Semester 1 Personality Lecture Notes

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering major personality theories, psychodynamic concepts, humanistic approaches, and diagnostic categories based on lecture notes.

Personality

A pattern of habitual behaviors, cognitions, and emotions that predicts what a person will do in a given situation.

Nature

The perspective that behavior, personality traits, and abilities are determined by genetics.

Nurture

The perspective that behavior is determined by environment, upbringing, and life experiences.

Idiographic Approach

A psychological approach focused on looking at individuals and scientific biography.

Nomothetic Approach

A psychological approach focused on looking at groups of people and population norms.

Sanguine

A personality type associated with the fluid blood, characterized as positive, confident, and passionate.

Phlegmatic

A personality type associated with phlegm (mucous), characterized as sluggish, dull, or coolheaded.

Choleric

A personality type associated with yellow bile, characterized as being quick to anger.

Melancholic

A personality type associated with black bile, characterized by a depressed state.

Libido

The quantitative magnitude of life-producing and affirming impulses, related to survival, propagation, and love.

Cathexis

The process of investing libidinal energy into various activities, people, objects, and goals.

Catharsis

A process that allows cathected energy to be released, often used to cure neurosis.

Thanatos

The Death Drive, representing a drive towards self-destruction, death, and chaos.

Id

The basic, non-moral material of personality that knows no logic and strives for reduced tension and increased pleasure.

Super-ego

The internalized parent figure and bearer of moral codes, standards of conduct, and inhibitions.

Ego

The part of the psyche that serves the Id's demands while protecting the whole psyche's health, safety, and sanity.

Parapraxis

An error such as a slip of the tongue or pen thought to reveal unconscious wishes, attitudes, or impulses; commonly known as a Freudian Slip.

Epigenesis

The growth principle that humans pass through a series of $8$ psychosocial stages, each building on the earlier ones.

Repression

The abrupt and involuntary removal of threatening impulses, ideas, or memories from conscious awareness.

Denial

The blocking of external events from entry into awareness when they are related to threatening impulses.

Projection

Attrributing one's own unacceptable impulses, wishes, or thoughts to another person or object.

Regression

Returning to earlier modes of response or behavior when confronted with anxiety.

Persona

The version of the self put forward to the world, derived from the Latin word for mask.

Collective Unconscious

A store of knowledge and experience possessed by all humans as a psychological heritage.

Anima and Animus

The opposite gender qualities and attributes of the psyche; Anima is feminine and Animus is masculine.

Shadow

The dark side of the psyche consisting of repressed memories, emotions, and instincts representing wildness and chaos.

Individuation

The lifelong endeavor of developing a relationship between the conscious, the unconscious, and psychic functions.

Individual Psychology

Alfred Adler's approach that views the person as an indivisible whole within a social environment.

Social Interest

Known in German as gemeinschaftsgefühl, it is an innate guide toward care and concern for the welfare of others.

Masculine Protest

An Adlerian concept where women reject the feminine condition due to the social devaluation of women.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's motivational theory consisting of physiological, safety, love, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

Peak Experiences

Moments of rapture, ecstasy, or intense happiness often occurring during creative, athletic, or nature experiences.

Phenomenal Field

The private, subjective world and space of perceptions that make up an individual's experience.

Congruence

A state of consistency between the ideal self and actual behavior, leading to a healthy sense of wellbeing.

Q-Sort

An assessment technique involving card sorting to measure the level of congruence between the real and ideal self.

Automaton Conformity

The most common device to escape from freedom, involving a chameleon-like immersion into a socially acceptable role.

Factor Analysis

A statistical method used to reduce large amounts of data to fewer, basic units for personality study.

Source Traits

Stable elements that act as the building blocks of personality, as identified by Raymond Cattell.

Lexical Hypothesis

The idea that individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant will be encoded into natural language.

Aetiology

The study of the causes or origins of mental health disorders or abnormal behaviors.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy beginning by early adulthood.

Avoidant Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern of social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, and hypersensitivity to negative evaluation.