Introduction to Personality Theory

Introduction to Personality Theory

• Personality theorists make observations of human behavior and speculate on their meaning
• Differences in theories stem from differences among theorists on basic issues concerning the nature of humanity

What is Personality?

• Personality is one's social skills, charisma, and popularity in everyday language
• Personality to scientists is a pattern of relatively permanent traits or characteristics that give some consistency to a person's behavior

What is a Theory?

• Theories are tools used by scientists to generate research and organize observations

Theory Defined

• A theory is a set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses

Theory and Its Relatives

• Although theory has some relationship with philosophy, speculation, hypothesis, and taxonomy, it is not the same as any of these
• Philosophy, the love of wisdom, is a broader term than theory, but one of its branches, epistemology, relates to the nature of knowledge and is used by scientists
• Theories rely on speculation, but speculation in the absence of controlled observations and empirical research is essentially worthless
• A hypothesis, or educated guess, is a narrower term than theory, one theory may generate hundreds of hypotheses
• Taxonomy is a classification system, and theories often rely on some sort of classification of data, taxonomies do not generate hypotheses

Why Different Theories?

• Psychologists and other scientists generate a variety of theories because they have different life experiences and ways of looking at the same data

Theorists' Personalities and Their Theories of Personality

• Because personality theories flow from an individual theorist's personality, some psychologists have proposed the psychology of science, a discipline that studies the personal characteristics of theorists

What Makes a Theory Useful?

• A useful theory must generate research, be falsifiable, organize data into an intelligible framework, guide action, be internally consistent, and be parsimonious

Dimensions for a Concept of Humanity

• Personality theorists have had different conceptions of human nature, and there are six dimensions for comparing these conceptions: determinism versus free choice, pessimism versus optimism, causality versus teleology, conscious versus unconscious determinants of behavior, biological versus social influences on personality, and uniqueness versus similarities among people

Research in Personality Theory

• When researching human behavior, personality theorists often use various measuring procedures, and these procedures must be both reliable and valid
• Reliability refers to a measuring instrument's consistency, while validity refers to its accuracy or truthfulness

Psychodynamic Theories

• Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis

Overview of Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud's psychoanalysis has endured because it postulated the primacy of sex and aggression, attracted followers dedicated to spreading psychoanalytic doctrine, and advanced the notion of unconscious motives

Biography of Sigmund Freud

• Born in the Czech Republic in 1856, Freud spent most of his life in Vienna
• In his psychiatry practice, he was more interested in learning about the unconscious motives of patients than in curing neuroses
• Early, Freud believed that hysteria was a result of being seduced during childhood by a sexually mature person
• In 1897, he abandoned his seduction theory and replaced it with his notion of the Oedipus complex

Levels of Mental Life

• Freud saw mental functioning as operating on three levels: unconscious, preconscious, and conscious

Unconscious

• It includes drives and instincts that are beyond awareness but that motivate most human behaviors
• Unconscious drives can become conscious only in disguised or distorted form, such as dream images, slips of the tongue, or neurotic symptoms
• Unconscious processes originate from repression, or the blocking out of anxiety-filled experiences, and phylogenetic endowment, or inherited experiences

Preconscious

• Contains images that are not in awareness but that can become conscious either quite easily or with some level of difficulty

Conscious

• Consciousness plays a relatively minor role in Freudian theory
• Conscious ideas stem from either the perception of external stimuli or from the unconscious and preconscious after they have evaded censorship

Provinces of the Mind

• Freud conceptualized three regions of the mind: the id, the ego, and the superego

The Id

• It is completely unconscious, serves the pleasure principle and contains basic instincts
• The id operates through the primary process

The Ego

• It is governed by the reality principle and is responsible for reconciling the unrealistic demands of the id and the superego
• The ego is also known as the secondary process

The Superego

• It serves the idealistic principle and has two subsystems-the conscience and the ego-ideal
• Results from punishment for improper behavior, where the ego-ideal stems from rewards for socially acceptable behavior

Dynamics of Personality

• Dynamics of personality refers to those forces that motivate people
• Freud grouped all human drives or urges under two primary instincts-sex (Eros or the life instinct) and aggression (the death or destructive instinct)
• The aim of the sexual instinct is pleasure, which can be gained through the erogenous zones, especially the mouth, anus, and genitals
• The object of the sexual instinct is any person or thing that brings sexual pleasure
• All infants possess primary narcissism, or self-centeredness, but the secondary narcissism of adolescence and adulthood is not universal
• Sadism, receiving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on another, and masochism, receiving sexual pleasure from painful experiences, satisfy both sexual and aggressive drives
• The destructive instinct aims to return a person to an inorganic state, but it is ordinarily directed against other people and is called aggression

Anxiety

• Freud believed only the ego feels anxiety, but the id, superego, and outside world can each be a source of anxiety
• Neurotic anxiety stems from the ego's relation with the id, moral anxiety is similar to guilt and results from the ego's relation with the superego, and realistic anxiety is produced by the ego's relation with the real world

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms operate to protect the ego against the pain of anxiety

Repression

• It involves forcing unwanted, anxiety-loaded experiences into the unconscious and is the most basic of all defense mechanisms because it is an active process in each of the others

Undoing and Isolation

• Undoing is the ego's attempt to do away with unpleasant experiences and their consequences, usually by repetitious ceremonial actions
• Isolation is marked by obsessive thoughts and involves the ego's attempt to isolate an experience by surrounding it with a blacked-out region of insensibility

Reaction Formation

• It is marked by the repression of one impulse and the ostentatious expression of its exact opposite

Displacement

• It takes place when people redirect their unwanted urges onto other objects or people in order to disguise the original impulse

Fixation

• Fixations develop when psychic energy is blocked at one stage of development, making psychological change difficult

Regression

• Regressions occur whenever a person reverts to earlier, more infantile modes of behavior

Projection

• It is seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or behaviors that actually reside in one's own unconscious
• When carried to extreme, projection can become paranoia, which is characterized by delusions of persecution

Introjection

• It takes place when people incorporate positive qualities of another person into their own ego to reduce feelings of inferiority

Sublimation

• Sublimations involve the elevation of the sexual instinct's aim to a higher level, which permits people to make contributions to society and culture

Stages of Development

• Freud saw psychosexual development as proceeding from birth to maturity through four overlapping stages

Infantile Period

• It encompasses the first 4 to 5 years of life and is divided into three subphases: oral, anal, and phallic
• During the oral phase and infant is primarily motivated to receive pleasure through the mouth
• During the second year of life, a child goes through an anal phase
• If parents are too punitive during the anal phase, the child may become an anal character, with the anal triad of orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy
• During the phallic phase, boys and girls begin to have differing psychosexual development
• At this time, boys and girls experience the Oedipus complex in which they have sexual feelings for one parent and hostile feelings for the other
• The male castration complex, which takes the form of castration anxiety, breaks up the male Oedipus complex and results in a well-formed male superego
• For girls, however, the castration complex, in the form of penis envy, precedes the female Oedipus complex, a situation that leads to only a gradual and incomplete shattering of the female Oedipus complex and a weaker, more flexible female superego

Latency Period

• Freud believed that psychosexual development goes through a latency stage from about age 5 until puberty in which the sexual instinct is partially suppressed

Genital Period

• It begins with puberty, when adolescents experience a reawakening of the genital aim of Eros
• The term "genital period" should not be confused with "phallic period"

Maturity

• Freud hinted at a stage of psychological maturity in which the ego would be in control of the id and superego and in which consciousness would play a more important role in behavior

Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud erected his theory on the dreams, free associations, slips of the tongue, and neurotic symptoms of his patients during therapy, but he also gathered information from history, literature, and works of art

Freud's Early Therapeutic Technique

• During the 1890s, Freud used an aggressive therapeutic technique in which he strongly suggested to patients that they had been sexually seduced as children
• He later dropped this technique and abandoned his belief that most patients had been seduced during childhood

Freud's Later Therapeutic Technique

• Beginning in the late 1890s, Freud adopted a much more passive type of psychotherapy, one that relied heavily on free association, dream interpretation, and transference
• The goal was to uncover repressed memories, and the therapist uses dream analysis and free association

Dream Analysis

• Freud differentiated the manifest content (conscious description) from the latent content (the unconscious meaning) to interpret dreams
• Nearly all dreams are wish-fulfillments, dreams are known only through dream interpretation
• To interpret, Freud used both dream symbols and the dreamer's associations to the dream content

Freudian Slips

• Freud believed that parapraxes, or so-called Freudian slips, are not chance accidents but reveal a person's true but unconscious intentions

Defense Mechanisms (Related Research)

• George Valliant added to the list, and has found evidence that some are neurotic, immature/maladaptive, and mature/adaptive
• Neurotic defense mechanisms are successful over the short term, immature defenses are unsuccessful and have the highest degree of distortion, mature and adaptive defenses are successful over the long term and maximize gratification

Oral Fixation

• Recent research found aggression is higher in people who bite their finger nails than in non-nail biters, especially in women
• Orally fixated people tend to see their parents more negatively than people who were less orally fixated

Critique of Freud

• Freud regarded himself as a scientist, but many critics consider his methods to be outdated, unscientific, and permeated with gender bias
• Psychoanalysis is rated high on its ability to generate research, very low on its openness to falsification, and average on organizing data and guiding action
• Lacks operational definitions so it rates low on internal consistency

Concept of Humanity

• Freud's concept of humanity was deterministic, pessimistic, emphasized causality over teleology, unconscious determinants over conscious processes, and biology over culture
• Freud took a middle position on the dimension of uniqueness versus similarities among people

Adler: Individual Psychology

• Alfred Adler developed individual psychology

Overview of Adler's Individual Psychology

• Original member of Freud's psychoanalytic group, Adler advocated a personality theory that opposed Freud's
• Where Freud's view of humanity was pessimistic and rooted in biology, Adler's view was optimistic, idealistic, and rooted in family experiences

Biography of Alfred Adler

• Born in 1870 in a town near Vienna
• In 1902, he became a charter member of Freud's organization
• Personal and professional differences between the two men led to Adler's departure from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911
• Then founded his own group, the Society for Individual Psychology
• Strengths were his energetic oral presentations and his insightful ability to understand family dynamics
• Not a gifted writer, prevented individual psychology from attaining world recognition equal to Freud's psychoanalysis

Introduction to Adlerian Theory

• Although Adler's individual psychology is complex and comprehensive, its main tenets can be stated in simple form

Striving for Success or Superiority

• This is the sole dynamic force behind people's actions

The Final Goal

• It unifies personality and makes all behavior meaningful, the most important of which are to strive for either success or superiority

The Striving Force as Compensation

• People are born with inferior bodies, feel inferior, and attempt to overcome feelings through their natural tendency to move toward completion
• Striving force can take one of two courses: personal gain (superiority) or community benefit (success)

Striving for Personal Superiority

• Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal superiority with little concern for other people and benefit, but although they appear to be interested in other people, their basic motivation is personal benefit

Striving for Success

• Psychologically healthy people strive for the success of all humanity, but without losing their personal identity

Subjective Perceptions

• People's subjective view of the world-not reality-shapes their behavior

Fictionalism

• Fictions are people's expectations of the future
• Fictions guide behavior, emphasized teleology over causality, explanations of behavior in terms of future goals rather than past causes

Organ Inferiorities

• All humans are "blessed" with organ inferiorities, which stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority and move people toward perfection or completion

Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality

• All behaviors are directed toward a single purpose
• Seemingly contradictory behaviors can be seen as operating in a self-consistent manner

Organ Dialect

• People often use a physical disorder to express style of life

Conscious and Unconscious

• Processes are unified and operate to achieve a single goal
• The part of our goal that we do not clearly understood is unconscious, the part that we fail to fully comprehend is conscious

Social Interest

• Human behavior has value to the extent that it is motivated by social interest
• This is a feeling of oneness with all of humanity

Origins of Social Interest

• Although social interest exists as potentiality in all people, it must be fostered in a social environment
• Parent-child relationship can be so strong that it negates the effects of heredity

Importance of Social Interest

• Social interest is the sole criterion of human values, and the worthiness of all one's actions must be seen by this standard
• Societies could not exist, individuals in antiquity could not have survived without cooperating with others to protect themselves from danger, even an infant's helplessness predisposes it toward a nurturing person

Style of Life

• The manner of a person's striving, pattern that is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of age
• Healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior, limited ability to change their style of life

Creative Power

• Style of life is partially a product of heredity and environment but ultimately shaped by people's creative power
• This is their ability to freely choose a course of action

Abnormal Development

• Creative power is not limited to healthy people
• Unhealthy individuals also create their own personalities and personal life. Each of us a limited freedom and freedom of choice

General Description for Abnormal Development

• Most important factor: lack of social interest, also people with a useless style of life tend to set their goals too high, have a dogmatic style of life, and live in own private world

External Factors in Maladjustment

• Exaggerated physical deficiencies which do not themselves cause abnormal development, a pampered style of life, and or a neglected style of life

Safeguarding Tendencies

• Both normal and neurotic people create symptoms as a means of protecting their fragile self-esteem

Masculine Protest

• Both men and women sometimes overemphasize the desirability of being manly

Applications of Individual Psychology

• Adler applied to family constellation, early recollections, dreams, and psychotherapy

Family Constellation

• The perceptions of how people may fit into families
• These may relate to their life style and affect future development prospects

Early Recollections

• A reliable method to help to determine life style patterns
• Adler believed that early memories are templates on which people project their current style of life
• These recollections do not to be accurate accounts of early events

Dreams

• Dreams give insight into to solving and help determine future and the best options or directions to take

Psychotherapy

• Create to help to create the relationship involving and to help foster both support the social connections

Related Research

• Although family constellation and birth order have been widely researched, a topic more pertinent to Adlerian theory is early recollections
• Early recollections are a number of personal traits, such as depression, alcoholism, criminal behavior, and success in counseling
• A change in style of life may be capable of producing a change in early recollections, and made-up early recollections may be as meaningful as actual ones

Critique of Adler

• Individual psychology rates high on its ability to generate research, organize data, and guide the practitioner
• Receives a moderate rating on parsimony, because it lacks operational definitions, it rates low on internal consistency
• Many of its related research findings can be explained by other theories.

Concept of Humanity

• Adler saw people as forward moving and social, who are motivated by the future
• Most theorists on uniqueness, Adler rates high