PERSONALITY THEORIES

What is personality?

 An individual’s
unique patterns of
thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors that
persists over time
and across situations.
Classes of Personality
Theories

 Psychodynamic theories
 Humanistic theories
 Trait theories
 Cognitive-social learning theories

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 Psychodynamic Theories
 Initially called Psychoanalytic (Freud) it is
psychodynamic psychology
 “Neo-Freudians:” his students
 Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 A few facts about Freud

 He was an extremely intelligent man

 Early in his career, he thought cocaine could be a
treatment to help depressed patients - that didn’t work
out
 He smoked so many cigars that he developed terrible
cancer of the jaw (30 surgeries)
 He sometimes fainted in front of his colleagues (esp. Carl
Jung)
 Initially studied zoology at the University of Vienna
 Sigmund Freud
 Psychoanalysis - Freud’s theory of
personality and method of therapy
 Freud’s view of humanity is “deterministic”
(little free will) and pessimistic
 Freud focused on the “unconscious”
 drives, desires, needs, and conflicts which we
are unaware of guide behavior
 Sigmund Freud

 The nutshell version - the mind is mostly

hidden from us and our hidden mind affects
our physical body and behaviour

 He specialized in nervous disorders after

medical school and found that he had some
patients that made no neurological sense
 Sex and issues with sex lay at the heart of our
behaviour and disorders
How did he access the
unconscious?
 Initially tried hypnosis but then went to free
association – say whatever comes to mind
no matter how trivial or embarrassing

 This way painful unconscious memories

could be released
 Ifyour hand is going numb because of fear
of touching one’s genitals – dealing with the
fear will heal the numb hand
Freud’s three
parts of the
psyche
 Id:
 The collection of unconscious urges and desires that continually
seek expression. Think base desires
 Ego:
 The part of the personality that mediates between the demands
of reality, the id, and superego.
 Superego:
 The social and parental standards the individual has internalized
(our conscience).

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 Id

 Contains primitive drives & instincts

 TheId wants to survive, reproduce and
aggress
 Functions entirely in the unconscious
 Pleasure principle:
 The way the id seeks immediate gratification of
an instinct. It wants to maximize pleasure &
minimize pain.
 Libido:
A form of psychic energy; the energy generated
by the sexual drive.
 Ego

 Operates at all three levels

 Must be strong enough to mediate between
id and supergo
 Reality principle:
 ego strives to satisfy id within the
constraints of the real world in ways that
bring long-term pleasure
 Superego

 Develops around 4-5 years of age and

operates at all 3 levels of consciousness
 Focused on how we OUGHT to behave
 contains the internalized values of family and
society
 it is highly moralistic, like a strict parent
 Strives for perfection
 GUILT originates in the superego

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 Ego Defense Mechanisms

 When the ego fails to satisfy both the id and the

superego, anxiety occurs. In order to avoid the
discomfort of anxiety, the ego distorts reality by the
use of defense mechanisms.

 Unhealthy personalities develop not only when we

become too dependent upon defense mechanisms,
but also when the id or superego is unusually strong
or the ego unusually weak
Ego Defense Mechanisms

 Repression
 preventing painful, dangerous, anxiety producing
thoughts from entering consciousness
 Freud believed that repression underlies all the
other defense mechanisms
 Incomplete and things slip through
 It was 1988 and the then-vice
president, George H. W. Bush, was on a
routine visit to Idaho. He was supposed
to give a dry speech on agricultural
policy and praise his successes
alongside President Reagan, live on
television. Then he said: “We’ve had
triumphs. Made some mistakes. We’ve
had some sex... uh... setbacks.”
 Psychosexual Stages of
Development
 In Freudian theory, there are five developmental
periods during which particular kinds of pleasures
must be gratified if personality development is to
proceed normally

 At each stage libido energy is focused on a different

part of the body (erogenous zone)

 Fixation: if too much or too little gratification of the

libidinal drive is provided at any stage, the
personality becomes “fixated” at that stage and
development gets “stuck” at that stage
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
order is important, not exact
times
 oral stage (birth - 18 months)
 anal stage (18 months - 3.5 years)
 phallic stage (3.5 - 6 years)
 latency stage (6 years - puberty)
 genital stage (puberty on)

Personalities are influenced by:

 How conflicts have been resolved
 At which stage we are fixated

© Prentice Hall, 1999

Oral Stage

 0-18 months—infant receives satisfaction through

sucking, eating, biting, etc. Erogenous zone is the
mouth.
 Overindulgent—gullible, dependent, and passive
 Underindulgent—aggressive, sadistic person
 Oral fixated adults orient their life around their
mouth by overeating, alcoholism, smoking, talking
too much
Anal Stage

 18 months-3 years—the child receives satisfaction

by having and/or retaining bowel movements.
Erogenous zone is the anus.
 Fixation (if toilet training is too strict) results in
retentive or explosive personality
 Anal-retentive—highly controlled, compulsively
neat
 Anal-explosive—messy, disorderly, rebellious, and
destructive
Phallic Stage

 3-6 years—center of pleasure is the genitals, typically

a time of exploration of pleasure through
masturbation and “playing doctor”
 Child resolves the Oedipus Complex
 male child lusts after the mother, sees father as a competitor,
fears retaliation
 or the Electra complex
 female child is attracted to father and resents mother
 Castration anxiety in males and penis envy in girls
 Latency Stage
 Age 6 to puberty—children repress sexual thoughts and
engage in nonsexual activities such as developing
social and intellectual skills
 Child has resolved the Oedipus or Electra complex and
continues to identify with the same-sex parent. This
identification process facilitates the incorporation of
parent values into the child’s superego.
 This allows them to develop successful interactions with
same-sex peers and refine appropriate gender roles
Genital Stage

 Adolescence onwards—genitals are again the

erogenous zones.
 Individual seeks to fulfill his or her sexual desires
through mature romantic and sexual interest in
members of the opposite sex.
 Unsuccessful outcomes lead to sexual relationships
based on lustful desires rather than respect and
commitment.
 Freud’s Case Study of
Little Hans
 Five year old Hans was afraid to
leave his house because of a fear
that a horse would bite him. Freud
discovered that Hans was actually
afraid of his erotic feelings toward
his mother and his aggressive
wishes towards his father.
 Freud diagnosed Hans’s
unconscious anxiety as having
been misdirected from his parents
and onto horses. Freud supported
his hypothesis with the following
five points:
 Little Hans
1. Hans has said he wanted to sleep with his mother,
“coax with” or caress her, to be married to her
and have children “Just like daddy.”
2. Hans experienced castration anxiety. His parents
warned that if he continued to play with his
“widdler,” it would be cut off. He noticed that his
sister had no “widdler.”
3. Hans wanted his mother all to himself, was
jealous of his father and feared his mother would
prefer his father’s bigger widdler which was “like
a horse”.
 Little Hans
4. Hans was most afraid of horses with black
muzzles similar to his father’s black moustache.
After Hans had “accidently” knocked down a
statue of a horse and then seen a real horse fall
down, he recognized his own aggressive
impulse that his father should fall down and die.

This obviously frightened him. Horses became a

symbolic substitute for his father whom he both
feared and hated.
 Little Hans

5. Through psychoanalysis, the unconscious was made

conscious. Hans’s fears were brought into the open
and he achieved insight.

Freud observed “Hans was really a little Oedipus who

wanted to have his father out of the way - to get rid of
him - so that he might be alone with his handsome
mother and sleep with her.”
 Criticism of Freud’s
Psychoanalytic theory
 Many individuals had concerns about Freud’s
focus on sexuality as the key factor in personality
development
 As a result of this criticism, the “Neo-Freudians”
began to develop their own theories concerning
personality development.
 Accepted the id, ego and superego, the importance
of the unconscious and that childhood is key for
forming personality but they were less rigid than
Freud
Neo-Freudian:
Carl Jung
 Disagreed with Freud
 the sexual instinct is not the main factor in
personality
 the personality is not almost completely formed
in early childhood
 Jung thought the unconscious was a source of
energy and strength, not just needs and desires
 Jung had a more positive view of human
nature: people are rational and spiritual
 Carl Jung
 Personality consists of three parts
 Ego
 therational, largely conscious system of personality, which
operates according to the reality principle
 Personal unconscious
 allof the thoughts and experiences that are accessible to
the conscious, as well as repressed memories and impulses
 Collective unconscious
 contains the universal experiences of humankind
transmitted to each individual
 contains Archetypes: a generic, idealized model of a
person e.g. heroes, Madonna mother
Jung classified people based
on the flow of their “psychic
energy”
 Extraverts: energy is directed toward the
external world, are social and like working with
others (e.g. politicians)
whereas
 Introverts: “psychic energy” is focused more
inward on themselves and their own thoughts
and feelings (e.g. poets)

© Prentice Hall, 1999

 Jung also classified people based
on how they understand and
relate to the world
 rational: regulate their actions primarily by “thinking” or
“feeling”
or
 irrational: regulate their actions through the senses
“sensing” or through unconscious processes “intuiting”

Note: irrational here does not have any negative

connotations (it does not mean “crazy”). It’s just how
that person attempts to understand the world
© Prentice Hall, 1999
 Neo-Freudian: Alfred Adler -
Superiority
 Adler felt the primary struggle in personality
development was the overcoming of feelings of
inferiority. He contributed the notion of the “inferiority
complex” to the understanding of personality.
 Personality development strives toward acceptance of self
and recognition of one’s self worth

 Birth order was also an area that Adler studied. He felt it

was an important part of personality development.
Though little empirical research supports his hypothesis,
anecdotal evidence persists and it continues to be
studied today.
Alfred Adler
 Emphasized the unity of the personality rather than
the separate warring components of id, ego, and
superego
 Maintained that the drive to overcome feelings of
inferiority acquired in childhood motivates most of
our behavior (infancy)
 FYI – he struggled to overcome his own childhood
illnesses and accidents
 Claimed that people develop a “style of life” at an
early age – a unique way in which the child and
later the adult will go about the struggle to achieve
superiority
 Karen Horney - Security
 Believed that personality could continue to
develop and change throughout life
 Believed that many of women’s psychological
difficulties arise from failure to live up to an
idealized version of themselves
 To be psychologically healthy, women, she
claimed, (and men for that matter) must learn to
overcome irrational beliefs about the need for
perfection
 Penis Envy was really Power Envy which was a
result of social status rather than biology
Horney’s 3 Neurotic Trends:

 1. moving towards people (submission),

being a “people pleaser,” logic is, if I’m
nice to you, then you won’t hurt me.

 2. moving against people (aggression), if I

hurt you first, then you can’t hurt me.

 3. moving away from people

(detachment), by avoiding people the
person reduces the chance of being hurt
Differences Between
Freud
and Jung
 Freud
 Stressed the primacy of sexual instincts
 Development is shaped in childhood

Jung
 Stressed people’s rational & spiritual
qualities
 Development only comes to fruition
during middle adulthood
Differences Between
Freud
and Adler
 Freud
 We are controlled by our environment
 View of individual: selfish; eternally in
conflict with society

 Adler
 We can control our own fate
 View of individual: striving for perfection;
develops socially constructive goals
Differences Between
Freud
and Horney
 Freud
 Personality
is shaped by sexual (biological)
development

 Horney
 Personality is shaped by environmental &
social factors
 Nonsexual factors play a larger role in
personality development
How does a
psychoanalyst access the
unconscious?
 Freud liked hypnosis & free association
 Jung analyzed dreams
 A more modern method would be to utilize Projective
Tests
 An ambiguous stimulus is presented and the patient is asked
to describe it or present the story behind it
 Examples of these tests include:
 the Rorschach inkblot test
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Rorschach
Ink blot test
Rorschach Inkblot
Test
 Contains 10 or so symmetric inkblots in
which the examiner then goes
through the cards and asks the test
taker to clarify their responses by
identifying the various parts of the
inkblot that led to the response
 Assumes the test taker’s responses are
projections of their personal conflicts
and personality dynamics
 Widely used but not demonstrated to
be reliable and valid
Thematic
Apperception
Test
TAT

 Consists of several cards with pictures of

ambiguous settings and one blank card
 Test taker has to make up a story for
each card they see (what happened
before, is happening now, what the
people are feeling and thinking, and
how things will turn out)
 Looks for recurring themes in the
responses
 Scoring has yet to be demonstrated to
be either reliable or valid
 Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Theories
 Give credit where credit is due:
 First personality theories charted new ground and were bold in
their ideas
 Unconscious forces do influence behavior (schemas, priming,
parallel processing, implicit memory and stereotypes are all
modern ideas of the unconscious).
 Internal conflict has been shown to produce psychological
distress.
 Early childhood experiences can
have an impact on adult personality
 People do use the processes described in defense mechanisms
to reduce distress.
 But don’t be too
hasty…
 Psychodynamic theories aren’t good science (no
testable hypothesis) and they only offer after the fact
explanations for behavior.
 There is little empirical evidence. Psychodynamic
theories are based on subjective case studies.
 There tends to be a
sexist bias and a male-
centered point of view.
 Lack of cross-cultural
support
 Where do we go
from here?
 Freud’s view of the unconscious: a vast storage
space of repressed and unacceptable thoughts,
wishes, feelings and memories

 Current view: information processing that occurs

without our awareness
 The Modern Unconscious
Involves…
 Schemas that control our perceptions
 Priming that points us toward certain interpretations
 Parallel processing (i.e. vision and thought) that
occurs without us knowing
 Implicit memories of learned skills
 Instantly activated emotions
 Self concepts and stereotypes that filter information
about ourselves and others