Personality: Unique, relatively consistent pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that we distinguish one another from.

I. Psychoanalytic Approach

        Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939): Personality is a function of the ‘push and pull’ of three entities residing in our
        layers of consciousness (conscious, preconscious, and unconscious)

• Id – functions on “pleasure principle”; immediate gratification of needs to reduce tension, discomfort regardless of consequences
• Superego – our moral guide/conscience; “idealistic principle”: internalizing our parents’ values; voice of society; works against the “id” in inflicting guilt
• Ego – functions on “reality principle”; serves to balance the demands of the id and the superego; assess what is realistically possible in satisfying the id and/or superego (i.e., what society will deem acceptable)
• The ego uses defense mechanisms to keep the id’s threatening impulses from reaching the conscious layer of our consciousness; protection against pain of anxiety
• Denial: Denying the anxiety outright
• Repression: Blocking out/prevention of anxiety – forcing anxiety back into unconscious; the repressed anxiety can resurface in a disguised form in deceiving the ego, such as in dreams, “Freudian slips”, or sexual impotency
• Rationalization: Creating reasons/explanations for anxiety in the form of a shortcoming
• Projection: Seeing in others unacceptable feelings that reside in one’s own unconscious; Freud described homophobia as unconscious feelings of repressed homosexuality
• Displacement: Acting out your anxiety on an innocent party; scapegoating
• Reaction formation: reversing the nature of the anxiety so that it feels like its opposite nature; exaggerated love for someone you unconsciously hate
• Sublimation: Channeling anxiety into socially-acceptable activities; focusing sexual energy into art, music, etc.

• 1) Oral (birth – age 1.5): gratification is centered around the mouth (e.g., breast-feeding, sucking, biting)
• 2) Anal (1.5 – age 3): gratification is centered around the pleasure of defecation; toilet-training is issue for resolution and development
• 3) Phallic (3 – age 6): gratification manifests itself through masturbation; resolution for development lies in identification w/ same-sex parent
• Oedipus Complex: boys have unconscious jealous love for mother and desire to kill the father; fear of castration by father leads to resolution with acceptance of/identification with father and internalization of father’s values; strong superego results in this resolution
• Electra Complex: girls discover that they do not have a penis and desire one (“penis envy”); they direct their anger toward the mother for not providing a penis; jealous of mother for father; gradual realization that these desires are self-defeating; identification with mother results
• 4) Latency (age 6 - puberty): sexual urges are repressed and transformed into socially acceptable activities
• 5) Genital (puberty – adulthood)
• Successful resolution and development into a mature sexual relationship

• For example, anal-stage fixations result in anal-retentive and anal-expulsive personalities
• Or, obsessive behavior around the mouth (i.e., chewing gum, smoking, biting nails) in adulthood is a fixation of the oral stage
• Psychoanalytic treatment for maladjustment later in life explores the unresolved psychosexual stage

• Freud’s theory was thought to be sexist against women
• Description rather than prediction
• Subjective description, solely by Freud, and “after the fact” on a relatively small sample of patients, including himself!
• His patients were mostly females from upper classes
• Unverifiable concepts
• How can you directly confirm, disconfirm, and even observe the Oedipus Complex?!
• Feels more mythical than scientific
• Too many hypotheses for reaction to anxiety

• Was rich and comprehensive in description
• 1st comprehensive theory of personality: every personality theory since can be seen as a reaction to Freud
• Sparked psychoanalysis, a way of dealing with mental disorders: many still believe that psychoanalysis is the best treatment for mental illness
• Was controversial and stretched the boundaries for creativity

        Allport's Trait Theory

• Cardinal traits: affect every area of the individual’s life; Mother Theresa – altruistic; most of us do not have such a trait that dominates of lives
• Central traits: influence many aspects of our lives, but not quite as pervasive (usually 5-10 of these); someone you think of as “kind” or “funny”
• Secondary traits: affect narrower aspects of our lives: preference for cowboy hats or always wearing perfume

• 5-factor model of personality (“Big Five”); where we fall on 5 different dimensions determines personality type
• Dimensions: 1. openness to experience (curiosity, flexibility, imagination, artistic sensibility); 2. conscientiousness (discipline, organization, dependable); 3. extraversion (outgoing, upbeat, friendly, assertive, gregarious); 4. agreeableness (sympathethic, trusting, cooperative, straightforward); 5. neuroticism (aka "stablity"; anxious, hostile, self-conscious)
• Take a mini-test of these 5 here: http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/bigfiveminitest.html
• Personality inventory: A “paper-and-pencil” test for assessing personality that requires you to read statements/traits and indicate whether each is true/false about themselves or indicate the level to which the statement describes yourself

• Theory behind it that we will give an answer consistent with the inner workings of our minds

• Creativity, coping resources, emotional processing, relationships with others, thought disorders, psychoses

• Best used to learn motivation behind people’s behavior: believed that person will identify with one of the characters on each card
• In their stories, people are thought to express their own circumstances, needs, environmental demands, emotions, and perceptions of reality

• Bandura: self-efficacy/self-reinforcement: knowing we can actually perform behaviors successfully in the way we wish to behave leads to self-praise
• Mischel’s controversy
• Situational specificity: our behavior is mostly a function of a given situation, not of stable, internal traits
• Interactionism: both traits and situations interact to produce behavior, thoughts
• Bandura’s reciprocal determinism: behavior also influences traits and situations – all 3 factors influence each other

• Humanistic psych focuses on the positive aspects of being a human being (e.g., goodness, creativity, free will)
• Rejection of the scientific goal of predicting and controlling human behavior
• The major aim should be to discover things that expand and enrich human experience
• Should strive to seek info that will help solve human problems
• Description of what it means to be a human being in terms of meaningful experience, such as values, language, and emotions
• Self-actualized personality (Maslow): achieving our highest emotional/intellectual potential
• Perceive reality accurately/efficiently; accepting of oneself, others, and nature; appreciate ordinary, simple, natural, and spontaneous events; focus on cultural, rather than personal, problems; form deep relationships with few persons; Autonomy: depend on oneself for growth and self-esteem; peak experiences: “Oceanic” feeling of oneness with experience, the world, and others that transcends time/space; loss of self-consciousness; democratic values and no feelings of prejudice; clear sense of right and wrong; avoid humor at others’ expense; creative in their own way
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: 1. Physiological needs: food, water, air; 2. Safety needs: shelter, protection; 3. Belongingness/love needs; 4. Esteem needs; 5. Cognitive needs; 6. Aesthetic needs: harmony; 7. Self-Actualization
• Cannot progress up the hierarchy until each need below current need is met