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PSY 111: Introduction to Learning Unit 9: Mini-Lecture

Personality

Speaker: Judy Austin

Do you know the names of the seven dwarfs? Let’s see… They are Crazy, Selfish, Ugly, Narcissistic, Crude, Lazy, and Uncooperative. Whoops… Those are not the names of the seven dwarfs; those are the seven characteristics of my ex-husband’s personality… Just kidding, my ex-husband was totally perfect in every way… Seriously, putting all kidding and jokes aside, we probably can recall the names of the seven dwarfs – Bashful, Happy, Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Doc, and Sleepy. What helps us to be able to remember them is that each dwarf has a distinct personality. Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. We each have a distinct personality. In this lecture we will look at the following personality models: Psychoanalytic, Neo-Freudian, Humanistic, Trait, and Social- Cognitive. The Psychoanalytic Approach focuses on Sigmund , the Neo-Freudian on and , the Humanistic on and , and the Social-Cognitive on .

Psychoanalytic Perspective So let’s look first at the Psychoanalytic Perspective on personality. ’s clinical experience led him to develop the first comprehensive theory of personality, which included the unconscious , psychosexual states, and defense mechanisms.

The , according to Freud, is made up of mainly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. He believed the mind is like an iceberg. It is mostly hidden, and below the surface lays the unconscious mind. The stores temporary memories. Freud believed our personality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve conflicts between our biological impulses (the ID) and social restraints (the Superego). The ID consciously strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification. The Superego provides standards for judgment, which is our conscious. The Ego mediates the demands of the ID and Superego. In order to find out what was in a patient’s mind, Freud asked patients to say whatever came into their thoughts. This process was called “free association.” Free association often leads to painful, embarrassing unconscious memories, but once retrieved and released causes the patient to feel better. Another method Freud used to analyze the unconscious mind was through interpreting a patient’s dreams. Freud believed there were manifest and latent contents of dreams. Manifest content is the dream as it is dreamed. The dream's latent content is the real meaning behind the dream which the dreamer seeks to hide from the conscious mind.

Freud believed personality formed during the first few years of life divided into psychosexual states. During these stages the ID’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive body areas called erogenous zones. The five psychosexual stages of personality according to Freud are Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. The takes place up to 18 months of age and pleasure focuses on the mouth through sucking, biting, and chewing. The is from 18 to 36 months, and its pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination and coping with demands for control. The which takes place from 3 to 6 years focuses its pleasure in the genitals and is coping with incestuous sexual

Page 1 of 3 PSY 111: Introduction to Psychology Learning Unit 9: Mini-Lecture feelings. In the , which is from age 6 to , sexual feelings become dormant. The is from puberty onward and focuses on the maturing of sexual interests. Freud believed during the Phallic stage boys develop a sexual for their and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival fathers. He called this the . When girls develop a sexual desire for their fathers, it is called the Complex.

Freud also believed the Ego tries to protect by distorting reality through defense mechanisms. Six types of defense mechanisms are: , , reaction formation, projection, rationalization, and displacement. Repression banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from . Regression leads an individual faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage. Reaction Formation causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites. People may express feelings of purity when they may be anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex. Projection leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others. Rationalization offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.

When evaluating Freud’s , we are resting everything on the repression of painful experiences into the unconscious mind. If this is the case, then why are the majority of children, camp survivors, and battle-scarred veterans able to remember their painful experiences? Also, Freud’s concepts arise out of clinical practices which are merely an after-the-fact explanation.

Neo-Freudians Alfred Adler and Carl Jung studied with Sigmund Freud, but later decided they did not agree with his ideas about all tensions in life being sexual. Therefore, their ideas about personality are considered Neo- Freudian. Alfred Adler believed tensions were social. He coined the term “inferiority complex” and believed children struggled with this inferiority complex while striving for superiority and power. Carl Jung believed in , which contains a common reservoir of images derived from our species’ past. He believed this is why many cultures share certain and images such as the being a symbol of nurturance.

Humanistic Perspective By the 1960s more and more became discontented with how negative Freud’s theories were and chose to look at a more “humanistic” perspective. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were the main leaders of the Humanistic Perspective Theory of Personality. Maslow believed we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs. We are all striving to be a self-actualized person. In order to reach this level we have to be totally satisfied on several levels. The bottom level is the physiological level, then the safety level, the belonging level, the esteem level, and the self-actualized level. We cannot move to the next level until our needs are completely satisfied, and we cannot work on more than one level at a time. The self-actualized level is where we would fulfill our potential. Carl Rogers also believed in an individual’s self-actualization tendencies. His beliefs centered on the concept of “Unconditional Positive Regard.” This is an attitude of acceptance of others despite failings. In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked people to describe themselves as they would like to be and as they actually are. If the two

Page 2 of 3 PSY 111: Introduction to Psychology Learning Unit 9: Mini-Lecture descriptions were close, then the individual had a positive self-concept. The Humanistic Perspective has had a pervasive impact on counseling, education, -rearing, and management with its emphasis on a positive self-concept, empathy, and the thought that people are basically good and can improve. Critics of the Humanistic Perspective state that the concepts are vague and lack scientific basis. It also fails to appreciate the reality of our human capacity for evil.

Trait Perspective The Trait Perspective is based on an individual’s personality being made up of consistent ways of behaving called traits. Examples of traits would be: honest, dependable, moody, and impulsive.

Almost 18,000 words have been identified that represent traits. There is a test called the MMPI, which stands for Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It is the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests and was originally developed to identify emotional disorders. Some trait researchers believe that the test called “The Big Five” does a better job of assessment. This assessment looks at conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and extraversion.

Social-Cognitive Perspective The last personality perspective we’re going to look at in this unit is the Social-Cognitive Perspective. Albert Bandura is the person most closely identified with this approach. He believed the personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and his or her social context. In looking at personality from this perspective, we would derive that people choose different environments, our personalities shape how we react to events, and our personalities shape situations. Social-cognitive psychologists emphasize the study of whether we feel we control our environment or our environment controls us. An external locus of control refers to the that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate while an internal locus of control refers to the perception that we can control our own fate. If we are unable to avoid repeated adverse events we then can acquire what is called “learned helplessness.”

I hope you enjoyed this lecture on personality, and I leave you with a story about three psychiatrists that decided to analyze each other’s personalities. The first one said, “There’s something in my personality that makes me a compulsive shopper. I’m deeply debt, and I have to overcharge my patients.” The second one said, “There’s something in my personality that makes me addicted to drugs. I’m so out of control that I pressure my patients into buying illegal drugs for me.” The first two then turn to the third psychiatrist and say, “So what’s wrong with your personality?” The third psychiatrist said, “What’s wrong with my personality is that no matter how hard I try, I just can’t keep a secret.”

© Judy Austin and Indian Hills Community College

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