated self-image and to maintain their current style of life. Compares to Freud's defence mechanisms. Symptoms are formed as a protection against anxiety. Freud: operate in unconscious and protect the ego against anxiety. Common to everyone. Adler: largely conscious and shield person's fragile self-esteem from public disgrace. Reference to construction of neurotic symptoms. Following designed to protect a person's present style of life and to maintain a fictional, elevated feeling of importance: a. Excuses Most common of safeguarding tendencies. "Yes, but" They would like to but .... follow with excuse. "If only" same excuse phrased differently. Protect a weak but artificially inflated sense of self worth and deceive people into believing they are more superior than they really are. b. Aggression Use this to safegaurd their exaggerated superiority complex. Protect their fragile self-esteem. Can take the form of: i. Depreciation: tendency to undervalue other people's achievements and to overvalue one's own. Evident in gossip, criticism. The intention behind these kinds of acts is to belittle another so that the person, by comparison will be placed in a favorable light. ii. Accusation: tendency to blame others for one's failures and to seek revenge Safeguarding one's own tenuous self-esteem. Unhealthy people invariably act to cause the people around them to suffer more than they do. iii. Self-accusation: marked by self-torture and guilt. Include: masochism,depression and suicide as a means of hurting people who are close to them. Converse of depreciation: both aimed toward gaining personal superiority. Depreciation: people who feel inferior devalue others to make themselves look good. Self-accusation: devalue themselves in order to inflict suffering on others while protecting their own magnified feelings of self-esteem. c. Withdrawal Personality can be halted when people run away from difficulties. Safeguarding through distance. People unconsciously escape life's problems by setting distance between themselves and those problems. 4 modes; i. Moving backward : tendency to safeguard one's fictional goal of superiority by psychologically reverting to a more secure period of life. SIm to F: regression. takes place in unconscious and protects against anxiety filled experiences. Adler: sometimes be conscious and aim is to maintain an inflated goal of superiority. Designated to elicit sympathy. -- attitude of pampered child. ii. Standing still: similar to moving backward, not as a severe Simply do not move in any direction. Avoid all responsibility by ensuring themselves against any threat of failure. Safeguard aspirations never do anything to prove they can/can't accomplish goals. Safeguard their self-esteem and protect themselves against failure. iii. Hesitating: Vacillate when faced with difficult problem. Close to standing still. Procrastinations that give them excuse "its too late now" Compulsive Behaviour... attempt to waste time. Allows individual to preserve their inflated sense of self-esteem. iv. Constructing Obstacles: Build straw house to show they can knock it down. Overcoming obstacles to protect their self-esteem and their prestige. If fail hurdle resort to an excuse. SUMMARY: found in everyone by when they become too rigid they lead to self-defeating behaviours. Overly sensitive people create safeguarding tendencies to buffer: fear of disgrace eliminate their exaggerated inferiority feelings attain self esteem This can block their authentic feelings of self-esteem. Better served if people gave up self interest and developed a genuine caring for other people
List and describe 8 major archetypes.
p. 111-115
Critique Adler's ideas as a scientific theory.
p. 97-98
Discuss the importance of Jung's encounter with his anima.
pg. 103-104
Discuss Adler's concept of creative power and be prepared to debate the validity of this concept.
6th tenet of Adlerian Theory: Style of life is molded by people's creative power Each person, Adler believed, is empowered with the freedom to create her or his own style of life. Ultimately, all people are responsible for who they are and how they behave. Their creative power places them in control of their own lives, is responsible for their final goal, determines their method of striving for that goal, and contributes to the development of social interest. creative power makes each person a free individual. -(more on p. 83)
Explain organ dialect and give examples of how it is expressed in a person's behavior.
Adler recognized several ways in which the entire person operates with unity and self-consistency. The first of these he called organ jargon, or organ dialect. Organ dialect: The expression of a person's underlying intentions or style of life through a diseased or dysfunctional bodily organ. According to Adler, the whole person strives in a self-consistent fashion toward a single goal, and all separate actions and functions can be understood only as parts of this goal. The disturbance of one part of the body cannot be viewed in isolation; it affects the entire person. Examples: Arthritis in hands. deformity... in hands speaks of his desire for sympathy. His stiff and deformed joints voice his whole style of life. Bed wetter. Creative expression for the child speaking with his bladder instead of his mouth... because he doesn't want to do what the parents wish.
Define causality and teleology and discuss Adler's teleological approach.
Causality: considers behavior as springing for a specific cause. deals with past experiences that produce some present effect. (Freud's view )People driven by past experiences that activate present behavior Teleological: is an explanation of behavior in terms of its final purpose or aim. It is concerned with future goals or ends. (Adler's view) people are motivated by present perceptions of the future.
Discuss Adler's ideas on birth order.
Family constellation: birth order, gender of siblings, and age spread. Firstborn Children: are likely to have intensified feelings of power and superiority, high anxiety, and overprotective tendencies. They occupy a unique position, being an only child for a time and then experiencing a traumatic dethronement when a younger sibling is born. This event dramatically changes the situation and the child's view of the world. If firstborn children are age 3 or older when a baby brother or sister is born, they incorporate this dethronement onto a previously established style of life. If they have already developed a self-centered style of life, they likely will feel hostility and resentment toward the new baby, but if they formed a cooperating style, they will eventually adopt this same attitude toward the new sibling. If firstborn children are less than 3 years old, their hostility and resentment will be largely unconscious, which makes these attitudes more resistant to change in later life. Second-born children: begin life in a better situation for developing cooperation and social interest. To some extent, the personalities of second-born children are shaped by their perception of the older child's attitude toward them. If this attitude is one of extreme hostility and vengeance, the second child may become highly competitive or overly discouraged. The typical second child, however does not develop in either of these two directions. Instead, the second-born child matures toward moderate competitiveness, having a healthy desire to overtake the older rival. Youngest child: are often the most pampered and, consequently , run a high risk of being problem children. They are likely to have strong feelings of inferiority and to lack a sense of independence. Nevertheless, they possess many advantages. They are often highly motivated to exceed older siblings and to become the fastest runner, the best musician, the most skilled athlete, or the most ambitious student. Only Child: are in unique position of competing, not against brothers and sisters, but against father and mother. Living in an adult world, they often develop an exaggerated sense of superiority and an inflated self-concept. Only child may lack well-developed feelings of cooperation and social interest, possess a parasitic attitude, and expect other people to pamper and protect them.
Name and discuss the Jungian levels of the psyche.
Jung based his personality theory on the assumptions that the mind, or psyche, has both a conscious and an unconscious level. He asserted that the most important portion of the unconscious springs not from personal experiences of the individual but form the distant past of human existence, a concept jung called the collective unconscious. Conscious: conscious images are those that are sensed by the ego. Jung saw the ego as the center of conscious, but not the core of personality. Ego is not the whole personality, but must me completed by the more comprehensive self, the center of personality that is largely unconscious. Conscious plays a relatively minor role in analytical psychology, and an overemphasis on expanding one's conscious psyche can lead to psychological imbalance. Healthy individuals are in contact with their conscious world, but they also allow themselves to experience their unconscious self and this to achieve individuation. (pgs. 108-110)
Identify and describe Jung's stages of personality development.
Jung believed that personality develops through a series of stages that culminate in individuation, or self-realization. -in contrast to Freud, he emphasized the second half of life, the period after age 35 or 40, when a person has the opportunity to bring together the various aspects of personality and to attain self-realization. -Jung grouped the stages of life into four periods: childhood; youth; middle life; and old age. 1. Childhood: three stages- the anarchic; the monarchic; the dualistic.
Identify Jung's 2 major attitudes and 4 functions.
Jung recognized various psychological types that grow our of a union of two basic attitudes: introversion and extraversion- and for separate functions: thinking; feeling; sensing; and intuiting. Attitudes: 1. Introversion: is the turning inward of psychic energy with an orientation toward the subjective. Introverts are tuned in to their inner world with all its biases, fantasies, dreams, and individualized perceptions. These people perceive the external world of course, but they do so selectively and with their own subjective view. (2.) Extraversion: is the attitude distinguished by the turning outward of psychic energy so that a person is oriented toward the objective and away from the subjective. Extraverts are more influenced by their surroundings than by their inner world. They tend to focus on the objective attitude while suppressing the subjective. Functions: (1.) sensing: tells people that something exits (2.)thinking: enables them to recognize its meaning (3.)Feeling: tell them its value or worth (4.)intuition: allows them to know about it without knowing how they know
Distinguish between striving for superiority and striving for success.
Superiority: Some people strive for superiority with little or no concern for others. Their goals are personal ones, and their strivings are motivated largely by exaggerated feelings of personal inferiority, or the presence of an inferiority complex. Success: These individuals are psychologically healthy who are motivated by social interest and the success of all humankind. These healthy individuals are concerned with goals beyond themselves, are capable oh helping others without demanding or expecting a personal payoff, and care able to see others not as opponents but as people with whom the can cooperate for social benefit. Their own success is not gained at the expense of others but is a natural tendency to move toward completion or perfection.
Define social interest and give examples of what it is and what it is not.
The forth of Adler's tenets is: The value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest. Social interest is Adler's somewhat misleading translation of is his original German term, Gemeinschaftsgefuhl. A better translation might be "social feeling" or "community feeling. Social interest can be defined as an attitude of relatedness with humanity in general as well as an empathy for each member of the human community. Examples: To Adler, social interest is the only gauge to be used in judging the worth of a person. As the barometer of normality, it is the standard to be used in determining the usefulness of a life. To the degree that people possess social interest, they are psychologically mature. Social interest is not synonymous with charity and unselfishness. Acts of philanthropy and kindness may or may not be motivated by Gemeinschaftsgefuhl. (p. 81)
Discuss Adler's concept of fictionalism.
This subjective, fictional final goal guides our style of life, gives unity to our personality. Vaihinger believed that fictions are ideas that have no real existence, yet they influence people as if they really existed. People are motivated not by what is true but by their subjective perception of what is true. Adler's emphasis on fictions is consistent with his strongly held teleological view of motivation. He adopted a teleological view, one in which people are motivated by present perceptions of the future. As fictions, these perceptions need not be conscious or understood. Nevertheless, they bestow a purpose on all of people's actions and and are responsible for a consistent pattern that runs throughout their life.
Discuss research on Adler's hypotheses concerning early recollections.
To gain an understanding of patients' personality, Adler would ask them to reveal their early recollections. ER Recalled memories yield clues to understanding one's style of life. Not causal effect. Weather recalled experiences correspond with objective reality or fantasy made no difference. People reconstruct the events to make them consistent with a theme or pattern that runs throughout their lives. Early recollections are a valid indicator of a person's style of life. ADLER's: Early recollection showed he had the help of others. Adler confidence to compete against his rival is due to receiving aid from others. Confidence and competitive attitude likely carried over to his relationship with Sigmund Freud. Relationship between style of life and early recollections. Doesn't believe that early childhood experiences caused man's current distrust. His current distrustful style of life shapes and colors his early recollections. Highly anxious people project their current style of life onto their memory of childhood experiences by recalling fearful and anxiety producing experiences. Confident people recall memories that include pleasant relations with others. Recollections of early experiences are simply shaped by present style of life. Early Recollections A more reliable method of determining style of life is to ask people for their earliest recollections. Adler believed that early memories are templates on which people project their current style of life. These recollections need not be accurate accounts of early event, but true or false, they have psychological importance because they reflect a person's current view of the world.
