Lecture 7: Psychodynamic models of personality Flashcards
(21 cards)
What are some aims of studying personality?
- Explain motivations basis of behaviour
- Determine the basic behaviour of human beings
- Provide descriptions of how people behave
- Measure personality, develop scales or qualitative interviews
- Understand how personality develops
- Assist in the development of interventions to facilitate behaviour change
- Assess the effects of genetics vs the environment in personality
What is the idiographic approach to assessing personality?
- Emphasises the uniqueness of individuals, and how there are a number of different personality traits
- Aims to develop an in depth understanding of the individual
Advantages: depths of understanding of the individual
Disadvantages: difficult to make generalisations of the data
What is the nomothetic approach?
- Focusing on traits that occur consistently across groups of people. People are unique in the way traits combine
- Aims to identify the basic of underlying structure of personality, and minimise the traits requires to describe personality universally
Advantages: discovery of general principles that have predictive function
Disadvantages: can be a superficial understanding of any one person
The clinical strand of personality theorising
- Developed from case studies of the mentally ill
- Sigmund Freud is considered the founder
The individual differences strand of personality theorising
- Documents differences in personality through research and statistical methods
- The major advance in research in individual differences was caused by Francis Galton
What is the background of Sigmund Freud?
- Was an Austrian neurologist
- Interested in hypnosis and what drove patients to hysteria
- Adopted the approach of encouraging his patients to talk about their problems while he listened
- Founder of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychology
What are Freuds (1940) 3 level of consciousness?
1) Conscious mind - thoughts, feelings and memories we are aware of at any time
2) Preconscious mind - thoughts, feelings and memories that are unconscious but can easily be recalled into our conscious mind
3) Thoughts and feelings that are kept in our unconscious due to their unacceptable nature
- Conscious mind and preconscious are primary thinking and unconscious is secondary thinking
Freud argues that a persons dreams were a direct route to a person’s unconscious, what are the elements to dreams?
1) Manifest the content of the dreams - Not a true representation of a person’s unconscious as the dreamer ‘censers’ the true meaning
2) Latent content of dreams - The true meaning of the dream, identified by the analyst.
What does Freud argue that the 3 biological drives are that motivate human behaviour?
1) Sexual drives to reproduce (libido)
2) Life-preserving drives
3) Death instinct (Thanatos) people have an unconscious desire to die
What is the ID (Freud 1901)
- Develops first in the child
- Unconscious part of the personality, including instinctive and primitive behaviours
- Irrational and operates based on the pleasure principle
What is the Ego (Freud 1901)?
- Develops second, as the child develops
- Conscious and executive part of the personality, responsibility for dealing with reality
- Rational and operates based on the reality principle
What is the super ego?
- Develops last in the child
- Considered the conscious of the mind
- Holds our values and morals learns from parents and society
What is the oral stage of development (0-1 years old) ?
- Pleasure zone is in the mouth
- Over or under stimulation leads to fixation and abnormal personality development
- Overstimulation leads to oral receptive personality type (over trusting and dependant)
- Under stimulation leads to oral aggression personality type (adult which envies and manipulates others)
What is the Anal stage of development (18m-3 years old)?
- Pleasure zone is the anal region (bowel and bladder elimination)
- Inappropriate toilet training leads to fixation and abnormal development
- Excessive control leads to anal-retentive personality type (too orderly and extremely stubborn)
- Or an anal-expulsive personality type (messy, disorganised and disobedient)
What is the phallic stage of development (aged 3-5)?
- Pleasure zone is the genitals
- Boys develop oedipal complex, and girls develop electra complex.
- Inability to cope with sexual feelings leads to fixation and abnormal personality development.
What is the Latent stage of development? (5-12)
- Resting period in the child’s development; energy is taken up by socialising and learning
- The child develops defence mechanisms
What is the genital stage of development (12-18)?
- Puberty and mature sexual interest in others occur
- Conflicts are left from previous stages
What are Freud’s 12 defence mechanisms?
1) Repression
2) Regression - returning to an earlier easier stage of life
3) Denial
4) Displacement
5) Reaction formation - overcome impulses (eg; being really nice to someone you dont like)
6) Conversion reaction - transferring psychological symptoms to physical
7) Rationalisation
8) Intellectualisation/isolation - stay distant from the situation
9) Phobic avoidance
10) Projection - blaming others
11) Sublimation - turning dangerous or unacceptable urges and transforming into positive forms
12) Undoing - ritualistic behaviours are used for protection, walking over three drains
What are some criticisms of Freud’s theory?
- Freud’s work lack empirical support, remains untested and are unfalsifiable.
- Criticised from having narrow motivational basis to explain human behaviour.
- Ignores social factors
- Deterministic (little free will)
- Presents a negative view of humans
- The view of women and non-heterosexual in Freudian theory is problematic
What was the Rorschach test? (Hermann Rorschach 1921)
- Test was used as an assessment tool for projective examination of personality
- A psychologist shows the pp 10 ink blot cards and direct them to respond to each with what the ink blot looks like
