Theories of Development Flashcards

Personality and Holistic Nursing Care

  • Personality Definition: An enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about oneself and the environment that is demonstrated in our social and interpersonal relationships.
  • Holistic Concept of Nursing Care: This approach incorporates the entire scope of human needs. It specifically addresses the following client issues:
    • Physical issues.
    • Emotional issues.
    • Psychosocial issues.
    • Cultural issues.
    • Spiritual issues.

Individual Needs and Behavior: Abraham Maslow

  • Theoretical Basis: Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, theorized that individuals act in response to certain needs that are unchanging and innate in origin.
  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
    • Physiologic Needs: These are essential for basic functioning (the foundation of the hierarchy).
    • Comfort, Safety, Stability, Security: Second level needs.
    • Love and Acceptance: Includes self-respect and self-confidence.
    • Self-actualization: Focuses on growth and fulfillment.
  • Progression Principle: According to Maslow's opinion, a person cannot move to a higher level of the hierarchy until the needs of the previous (lower) level are satisfied.

Individual Needs and Behavior: William Glasser

  • Core Theories: Glasser developed Reality Therapy and Control Theory.
  • Four Basic Psychological Needs:
    • Love and Belonging: Identified as an internal need.
    • Power and Control: The drive to exert control over our world.
    • Freedom and Choice: If these are hindered, the individual will attempt to regain them.
    • Fun and Relaxation: These elements serve to even out the personality.
  • Theoretical Goal: Mental health is improved when individuals learn to meet these needs through responsible choices.

Temperament and Character

  • Temperament Definition: The inherent way one reacts to stimuli and self-regulates, including the intensity of their emotions and reactions.
  • Variances in Character:
    • Defines how one thinks, reacts, and behaves.
    • Includes the intensity and extent of feelings, such as perseverance and determination.
  • Babies’ Temperament Studies: Theories developed to understand change and growth categorizing infants into three groups:
    • Easy: This is the largest group; infants are playful and adaptable.
    • Difficult: A smaller group; infants are irritable and unable to adapt well.
    • Slow-to-warm-up: Infants with lower activity levels and slower adaptation to new situations.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

  • Role of the Unconscious:
    • Conscious: Present awareness.
    • Preconscious/Subconscious: Levels just below current awareness that are easily retrieved.
    • Unconscious: Contains past experiences and related emotions that are completely removed from the conscious level.
  • Relational Concepts:
    • Transference: The unconscious transfer of feelings and attitudes from a person or situation in one’s past to a person or situation in the present.
    • Countertransference: The response elicited in the person receiving the transferred feelings or communications.
  • Personality Components:
    • Id: Operates on the pleasure principle.
    • Ego: The conscious self.
    • Superego: The conscience.
  • Ego-defense Mechanisms:
    • Used by the ego to remain in control.
    • Protect the individual from anxiety and awareness of internal and external stressors.
    • Operate mostly at the unconscious level.
    • May be adaptive or maladaptive.

Freud’s Psychosexual Development Theory

  • Development occurs through five distinct stages:
    1. Oral stage
    2. Anal stage
    3. Phallic stage
    4. Latency stage
    5. Genital stage

Erikson’s Psychosocial Development Theory

  • Theoretical Basis: Personality development is related to psychological and social factors. It consists of eight stages involving developmental crises.
  • Rules of Progression:
    • Each stage has a crisis that must be resolved.
    • If not resolved, development could be adversely affected.
    • Failure at one stage can be corrected by success at a later stage.
  • Eight Stages of Development:
    • Trust vs. mistrust: (Birth to 11 year).
    • Autonomy vs. shame + doubt: (Ages 11 to 22 years).
    • Initiative vs. guilt: (Ages 22 to 66 years).
    • Industry vs. inferiority: (Ages 66 to 1212 years).
    • Identity vs. role confusion: (Ages 1212 to 1818 years).
    • Intimacy vs. isolation: (Ages 1919 to 4040 years).
    • Generativity vs. stagnation: (Ages 4040 to 6565 years).
    • Integrity vs. despair: (>6565 years).

Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

  • Theoretical Basis: Personality development results from an increasing intellectual ability to organize and integrate experiences into behavior patterns.
  • Mechanisms of Growth:
    • Organization: Tends to occur at specific age levels.
    • Maturation: Occurs as the child thinks and interacts with the environment.
    • Building Mental Schema: Leads to cognitive balance.
    • Assimilation vs. Accommodation: Processes for adjusting to new information.
  • Four Stages of Development (Align with chronologic age periods):
    • Sensorimotor stage: (99 months to 11 year old).
    • Preoperational stage: (22 to 77 years old).
    • Concrete mental operations: (77 to 1212 years old).
    • Formal operations: (1111 to 1212 years and older).
  • Irreversibility: Upon entering a new stage, the process is irreversible; each stage builds on preceding development.

Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory

  • Theoretical Basis: Choices alone do not determine the stage of moral logic; rather, the reasons used to justify behavior establish the level of ethical development.
  • Structure: Comprises six stages on three levels (Preoperational, Conventional, and Postconventional).
  • Developmental Patterns:
    • Intellect and emotional development occur in parallel patterns.
    • Cognitive development level determines how a child perceives a situation and what is learned from it.
    • Each of the three levels builds on the previous one with increasing complexity in the individual's view of moral issues.

Sullivan’s Interpersonal Development Theory

  • Theoretical Basis: Behavior and personality are the direct result of interpersonal relationship concepts.
  • Core Concepts:
    • Anxiety: Resulting from unmet needs and interpersonal dissatisfaction.
    • Self-development Concepts: "Good-me," "bad-me," and "not-me."
  • Stages of Development:
    • Infancy: Focus on oral satisfaction of needs.
    • Childhood: Learning to delay personal gratification.
    • Juvenile: Relationships with peer groups.
    • Preadolescent: Interactions with the same gender.
    • Early adolescence: Relationships with other genders.
    • Late adolescence: Forming meaningful long-term relationships.

Peplau’s Psychodynamic Nursing Theory

  • Theoretical Basis: Hildegard Peplau developed four stages of development relevant to nursing:
    1. Infancy: Learning to rely on others.
    2. Toddler: Learning to delay self-gratification.
    3. Early childhood: Developing skills to behave in an acceptable manner.
    4. Late childhood: Learning to compromise, compete, and cooperate in interactions with others.

Additional Mental Health Theories

  • Murray Bowen: Family Systems Theory:
    • Family relationship dynamics are key to understanding current behaviors.
    • Behavior factors: Biologic, genetic, psychological, and sociologic.
    • Level of Differentiation:
      • Solid self: Based on internal convictions and principles; adaptable and copes effectively.
      • Pseudoself: Based on an external locus of control; less adaptive and relies on external sources to cope.
  • Skinner’s Behavioristic Theory: Behavior (adaptive and maladaptive) is the result of conditioning shaped by reward, punishment, and reinforcement. Conditioning occurs automatically without regard to conscious thought processes.
  • Bandura’s Social Learning Theory: Individuals can change their surroundings via internal and external forces. Social learning is based on observing and imitating models.
  • Beck’s Cognitive-Behavioral Theory: Focuses on the individual’s ability to think, analyze, and decide on behavior rather than acting purely on feelings.

Questions & Discussion

  • Question 1: An enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about oneself and the environment is:
    • Options: A defense mechanism; Behavior; The pseudoself; Personality.
    • Answer: Personality.
    • Rationale: Personality is a combination of characteristic patterns of our perceptions about, our relation to, and our thoughts about ourselves and the world in which we exist.
  • Question 2: Who theorized about a hierarchy of innate needs that range from basic survival requirements to a desire for self-fulfillment?
    • Options: Erikson; Maslow; Peplau; Piaget.
    • Answer: Maslow.
    • Rationale: Abraham Maslow defined human needs with a hierarchy. Physical needs form the first level, and other needs form higher levels. He believed that people must satisfy their basic needs before they are able to seek things such as self-actualization.
  • Question 3: Which of the following terms is not a component of personality according to Freud?
    • Options: Solid self; Id; Superego; Ego.
    • Answer: Solid self.
    • Rationale: The solid self is not a part of Freud’s theories. Freud believed that personality was made up of three parts: the id, superego, and ego. The solid self is a component of Bowen’s Family Systems theory. It refers to behavior based on internal convictions and principles.
  • Question 4: Tell whether the following statement is true or false: According to Kohlberg, it is the reasons people give to justify their choices that determine their level of ethical development.
    • Answer: True.
    • Rationale: Kohlberg’s theory of moral development divides growth into three levels (preoperational, conventional, and postconventional) that center on the reasons one gives to justify choices and behaviors.