Chapter 13: Theories of Personality

Karen Horney observation

Giving a child a nurturing environment and healthy friction will lead to self-realization

Personality Defined

the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave

Sigmund Freud started…

the psychoanalytic perspective

Psychological defense mechanisms include

1. repression

2. suppression

3. denial

4. rationalization

5. projection

6. displacement

7. sublimation

Repression

pushing threatening or conflicting events or situations out of conscious memory

suppression

setting aside threatening or conflicting events or situations to be dealt with later

denial

refusal to recognize or acknowledge an undesired reality. people can eventually believe their denials and think they are reality, but at what cost?

rationalization

stating an acceptable reason for our behavior but not the real reason

projection

placing one’s own unacceptable thoughts onto others as if the thoughts belonged to them and not to ourselves

displacement

expressing feelings that would be threatening if directed at the real target onto a less threatening substitute target

sublimation

turning socially unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behavior

Erik Erickson and psychosexual stages

a joke in psychology, but led to psychosocial states of development

Carl Jung

“Crown Prince,” some power in our ancestral past and ESP, archetypes: mandala, animus, anima, rebirth, mother, father, shadow, compensation: emotional health involves the ability to balance and integrate opposites

Carl Jung dream interpretation

more flexible than Freud interpretation

Carl Jung typologies

develop in Myers Briggs Type Indicator -

Introversion-Extraversion

Sensing-Intuiting

Thinking-Feeling

Judging-Perceiving

Alfred Adler

1. overcoming feels of inferiority and striving for superiority

2. Work-Love-Society

3. All behavior has behavior and is goal directed (teleological)

4. Fictional Finalism, anticipated future; when it doesn’t work out, shock, neurosis

5. Early recollections are a powerful guide to present emotional health

6. Birth order: Ideographic power, nomothetic weakness

Karen Horney

1. the right nurturing + healthy friction = self-realization

2. Neurosis: a dysfunctional response to basic anxiety

3. Neurotic needs

   1. moving toward people

   2. moving away from people

   3. moving against people

4. defense mechanisms: externalization, blind spot, arbitrary rightness, elusiveness

5. The Neurotic Personality of our Times, Neurosis and Human Growth

Carl Rogers

1. embraced growth model, rejected medical model

2. Phenomenology: desire to grasp reality as each individual uniquely perceives it

3. Humanistic Psychology: focus on present experience and ultimate worth of the individual

4. Unconditional positive regard vs conditions of worth

5. actualizing tendency

6. non-directive approach

   1. identify the real self; explore the ideal self; in therapy work systematically from one to the other

Abraham Maslow

1. humanistic psychology and phenomenology

2. hierarchy of needs:

   1. A D-need: physiological

   2. A D-need: safety

   3. A D-need: love and belonging

   4. A G-need: respect and esteem

   5. A G-need: self actualization

3. B-(being) values: love, joy, truth, unity experienced fully only by the self-actualized

4. study of exceptional individuals

5. chicken study: by incorporating the habits of exceptional people, we become better

Julian Rotter

Loss of Control

1. Internal: we have control of our environment based on our choices

2. External: we are manipulated by life and circumstances

Gordon Allport

traits are hard-wired into human personality

• cardinal traits: most central to a person’s definition

• central traits: cardinal traits interact with our environment

Raymond Cattell

used a statistical procedure called factor analysis to reduce 4000 descriptors to 16 source traits

16 PF test (the 16-personality factor questionnaire)

Traits in the 16pf

warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity

the big five

a more recent development that has stood the test of time

CANOE: Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, extraversion

the projective tests

interpretation of ambiguous stimuli to gain insight

Hermann Rorschach and the Rorschach Inkblot test

provides insight into the way people process info and dominant themes in their lives

the thematic apperception test

provocative pictures; your description of what is taking place provides insights into your thought processes and dominant themes

eclectic

today therapists are aware of many perspectives and incorporate them into their therapeutic produces as best fits the situation