U6 pt.1

Key Terms:

  • Temperament: The basic foundation of personality, biologically determined and present early in life.

  • Character: Personality aspect combining:

    • Temperament (inherited traits)

    • Social influences

  • Personality: A combination of temperament and character.

    • Defined as an enduring, stable set of characteristics and a unique adjustment to life.

Theories of Personality:

  1. Psychodynamic Theory:

    • Personality is largely unconscious.

    • Key levels of the psyche:

      • Preconscious: Contains feelings and impulses not currently in awareness but can be brought into consciousness.

      • Unconscious: Holds memories, emotional conflicts, wishes, and repressed impulses.

        • Not directly accessible but influences thoughts and behavior.

Defense Mechanisms:

  • Definition: The ego's protective strategies to reduce anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

  • Repression: The fundamental defense mechanism that pushes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories out of consciousness.

Regression

Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated.

A little boy reverts to sucking his thumb on the way to his first day of school.

Reaction Formation

Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites.

Repressing angry feelings, a person displays exaggerated friendliness.

Projection

Disguising one's own threatening impulses by attributing them to others.

"The thief thinks everyone else is a thief" (a common saying).

Rationalization

Offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one’s actions.

A habitual drinker says they drink with friends "to be sociable."

Displacement

Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person.

A little girl kicks the family dog after being sent to her room.

Sublimation

Transferring unacceptable impulses into socially valued motives.

A person with aggressive tendencies becomes a surgeon or athlete.

Denial

Refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities.

A partner denies evidence of their loved one's affair.