In-Depth Exploration of Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

1. Essentials of Understanding Psychology 9th Edition By Robert Feldman PowerPoints by Kimberly Foreman Revised for 9th Ed by Cathleen Hunt

2. Chapter 10:Personality

3. MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • How do psychologists define and use the concept of personality? • What do the theories of Freud and his successors tell us about the structure and development of personality?

4. MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • Based on the idea that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control

5. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Psychoanalytic Theory • Sigmund Freud • Unconscious • Part of the personality that contains memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which one is not aware • Motivates much of our behavior • Preconscious • Holds material easily brought to mind

6. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Id • Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality • Holds primitive drives • Pleasure principle

7. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Ego • Strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world • Reality principle • “Executive” of personality

8. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Superego • Represents the rights and the wrongs of society as taught and modeled by one’s parents, teachers, and other significant individuals • Includes the conscience

9. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Individuals encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges • Failure to resolve conflicts at any stage can result in fixation

10. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Oral stage • Baby’s mouth is focal point of pleasure • Weaning is main conflict • Fixation could include: • Eating • Talking • Smoking • Other oral interests

11. Psychosexual Stages

12. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Anal stage • Major source of pleasure is the anal region • Children obtain pleasure from both retention and expulsion of feces • Fixation may result in: • Rigidity • Orderliness • Punctuality • Disorderliness • Sloppiness

13. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Phallic stage • Focus is on genitals • Oedipal conflict • Castration anxiety • Identification

14. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Latency period • Lasts until puberty • Sexual interests become dormant • Genital stage • Extends until death • Focus is on mature, adult sexuality (sexual intercourse)

15. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Defense Mechanisms • Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing its source from themselves and others • Repression Figure 3 of Module 31

16. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Jung’s Collective Unconscious • Common set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we inherit from our relatives, the whole human race, and even nonhuman animal ancestors from the distant past • Archetypes • Universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience

17. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Horney’s Neo-Freudian Perspective • Women’s issues • Suggested that personality develops in the context of social relationships and depends particularly on the relationship between parents and child

18. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Adler and the Other Neo-Freudians • Alfred Adler • Proposed that the primary human motivation is a striving for superiority in a quest for self-improvement and perfection • Inferiority complex • Describes situations in which adults have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority they developed as children • Erik Erikson • Anna Freud

19. MODULE 32: Trait, Learning, Biological, Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality • What are the major aspects of trait, learning, biological and evolutionary, and humanistic approaches to personality?

20. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Trait Theory • Seeks to explain, in a straightforward way, the consistencies in individuals’ behavior • Traits • Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors displayed in different situations

21. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying Basic Characteristics • Cardinal trait • Single characteristic that directs most of a person’s activities • Central trait • Major characteristics of an individual • Secondary trait • Affect behavior in fewer situations

22. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality • Factor analysis • Statistical method of identifying associations among a large number of variables to reveal more general patterns • Factors • Combinations of traits • Cattell: • Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) • Eysenck: • 3 major dimensions: • Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

23. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • The Big Five Personality Traits • Openness to experience • Conscientiousness • Extraversion • Agreeableness • Neuroticism Figure 2 of Module 32

24. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach • States that personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns

25. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • How much consistency exists in personality? • Walter Mischel • Personality is variable from one situation to another • Situationism • Cognitive-affective processing system theory (CAPS) • People’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view, and then react, in situations

26. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • Self-esteem • The component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations • Relationship harmony

27. Biological and Evolutionary Approaches: Are We Born with Personality? • Suggest that important components of personality are inherited • Temperament • Innate disposition

28. Humanistic Approaches:The Uniqueness of You • Emphasize people’s inherent goodness and their tendency to move towards higher levels of functioning • Carl Rogers • Self-actualization • Self-concepts • Unconditional positive regard • Conditional positive regard

29. Comparing Approaches to Personality

30. MODULE 33: Assessing Personality: Determining What Makes Us Distinctive • How can we most accurately assess personality? • What are the major types of personality measures?

31. Psychological Tests • Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively • Reliability • The measurement consistency of a test • Validity • When a test measures what it is designed to measure

32. Self-Report Measures of Personality • Self-Report Measures • Asks people about a relatively small sample of their behavior • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2 (MMPI-2) • Test standardization

33. Projective Measures • Projective Personality Tests • People are shown ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it • Rorschach test • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

34. Behavioral Assessment • Direct measures of an individual’s behavior designed to describe characteristics indicative of personality

35. Assessing Personality Assessments • Understand what the test claims to measure • Base no decision only on the results of any one test • Remember that test results are not always accurate