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An Investigation of the Oral, Anal and Hysterical Character Types and Their Relationship to Perceptions of Childrearing

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An Investigation of the Oral, Anal and Hysterical Character Types and Their Relationship to Perceptions of Childrearing AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ORAL, ANAL AND HYSTERICAL CHARACTER TYPES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO PERCEPTIONS OF CHILDREARING by ROLAND GLEN BOWMAN B.A. (Hon.), University of Saskatchewan, 1969 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Psychology We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard / THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 1973 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date ^LfX. r / 7 73 ABSTRACT Although psychoanalytic theory can provide a large number of testable hypotheses concerning personality development, scientific psychology has been slow to realize this potential. The concept of character type is one aspect of Freudian theory which merits further investigation. It is believed that certain traits occur together in adult personality because they arise at the same level of psychosexual development. The present study tested the empirical validity of the oral, anal and hysterical character constructs in a normal sample. Relationships between character type and perceptions of parental attitudes and behavior were also explored. 143 psychology students completed a personality questionnaire, which provided scores for traits relevant to the character typology, and the Parental Bole Patterns questionnaire (PBP), a measure of adult's perceptions of their own childrearing. Subjects also provided information about birth order, number of siblings, parents' marital status and other demographic variables thought to be relevant to the personality types. It was hypothesized that those traits which have been attributed to the oral, anal and hysterical types would form correlation clusters. Factor analysis was used to test the nature of these intercorrelations. Several hypotheses concerning relationships between personality and childrearing were also advanced. These were tested by computing correlations between personality factor scores and PBP scores. For both male and female subjects, factors identifiable as the oral, anal and hysterical emerged, although the results did not support a view of the oral character as a unitary construct. The anal character emerged most clearly. These findings were discussed in relation to published studies in which the same personality questionnaire was used in a psychiatric population. • The majority of the hypotheses pertaining to relationships between personality and childrearing also received support. The oral character was associated with perceptions of low parental warmth and high control, the anal character with high warmth (for females), and the hysterical character with low warmth. iv A multivariate analysis of variance performed on groups of subjects typical of one of the three character types failed to indicate significant differences in childrearing perceptions. Since an adequate typology should enable researchers to make predictions on the basis of subject assignment to type, the usefulness of the psychoanalytic character typology remains in question. Allan Best, Ph.D. ) V TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Descriptions of the Oral, Anal and Hysterical Character Types 7 The Empirical Validity of the Character Typology 14 The Character Typology and Childrearing Variables 21 Dimensions of Childrearing Behavior ......... 26 Parental Attitudes and Behavior and the Development of Personality 31 Hypotheses .................................. 36 Method 38 Subjects 38 Measures Used 38 Procedure 40 Statistical Analysis 41 Results 44 Demographic Variables 44 Test statistics: Personality Questionnaire 46 Factor Analysis of Personality Scales ....... 47 Childrearing scales 52 I Personality and Perceptions of Childrearing ...54 Relationships Involving Demographic Variables 57 vi Discussion 60 References 69 Appendix 1. Personality Test Scales 75 Appendix 2. Scales for the Parental Role Patterns Questionnaire 96 Appendix 3. Scale Statistics .115 Appendix 4. Factor Structure for Personality Questionnaire ..............118 vii TABLES Table I. Relationships between Childrearing Atmosphere and Personality ., 35 Table II. Loadings for Personality Factors — Hales 49 Table III. Loadings for Personality Factors — Females 50 Table IV. Traits Loading on Lazare et al.'s (1970) Oral, Obsessive and Hysterical Factors .. 51 Table V. Correlations between Personality Factor Scores and PRP scores 55 Table VI. Significant Correlations between Personality Factors and Demographic Variables ... 58 Table VII. Significant Correlations between Childrearing and Demographic Variables .......... 59 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank Dr. Allan Best for his help and encouragement in all aspects of thesis research. I am also grateful to Dr. E. I. Signori for his assistance in preparing the final work. None of this would have been possible without Sheena, who provided ESW and other more tangible forms of assistance throughout. 1 INTRODUCTION Although psychoanalytic theory can provide a large number of testable hypotheses concerning personality development, scientific psychology has been slow to realize this potential. Sarnoff (1971) suggests that "some experimenters have shied away from such research simply out of sheer reluctance to face the labor of constructing the methodological foundation that this area of experimentation has been lacking. Also formidable is the intellectual task of teasing out systematic semantic definitions and deducing specific hypotheses from the loose fabric of Freudian prose. And one cannot gainsay the attraction of working on concepts whose operational definitions and techniques of manipulation have already enlisted a fair degree of employment among fellow experimenters." (p. 4)' However, while research findings have been slow to accumulate, the recent publication of two books which summarize past research and suggest new directions for investigation in this area provides some indication of continuing experimental interest (Kline, 1972 and Sarnoff, 1971). One of the major contributions to the study of normal personality provided by psychoanalytic theory is the notion of character type. In general, the hypothesis is that certain personality traits occur together in adult personality because they arise at the same level of 2 psychosexual development. For example, the "anal triad" (parsimony, orderliness and obstinacy) is associated with the anal stage and conflicts surrounding bowel training. The concept of "type" is an attractive one in the study of personality because typologies are able to impose a degree of order in a very confusing area. They are economical in that, if a person is correctly assigned to a type, predictions can be made on the basis of past experience with similar individuals, who were also members of that type. Two different strategies have been popular in personality research. First, investigators have obtained measures on a single dimension, and attempted to relate these to behavior in experimental situations or to scores on other discrete variables. While this approach permits elegant experimental design, it may reveal little about persons. At the other extreme, research has attempted to encompass the entire range of personality. This often means that subjects' scores are reported for a large number of measures. This procedure provides more information about persons, but because of the large number of variables involved it may be difficult to conceptualize individual personality. The type approach represents a compromise solution. 3 A single label can convey a considerable amount of information and also permits clean experimental design. However, it has been much criticized, especially by Anglo- Saxon psychologists (according to Eysenck, 1970, pp. 10- 14). Critics have objected that typologies are doomed to failure because psychological dimensions are continuous rather than discontinuous. For example, Mischel (1971, pp.11-23) writes of the fallacy involved in attempting to "pigeonhole" the individual into one of a few categories. Eysenck points out that this kind of criticism indicates a misconception of typing, since typologists have normally been well aware that not all persons can be assigned to one of a small group of types. He quotes a statement of Jung to the effect that everyone possesses both the mechanisms of extraversion and introversion, and that the labels "extravert" and "introvert" merely indicate the relative strengths of these response tendencies. The opponents of typology often prefer to work with traits. Yet, as Eysenck again has pointed out, a type is a group of correlated traits in the same way that a trait is a group of correlated acts or tendencies. Thus, the major difference between the two lies in the level of inclusiveness or organization. Cattell (1966, pp.289-92) has identified 45 semantic uses for "type". However, he discusses only two of these, 4 bipolar and species types, because the vast majority of uses cannot be dealt with statistically due to imprecise definition. Bipolar types are essentially groups of extreme scorers on a continuous
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