Theories of Personality Flashcards

Flashcards on Erich Fromm's Humanistic Psychoanalysis

Basic Anxiety

Humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Personality

The totality of inherited and acquired psychological qualities that are characteristic of one individual and make the individual unique.

Human Dilemma

Humans can reason but lack the powerful instincts needed to adapt to a changing world.

Existential Dichotomies

Self-awareness and reason tell us that we will die, but we try to negate this dichotomy by postulating life after death. Humans are capable of conceptualizing the goal of complete self-realization, but we are also aware that life is too short to reach that goal. People are ultimately alone, yet we cannot tolerate isolation.

Human Needs/Existential Needs

Arise from human self-awareness and cultural evolution; efforts to answer the question of human existence and prevent insanity.

Relatedness

The drive for union with others while preserving one's individuality; a response to the existential dilemma of separateness and isolation.

Submission

Submitting to a person, group, or institution to escape separateness; provides identity through connection to a more powerful entity; risks loss of independence and self-definition.

Power

Exerting control over others to feel secure and connected; power seekers often pair with submissive individuals; mutual dependence forms a symbiotic relationship, feeling satisfying but hindering psychological growth and self-reliance.

Love

The only healthy and fulfilling path to relatedness; involves union with someone or something outside oneself while retaining separateness and integrity; two people become one yet remain two—connected but autonomous.

Care

Concern for the other’s well-being and active nurturing.

Responsibility

Willingness and ability to respond to another’s needs.

Respect

Valuing the other as they are, without trying to change them.

Knowledge

Deep understanding from the other’s point of view.

Transcendence

The human drive to rise above a passive existence and enter a realm of purposefulness and freedom; rooted in the awareness that we are “thrown into” life and death without consent.

Positive/Productive Transcendence

Achieved through creation (e.g., art, ideas, nurturing life); affirms life and connects humans to their creative potential.

Negative/Destructive Transcendence

Achieved by destroying life or meaning to feel powerful or significant; involves malignant aggression, unique to humans, where humans may kill to dominate, control, or make a statement.

Rootedness

The need to establish roots or feel at home in the world; represents the human desire for belonging, connection, and a sense of origin or stability.

Productive Rootedness

Achieved when individuals are weaned from the orbit of their mother; involves actively relating to the world in a creative and integrated way, leading to whole, independent, and engaged individuals.

Nonproductive Rootedness (Fixation)

Marked by a fear of psychological birth and a reluctance to separate from parental dependence; involves clinging to security, especially the protective role of a mother figure, resulting in emotional immaturity and resistance to growth or independence.

Sense of Identity

The need to be aware of oneself as a distinct and separate being; the ability to say, “I am I,” and see oneself as the subject of one’s actions.

Frame of Orientation

A road map that enables people to organize the various stimuli that impinge on them; requires a final goal or “object of devotion” to prevent insanity.

Mechanisms of Escape

Used in an attempt to flee from the freedom that is producing a frightening sense of isolation and aloneness

Authoritarianism

The tendency to give up the independence of one’s self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside oneself to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking; allows individuals to escape their weakness or isolation by submitting to or controlling others.

Masochism

The submission of the self to a more powerful person, institution, or force; motivated by feelings of powerlessness, inferiority, and weakness; the goal is to feel secure or protected by fusing with something stronger.

Sadism

The domination of others to feel powerful and reduce one’s anxiety; more neurotic and socially destructive than masochism; the underlying goal is unity with others through control or harm.

Destructiveness

Is rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation, and powerlessness; seeks to do away with other people; restores lost feelings of power by destroying people and objects.

Conformity (automaton conformity)

Giving up one’s individuality and becoming whatever other people desire them to be; seldom expresses their own opinion, cling to expected standards of behavior, and often appear stiff and automated.

Character Orientation

A person’s relatively permanent way of relating to people and things.

Character

The relatively permanent system of all noninstinctual strivings through which man relates himself to the human and natural world.

Assimilation

How a person acquires and uses things.

Socialization

How a person relates to self and others

Receptive Character

The source of all good lies outside themselves; the only way they can relate to the world is to receive things, love, knowledge, etc.; more concerned with receiving than with giving.

Exploitative Character

The source of all good is outside, and they aggressively take what they desire; likely to use cunning or force; prefer to steal or plagiarize rather than create

Hoarding Character

Seek to save that which they have already obtained; tend to live in the past and are repelled by anything new; are excessively orderly, stubborn and miserly.

Marketing Character

See themselves as commodities with their value dependent on their ability to sell themselves; must see themselves in constant demand; must make others believe that they are skillful and saleable

Normal Guilt

Develop a healthy sense of humility; improve our relations with others; creatively use our potentialities.

Neurotic Guilt

Leads to nonproductive or neurotic symptoms such as sexual impatience, depression, cruelty to others, or inability to make choices.

Formative Tendency

All matter, both organic and inorganic, tends to evolve from simpler to more complex forms; a creative, rather than disintegrative, process drives the universe.

Actualizing Tendency

The tendency within all humans to move toward completion or fulfillment of potential; the only motive people possess; includes both the conscious and unconscious, as well as the physiological and cognitive.

Need for Maintenance

The basic drive to protect and sustain what already exists—our physical health, self-concept, routine, safety, and emotional stability.

Need for Enhancement

The urge to grow, expand, try new things, and become more than what we are; drive for creativity, learning, risk-taking, and personal development.

Congruence (authenticity)

Being real and honest with you, not fake or pretending.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Being accepted and loved no matter what.

Empathy

Someone who truly tries to understand what you're going through.

Self Actualization

The drive within every person to grow, fulfill their potential, and become their true self.

Self- Concept

The way a person sees and defines themselves (“Who am I?”); it may or may not match reality, but it shapes how they behave.

Ideal Self

The person you want to be.

Accurately Symbolized

Healthy awareness; we understand our experiences as they truly are.

Conditions of Worth

External evaluations, perceptions of other people’s views of us; leads to incongruence—a gap between who they are and who they think they must be.

Incongruence

When your real self and ideal self are not aligned; signals that they are not being true to themselves.

Vulnerability

People are vulnerable when they are unaware of the discrepancy between their organismic self and their self- experiences.

Anxiety

A state of uneasiness or tension whose cause is unknown

Threat

Awareness that our self is no longer whole or congruent.

Defensiveness

Keeps our perception of our organismic experiences consistent with our self-concept; distort the experience to avoid feeling unworthy.

Distortion

Misinterpreting an experience to fit it into some aspect of our self-concept.

Denial

Refuse to perceive an experience in awareness or at least keep some aspect of it from reaching symbolization.

Disorganization

Results when There is a discrepancy between people’s organismic experiences and their view of self and Defenses fail to function

Counselor Congruence

The therapist is genuine, real, and transparent—what they feel inside matches what they express.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Accepting and valuing the client without judgment or conditions.

Empathic Listening

Deeply understanding the client’s feelings from their point of view and reflecting this understanding to them.

Open to Experience

They don’t deny their feelings or distort reality; accept both pleasant and painful emotions without becoming defensive.

Living Existentially (in the present moment)

They live in the now, not stuck in regrets or anxieties about the future.

Trust in Own Feelings and Instincts

They listen to their gut and inner values, not just external expectations.

Creativity and Adaptability

They’re flexible, willing to explore new ways of thinking or doing things.

Leading a Fulfilled Life/Striving Toward Self- Actualization

They feel alive, purposeful, and are always growing.

Freedom and Responsibility in Decision-Making

They don’t blame others for their choices—they own them.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

It assumes that the whole person is constantly being motivated by one need or another and that people have the potential to grow toward psychological health, that is, self-actualization.

Holistic Approach to Motivation

The whole person, not any single part or function, is motivated.

Physiological Needs

Air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction, and warmth

Safety Needs

Personal security, employment, resources, health, and property

Love and Belonging

Friendship, intimacy, family, and a sense of belonging

Esteem

Respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, and freedom

Self- actualization

The desire to become the most that one can be.

Aesthetic Needs

Need for beautiful and orderly surroundings

Cognitive Needs

Have a desire to know, to solve mysteries, to understand, and to be curious.

Neurotic Needs

They serve as compensation for unsatisfied basic needs.

Expressive Behavior

Unmotivated

Coping Behavior

Always motivated and aimed at satisfying a need

More Efficient Perception of Reality

They are not fooled by facades and can see both positive and negative underlying traits in others.

Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature

can accept themselves the way they are.

Spontaneity, Simplicity, and Naturalness

They are unpretentious and not afraid or ashamed to express joy, awe, elation, sorrow, anger, or other deeply felt emotions.

Problem- Centering

Self-actualizing people are interested in problems outside themselves.

The Need for Privacy

Self- actualizing people have a quality of detachment that allows them to be alone without being lonely.

Autonomy

Self-actualizing people are autonomous and depend on themselves for growth.

Continued Freshness of Appreciation

Self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again, freshly, and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.

The Peak Experience

People had mystical experiences, and that somehow gave them a feeling of transcendence.

Gemeinschaftsgefuhl

Oneness with all humanity.

Profound Interpersonal Relations

Self-actualizers have a nurturing feeling toward people, but close friendships are limited to only a few.

The Democratic Character Structure

They could be friendly and considerate with people regardless of class, color, age, or gender.

Discrimination Between Means and Ends

Self-actualizing people have a clear sense of right and wrong conduct and have few conflicts about basic values.

Philosophical Sense of Humor

Self-actualizing people are their philosophical, nonhostile sense of humor.

Creativeness

Self-actualizing people were creative in some sense of the world.

Resistance to Enculturation

Self-actualizing people have a sense of detachment from their surroundings and can transcend a particular culture.

The Jonah Complex

It blocks people’s growth toward self-actualization, or the fear of being one’s best.

Personality

The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine their characteristic behavior and thought.

Cardinal Dispositions

Eminent characteristic or ruling passion so outstanding that it dominates their lives.

Central Dispositions

Characteristics that form the basic foundations of personality; used to describe a person.

Secondary Dispositions

Traits that appear only in certain circumstances or situations.

Stylistic dispositions

Dispositions that guide action

Motivational dispositions

Dispositions that initiate action