Theories of Personality Reviewer (Schultz) PDF

lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Theories of Personality Reviewer (Schultz) No Highlights Psychology (Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any...

lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Theories of Personality Reviewer (Schultz) No Highlights Psychology (Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila) Scan to open on Studocu Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Theories of Personality Duane Schultz Board Exam Reviewer Nino-Mhar Malana, RPm Chapter 2 Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalysis  Psychoanalysis is Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality and system of therapy for treating mental disorders. The Life of Freud (1856–1939) The Early Years  Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor, Czech Republic).  His father was a relatively unsuccessful wool merchant. When his business failed in Moravia, he moved the family to Leipzig, Germany, and later, when Freud was 4, to Vienna, Austria. Freud remained in Vienna for nearly 80 years.  When Freud was born his father was 40 years old and his mother (the elder Freud’s third wife) only 20. The father was strict and authoritarian. Freud recalled his childhood hostility and anger toward his father. He felt superior to his father as early as age 2.  Freud’s mother was attractive and her behavior toward her first-born son was protective and loving. Freud felt a passionate, even sexual attachment to her, a situation that set the stage for his concept of the Oedipus complex. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  There were eight children in the Freud family, two of them his adult half-brothers with children of their own. Freud resented them all and grew jealous whenever new competitors for his mother’s affection were born.  From an early age he exhibited a high level of intelligence, which his parents helped to foster. His sisters were not allowed to practice the piano lest the noise disturb Freud’s studies. He was given a room of his own; he often took his meals there so as not to lose time from his studies. The room was the only one in the apartment to contain a prized oil lamp; the rest of the family used candles.  Freud had many interests, including military history, but when it came time to choose a career from among the few professions open to Jews in Vienna, he settled on medicine. It was not that he wanted to be a physician but rather that he believed medical studies would lead to a career in scientific research, which in turn might bring the fame he desired. While completing work for his medical degree at the University of Vienna, he conducted physiological research on the spinal cord of fish and the testes of eels, making respectable contributions to the field. The Cocaine Episode  Highly enthusiastic, Freud called cocaine a miracle drug and a magical substance that would cure many ills and also be the means to the recognition he craved.  Freud was strongly criticized for his part in unleashing the cocaine plague. The publicity brought him infamy rather than fame, and for the rest of his life he tried to eradicate his earlier endorsement of cocaine, deleting all references to it from his own bibliography. However, according to letters published long after his death, he continued to use cocaine well into middle age. The Sexual Basis of Neurosis  A further impetus was his engagement to Martha Bernays, which lasted four years before they could afford to marry.  Freud established practice as a clinical neurologist in 1881 and began his exploration of the personalities of people suffering from emotional disorders.  He studied several months in Paris with the psychiatrist Jean Martin Charcot, a pioneer in the use of hypnosis. Charcot also alerted Freud to the possible sexual basis of neurosis. Freud overheard Charcot comment that a particular patient’s problem was sexual in origin. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Childhood Sexual Abuse: Fact or Fantasy?  By 1896, after several years in clinical practice, Freud was convinced that sexual conflicts were the primary cause of all neuroses. He claimed that the majority of his women patients reported traumatic sexual experiences from childhood. These events resembled seduction, with the seducer usually being an older male relative, typically the father.  In 1984, nearly a century later, a psychoanalyst who briefly headed the Freud Archives charged that Freud lied and that his patients had truly been victims of childhood sexual abuse. Jeffrey Masson claimed that Freud called these experiences fantasies to make his ideas more palatable and acceptable to the public. Otherwise, who would believe that so many fathers and uncles were sexually abusing little girls? In other words, Masson said, Freud covered up the truth to make his theory of neurosis more acceptable.  It is important to note that Freud never claimed that all the childhood sexual abuses his patients reported were fantasies; what he did deny was that his patients’ reports were always true. It was, Freud wrote, “hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general”.  It has also been suggested that Freud changed his position on the seduction theory because he realized that if sexual abuse was so widespread, then many fathers (including perhaps his own) would be considered suspect of perverse acts against their children. Freud’s Sex Life  He “had no contact with members of the opposite sex throughout [his early years]. He was decidedly shy and afraid of women and was a virgin when he married at age 30”.  He occasionally had been impotent during his marriage and had sometimes chosen to abstain from sex because he disliked condoms and coitus interruptus, the standard birth control methods of the day.  Freud diagnosed his condition as anxiety neurosis and neurasthenia (a neurotic condition characterized by weakness, worry, and disturbances of digestion and circulation), and he traced both disturbances to an accumulation of sexual tension.  In his writings, he proposed that neurasthenia in men resulted from masturbation, and anxiety neurosis arose from abnormal sexual practices such as coitus interruptus and abstinence. By so labeling his symptoms, “his personal life was thus deeply involved in this particular theory, since with its help he was trying to interpret and solve his own problems…. Freud’s theory of actual neurosis is thus a theory of his own neurotic symptoms”. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  For 3 years Freud psychoanalyzed himself through the study of his dreams. It was during this period that he performed his most creative work in developing his theory of personality. Through the exploration of his dreams, he realized, for the first time, how much hostility he felt toward his father. He recalled his childhood sexual longings for his mother and dreamed of a sex wish toward his eldest daughter. The Pinnacle of Success  As his work became known through published articles and books as well as papers presented at scientific meetings, Freud attracted a group of disciples who met with him weekly to learn about his new system. The topic of their first meeting was the psychology of cigar making. The disciples included Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, who later broke with Freud to develop their own theories. Freud considered them traitors to the cause, and he never forgave them for disputing his approach to psychoanalysis. At a family dinner, he complained about his followers’ disloyalty.  Although grateful for the honor, Freud did not like the United States, complaining of its informality, bad cooking, and scarcity of bathrooms. Although he had been troubled by gastrointestinal problems for many years prior to his visit to the United States, nevertheless “he blamed the New World for ruining his digestion”.  Freud’s system of psychoanalysis was warmly welcomed in the United States. Two years after his visit, American followers founded the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Over the next few years, psychoanalytic societies were established in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.  During the 1920s and 1930s, Freud reached the pinnacle of his success, but at the same time his health began to decline seriously. From 1923 until his death 16 years later, he underwent 33 operations for cancer of the mouth (he smoked 20 cigars daily). Portions of his palate and upper jaw were removed, and he experienced almost constant pain, for which he refused medication. He also received X-ray and radium treatments and had a vasectomy, which some physicians thought would halt the growth of the cancer. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Instincts: The Propelling Forces of the Personality  Instincts are the basic elements of the personality, the motivating forces that drive behavior and determine its direction. In Freud’s system, mental representations of internal stimuli, such as hunger, that drive a person to take certain actions.  Freud’s German term for this concept is Trieb, which is best translated as a driving force or impulse. Instincts are a form of energy—transformed physiological energy—that connects the body’s needs with the mind’s wishes.  The aim of an instinct is to satisfy the need and thereby reduce the tension.  Freud’s theory can be called a homeostatic approach insofar as it suggests that we are motivated to restore and maintain a condition of physiological equilibrium, or balance, to keep the body free of tension. Types of Instincts  The life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the individual and the species by seeking to satisfy the needs for food, water, air, and sex. The life instincts are oriented toward growth and development.  The psychic energy manifested by the life instincts is the libido.  The libido can be attached to or invested in objects, a concept Freud called cathexis. If you like your roommate, for example, Freud would say that your libido is cathected to him or her.  The life instinct Freud considered most important for the personality is sex, which he defined in broad terms. He did not refer solely to the erotic but included almost all pleasurable behaviors and thoughts.  Freud regarded sex as our primary motivation. Erotic wishes arise from the body’s erogenous zones: the mouth, anus, and sex organs. He suggested that people are predominantly pleasure-seeking beings, and much of his personality theory revolves around the necessity of inhibiting or suppressing our sexual longings.  In opposition to the life instincts, Freud postulated the destructive or death instincts. Drawing from biology, he stated the obvious fact that all living things decay and die, returning to their original inanimate state, and he proposed that people have an unconscious wish to die.  One component of the death instincts is the aggressive drive, described as the wish to die turned against objects other than the self. The aggressive drive compels us to destroy, conquer, and kill. Freud came to consider aggression as compelling a part of human nature as sex. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 The Levels of Personality Conscious  The conscious, as Freud defined the term, corresponds to its ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment. Freud considered the conscious a limited aspect of personality because only a small portion of our thoughts, sensations, and memories exists in conscious awareness at any time. Unconscious  More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control. Preconscious  Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of memories, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. The Structure of Personality The Id  The id corresponds to Freud’s earlier notion of the unconscious (although the ego and superego have unconscious aspects as well). The id is the reservoir for the instincts and libido (the psychic energy manifested by the instincts). The id is a powerful structure of the personality because it supplies all the energy for the other two components.  Because the id is the reservoir of the instincts, it is vitally and directly related to the satisfaction of bodily needs.  The id operates in accordance with what Freud called the pleasure principle; through its concern with tension reduction, the id functions to increase pleasure and avoid pain. The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or postponement of satisfaction for any Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 reason. It knows only instant gratification; it drives us to want what we want when we want it, without regard for what anyone else wants. The id is a selfish, pleasure-seeking structure, primitive, amoral, insistent, and rash.  The id has no awareness of reality. The only ways the id can attempt to satisfy its needs (in relation to an infant) are through reflex action and wish-fulfilling hallucinatory or fantasy experience, which Freud labeled primary-process thought. The Ego  The growing child is taught to deal intelligently and rationally with the outside world and to develop the powers of perception, recognition, judgment, and memory—the powers adults use to satisfy their needs. Freud called these abilities secondary-process thought.  We can sum up these characteristics as reason or rationality, and they are contained in Freud’s second structure of personality, the ego, which is the rational master of the personality. Its purpose is not to thwart the impulses of the id but to help the id obtain the tension reduction it craves. Because it is aware of reality, the ego decides when and how the id instincts can best be satisfied.  The ego does not prevent id satisfaction. Rather, it tries to postpone, delay, or redirect it in order to meet the demands of reality. It perceives and manipulates the environment in a practical and realistic manner and so is said to operate in accordance with the reality principle.  The ego serves two masters—the id and reality—and is constantly mediating and striking compromises between their conflicting demands. Also, the ego is never independent of the id. It is always responsive to the id’s demands and derives its power and energy from the id. The Superego  The id and the ego do not represent Freud’s complete picture of human nature. There is a third set of forces—a powerful and largely unconscious set of dictates or beliefs—that we acquire in childhood: our ideas of right and wrong. In everyday language we call this internal morality a conscience. Freud called it the superego.  The basis of this moral side of the personality is usually learned by the age of 5 or 6 and consists initially of the rules of conduct set down by our parents.  Those behaviors for which children are punished form the conscience, one part of the superego.  The second part of the superego is the ego-ideal, which consists of good, or correct, behaviors for which children have been praised. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  As the arbiter of morality, the superego is relentless, even cruel, in its quest for moral perfection.  In terms of intensity, irrationality, and insistence on obedience, it is not unlike the id. Its purpose is not merely to postpone the pleasure-seeking demands of the id, as the ego does, but to inhibit them completely, particularly those demands concerned with sex and aggression. Anxiety: A Threat to the Ego  Freud described anxiety as an objectless fear; often, we cannot point to its source, to a specific object that induced it.  He suggested that the prototype of all anxiety is the birth trauma, a notion elaborated on by a disciple, Otto Rank.  The fetus in its mother’s womb is in the most stable and secure of worlds, where every need is satisfied without delay. Suddenly, it is required to begin adapting to reality because its instinctual demands may not always be immediately met. This birth trauma, with its tension and fear that the id instincts won’t be satisfied, is our first experience with anxiety. Reality Anxiety, Neurotic Anxiety, and Moral Anxiety  The first type of anxiety, the one from which the others are derived, is reality anxiety (or objective anxiety). This involves a fear of tangible dangers in the real world. Most of u justifiably fear fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and similar disasters. We run from wild animals, speeding cars, and burning buildings. Reality anxiety serves the positive purpose of guiding our behavior to escape or protect ourselves from actual dangers. Our fear subsides when the threat is no longer present.  Neurotic anxiety has its basis in childhood, in a conflict between instinctual gratification and reality. Children are often punished for overtly expressing sexual or aggressive impulses. Therefore, the wish to gratify certain id impulses generates anxiety. This neurotic anxiety is an unconscious fear of being punished for impulsively displaying id-dominated behavior.  Moral anxiety results from a conflict between the id and the superego. In essence, it is a fear of one’s conscience. When you are motivated to express an instinctual impulse that is contrary to your moral code, your superego retaliates by causing you to feel shame or guilt. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Moral anxiety is a function of how well developed the superego is. A person with a strong inhibiting conscience will experience greater conflict than a person with a less stringent set of moral guidelines.  Like neurotic anxiety, moral anxiety has some basis in reality. Children are punished for violating their parents’ moral codes, and adults are punished for violating society’s moral code.  Anxiety serves as a warning to the person that something is amiss within the personality. Anxiety induces tension in the organism and thus becomes a drive (much like hunger or thirst) that the individual is motivated to satisfy. The tension must be reduced. Defenses against Anxiety  Freud postulated several defense mechanisms and noted that we rarely use just one; we typically defend ourselves against anxiety by using several at the same time. Also, some overlap exists among the mechanisms.  Although defense mechanisms vary in their specifics, they share two characteristics: 1. they are denials or distortions of reality—necessary ones, but distortions nonetheless, and, 2. they operate unconsciously. We are unaware of them, which means that on the conscious level we hold distorted or unreal images of our world and ourselves. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Repression  Repression is an involuntary removal of something from conscious awareness. It is an unconscious type of forgetting of the existence of something that brings us discomfort or pain and is the most fundamental and frequently used defense mechanism.  The concept of repression is the basis of much of Freud’s personality theory and is involved in all neurotic behavior. Denial  The defense mechanism of denial is related to repression and involves denying the existence of some external threat or traumatic event that has occurred.  For example, a person with a terminal illness may deny the imminence of death. Parents of a child who has died may continue to deny the loss by keeping the child’s room unchanged. Reaction Formation  One defense against a disturbing impulse is to actively express the opposite impulse. This is called reaction formation.  A person who is strongly driven by threatening sexual impulses may repress those impulses and replace them with more socially acceptable behaviors. For example, a person threatened by sexual longings may reverse them and become a rabid crusader against pornography.  Another person, disturbed by extreme aggressive impulses, may become overly solicitous and friendly. Thus, lust becomes virtue and hatred becomes love, in the unconscious mind of the person using this mechanism. Projection  Another way of defending against disturbing impulses is to attribute them to someone else. This defense mechanism is called projection. Lustful, aggressive, and other unacceptable impulses are seen as being possessed by other people, not by oneself.  The person says, in effect, “I don’t hate him. He hates me.” Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Regression  In regression, the person retreats or regresses to an earlier period of life that was more pleasant and free of frustration and anxiety. Regression usually involves a return to one of the psychosexual stages of childhood development. The individual returns to this more secure time of life by manifesting behaviors displayed at that time, such as childish and dependent behaviors. Rationalization  Rationalization is a defense mechanism that involves reinterpreting our behavior to make it seem more rational and acceptable to us. We excuse or justify a threatening thought or action by persuading ourselves there is a rational explanation for it.  The person who is fired from a job may rationalize by saying that the job wasn’t a good one anyway.  It is less threatening to blame someone or something else for our failures than to blame ourselves. Displacement  If an object that satisfies an id impulse is not available, the person may shift the impulse to another object. This is known as displacement.  The child may hit a younger brother or sister, or the adult may shout at the dog.  The substitute object will not reduce the tension as satisfactorily as the original object. If you are involved in a number of displacements, a reservoir of undischarged tension accumulates, and you will be driven to find new ways of reducing that tension. Sublimation  Whereas displacement involves finding a substitute object to satisfy id impulses, sublimation involves altering the id impulses. The instinctual energy is diverted into other channels of expression, ones that society considers acceptable and admirable.  Sexual energy, for example, can be diverted or sublimated into artistically creative behaviors.  Freud believed that a variety of human activities, particularly those of an artistic nature, are manifestations of id impulses that have been redirected into socially acceptable outlets.  As we noted, Freud suggested that defense mechanisms are unconscious denials or distortions of reality. We are, in a sense, lying to ourselves when we use these defenses, but we are not aware of doing so. If we knew we were lying to ourselves, the defenses would not be so effective. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  When the defenses fail, we are stricken with overwhelming anxiety. We feel dismal, worthless, and depressed. Unless the defenses are restored or new ones form to take their place we are likely to develop neurotic or psychotic symptoms. Thus, defenses are necessary to our mental health. We could not survive long without them. Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development  Freud believed that all behaviors are defensive but that not everyone uses the same defenses in the same way.  All of us are driven by the same id impulses, but there is not the same universality in the nature of the ego and superego. Although these structures of the personality perform the same functions for everyone, their content varies from one person to another. They differ because they are formed through experience, and no two people have precisely the same experiences, not even siblings reared in the same house.  A person’s unique character type develops in childhood largely from parent–child interactions. The child tries to maximize pleasure by satisfying the id demands, while parents, as representatives of society, try to impose the demands of reality and morality.  So important did Freud consider childhood experiences that he said the adult personality was firmly shaped and crystallized by the fifth year of life.  Sometimes a person is reluctant or unable to move from one stage to the next because the conflict has not been resolved or because the needs have been so supremely satisfied by an indulgent parent that the child doesn’t want to move on. In either case, the individual is said to be fixated at this stage of development. In fixation, a portion of libido or psychic energy remains invested in that developmental stage, leaving less energy for the following stages. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 The Oral Stage  The oral stage, the first stage of psychosexual development, lasts from birth until some time during the second year of life. During this period, the infant’s principal source of pleasure is the mouth. The infant derives pleasure from sucking, biting, and swallowing.  The infant is in a state of dependence on the mother or caregiver who becomes the primary object of the child’s libido.  There are two ways of behaving during this stage: oral incorporative behavior (taking in) and oral aggressive or oral sadistic behavior (biting or spitting out). 1. The oral incorporative mode occurs first and involves the pleasurable stimulation of the mouth by other people and by food.  Adults fixated at the oral incorporative stage are excessively concerned with oral activities, such as eating, drinking, smoking, and kissing.  If, as infants, they were excessively gratified, their adult oral personality will be predisposed to unusual optimism and dependency. Because they were overindulged in infancy, they continue to depend on others to gratify their needs. As a consequence, they are overly gullible, swallow or believe anything they are told, and trust other people inordinately. Such people are labeled oral passive personality types. 2. The second oral behavior, oral aggressive or oral sadistic, occurs during the painful, frustrating eruption of teeth.  Persons who become fixated at this level are prone to excessive pessimism, hostility, and aggressiveness. They are likely to be argumentative and sarcastic, making so-called biting remarks and displaying cruelty toward others. They tend to be envious of other people and try to exploit and manipulate them in an effort to dominate. The Anal Stage  Defecation produces erotic pleasure for the child, but with the onset of toilet training, the child must learn to postpone or delay this pleasure. For the first time, gratification of an instinctual impulse is interfered with as parents attempt to regulate the time and place for defecation.  If the toilet training is not going well—for example, if the child has difficulty learning or the parents are excessively demanding—the child may react in one of two ways. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 1. One way is to defecate when and where the parents disapprove, thus defying their attempts at regulation. If the child finds this a satisfactory technique for reducing frustration and uses it frequently, he or she may develop an anal aggressive personality.  To Freud, this was the basis for many forms of hostile and sadistic behavior in adult life, including cruelty, destructiveness, and temper tantrums. Such a person is likely to be disorderly and to view other people as objects to be possessed. 2. A second way the child may react to the frustration of toilet training is to hold back or retain the feces. This produces a feeling of erotic pleasure (derived from a full lower intestine) and can be another successful technique for manipulating the parents. They may become concerned if the child goes several days without a bowel movement. Thus, the child discovers a new method for securing parental attention and affection. This behavior is the basis for the development of an anal retentive personality.  Stubborn and stingy, such a person hoards or retains things because feelings of security depend on what is saved and possessed and on the order in which possessions and other aspects of life are maintained. The person is likely to be rigid, compulsively neat, obstinate, and overly conscientious. The Phallic Stage  Children at the phallic stage display considerable interest in exploring and manipulating the genitals, their own and those of their playmates.  Pleasure is derived from the genital region not only through behaviors such as masturbation, but also through fantasies.  The child becomes curious about birth and about why boys have penises and girls do not. The child may talk about wanting to marry the parent of the opposite sex.  The Oedipus complex in boys  The basic conflict of the phallic stage centers on the unconscious desire of the child for the parent of the opposite sex. Accompanying this is the unconscious desire to replace or destroy the parent of the same sex. Out of Freud’s identification of this conflict came one of his best-known concepts: the Oedipus complex.  In the Oedipus complex, the mother becomes a love object for the young boy. Through fantasy and overt behavior, he displays his sexual longings for her. However, the boy sees the father as an Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 obstacle in his path and regards him as a rival and a threat. He perceives that the father has a special relationship with the mother in which he, the boy, is not allowed to participate. As a result, he becomes jealous of and hostile toward the father.  Accompanying the boy’s desire to replace his father is the fear that the father will retaliate and harm him. He interprets his fear of his father in genital terms, becoming fearful that his father will cut off the offending organ (the boy’s penis), which is the source of the boy’s pleasure and sexual longings. And so castration anxiety, as Freud called it, comes to play a role, as it may have done in Freud’s childhood.  So strong is the boy’s fear of castration that he is forced to repress his sexual desire for his mother. To Freud, this was a way of resolving the Oedipal conflict. The boy replaces the sexual longing for the mother with a more acceptable affection and develops a strong identification with the father.  The Oedipus complex in girls  Freud was less clear about the female phallic conflict, which some of his followers termed the Electra complex.  Like the boy’s, the girl’s first object of love is the mother, because she is the primary source of food, affection, and security in infancy.  During the phallic stage, however, the father becomes the girl’s new love object. Why does this shift from mother to father take place? Freud said it was because of the girl’s reaction to her discovery that boys have a penis and girls do not.  The girl blames her mother for her supposedly inferior condition and consequently comes to love her mother less. She may even hate the mother for what she imagines the mother did to her. She comes to envy her father and transfers her love to him because he possesses the highly valued sex organ.  Thus, a girl develops penis envy, a counterpart to a boy’s castration anxiety. She believes she has lost her penis; he fears he will lose his.  This female Oedipus complex, Freud suggested, can never be totally resolved, a situation he believed led to poorly developed superegos in women. Freud wrote that an adult woman’s love for a man is always tinged with penis envy, for which she can partially compensate by having a male child. The girl comes to identify with the mother and repress her love for her father, but Freud was not specific about how this occurs. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  The phallic personality  The so-called phallic character or personality type evidences strong narcissism. Although continually acting to attract the opposite sex, these persons have difficulty establishing mature heterosexual relationships.  Freud described the male phallic personality as brash, vain, and self-assured. Men with this personality try to assert or express their masculinity through activities such as repeated sexual conquests.  The female phallic personality, motivated by penis envy, exaggerates her femininity and uses her talents and charms to overwhelm and conquer men. The Latency Period  Fortunately, because the child and parents certainly could use some rest, the next 5 or 6 years are quiet. The latency period is not a psychosexual stage of development. The sex instinct is dormant, temporarily sublimated in school activities, hobbies, and sports and in developing friendships with members of the same sex. The Genital Stage  The genital stage, the final psychosexual stage of development, begins at puberty. The body is becoming physiologically mature, and if no major fixations have occurred at an earlier stage of development, the individual may be able to lead a normal life.  Freud believed that the conflict during this period is less intense than in the other stages. The adolescent must conform to societal sanctions and taboos that exist concerning sexual expression, but conflict is minimized through sublimation.  The genital personality type is able to find satisfaction in love and work, the latter being an acceptable outlet for sublimation of the id impulses. Questions about Human Nature  Human beings are depicted in pessimistic terms, condemned to a struggle with our inner forces, a struggle we are almost always destined to lose. Doomed to anxiety, to the thwarting of at least some of our driving impulses, we experience continual tension and conflict. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  In Freud’s system, there is only one ultimate and necessary goal in life: to reduce tension.  Although Freud recognized universality in human nature, in that we all pass through the same stages of psychosexual development and are motivated by the same id forces, he asserted that part of the personality is unique to each person. The ego and superego perform the same functions for everyone, but their content varies from one person to another because they are formed through personal experience.  Virtually everything we do, think and dream is predetermined by the life and death instincts, the inaccessible and invisible forces within us. Our adult personality is determined by interactions that occurred before we were 5, at a time when we had limited control.  Freud also argued, however, that people who underwent psychoanalysis could achieve the ability to exercise increased free will and take responsibility for their choices. “The more the individual is able to make conscious what had been unconscious, the more he or she can take charge of his or her own life”. Thus, Freud suggested that psychoanalysis had the potential to liberate people from the constraints of determinism. Assessment in Freud’s Theory Free Association  Freud’s development of the technique of free association owes much to Josef Breuer, a Viennese physician who befriended Freud during Freud’s early years in private practice. A technique in which the patient says whatever comes to mind. In other words, it is a kind of daydreaming out loud.  Freud used the technique with some success and called the process catharsis, from the Greek word for purification. The expression of emotions that is expected to lead to the reduction of disturbing symptoms.  However, he later abandoned hypnosis, partly because he had difficulty hypnotizing some of his patients. Also, some patients revealed disturbing events during hypnosis but were unable to recall those events when questioned later.  The material revealed by patients in free association was predetermined, forced on them by the nature of their conflict.  He also found that sometimes the technique did not operate freely. Some experiences or memories were evidently too painful to talk about, and the patient would be reluctant to disclose them. Freud Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 called these moments resistances. He believed they were significant because they indicate proximity to the source of the patient’s problems. The expression of emotions that is expected to lead to the reduction of disturbing symptoms. Dream Analysis  Freud believed that dreams represent in symbolic form, repressed desires, fears, and conflicts. So strongly have these feelings been repressed that they can surface only in disguised fashion during sleep.  In his technique of dream analysis, Freud distinguished two aspects of dreams: the manifest content, which refers to the actual events in the dream, and the latent content, which is the hidden symbolic meaning of the dream’s events.  Steps, ladders, and staircases in a dream represented sexual intercourse. Candles, snakes, and tree trunks indicated the penis, and boxes, balconies, and doors signified the female body. Freud warned that despite this apparent universality of symbols, many symbols are specific to the person undergoing analysis and could have a different meaning for someone else. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Research on Freud’s Theory  Freud’s major research method was the case study. We noted in Chapter 1 that the case study method has several limitations. It does not rely on objective observation, the data are not gathered in systematic fashion, and the situation (the psychoanalytic session) is not amenable to duplication and verification.  A fundamental criticism of Freud’s case studies involves the nature of his data. He did not keep verbatim records of the therapy sessions, and he warned analysts against taking notes during the sessions, believing it would distract their attention from their patients’ words. Thus, it is possible that his data were incomplete, consisting only of what he later remembered. It is also possible that his recollection was selective and that he recorded only the experiences that would support his theory, or that he interpreted those experiences in ways that would support his theory.  Freud made few attempts to verify the accuracy of a patient’s stories, which he might have done by questioning the patient’s friends and relatives about the events described.  Some critics also suggest that Freud’s patients did not actually reveal childhood sexual experiences because, in most cases, those experiences had never occurred.  Other critics agree that Freud was suggesting accounts of childhood seduction, without really hearing his patients say so, because he had already formed the hypothesis that such seductions were the true cause of adult neuroses. Still others charge that Freud may have used the power of suggestion to elicit or implant alleged memories of childhood seduction that had never taken place.  Another criticism of Freud’s research is that it is based on a small and unrepresentative sample of people, restricted to him and to those who sought psychoanalysis with him. Only a dozen or so cases have been detailed in Freud’s writings, and most of these were of young, unmarried, upper-class women of good education. It is difficult to generalize from this limited sample to the population at large. Scientific Validation of Freudian Concepts The unconscious  Much research on the nature of the unconscious involves subliminal perception (also called subliminal psychodynamic activation), in which stimuli are presented to research participants below their level of conscious awareness. (The word subliminal derives from sub, meaning below, and Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 limen, meaning threshold.) Despite their inability to perceive the stimuli, the research participants’ conscious processes and behavior are activated by the stimuli. In other words, people can be influenced by stimuli of which they are not consciously aware. The ego  Ego control, as you would expect from the name, is close to Freud’s original conception. It refers to the amount of control we are able to exert over our impulses and feelings. The degree of ego control ranges from under-controlled (in which we are unable to restrain any impulses and feelings) to over-controlled (in which we tightly inhibit the expression of our impulses). Both extremes are considered maladaptive.  Ego resiliency refers to our flexibility in modulating, adjusting, or changing our typical level of ego control to meet the daily changes in our environment. Persons with little ego resiliency are referred to as “ego brittle”, meaning they are unable to alter their level of ego control to meet challenges or difficult life situations. Those high in ego resiliency are flexible and adaptable, able to tighten or loosen their degree of ego control as the situation warrants.  The researchers suggested that difficult life situations, setbacks and failures, or other negative experiences tend to lower ego resiliency. Catharsis  Apparently, striking the punching bag had not been cathartic. It had not dissipated their anger but might even have increased it. Other research confirms that venting anger serves to increase the likelihood of expressing more anger.  A later study showed that people who believed venting anger was good for them were more attracted to violent video games than were those who did not believe in the value of catharsis. Displacement  An analysis of 97 studies supported the contention that displaced aggression is a viable and reliable phenomenon. The analysis found that the more negative and stressful the setting or context in which displacement occurs, the greater the intensity of that displacement.  The researchers concluded that dwelling on anger maintains the feeling and is likely to cause it to be expressed outwardly in aggressive behavior. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Repression  Research conducted in Australia identified research participants as repressors and non-repressors based on personality test scores that showed repressors to be low in anxiety and high in defensiveness. Repressors recalled fewer emotional experiences from childhood, particularly those involving fear and self-consciousness, than did non-repressors.  In a group of 443 male and female college students, repressors were found to be less likely to smoke and drink than were non-repressors. Repressors in this study scored higher than non-repressors on the belief that excessive drinking would not lead to harmful consequences for them. Other defense mechanisms  Researchers have suggested a hierarchy among the Freudian defense mechanisms in which the simpler ones are used earlier in life and the more complex ones emerge as we grow older.  For example, studies show that denial (a simple, low-level defense mechanism) is used mostly by young children and less by adolescents. Identification, a more complex defense, is used considerably more by adolescents than by younger children.  Denial was used more frequently by boys; girls were more likely to use regression, displacement, and reaction formation.  Two studies conducted in Canada demonstrated that adolescent girls with anorexia nervosa (an eating disorder), and older women who had been victims of spouse abuse, were far more likely to use denial as a coping mechanism than were girls or women who were not in these categories. The researchers suggested that by unconsciously denying their difficulties, the girls and women were attempting to minimize or distance themselves from the situations.  A study of adult men found that those who tried to protect themselves from feelings of weakness by being more powerful and competitive and who avoided emotional expression tended to use more immature defense mechanisms. Those men who did not feel so great a need to be more powerful than others and who could express their emotions more freely used more mature defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms in Asian cultures  In an unusual study of Asians and Americans, a group of research participants in the United States was compared with a group of Asian Buddhists living in Thailand. A self-report inventory, the Instruments Life Style Index, was used to assess the use of defense mechanisms. The researchers found a strong Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 similarity between people in the two cultures in their use of regression, reaction formation, projection, repression, denial, and compensation. Dreams  People who spend a great deal of time playing video games tend to have more bizarre dreams containing dead and imaginary characters than people who spend considerably less time playing video games.  Those with lower levels of psychological well-being (and, thus, presumably, less happy) reported more dreams of aggression toward others, negative emotions, and failure and misfortune. Those with higher levels of psychological wellbeing reported dreams of friendly interactions with others, positive emotions, and success and good fortune.  Other research confirmed that dreams reflect real-life experiences and that the emotional intensity of these experiences, as well as the person’s mood, influences the dream stories. Briefly, it may be that if you are having a bad day, you have bad dreams that night. And if something in your room smells bad, that can affect your dreams. Research in a sleep laboratory in Germany found that a mere 10 seconds’ exposure to the odor of roses once the subjects were asleep resulted in more pleasant dreams than exposure to the smell of rotten eggs. The Oedipus complex  A study conducted in Wales of boys and girls ages 12 to 14 assessed their attitudes toward their parents. The results showed that children who were ambivalent toward their fathers (who viewed them with a mixture of both love and hatred) displayed a less secure attachment toward other people than did children who did not feel ambivalent about their fathers. Oral and anal personality types  An investigation of the oral personality type showed a strong relationship between the oral orientation, as identified by the Rorschach, and obesity. This supports Freud’s contention that oral types are preoccupied with eating and drinking. Another study found oral personality types to be more conforming to the suggestions of an authority figure than anal personality types.  According to Freud, oral personalities are dependent and submissive and should be more conforming than anal personalities; anal types tend to be hostile and can be expected to resist conformity. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Aggression  Considerable research has demonstrated that although frustration can trigger aggression, it does not always do so. Aggressive responses to frustration can be modified by training. This idea supports the role of learning in aggression. The psychologist Albert Bandura has shown that we learn aggressive behavior the same way we learn many social behaviors, primarily by observing aggression in other people and imitating what we have seen. Age and personality development  Noted child development psychologist Jerome Kagan reviewed the literature and concluded that personality appears to depend more on temperament and experiences in later childhood than on early parent–child interactions. Although there is no denying that our first 5 years of life affect our personality, it is now obvious that personality continues to develop well beyond that time. The Freudian slip  Not all lapses in speech are Freudian slips, of course, but research suggests that at least some may be what Freud said they were—hidden anxieties revealing themselves in embarrassing ways. Repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse  Despite evidence to support the existence of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse that actually did occur, it is important to note that research also shows how easily false memories can be implanted and recollections distorted, to the point where something that never occurred can be made conscious and appear to be genuine or threatening. Extensions of Freudian Theory Ego Psychology: Anna Freud  Although Anna Freud (1895–1982) may have been an unplanned baby (she said she never would have been born had a safer contraceptive method been available to her parents), she became the only one of Sigmund Freud’s six children to follow his path. An unhappy child, Anna was jealous of the older sister favored by her mother and was ignored by her other siblings. She recalled “the experience of being … only a bore to them, and of feeling bored and left alone”. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Anna was not ignored by her father. She became his favorite child and by the age of 14 was dutifully attending meetings of his psychoanalytic group, listening attentively to the case histories being presented and discussed.  At 22, Anna began 4 years of psychoanalysis conducted by her father, who was later sharply criticized for analyzing his daughter. To analyze one’s child was a serious violation of Freud’s rules for the practice of psychoanalysis; the situation with Anna was kept secret for many years.  Anna Freud joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, presenting a paper entitled Beating Fantasies and Daydreams. Although she claimed to be describing the experiences of a patient, she was actually relating her own fantasies. She spoke of an incestuous love relationship between father and daughter, a physical beating, and sexual gratification through masturbation.  Whereas the elder Freud had worked only with adults, attempting to reconstruct their childhood by eliciting their recollections and analyzing their fantasies and dreams, Anna worked only with children.  She established a clinic and a center to train analysts in the building next door to her father’s London home. In 1927 she published Four Lectures on Child Analysis. Sigmund Freud approved of her work: “Anna’s views on child analysis are independent of mine; I share her views, but she has developed them out of her own independent experience”.  Anna Freud substantially revised orthodox psychoanalysis by expanding the role of the ego, arguing that the ego operates independently of the id. This was a major extension of the Freudian system, one that involved a fundamental and radical change. Object Relations Theories: Heinz Kohut and Melanie Klein  We used the word object when we discussed Freud’s concept of cathexis, which he defined as an investment of psychic energy in an object. By object, he meant any person or activity that can satisfy an instinct. Thus, we may invest psychic energy in people, such as our mothers, who are able to satisfy our basic needs.  Freud suggested that the first instinct-gratifying object in an infant’s life is the mother’s breast. Later, the mother as a whole person becomes an object. As the child matures, other people also become such objects, as long as they satisfy the child’s instinctual needs.  Object relations theories focus more on interpersonal relationships with such objects than they do on instinctual drives. Although drive satisfaction is important, it is secondary to the establishment of interrelationships. This primary emphasis on personal relations, over instinctual needs, tells us that Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 unlike Freud, object relations theorists accept social and environmental factors as influences on personality.  They place particular emphasis on the mother–child relationship, suggesting that the core of personality is formed in infancy, at a younger age than Freud proposed. Heinz Kohut (1913–1981)  Kohut’s emphasis is on the formation of the nuclear self, which he described as the foundation for becoming an independent person, capable of taking initiative and integrating ambitions and ideals.  The nuclear self develops from the relationships that form between the infant and so-called self-objects in the environment.  These self-objects are the people who play such a vital role in our lives that, as infants, we believe they are part of our selves.  Typically, the mother is the infant’s primary self-object. Kohut suggested that her role is to gratify not only the child’s physical needs but also the psychological needs.  To do this, the mother must act as a mirror to the child, reflecting back on the child a sense of uniqueness, importance, and greatness. By doing so, the mother confirms the child’s sense of pride, which becomes part of the nuclear self. If the mother rejects her child, thus mirroring a sense of unimportance, then the child may develop shame or guilt.  In this way, all aspects of the adult self (the positive and the negative) are formed by the child’s initial relations with the primary self-object. Melanie Klein (1882–1960)  Klein experienced difficulties both as a daughter and a mother. This may have been an influence on her formulation of a system of personality development that focused on the intense emotional relationship between infant and mother.  She emphasized the first 5 to 6 months of a child’s life, in contrast to Freud’s stress on the first 5 years. She assumed babies are born with active fantasy lives that harbor mental representations (images) of Freudian id instincts, which the images temporarily satisfy. For example, a hungry baby can imagine sucking at the mother’s breast and so, for a time, assuage the hunger. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Infants relate, initially, only to parts of objects, and the first such part-object for babies is the mother’s breast. The breast either gratifies or fails to gratify an id instinct, and the infant comes to judge it as good or bad.  The baby’s world, as represented by this part-object, is thus seen as either satisfying or hostile. Gradually, as the world expands, infants relate to whole objects rather than part-objects, for example, to the mother as a person rather than solely a breast. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 Chapter 3 Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology  Sigmund Freud once designated Carl Jung as his spiritual heir, but Jung went on to develop a theory of personality that differed dramatically from orthodox psychoanalysis. He fashioned a new and elaborate explanation of human nature quite unlike any other; he called it analytical psychology.  Disagreements with Freud 1. The first point on which Jung came to disagree with Freud was the role of sexuality. Jung broadened Freud’s definition of libido by redefining it as a more generalized psychic energy that includes sex but is not restricted to it. 2. The second major area of disagreement concerned the direction of the forces that influence personality. Whereas Freud viewed human beings as prisoners or victims of past events, Jung argued that we are shaped by our future as well as our past. 3. The third significant point of difference revolved around the unconscious. Rather than minimizing the role of the unconscious, as did the other neo-psychoanalytic dissenters we discuss, Jung placed an even greater emphasis on it than Freud did. He probed more deeply into the unconscious and added a new dimension: the inherited experiences of human and pre-human species. Although Freud had recognized this phylogenetic aspect of personality (the influence of inherited primal experiences), Jung made it the core of his system of personality. He combined ideas from history, mythology, anthropology, and religion to form his image of human nature. The Life of Jung (1875–1961) An Unhappy Childhood  Jung’s difficult and unhappy childhood years were marked by black-frocked clergymen, deaths and funerals, neurotic parents in a failing marriage, religious doubts and conflicts, bizarre dreams and visions, and a wooden doll for a companion. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Born in Switzerland into a family that included nine clergymen (eight uncles and his father), Jung was introduced at an early age to religion and the classics.  He was close to his father but considered him weak and powerless. Although kind and tolerant, Jung’s father experienced periods of moodiness and irritability and failed to be the strong authority figure his son needed.  Jung’s mother was the more powerful parent, but her emotional instability led her to behave erratically. She could change in an instant from cheerful and happy to mumbling incoherently and gazing vacantly into space.  As a result of his mother’s odd behavior, Jung became wary of women, a suspicion that took many years to dispel. In his autobiography, he described his mother as fat and unattractive, which may explain why he rejected Freud’s notion that every boy has a sexual longing for his mother. Clearly, it did not reflect his experience.  To avoid his parents and their continuing marital problems, Jung spent many hours alone in the attic of his home, carving a doll out of wood, a figure in whom he could confide. Dreams and Fantasies  Distrustful of his mother and disappointed in his father, Jung felt cut off from the external world, the world of conscious reality. As an escape, he turned inward to his unconscious, to the world of dreams, visions, and fantasies, in which he felt more secure.  When Jung was 3 years old, he dreamed he was in a cavern. In a later dream, he saw himself digging beneath the earth’s surface, unearthing the bones of prehistoric animals. To Jung, such dreams represented the direction of his approach to the human personality.  Jung’s loneliness is reflected in his theory, which focuses on the inner growth of the individual rather than on relationships with other people. In contrast, Freud’s theory is concerned more with interpersonal relationships, perhaps because Freud, unlike Jung, did not have such an isolated and introverted childhood. The Study of Medicine  Jung disliked school and resented the time he had to devote to formal studies rather than to ideas that interested him. He preferred to read on his own, particularly about religious and philosophical issues. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  To his delight, he was forced to miss six months of school because he had suffered a series of fainting spells. He returned to school but his presence was disruptive. His teachers sent him home because his classmates were more interested in “waiting for Carl to faint than in doing their lessons”.  When Jung overheard his father say, “What will become of the boy if he cannot earn his living?” his illness suddenly disappeared, and he returned to school to work more diligently than before. Jung later wrote that the experience taught him about neurotic behavior. He recognized that he had arranged the situation to suit himself, to keep him out of school, and that realization made him feel angry and ashamed.  Jung chose to study medicine at the University of Basel and decided, to the disappointment of his professors, to specialize in psychiatry, a field then held in low repute. He believed that psychiatry would give him the opportunity to pursue his interests in dreams, the supernatural, and the occult.  Beginning in 1900, Jung worked at a mental hospital in Zurich, under the direction of Eugen Bleuler, the psychiatrist who coined the term schizophrenia. The Years with Freud  When Jung and Freud met for the first time, they were so congenial and had so much to share that they talked for 13 hours. Their friendship became a close one. “I formally adopted you as an eldest son,” Freud wrote to Jung, “and anointed you as my successor and crown prince”.  Jung considered Freud a father figure. “Let me enjoy your friendship not as one between equals”, he wrote to Freud, “but as that of father and son”.  Their relationship appeared to contain many of the elements of the Oedipus complex, with its inevitable wish of the son to destroy the father.  Also, their relationship may have been tainted, even doomed, by a sexual experience Jung had at the age of 18. A family friend, an older man who had been a father figure and confidant, made physical overtures to Jung, seeking a homosexual encounter. Repelled and disappointed, Jung broke off the relationship.  Years later, when Freud, who was nearly 20 years older than Jung, attempted to designate Jung as son and heir, Jung may have felt Freud was, in a sense, forcing himself on Jung and changing the nature of their relationship. Because of Jung’s earlier encounter with the older man, he may have been similarly disappointed in Freud and unable to sustain an emotionally close relationship with him. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Contrary to Freud’s hopes, Jung was not an uncritical disciple. Jung had his own ideas and unique view of the human personality, and when he began to express these notions, it became inevitable that they would part. They severed their relationship in 1913. A Neurotic Episode  That same year, when Jung was 38 years old, he underwent a severe neurotic episode that lasted for three years. He believed he was in danger of losing contact with reality and was so distressed that he resigned his lectureship at the University of Zurich. At times he considered suicide; he “kept a revolver next to his bed in case he felt he had passed beyond the point of no return”.  During the crisis Jung experienced vivid, often violent dreams and visions involving large-scale disasters such as ice covering the earth, flowing rivers of blood, even the destruction of all civilization. Other dreams were more personal but equally terrifying. “Jung travels the land of the dead, falls in love with a woman he later realizes is his sister, gets squeezed by a giant serpent and … eats the liver of a little child”. No wonder he felt as if he were going mad!  Jung overcame his disturbance by confronting his unconscious through the exploration of his dreams and fantasies. Although Jung’s self-analysis was less systematic than Freud’s, his approach was similar.  He concluded that the most crucial stage in personality development was not childhood, as Freud believed, but middle age, which was the time of Jung’s own crisis. Psychic Energy: Opposites, Equivalence, and Entropy  One of the first points on which Jung disputed Freud concerned the nature of libido. Jung did not agree that libido was primarily a sexual energy; he argued instead that libido was a broad, undifferentiated life energy.  Interestingly, Jung, who minimized the importance of sex in his personality theory, maintained a vigorous, anxiety-free sex life and enjoyed a number of extramarital affairs.  “To Jung, who freely and frequently satisfied his sexual needs, sex played a minimal role in human motivation. To Freud, beset by frustrations and anxious about his thwarted desires, sex played the central role”. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Jung used the term libido in two ways: first, as a diffuse and general life energy, and second, from a perspective similar to Freud’s, as a narrower psychic energy that fuels the work of the personality, which he called the psyche.  It is through psychic energy that psychological activities such as perceiving, thinking, feeling, and wishing are carried out.  When a person invests a great deal of psychic energy in a particular idea or feeling, that idea or feeling is said to have a high psychic value and can strongly influence the person’s life.  For example, if you are highly motivated to attain power, then you will devote most of your psychic energy to seeking power.  The principle of opposites can be seen throughout Jung’s system. He noted the existence of opposites or polarities in physical energy in the universe, such as heat versus cold, height versus depth, creation versus decay. So it is with psychic energy: Every wish or feeling has its opposite. This opposition or antithesis—this conflict between polarities—is the primary motivator of behavior and generator of energy. Indeed, the sharper the conflict between polarities, the greater the energy produced.  For his principle of equivalence, Jung applied to psychic events the physical principle of the conservation of energy. He stated that energy expended in bringing about some condition is not lost but rather is shifted to another part of the personality. Thus, if the psychic value in a particular area weakens or disappears, that energy is transferred elsewhere in the psyche.  For example, if we lose interest in a person, a hobby, or a field of study, the psychic energy formerly invested in that area is shifted to a new one.  The psychic energy used for conscious activities while we are awake is shifted to dreams when we are asleep.  The word equivalence implies that the new area to which energy has shifted must have an equal psychic value; that is, it should be equally desirable, compelling, or fascinating. Otherwise, the excess energy will flow into the unconscious. In whatever direction and manner energy flows, the principle of equivalence suggests that energy is continually redistributed within the personality.  In physics, the principle of entropy refers to the equalization of energy differences. For example, if a hot object and a cold object are placed in direct contact, heat will flow from the hotter object to the colder object until they are in equilibrium at the same temperature. In effect, an exchange of energy occurs, resulting in a kind of homeostatic balance between the objects. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Ideally, the personality has an equal distribution of psychic energy over all its aspects, but this ideal state is never achieved. If perfect balance or equilibrium were attained, then the personality would have no psychic energy because, as we noted earlier, the opposition principle requires conflict for psychic energy to be produced. The Systems of Personality The Ego  The ego is the center of consciousness, the part of the psyche concerned with perceiving, thinking, feeling, and remembering. It is our awareness of ourselves and is responsible for carrying out the normal activities of waking life. The Attitudes: Extraversion and Introversion  Extraverts are open, sociable, and socially assertive, oriented toward other people and the external world.  Introverts are withdrawn and often shy, and they tend to focus on themselves, on their own thoughts and feelings.  According to Jung, everyone has the capacity for both attitudes, but only one becomes dominant in the personality.  The dominant attitude then tends to direct the person’s behavior and consciousness.  The non-dominant attitude remains influential, however, and becomes part of the personal unconscious, where it can affect behavior.  For example, in certain situations an introverted person may display characteristics of extraversion, wish to be more outgoing, or be attracted to an extravert. Psychological Functions  Sensing and intuiting are grouped together as non-rational functions; they do not use the processes of reason. These functions accept experiences and do not evaluate them.  Sensing reproduces an experience through the senses the way a photograph copies an object. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Intuiting does not arise directly from an external stimulus; for example, if we believe someone else is with us in a darkened room, our belief may be based on our intuition or a hunch rather than on actual sensory experience.  The second pair of opposing functions, thinking and feeling, are rational functions that involve making judgments and evaluations about our experiences. Although thinking and feeling are opposites, both are concerned with organizing and categorizing experiences.  The thinking function involves a conscious judgment of whether an experience is true or false.  The kind of evaluation made by the feeling function is expressed in terms of like or dislike, pleasantness or unpleasantness, stimulation or dullness.  Just as our psyche contains some of both the extraversion and introversion attitudes, so do we have the capacity for all four psychological functions. Similarly, just as one attitude is dominant, only one function is dominant. The others are submerged in the personal unconscious.  Further, only one pair of functions is dominant—either the rational or the irrational—and within each pair only one function is dominant.  A person cannot be ruled by both thinking and feeling or by both sensing and intuiting, because they are opposing functions. Psychological Types  The extraverted thinking types live strictly in accordance with society’s rules. These people tend to repress feelings and emotions, to be objective in all aspects of life, and to be dogmatic in thoughts and opinions. They may be perceived as rigid and cold. They tend to make good scientists because their focus is on learning about the external world and using logical rules to describe and understand it.  The extraverted feeling types tend to repress the thinking mode and to be highly emotional. These people conform to the traditional values and moral codes they have been taught. They are unusually sensitive to the opinions and expectations of others. They are emotionally responsive and make friends easily, and they tend to be sociable and effervescent. Jung believed this type was found more often among women than men.  The extraverted sensing types focus on pleasure and happiness and on seeking new experiences. These people are strongly oriented toward the real world and are adaptable to different kinds of people Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 and changing situations. Not given to introspection, they tend to be outgoing, with a high capacity for enjoying life.  The extraverted intuiting types find success in business and politics because of a keen ability to exploit opportunities. These people are attracted to new ideas and tend to be creative. They are able to inspire others to accomplish and achieve. They also tend to be changeable, moving from one idea or venture to another, and to make decisions based more on hunches than on reflection. Their decisions, however, are likely to be correct.  The introverted thinking types do not get along well with others and have difficulty communicating ideas. These people focus on thoughts rather than on feelings and have poor practical judgment. Intensely concerned with privacy, they prefer to deal with abstractions and theories, and they focus on understanding themselves rather than other people. Others see them as stubborn, aloof, arrogant, and inconsiderate.  The introverted feeling types repress rational thought. These people are capable of deep emotion but avoid any outward expression of it. They seem mysterious and inaccessible and tend to be quiet, modest, and childish. They have little consideration for others’ feelings and thoughts and appear withdrawn, cold, and self-assured.  The introverted sensing types appear passive, calm, and detached from the everyday world. These people look on most human activities with benevolence and amusement. They are aesthetically sensitive, expressing themselves in art or music, and tend to repress their intuition.  The introverted intuiting types focus so intently on intuition that they have little contact with reality. These people are visionaries and daydreamers—aloof, unconcerned with practical matters, and poorly understood by others. Considered odd and eccentric, they have difficulty coping with everyday life and planning for the future. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 The Personal Unconscious  The personal unconscious in Jung’s system is similar to Freud’s conception of the preconscious. It is a reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed because it was trivial or disturbing. There is considerable two-way traffic between the ego and the personal unconscious. For example, one’s attention can wander readily from this page to a memory of something done yesterday. Complexes  As we file more and more experiences in our personal unconscious, we begin to group them into what Jung called complexes. A complex is a core or pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes organized around a common theme.  For example, we might say that a person has a complex about power or status, meaning that he or she is preoccupied with that theme to the point where it influences behavior. The person may try to become powerful by running for elective office, or to identify or affiliate with power by driving a motorcycle or a fast car. By directing thoughts and behavior in various ways, the complex determines how the person perceives the world.  Complexes may be conscious or unconscious. Those that are not under conscious control can intrude on and interfere with consciousness. The person with a complex is generally not aware of its influence, although other people may easily observe its effects.  Some complexes may be harmful, but others can be useful. For example, a perfection or achievement complex may lead a person to work hard at developing particular talents or skills.  Jung believed that complexes originate not only from our childhood and adult experiences, but also from our ancestral experiences, the heritage of the species contained in the collective unconscious. The Collective Unconscious  The deepest and least accessible level of the psyche, the collective unconscious is the most unusual and controversial aspect of Jung’s system. Jung believed that just as each of us accumulates and files all of our personal experiences in the personal unconscious, so does humankind collectively, as a species, store the experiences of the human and pre-human species in the collective unconscious. This heritage is passed to each new generation.  People have always had a mother figure, for example, and have experienced birth and death. They have faced unknown terrors in the dark, worshipped power or some sort of godlike figure, and feared an evil Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 being. The universality of these experiences over countless evolving generations leaves an imprint on each of us at birth and determines how we perceive and react to our world. Archetypes  The ancient experiences contained in the collective unconscious are manifested by recurring themes or patterns Jung called archetypes. He also used the term primordial images. By being repeated in the lives of succeeding generations, archetypes have become imprinted on our psyche and are expressed in our dreams and fantasies.  The persona archetype is a mask, a public face we wear to present ourselves as someone different from who we really are. The persona is necessary, Jung believed, because we are forced to play many roles in life in order to succeed in school and on the job and to get along with a variety of people.  Although the persona can be helpful, it can also be harmful if we come to believe that it reflects our true nature. Instead of merely playing a role, we may become that role. As a result, other aspects of our personality will not be allowed to develop. Jung described the process this way: The ego may come to identify with the persona rather than with the person’s true nature, resulting in a condition known as inflation of the persona. Whether the person plays a role or comes to believe that role, he or she is resorting to deception. In the first instance, the person is deceiving others; in the second instance, the person is deceiving himself or herself.  The anima and animus archetypes refer to Jung’s recognition that humans are essentially bisexual. The psyche of the woman contains masculine aspects (the animus archetype), and the psyche of the man contains feminine aspects (the anima archetype).  These opposite sex characteristics aid in the adjustment and survival of the species because they enable a person of one sex to understand the nature of the other sex.  The archetypes predispose us to like certain characteristics of the opposite sex; these characteristics guide our behavior with reference to the opposite sex.  Jung insisted that both the anima and the animus must be expressed. A man must exhibit his feminine as well as his masculine characteristics, and a woman must express her masculine characteristics along with her feminine ones. Otherwise, these vital aspects will remain dormant and undeveloped, leading to one-sidedness of the personality. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  The most powerful archetype Jung proposed has the sinister and mysterious name of shadow, which contains the basic, primitive animal instincts and therefore has the deepest roots of all archetypes. Behaviors that society considers evil and immoral reside in the shadow, and this dark side of human nature must be tamed if people are to live in harmony. We must restrain, overcome, and defend against these primitive impulses. If not, society will likely punish us.  But we face a dilemma. Not only is the shadow the source of evil, it is also the source of vitality, spontaneity, creativity, and emotion. Therefore, if the shadow is totally suppressed, the psyche will be dull and lifeless. It is the ego’s function to repress the animal instincts enough so that we are considered civilized while allowing sufficient expression of the instincts to provide creativity and vigor.  The animal instincts do not disappear when they are suppressed. Rather, they lie dormant, awaiting a crisis or a weakness in the ego so they can gain control. When that happens, the person becomes dominated by the unconscious.  The self archetype represents the unity, integration, and harmony of the total personality.  To Jung, the striving toward that wholeness is the ultimate goal of life. This archetype involves bringing together and balancing all parts of the personality.  The self cannot begin to emerge until the other systems of the psyche have developed. This occurs around middle age, a crucial period of transition in Jung’s system, as it was in his own life. The actualization of the self involves goals and plans for the future and an accurate perception of one’s abilities. The Development of the Personality Childhood to Young Adulthood  The ego begins to develop in early childhood, at first in a primitive way because the child has not yet formed a unique identity. What might be called the child’s personality is, at this stage, little more than a reflection of the personalities of his or her parents.  The ego begins to form substantively only when children become able to distinguish between themselves and other people or objects in their world. In other words, consciousness forms when the child is able to say “I”. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  From the teenage years through young adulthood, we are concerned with preparatory activities such as completing our education, beginning a career, getting married, and starting a family. Our focus during these years is external, our conscious is dominant, and, in general, our primary conscious attitude is that of extraversion. Middle Age  Jung believed that major personality changes occur between the ages of 35 and 40. This period of middle age was a time of personal crisis for Jung and many of his patients. By then, the adaptation problems of young adulthood have been resolved. The typical 40-year-old is established in a career, a marriage, and a community. Jung asked why, when success has been achieved, so many people that age are gripped by feelings of despair and worthlessness. His patients all told him essentially the same thing: They felt empty.  Adventure, excitement, and zest had disappeared. Life had lost its meaning.  Jung noted that in the first half of life we must focus on the objective world of reality—education, career, and family. In contrast, the second half of life must be devoted to the inner, subjective world that heretofore had been neglected.  The attitude of the personality must shift from extraversion to introversion. The focus on consciousness must be tempered by an awareness of the unconscious. Our interests must shift from the physical and material to the spiritual, philosophical, and intuitive. Individuation  Simply stated, individuation involves becoming an individual, fulfilling one’s capacities, and developing one’s self.  The tendency toward individuation is innate and inevitable, but it will be helped or hindered by environmental forces, such as one’s educational and economic opportunities and the nature of the parent–child relationship.  To strive for individuation, middle-aged persons must abandon the behaviors and values that guided the first half of life and confront their unconscious, bringing it into conscious awareness and accepting what it tells them to do. They must listen to their dreams and follow their fantasies, exercising creative imagination through writing, painting, or some other form of expression. They must let themselves be guided not by the rational thinking that drove them before, but by the spontaneous flow of the unconscious. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Jung cautioned that admitting unconscious forces into conscious awareness does not mean being dominated by them. The unconscious forces must be assimilated and balanced with the conscious.  At this time of life, no single aspect of personality should dominate. An emotionally healthy middle-aged person is no longer ruled by either consciousness or unconsciousness, by a specific attitude or function, or by any of the archetypes. All are brought into harmonious balance when individuation is achieved.  Of particular importance in the midlife process of individuation is the shift in the nature of the archetypes. The first change involves dethroning the persona. Although we must continue to play various social roles if we are to function in the real world and get along with different kinds of people, we must recognize that our public personality may not represent our true nature. Further, we must come to accept the genuine self that the persona has been covering.  Next, we become aware of the destructive forces of the shadow and acknowledge the dark side of our nature with its primitive impulses, such as selfishness. We do not submit to them or allow them to dominate us but simply accept their existence.  We must also come to terms with our psychological bisexuality. A man must be able to express his anima archetype, or traditionally feminine traits such as tenderness, and a woman must come to express her animus, or traditionally masculine traits such as assertiveness.  Jung believed that this recognition of the characteristics of the other sex was the most difficult step in the individuation process because it represents the greatest change in our self-image.  Once the psyche’s structures are individuated and acknowledged, the next developmental stage can occur. Jung referred to this as transcendence, an innate tendency toward unity or wholeness in the personality, uniting all the opposing aspects within the psyche. Questions about Human Nature  Jung did not hold such a deterministic view, but he did agree that personality may be partly determined by childhood experiences and by the archetypes. However, there is ample room in Jung’s system for free will and spontaneity, the latter arising from the shadow archetype.  On the nature–nurture issue, Jung took a mixed position. The drive toward individuation and transcendence is innate, but it can be aided or thwarted by learning and experience. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  The ultimate and necessary goal of life is the realization of the self. Although it is rarely achieved, we are continually motivated to strive for it.  Jung disagreed with Freud on the importance of childhood experiences. Jung thought they were influential but did not completely shape our personality by age 5. We are affected more by our experiences in middle age and by our hopes and expectations for the future.  Each individual is unique, in Jung’s view, but only during the first half of life. When some progress toward individuation is made in middle age, we develop what Jung designated as a universal kind of personality in which no single aspect is dominant. Thus, uniqueness disappears, and we can no longer be described as one or another particular psychological type.  Jung presented a more positive, hopeful image of human nature than Freud did, and his optimism is apparent in his view of personality development. Jung argued that the human species also continues to improve. Present generations represent a significant advance over our primitive ancestors. Assessment in Jung’s Theory  His patients did not lie on a couch. “I don’t want to put the patient to bed,” he remarked. Usually, Jung and the patient sat in comfortable chairs facing each other, although sometimes Jung faced a window so he could look out at the lake near his house. Word Association  The word association test, in which a subject responds to a stimulus word with whatever word comes immediately to mind, has become a standard laboratory and clinical tool in psychology.  Jung measured the time it took for a patient to respond to each word. He also measured physiological reactions to determine the emotional effects of the stimulus words.  Jung used word association to uncover complexes in his patients. A variety of factors indicated the presence of a complex; these factors include physiological responses, delays in responding, making the same response to different words, slips of the tongue, stammering, responding with more than one word, making up words, or failing to respond. Symptom Analysis  Symptom analysis focuses on the symptoms reported by the patient and is based on the person’s free associations to those symptoms. It is similar to Freud’s cathartic method. Between the Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221 patient’s associations to the symptoms and the analyst’s interpretation of them, the symptoms will often be relieved or disappear. Dream Analysis  Jung agreed with Freud that dreams are the “royal road” into the unconscious. Jung’s approach to dream analysis differed from Freud’s in that Jung was concerned with more than the causes of dreams, and he believed that dreams were more than unconscious wishes.  First, dreams are prospective; that is, they help us prepare for experiences and events we anticipate will occur. Second, dreams are compensatory; they help bring about a balance between opposites in the psyche by compensating for the overdevelopment of any one psychic structure. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator  An assessment instrument related to Jung’s personality theory is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), developed in the 1920s by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. Today, the MBTI is one of the most popular self-report inventories ever devised and is administered to approximately 2.5 million people annually. Of the leading corporations listed in the Fortune 100, 89 of them use the MBTI for employee hiring and promotion decisions. Research on Jung’s Theory  Jung, like Freud, used the case study method, which Jung called life-history reconstruction. It involved an extensive recollection of a person’s past experiences in which Jung sought to identify the developmental patterns he believed led to the present neurotic condition.  Jung’s data did not rely on objective observation and were not gathered in a controlled and systematic fashion. Further, the situations in which they were obtained—the clinical interviews—were not amenable to duplication, verification, or quantification.  Like Freud, Jung did not keep verbatim records of his patients’ comments, nor did he attempt to verify the accuracy of their reports. Downloaded by La Li ([email protected])  lOMoARcPSD|46261221  Jung’s case studies involved (as did Freud’s) a small, unrepresentative sample of people, making it difficult to generalize to the population at large. Jung’s analysis of the data was subjective and unreliable. Psychological Types  Introverts showed strong interests in occupations that did not involve personal interaction, such as technical and scientific work.  Extraverts were more interested in jobs that offered high levels of social interaction, such as sales and public relations.  A more recent study of college students found that introverted feeling and judging types had higher gradepoint averages than the other psychological types.  The teachers and social work students showed high levels of intuiting and feeling.  Police officers and dental school students, who deal with people in a different way from teachers and social workers, scored high in extraversion and in sensing and thinking.  And a study of women admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy from 1988 to 1996 who took the MBTI found that the extraverted-sensing-thinking-judging types were the most likely to graduate. In co