Chapter 11

Personality and Personality DIsorder

• Personality: one’s characteristic pattern of behaving, thinking, feeling, attitudes, temperment, ideology, beliefs…

• Personality disorder: a personality disorder is a type of mental disorder in which people experience a rigid, dysfunctional and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving.

• An illness of one’s personality

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

• Freud proposed 3 levels of consciousness

  • Conscious

    • what we are aware of at any given moment

    • Thoughts, feelings, sensations, or memories

  • Preconscious (“our subconscious”)

    • memories we are not aware of but can easily bring to our awareness, and

  • Unconscious

    • Repressed memories, instincts, wishes, desires

    • Never have been conscious???

The Id, Ego, and Superego

• Id: contains life instinct (sexual and biological) and death instinct (aggressive and destructive impulses)

  • operates according to the pleasure principle; avoid pain, instant gratification

  • Source of the Libido, psychic energy fueling the personality

• Ego: logical, rational part of personality

  • Draws its energy from the Id

  • Attempts to satisfy the id’s urges and mediates when conflicts with the superego arise

  • Acts according to the reality principle

  • The most conscious part of the personality; engaged with reality

• Superego: formed around ages 5-6

  • moral system of the personality; our voice of authority; what’s right or wrong

  • consists of the conscience (including past punishments and guilt) and the ego ideal comprising past behaviors which have resulted in praise, pride, and satisfaction

  • Judges one’s behavior, thoughts, feelings, and wishes

Defense Mechanisms

• Used by ego to:

  • Maintain self-esteem

  • Defend against anxiety created by conflict between the id and superego

    • the id’s demands for pleasure often conflict with the superego’s desires for moral perfection

• Overuse can lead to psychological problems

• Repression is the most commonly used mechanism

• All individuals use defense mechanisms

The Psychosexual Stages of Development

• The sex instinct is an important factor influencing personality

• Develops through a series of stages

  • Each stage involves an erogenous zone and conflict

  • if the conflict is not resolved, the child develops a fixation. A portion fo the libido (psychic energy) remains invested at that stage

  • Overindulgence may leave a person unwilling to move on to the next stage

• Insufficient gratification may leave the person trying to make up for unmet needs

• Body organ as a source of pleasure

  • Central theme of phallic stage is controversial

• Freud thought that love (in the sexual sense) of opposite-sex parent represented a universal conflict that all humans must resolve early on in their development

  • Oedipus complex: boys-castation

  • Electra complex: girls-penis envy

• Oral Stage: the mouth

  • takes place from birth to 1 year of age

  • Conflict: sucking and weaning

  • Fixation can lead to dependency and passivity or sarcasm and hostility

  • Either you use your mouth too much or not enough

  • Chewing Gum etc

• Anal Stage

  • Takes place between 1 to 3 years of age

  • conflict: toilet training

  • Fixation can lead to excessive cleanliness and stinginess (retentive) or messiness and rebelliousness (expulsive)

• Phallic Stage (Genital)

  • Takes place between 3 to 5 or 6 years of age

  • conflict: Oedipus and Electra complex

  • Fixation can lead to flirtatiousness and promiscuity or excessive pride and chastity; prudishness, paraphillias

    • Oedipus complex: boys-castation

    • Electra complex: girls-penis envy

• Latency Stage: no organ

  • Lasts form the age of 5 or 6 years to puberty

  • period of sexual calm

• Genital Stage

  • puberty and beyond

  • revival of sexual interests

  • Discuss: fixation may result in sexual dysfunction(s)

Evaluating Freudian Theory

• Contributions

  • recognized importance of childhood experiences in shaping personality

  • identified role of defense mechanisms

  • called attention to the unconscious

Divergent Views to Freudian Theory

• Critics argue that

  • People do not typically repress painful memories

  • Dreams may or may not have symbolic meaning

  • Freud’s theories are difficult, if not impossible to test scientifically

The Neo-Freudians: Carl Jung

• Carl Jung (1875-1961)

  • Sexual instinct is not the main factor in personality

  • Felt that personality was not completely formed in early childhood

• archetypes

  • inherited tendencies to respond to universal human situations, objects, etc

  • Introverted and extraverted personality

  • “dreams are a representation of the unconscious mind”

  • Collective unconscious.

Ancestors over the past 12 Generations

The Neo-Freudians:Adler

• Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

  • The drive to overcome feelings of inferiority motivates most human behavior. Stressed unity of personality

    • When feelings of inferiority prevent personal development, they constitute an inferiority complex

    • Re: self-esteem; self worth, self-value

  • Theory is referred to as individual psychology or Adlerian Psychology

The Neo-Freudians: Horney

“We must learn to overcome irrational beliefs about the needs for perfection”: K Horney

• Karen Horney (1885-1952)

  • Work centered on 2 main themes

    • The neurotic personality: emotionally needy, the need for constant validation (mostly external).

    • Feminine psychology

  • rejected Freud’s psychosexual stages, the Oedipus complex, and penis envy

  • “Women’s difficulties arise from the failure to live up to idealized versions of themselves”

Personality Development: Humanistic Theories

• Humanistic Psychology

  • People have a natural tendency toward growth and realization of their fullest potential

  • Humanistic theories are more optimistic about human nature than Freud’s

  • However, Humanistic theories are difficult to test scientifically

Humanistic Theories: Maslow

• Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

  • proposed a hierarchy of needs that motivates behavior

  • The highest needs is self-actualization

  • self-actualizers

    • accurately perceive reality and quickly spot dishonesty

    • tend not to depend on external authority

    • Are internally driven, autonomous, and independent

    • Frequently have peak experiences

Humanistic Theories: Carl Rogers

• Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

  • conditions of worth

    • conditions on which positive regard depends

    • Conditions of worth force us to live according to someone else’s values

  • In efforts to gain positive regulars, we deny the true self becoming… Disingenuous, superficial

Carl Rogers

• Person-centered therapy

  • The goal is to enable people to live by and develop their own values

  • The therapist give client unconditional positive regard

    • unqualified caring and nonjudgemental acceptance

    • brings the person back in tune with development of the self, j a lifelong process

Humanistic theory: Self-Esteem

• How does self-esteem develop?

  • Variations in self-esteem can arise form comparisons of actual to desired traits

  • By age 7, most children have global self-esteem

    • Judgements come from both actual experiences and information provided by others

    • Recall Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development

• To develop healthy self-esteem, children need to:

  • Experience success in domains they view as important

  • Be encouraged by parents, teachers, and peers (validation) so they, in turn learn to value themselves (self-validation; internalization)

  • Mike’s theory of validation; The 5 A’s: Acceptance, Acknowledgement, Admiration, Approval, Appreciation

Trait theories

Traits: personal qualities or characteristics that help us face life’s situational demands and deal with unforeseen circumstances

attempt to explain differences among people

Traits are acquired both genetically and psychologically

Early Trait Theories: Allport

• Gordon Allport (1936). People inherit a unique set of raw materials for given traits, which are then shared by experience

  • proposed 2 kinds of traits

• cardinal traits

  • Major theme of a person’s life; how we really are

• central traits

• traits which we would “mention in writing in careful letter of reccomendation”. How we would describe ourselves

Early Trait Theories: Cattell

• Raymond Cattle (1950)

  • surface traits

    • the observable qualities of personality

  • source traits, i.e., intelligence

    • underlie surface traits

    • cause certain surface traits to cluster together

    • Cattell identifies 23 source traits

Hans Eysenck: PEN model

• Proposed a three-factor model with personality dimensions presented in a continuum, (ie scale 1——10, 1——100).

  • Psychoticism: “psychotics” at one end and those rigidly tied to he material world, lacking creativity

  • Extraversion: from outgoing to shy people

  • Neuroticism: describing emotional stability

The Five-Factor Model: Robert McCrae and Paul Costa

• Openness (High to Low scale)

  • open to new experiences, curious, and broadminded versus having narrow interests and preferring the familiar

• Conscientiousness

  • reliable, orderly, and industrious versus undependable and lazy, uncaring, indifferent

• Extraversion

  • outgoing, prefer to be around other people versus shy, solitary behavior

• Agreeableness

  • easygoing and friendly versus unfriendly and cold

• Neuroticism

  • pessimistic and irritable versus optimistic, take thing in stride; emotionally driven

• Argues that five factors ar needed to account for personality. Best understood as occurring in a continuum/ spectrum

Genetics in he development of Traits

• Five-Factor Theory of Personality

  • McCrae and Costa (2003)

  • behavioral genetic theory

    • asserts that heredity is largely responsible for individual differences

• Rushton and colleagues (1986)

  • Nurturance, empathy, assertiveness, altruism and aggressiveness are influenced by heredity

Nature, Nurture, and Personality Traits

• The heritability of aggressiveness may be as high as .50 Carey (1997)

• Genes constrain the ways in which environments affect personality traits (Kagan, 2003). the nature debate

• However, other studies suggest changes in personality do occur in response to repeated life-threatening situations for example. The nurture debate

Personality and Culture

• Cultural factors influence the development of personality

  • may not be captured in the 5-factor model

• Cultures differ in individualist cultures

  • Emphasis is placed on independence and individual achievement

• Collectivist cultures

  • emphasis on social connectedness

  • define the self in terms of group membership

Social-Cognitive Theory

The view that personality is a collection of learned behaviors that have been acquired through interactions with others

Behavior is viewed as being influenced by the person engaging with countless situations

Bandura’s Reciprocal Determinism Model

• Internal, environmental, and behavioral variables interact to influence personality; we respond to and engage with our environment

• Self-Efficacy

  • the perception people have of their ability to perform competently whatever they attempt; people approach new situations with confidence, set high goals and persist because they believe success is likely.

Self-Efficacy and Locus of Control

• Locus of Control: Rotter (1966, 1990s)

  • internal locus of control

    • see selves as primarily in control of their behavior and its consequences

  • External locus of control

    • perceive e events as in the hands of fate, luck, or chance

    • Students having an external LOC are less likely to be academically successful than those with an internal LOC

Fundamental traits, personality characteristics, attitudes…

• Essential to succeed in university and beyond:

  • Discipline

  • responsibility

  • determination

  • perseverance

  • commitment

  • motivation

  • initiative

  • industiousness

  • hardiness

• Elements seen as important components of early experience and structure

Personality Assessment

Methods used in assessing personality

• Observation

  • Used in hospitals, clinics, schools, and workplaces

  • behavioral assessment

    • psychologists count and record the frequency of particular behaviors

    • often used in behavior modification programs in treatment

    • time-consuming; behavior may be misinterpreted

Personality Assessment Methods

• Interviews

  • used to help in diagnosis and treatment

  • Structured interview

    • the content of the questions and the manner in which they are asked are carefully planned ahead of time

    • Comparisons can be made between different subjects

  • Rating Scales

    • provide standardized format, focus on relevant traits

Personality Inventories

• Inventory (evaluation or questionnaire)

  • paper and pencil test with questions about a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors

  • scored according to a standard procedure

  • used to measure several dimensions of personality

Personality Assessment: Personality Inventories

• Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory (MMPI)

  • now revised bio MMPI-2

  • now used to screen and diagnose psychiatric problems and disorders

  • the most extensively researched and widely used personality test

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

• Consists of 10 clinical (psychiatric) scales and 3 validity scales

• Validity Scales: used to detect dishonest responses

  • discerns those who are attempting to look healthier than they are and those attempting to appear disturbed

Personality Inventories: California Personality Inventory (CPI) and Myers-Briggs

• California Personality Inventory (CPI)

  • developed to assess personality in normal individuals not suspect with psychiatric conditions

  • does not include any questions designed to reveal psychiatric illness

  • useful in predicting school achievement, leadership, and executive success

Personality Inventories: California Personality Inventory (CPI) and Myers-Briggs

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

  • based on Jung’s theory of personality

  • measures normal individual differences on 4 personality dimensions

  • used in business and educational settings

    • extraversion - introversion

    • sensing - Intuition

    • Thinking - Feeling

    • Judging - Perceptive

Personality Inventories: Projective Tests

• Projective Tests

  • consist of inkblots, drawings of ambiguous human situation, or incomplete sentences

  • no correct or incorrect responses

  • the subject projects their inner thoughts, feelings, fears, or conflicts onto the test materials

  • include Rorschach Inkblot Test and Thematic Apperception Test

Projective Tests: Rorschach Inkblot Method

• The test taker is asked to describe 10 inkblots

• Responses can be used to diagnose disorders

example

Projective Tests: Rorschach Inkblot Methods

• Critics argue that results are too dependent on the judgement of the examiner; too subjective and may only reflect temporary mental states

• Exner (1993) developed the comprehensive system for scoring

  • provides normative data for comparison of responses

Projective Tests: Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Developed by Henry Murray (1935)

• Consists of 1 blank card and 19 cards showing vague or ambiguous black-and-white drawings of human figures

• The test taker describes the drawings

  • The descriptions are thought to reveal inner feelings, conflicts, and motives

• Critics argue that:

  • The test relies too heavily on the interpretation of the examiner

  • Responses may reflect temporary states and may not indicate more permanents aspects of personality