Theories of Personality Development and Personality Disorders

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, and social cognitive theories of personality, as well as defense mechanisms, developmental stages, and assessment methods.

Personality

The individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, including relatively enduring characteristics that lead people to act in a consistent and predictable manner.

Id

The primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates completely at an unconscious level according to the pleasure principle.

Ego

The decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle and acts as a mediator between the id and the superego.

Superego

The moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about right and wrong, consisting of the conscience and the ego ideal.

Pleasure Principle

The principle by which the id operates, seeking immediate pleasure and avoiding pain, summarized as "I want what I want NOW!"

Reality Principle

The principle by which the ego operates, making rational decisions by considering the consequences of behavior.

Eros

The life instinct within the id that motivates people to focus on pleasure-seeking tendencies, such as sexual urges.

Thanatos

The death instinct within the id that motivates people to use aggressive urges to destroy.

Libido

The energy storehouse that provides the energy for the instincts of the id.

Conscious Layer

The layer of awareness that includes thoughts or feelings of which a person is fully aware.

Preconscious Layer

The layer of awareness that includes information just beneath the surface of awareness.

Unconscious Layer

The layer of awareness including thoughts, memories, feelings, and desires that one is not aware of but that greatly influence behavior.

Freudian Slip

A slip of the tongue motivated by subconscious thoughts or feelings, such as saying "portly" instead of "pretty."

Defense Mechanism

Largely unconscious psychological reactions used by the ego to protect a person from painful emotions like anxiety and guilt caused by internal conflicts.

Suppression

The conscious denial of a disturbing situation or feeling; notably the only conscious defense mechanism.

Altruism

Receiving gratification vicariously or from response to others through constructive service that brings pleasure and satisfaction.

Humor

Emphasizing the amusing or ironic aspects of a conflict or stressor through laughter or jokes.

Sublimation

Acting out unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way, such as an aggressive person becoming a boxer.

Intellectualization

Excessively using intellectual processes to avoid affective expression or experience and minimize sympathetic involvement.

Isolation

The intrapsychic splitting or separation of affect from content, resulting in the repression of either the idea or the affect.

Externalization

An unconscious tendency to perceive one's own personality components, faults, or shortcomings in the external world and other people.

Inhibition

An involuntary decrease or loss of motivation to engage in goal-directed activity to prevent anxiety from unacceptable impulses.

Repression

The exclusion of unpleasant or unwanted experiences, emotions, or ideas from conscious awareness.

Reaction-Formation

Taking an opposite belief or behavior because the true belief causes anxiety, such as being extremely friendly to a person one dislikes.

Displacement

The transfer of emotions associated with a particular person or situation to another non-threatening person, object, or situation.

Undoing

An attempt to take back an unacceptable or hurtful behavior or thought by engaging in contrary behavior, like giving flowers after an argument.

Rationalization

Justifying illogical ideas or actions by developing acceptable explanations that satisfy both the teller and the listener.

Passive Aggression

Aggression toward others expressed indirectly through procrastination, evasion, or creating confusion.

Acting Out

Performing an extreme behavior to express thoughts or feelings a person feels incapable of otherwise expressing, such as throwing a book when angry.

Confabulation

Filling in missing memory gaps with information believed to be factual.

Dissociation

A disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment.

Projection

Rejecting emotionally unacceptable personal features and attributing them to other people, objects, or situations.

Introjection

Absorbing loved or hated external objects into the self to diminish anxiety, as seen in Stockholm Syndrome.

Regression

Returning to a previous stage of development, such as throwing a temper tantrum when hearing bad news.

Somatization

Transforming unconscious anxiety into a physical symptom that has no organic cause.

Distortion

Grossly reshaping the experience of external reality to suit inner needs, including hallucinations or delusions of grandiosity.

Fixation

Becoming stuck at a particular psychosexual stage because needs were either under-gratified or over-gratified.

Oral Stage

Freud's first stage ($Birth$ to $18$ months) where the erogenous zone is the mouth and gratification occurs through sucking and swallowing.

Anal Stage

Freud's second stage (age $1$ to $3$) centered on the erogenous zone of the anus and the conflict of toilet training.

Phallic Stage

Freud's third stage (age $3$ to $6$) where the erogenous zone is the genitals and children experience the Oedipal or Electra conflict.

Oedipus Complex

A boy's sexual attraction to his mother and wish to replace his father, which is resolved through identification with the father due to castration anxiety.

Electra Complex

A girl's attraction to her father and desire for a penis substitute (a child), eventually leading to the incorporation of mother's values.

Latency Period

A stage lasting from approximately age $6$ until puberty where sexual urges are repressed and children socialize mostly with the same gender.

Genital Stage

The final psychosexual stage beginning at puberty where mature sexual interests re-awaken.

Ego Identity

The conscious sense of self that develops through social interaction and is constantly changing due to new experiences.

Trust vs. Mistrust

Erikson's first psychosocial stage ($Birth$ to $18$ months) where the primary strength developed is hope through dependable care.

Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

Erikson's second stage ($18$ months to $3$ years) where children learn to do things for themselves and develop willpower.

Identity vs. Role Confusion

Erikson's fifth stage (age $12$ to $18$) centered on the organization of beliefs and drives into a consistent image of self, with the strength of fidelity.

Generativity vs. Stagnation

Erikson's seventh stage (age $40$ to $65$) focused on contributing to society and guiding future generations.

Personal Unconscious

Jung's layer of the unconscious containing material similar to Freud's model.

Collective Unconscious

Jung's concept of a layer of the unconscious shared by the entire human race containing inherited memory traces called archetypes.

Compensation

Efforts to overcome imagined or real inferiorities by developing one's abilities, as described by Alfred Adler.

Self-actualization

The humanistic concept of reaching one's full potential and "being all you can be," representing the culmination of inner-directed growth.

Unconditional Positive Regard

The full acceptance and approval of a person regardless of their behavior, which Carl Rogers argued is necessary for healthy development.

Cardinal Trait

A single personality trait that directs most of a person's activities, such as greed or kindness, according to Gordon Allport.

Self-efficacy

Bandura's term for an individual's beliefs about their ability to achieve specific goals.

Reciprocal Determinism

The social learning theory notion that the individual and the environment continually influence one another.

Bobo Doll Experiment

A study by Albert Bandura involving $72$ children that demonstrated how aggression can be learned through observation and imitation.

Cognition

Derived from the Latin "cognoscere," it is the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.

Object Permanence

The realization developed in Piaget's sensorimotor stage that something continues to exist even when it cannot be seen.

Conservation

The understanding developed in the concrete operational stage that physical quantities do not change based on an object's arrangement or appearance.

MMPI-2

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the most widely used objective personality instrument for clinical and employment settings.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A projective test consisting of $10$ bilaterally symmetrical inkblots where clients describe what they see to reveal their view of the world.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test using $31$ black and white pictures (usually showing $10$ to $14$ to a client) where the subject creates a story for each.

Enactive Learning

Learning by doing and experiencing the direct consequences of one's own actions.