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Personality PowerPoint from Morris & Maisto, as modified by Stephen Landman, Ph.D.

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What Is Personality?An individual’s unique patterns of:

thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

that persist over time and

across situations

Definition focuses on:

Unique differences

Stable, enduring differences

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Psychodynamic TheoriesSee behavior as the result of psychological dynamics within the individual:

Much of mental life is unconscious

Mental processes can be in conflict

Personality patterns start in childhood experiences

How we think of others guides our interactions with them

Personality involves learning to self-regulate

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Freud’s Structure of Personality

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IdPresent at birth

Wants immediate gratification, operating on the “Pleasure Principle”

Irrational

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SuperegoInternalized standards of right and wrong – the conscience

Irrational – says always do what society wants you to do; never gratify yourself

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EgoHas the job of reducing anxiety

Operates on the “Reality Principle”

Must meets the demands of the id, the demands of the superego, and the demands of reality

Has a bag of tools, all designed to reduce anxiety, called “defense mechanisms”, or “ego defense mechanisms”

View separate document on the defense mechanisms.

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Ego Defense MechanismsRepression - Excluding uncomfortable thoughts from consciousness:

Acting Out – Expressing wishes, desires, impulses openly and directly, without regard to whether the behavior is socially acceptable

Suppression – Purposely putting a thought out of your mind, deciding to not think about it, because it makes you anxious

Denial - Refusing to acknowledge a painful or threatening reality

Projection - Attributing one's own undesirable repressed motives, feelings, or wishes to others

Identification - Taking on the characteristics of someone else to avoid feeling incompetent

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Ego Defense Mechanisms IIRegression - Reverting to childlike behavior and defenses, psychologically returning to an earlier time, when one was not faced with anxiety-arousing reality.

Intellectualization - Thinking abstractly about stressful problems as a way of detaching oneself from them

Reaction Formation - Expression of exaggerated ideas and emotions that are the opposite of one's repressed beliefs or feelings

Displacement - Shifting repressed motives from an original object to a substitute object:

Sublimation - Redirecting repressed motives and feelings into more socially acceptable channels

Rationalization - The process of constructing a logical justification for an action that actually comes from a different, less worthy motivation; the process of finding a "good reason", to cover up the true reason, for an action.

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LibidoLibido, the life energy which drives the entire development of personality development, is sexual energy.

At different stages of life, the libidinal energy is aimed at, and expressed through different body parts.

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How Personality DevelopsFreud’s psychosexual stages:

Oral stage

Anal stage

Phallic stage

Latency stage

Genital stage

Overcoming fixation at each stage

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Oral StageThe oral stage lasts from birth to about 18 months. The focus of pleasure is, of course, the mouth. Sucking and biting are favorite activities.

Task that must be accomplished: weaning

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Anal StageThe anal stage lasts from about 18 months to three or four years old. The focus of pleasure is the anus. Holding it in and letting it go are greatly enjoyed.

Task that must be accomplished: toilet training

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The Phallic StageThe phallic stage lasts from three or four to five, six, or seven years old. The focus of pleasure is the genitalia. Masturbation is common.

In the phallic stage the Oedipus Complex occurs.

Task that must be accomplished: resolution of the Oedipus Complex

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The Oedipus Complex 1(taken from the Bouree article)

The first love-object for all of us is our mother. We want her attention, we want her affection, we want her caresses, we want her, in a broadly sexual way. The young boy, however, has a rival for his mother's charms: his father! His father is bigger, stronger, smarter, and he gets to sleep with mother, while junior pines away in his lonely little bed. Dad is the enemy.

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Oedipus Complex 2About the time the little boy recognizes this archetypal situation, he has become aware of some of the more subtle differences between boys and girls, the ones other than hair length and clothing styles. From his naive perspective, the difference is that he has a penis, and girls do not. At this point in life, it seems to the child that having something is infinitely better than not having something, and so he is pleased with this state of affairs.

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Oedipus Complex 3But the question arises: where is the girl's penis? Perhaps she has lost it somehow. Perhaps it was cut off. Perhaps this could happen to him! This is the beginning of castration anxiety, a slight misnomer for the fear of losing one's penis.

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Oedipus Complex 4The boy, recognizing his father's superiority and fearing for his penis, engages some of his ego defenses: He represses his desire for his mother. He identifies with his dad, and attempts to become more and more like him, that is to say, a man. After a few years of latency, he enters adolescence and the world of mature heterosexuality, sublimating his desire for his mother by being attracted to other females; thus resolving the Oedipus Complex.

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Carl JungTwo levels of unconsciousness:

Personal unconscious: • Individual’s repressed thoughts, forgotten

experiences, and undeveloped ideas

Collective unconscious: • The part of the unconscious that is inherited

and common to all members of a species• “Archetypes”

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Jung’s Personality TypesGeneral attitudes

Extrovert• Focuses on external

world

Introvert• Focuses more on

own thoughts, feelings

Individual types

Rational• Regulates self

based on thinking, feeling

Irrational• Bases actions on

perceptions, even if only intuited

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Androgyny

Today most people in the USA believe that it is not a good thing to force children into strict gender roles, the stereotypic masculine and feminine behaviors. Most people allow their children to develop naturally, and to express interests which they are attracted to. So it is okay for a girl to excel in sports or for a boy to like to cook or to like babies. This recognizes that real people are androgynous. Androgyny means a mixture of typically masculine and feminine aspects within a personality.

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Jung – Anima and Animus

Jung proved himself to be ahead of his time when he recognized that real people did not fit the stereotypic masculine and feminine gender roles. He called the female aspects of a personality in a male the anima, and he called males aspects of personality in a female the animus.

His explanation for this is that all males have had female ancestors and all females have had male ancestors, and people inherited the experiences of their ancestors, which are stored as archetypes in the collective unconscious.

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Differences Between Freud and Jung

Freud

Stressed the primacy of sexual instincts

Development is shaped in childhood

Jung

Stressed people’s rational & spiritual qualities

Development only comes to fruition during middle adulthood

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Alfred AdlerCompensation

One’s effort to overcome imagined or real personal weaknesses

Inferiority complex

Fixation on feelings of personal inferiority that results in emotional and social paralysis

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Karen HorneyNonsexual factors play a larger role than sexual ones

Anxiety as a driving force Reaction to real or imagined threats

Neurotic trendsSubmissionAggressionDetachment

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Erikson’s 8 Stages of Development

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Humanistic Personality TheoriesHumanistic theories stress the potential for growth and change.

Focus on here and now, rather than the past

We are responsible for our own lives.

Given reasonable conditions, people develop in socially desirable directions.• Rooted in Adler’s concept of striving for

perfection

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Abraham Masow

See document on Maslow at http://landman-psychology.com

Maslow was a humanistic personality theorist.

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Carl RogersSelf-actualizing tendency

The drive of human beings to fulfill their conceptions of themselves (self-concepts)

Fully functioning person

An individual whose self-concept closely resembles his/her inborn potentials• Helped along with unconditional positive

regard, instead of • Conditional positive regard

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Trait TheoriesPeople differ according to the degree to which they possess certain personality traits.

Use of factor analysis to cluster traits

Research confirms the value of the five-factor model, referred to as the “Big Five”.

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The Big Five DimensionsExtroversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness/dependability

Emotional stability

Openness to experience/culture/intellect

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Cognitive-Social Learning Theories

People organize their expectancies and values:

To guide their own behavior

Our set of standards is unique to each of us

Result of our past history

Our behavior is a result of the interaction of:

Our cognitions, learning, and environment

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Albert BanduraExpectancies guide our evaluation of a situation.

We then act according to our own performance standards.

When we meet our own standards, we develop our self-efficacy.• An attitude that our effort will be successful

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Rotter’s Locus of ControlLocus of control

An expectancy about whether reinforcement is under internal or external control

Internal

One can control his/her own fate.

External

One’s fate is determined by chance, luck, or the behavior of others.

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Explanatory StylesGeneral explanatory style

Two kinds• Optimistic explanatory style

– Appear to be more careful in their choices• Pessimistic explanatory style

– Higher risk-taking behavior

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Personality AssessmentInterviews

Unstructured• The interviewer asks questions about any

material that comes up.

Structured• The order and content of the questions are

fixed; set format.

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Personality AssessmentDirect Observation

Systematic observation• Issues of observer bias• Time consuming and expensive• People may alter their behavior when

observed

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Psychological AssessmentPsychologists always use a combination ofinterviews and tests; always given in a battery (more than one test), culminating in a written report. The report describes the reason for the assessment, the behavioral observations, the information received through the interview, names the tests given, describes test results and interpretations, and finishes with conclusions and/or recommendations.

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Objective TestsStandardized testsForced-choice or multiple choice formats

LimitationsRely entirely on self-reportFamiliarity with the test affects responses

Common in trait researchSixteen Personality Factor QuestionnaireNEO-PI-RMinnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory,

(originally published in 1943 to diagnose mental illnesses)

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MMPI – Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Originally published in 1943, to help diagnose mental illness. Has been revised several times, and is research based. It has changed and become more useful over the years.

The most widely used personality assessment tool used by psychologists today.

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Projective TestsPresent subject with a standard ambiguous, unstructured stimulus, and ask subject to interpret it.•Sentence CompletionI like _____________________________

•Kinetic Family DrawingsDraw a picture of your family in which everybody is doing something.

•Rorschach Inkbots (1921)•Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (1935)

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