L.1 - Nature, Culture, Subject

Question 1

Core concepts

Answer 1

• nature, culture, subject
• “first nature” vs “second nature”
• nurture
• schema
• joint internationally
• conventional cultural practices
• actor, agent, author
• symbolic order

Question 2

Lecture overview

Answer 2

• what are theories of personality about?
• quick overview of the course
• the historical origins of personalities
• an organism in nature
• a person in culture
• the subject of your life

Question 3

Levels of understanding concepts

Answer 3

1. intuitive, associative understanding
   > what is this about?
2. explicit understanding
   > what exactly is meant? how is this used?
3. critical, personal, creative understanding
   > does it make sense? can I creatively use it?
   (picture 3)

Question 4

Personality Theory

Answer 4

• starts with the questions:
  > who is this person?
  > how did he become this?
• the answer is part in personality traits, temperament, identity, self, …
• personality is about how people see and experience themselves (self-image, …)

(picture 1)

• in the present, people act and experience all sorts of things which are influenced by context
• however, there are still some stable acts and experiences across contexts
• starts with development (past) → experiences and acts (present) → goals and motivation (future)
• personality is a meaning-making agent (not just passive)
  (picture 2)

Question 5

what do personality theories tackle?

Answer 5

• about stories of people, their narratives through which they discover themselves
• stories told by themselves and others; family, friends, …

Question 6

Learning Objectives of Personality Theories

Answer 6

1. Evaluate personality concepts from multiple theoretical frameworks
2. Discuss case material from literature or film using concepts from personality theories
3. Reflect on your own experiences and personal development during tutorial activities

Question 7

Personality theories & Personality disorders
- normal vs abnormal

Answer 7

Personality theories (lecture 1-5)
➢ In any clinical situation the question “who is this person and how did (s)he become that way?” is crucial; as a clinician you need to ask yourself that question again and again
➢ Personality theories involve concepts, structures and ideas to help you ask the right questions and find partial answers to them

Personality disorders (lecture 7-12)
➢ Clinical problems can be understood as expressions of negative experiences in the relation between persons and the world they inhabit
➢ When such problems have a certain pervasiveness and persistence the may be regarded as personality problems or diagnosed as disorders

Question 8

What do personality theories include?

Answer 8

• scientific theories and research
• personal narratives
• cultural perspectives
• your own development as a person

Question 9

History and narratives - how do they come to be?

Answer 9

• human groups get cultural histories due to the continued transmission of conventions
  > e.g. stay silent in classroom if teacher speaks
• cultures develop oral and then written traditions and stories about who we are and how we came to be
• by telling these stories and reflecting on them we change our understanding of who we are
• the histories of individuals can be located within these larger histories of the multiple we’s wo which we belong

Question 10

What are the origins of personalities?

Answer 10

• Natural origins
  > e.g. being a mammal
• Cultural origins
  > divergence from other mammals
  > start of culture, language, conventionality, …
• Individual origins
  > birth of every individual
  > a lot of our self is out of our control

Question 11

Three perspective on personality

Answer 11

• Universal
  > human nature
  > when born, organism doesn’t have full personality, just has patterns
• Particular
  > human cultures
  > all different ways in which we become person in cultural, symbolic world
• Singular
  > human life
  > dependent on the individual (I am this, I am not that, I like this, I…)

Question 12

Some common confusions and mistakes

Answer 12

I. Naturalizing cultural categories
➢ E.g. treating race as a natural kind
> e.g. creating natural categories such as race, gender, instead of treating them as cultural

II. Reducing every aspect to cultural narratives
➢ E.g. not taking seriously the evolved physical body and brain as important limits on what is culturally possible
> we reduce everything to culture, instead of taking into consideration biology, science, nature, …
> e.g. sex, attachment, fear… are not cultural, they are something that every human has to deal with

III. Forgetting about the cultural and subjective position from where the author
speaks
➢ Any theory that is narrated is influenced by the narrator
➢ His or her particular position in history, in culture, in society matters a great deal
➢ In many aspects of personality theories this cannot be erased
> you should consider who is the author of a story/narrative, in order to understand how much the author influences it
> e.g. person from east has different impact on telling a story about war compared to european person

IV. Treating all accounts as equally subjective opinions
> we can have intersubjective discussion about what is really true

Question 12

What are two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation?

Answer 12

1. Obligate collaborative foraging
2. Group-mindedness

Question 13

1. Obligate collaborative foraging

Answer 13

➢ Humans have developed very strong skills for collaborating with each other
➢ Crucial in this is the strong tendency of already very young children towards joint intentionality (!)
> humans have a great capacity for shared goals and shared mental
states (intersubjectivity)
➢ Within this context shared meanings and shared stories can come into existence
→ these stories are very important, as through them we coordinate who we are in a group, what roles we have, how we carry out such roles, …
➢ Humans are from birth particularly attuned to sharing mental states with other humans

Question 14

Joint intentionality

Answer 14

• it’s not that the child has a goal or desire on their own, but they see that the situation requires something and joins in that goal
• in early stages of development, children and parents often have joint intentionality
  > e.g. parent points to something and kid looks; they have now joint attention
  (video of kids and monkeys picking up cloths)
• if the mother stops working together and sharing mental states, the baby has a problem
  > very difficult to feel who you are in the world
• identity starts with the outside, early on

Question 15

2. Group-mindedness

Answer 15

➢ Given the strong possibility of shared intentionality, humans also develop a capability for conventions
> shared intentionality is the starting point for things to get a meaning for the person involved
➢ Thus children from then on are born in a world full of pre-existing conventional structures that they grow into and only later and partially become aware of
> very young child already has a place in this conventional system since they are born, for example by being given a name, given clothes of a certain color, being baptized, …
➢ In this they are introduced into a pre-existing ‘symbolic order’: the universe of signs and meanings typical for human societies
> being baptized is a huge example of symbolic order

= identity and personality start to a large extent with all that other people want from you, think about you, the place they give you, …
> even if we still deviate from initial roles that we are given, we will always still be related to them

Question 16

Cultural practices vs behavioral traditions

Answer 16

• practitioners understand cultural practices as “shared” in the groups: they understand them as coventional
• we have all “agreed” to do them in a particular way, even though we all know that there are otehr ways we could do them
  > e.g. words are not behavioral traditions because we all have to understand that they have a meaning and understand the meaning

Question 17

our first and second nature

Answer 17

1. Universal human nature
   > collaboration and group-mindedness
2. Particular cultural histories
3. Individual life story

1st nature: from universal to individual
2nd nature: from cultural to individual
- we don’t distinguish consciously first to second nature, there is no clear line between the two, and from them the individual history emerges

Question 18

The emergence of schemata
- how do they emerge?
- what are they?

Answer 18

• there are some basic themes in everyone, but the way the parents deal with these schemata will shape patterns of how to look at oneself and the world
  > basic child needs: e.g. need for attachment, need for caring, …
• these patterns are called schemata
• Schemata: memory-structure developed in repeated interactions with others that cointains crucial pre-conceptions about self, others and the world
  (picture 4)

Question 19

What is the psychological self?

Answer 19

• person that we believe, experience and feel that we are
• constructed as a reflexive arrangement of the subjective “I” and the constructed “me” evolving and explanding over the human life course
  > begins life as a social actor
• the first person perspective starts from very early on
  > e.g. child that experiences his body, his emotions, his movements, …
• “reflexive” means in this case that something is acted by us, then others react to it and we integrate that in who we are, who we think we are, …
  (picture 5)

Question 20

Development of the self (McAdams)

Answer 20

(picture 6)
- first, we enter the stage of actor
> we have traits, roles, … people react to this and this starts shaping who we are
- then we enter the stage of the agent
> we start understanding ourselves, as wanting something, having goals and plans, …
> we start having proper intentions and we recognize them
> we develop understanding of our intentionality
- lastly, we become our own authors
> we develop stories of ourselves
> who have I been? what are my values? where will I go?

Question 21

The self as Actor

Answer 21

• focused in the present
  1. we discover what society says we are
  2. then we build our identity on performance in that part
  > if we keep it up, we are rewarded with affirmation of our identity
  > if we don’t, we are destroyed
• self as an actor= encompassing semantic representations of traits, social roles, and other features of self that result in and from repeated performances on the social stage of life
  > here the fact that is repeated is important, as we form who we are by repeating our being and behavior in different situations, and then it becomes part of who we are
• persona= masker and character → what your meaning is in the perspective of others
• appearance (the way one appears to others) might be disconnected from subjective experience

Question 22

The self as agent

Answer 22

• towards the future
• make choices, and as a result of those choices, to move forward in life in a self-determined and goal-directed manner
• human agency suggests intention, volition, will, purpose and some personal control in life
• even though children seem to have intentions, human beings do not consciously and reflexively understand themselves as motivated agents in a full sense until much time later

Question 23

The self as author

Answer 23

• integrating and reflective on past, present and future
• the “I” becomes an autobiographical author, the “me” becomes the story it tells
  > I is the one telling the story, the Me is what is being told (e.g. I is the person telling about themselves, the Me is what comes out of the story; they can be different at times, for example if the person is lying)
• the internalized and evolving mixture of self stories (narrative identity) aims to integrate the reconstructed past, experieced present and imagined future
• this is a life story, it’s not just a reflection of the past. It is influenced by how we narrate our life, not just events

Question 24

James Baldwin

Answer 24

(picture 7, 8, 9) - life chapters > we can see discrepancy between how he was raised and who he decides to be > e.g. he leaves church - key scenes > agentic, communal themes > crucial scene where others identify him in a certain way, and that shapes who he is - symbolic order > he takes his father as inspiration, he understands later cultural situations and roles, ...

Question 25

Baldwin - very very random information

Answer 25

- our narratives are shaped by what we encounter in our lives - Baldwin encountered existentialism and human rights movements - at 41 y.o. he goes through a key scene in his life (1965) > he had already become an influential american writer by then > he debates at cambridge university with william buckley (an influential conservative american)