Psy 12

an individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

• 1 ~ Freud's psychoanalytic theory
• 2 ~ the humanistic approach

• Sigmund Freud's theory and techniques
• proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality

focused on our inner capacities for growth and self-fulfillment

• in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
• *Freud assumed a line of mental dominoes had fallen from his pt's distant past to their troubled present. Believed free association would allow him to retrace that line, to retrieve and release

• according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories.
• According to contemporary psychologists, info processing of which we are unaware

• Freud's theory of personality and his techniques
• attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
• *basic to his theory was the belief that the mind is mostly hidden
• The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
• *compared our awareness to the part of an iceberg that floats above the surface

• Part of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis
• thought some thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories which are below our conscious are temporarily stored here, from which we can retrieve them into conscious awareness

• forcibly blocking unacceptable passions and thoughts from consciousness because they would be too unsettling to acknowledge
• Freud believed these feelings and ideas sometimes gain expression in disguised forms (ex: the work we choose, the beliefs we hold, daily habits)
• *Freud was greatly interested in the mass of unacceptable passions & thoughts he felt we repress cause they would be too unsettling to acknowledge.

• viewed jokes as expressions of repressed sexual and aggressive tendencies
• viewed dreams as the "royal road to the unconscious"
• In dream analyses, he'd search for pt's inner conflicts

• the remembered content of dreams
• Freud believed to be a censored expression of unconscious wishes (the dream's latent content)

the dreamer's unconscious wishes

including it's emotions and strivings, arises from a conflict btwn impulse and restraint - btwn our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges

our efforts to resolve basic conflict (associated w personality, btwn impulse and restraint) - by expressing these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction w/o also bringing guilt or punishment

• saw personality as composed of the id, the ego, and the superego
• To understand the minds dynamics during this conflict, Freud proposed 3 interacting systems: id, ego, superego

• One of 3 interacting systems proposed by Freud
• unconscious psychic energy constantly striving to satisfy basic drives to survive, reproduce and aggress.
• operates on the pleasure principle 
• Ex: An id-dominated person could be a newborn crying out for satisfaction, caring nothing of the outside world's conditions and demands. OR a person who often uses tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs and would sooner party now than sacrifice todays pleasure for future success.

demanding immediate gratification

• The "executive" system
• the largely conscious part of personality that mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality.
• operates on the reality principle 
• contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments and memories.

seeks to gratify the id's impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain

• the newly emerging moral compass (conscience) that forces the ego to consider the ideal - how we ought to behave
• strives for perfection, judging actions and producing positive feelings of pride or negative feelings of guilt. 
• Freud theorized around age 4 or 5 a child's ego recognizes the demands of the superego
• Ex: someone w exceptionally strong superego may be virtuous yet guilt-ridden; another w a weak superego may be wantonly self-indulgent and remorseless.

• Freud was convinced that personality forms during life's first few years.
• These are the childhood stages of development during which the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.

• pleasure-sensitive areas 
• Freud felt the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on this area when children pass through the psychosexual stages

• oral
• anal
• phallic
• latency
• genital

• 0-18 months
• Pleasure centers on the mouth - sucking, biting, chewing

• 18-36 months
• Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

• 3-6 years
• Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings

• 6 - puberty
• Dormant sexual feelings

• puberty on...
• Maturation of sexual interests

• According to Freud, during the phallic stage, boys seek genital stimulation. 
• They develop both unconscious sexual desires for their mom and jealousy and hatred for their dad, who they consider a rival.
• They then experience guilt and a lurking fear of punishment (perhaps castration) from their father

• a girls experience parallel to the Oedipus complex
• believed by some psychoanalysts in Freud's era

• the process by which, according to Freud, children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos.
• Freud believe this provides gender identity
• *In regards to the Oedipus and Electra complexes, Freud felt kids cope w the threatening feelings by repressing them and identifying with the rival parent.
• Nevertheless, Freud presumed our early childhood relations - w parents, caregivers, and everything else - influence our developing identity, personality, and frailties

the sense of being male or female

according to Freud, a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were unresolved.

• In psychoanalytic theory, the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
• *Freud said anxiety is price we pay for civilization. As members, we must control our impulses and not act them out. When anxiety happens then the ego fears losing control of the inner war btwn id and superego

• the basic defense mechanism which banishes anxiety-arousing wishes from consciousness, but enables other defense mechanisms
• Freud believed each of the other defense mechanisms disguise threatening impulses and keeps them from reaching consciousness

• Regression
• Reaction formation
• Projection
• Rationalization
• Displacement
• Denial
• *Enabled by repression
• "Remind Rachelle Politely Riding Diminishes Depression"

• one of 6 defense mechanisms enabled by repression
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: Retreating to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
• Ex: A little boy reverts to the oral comfort of thumb sucking in the car on the way to his first day of school

• one of 6 defense mechanisms
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: Switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites
• Ex: Repressing angry feeling, a person displays exaggerated friendliness

• one of 6 defense mechanisms
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: Disguising one's own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
• Ex: "A thief thinks everyone else is a thief."

• one of 6 defense mechanisms
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: offering self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening unconscious reasons for one's actions
• Ex: "A habitual drinker says she drinks with her friends 'just to be sociable.'"

• One of 6 defense mechanisms
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: Shifting sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object of person
• Ex: A little girl kicks the family dog after her mother sends her to her room

• one of 6 defense mechanisms
• Unconscious process to avoid anxiety: refusing to believe or even perceive painful realities
• Ex: A partner denies evidence of his loved one's affair

• those pioneering psychoanalysts who accepted Freud's basic ideas of:
• the personality structures of id, ego and superego
• the importance of the unconscious
• the shaping of personality in childhood
• the dynamics of anxiety and the defense mechanisms

• 1. They placed more emphasis on the conscious mind's role in interpreting experience and in coping w the environment
• 2. They doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming motivations
• Instead, they tended to emphasize loftier motives and social interactions

• Both Neo-Freudians; agreed childhood was important
• But they believed that childhood social, not sexual, tensions are crucial for personal formation

• that much of our behavior is driven by efforts to conquer childhood feelings of inferiority, feelings that trigger our strivings for superiority and power
• *proposed the still-popular idea of inferiority complex

• said childhood anxiety, caused by the dependent child's sense of helplessness, triggers our desire for love and security
• also attempted to balance the masculine bias she detected in Freud's view of psychology, such as the assumptions that women have weak superegos and suffer "penis envy"

• unlike other neo-freudians, he placed less emphasis on social factors & agreed the unconscious exerts a powerful influence
• Believed the unconscious contains more than repressed thoughts and feelings
• believed we have a collective unconscious

• Carl Jung's concept of a common reservoir of images derived from our specie's universal experiences
• explains why people in different cultures share certain spiritual concerns, myths, and images

• a personality test in which test takers are asked to describe an ambiguous stimulus or tell a story about it. 
• the stimulus has no inherent significance, so any meaning people read into it is presumably a projection of their interests and conflicts

• a type of projective test in which people describe what they see in a series of inkblots
• seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
• Has questionable reliability and validity
• designed by Hermann Rorschach

• Validity is the extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is supposed to
• Reliability is the extent to which a test yields consistent results

• Dev. psychologists now see our development as lifelong, not fixed in childhood.
• They doubt infants neural networks are mature enough to sustain as much emotional trauma as Freud though
• Also doubt that conscience and gener id form as the child resolves the Oedipus complex at age 5 - 6
• We gain our gender if earlier even w or w/o a same sex parent present

• Freud was right about 1 thing: We have limited access to all that goes on in our minds
• Research confirms the reality of unconscious implicit learning 
• But the "iceberg" notion held today differs from Freud's in that many now think of the unconscious not as seething passions and repressive censoring but as cooler info processing that occurs w/o our awareness
• Researchers also find little support for Freud's idea that defense mechanisms disguise sexual and aggressive impulses. More evidence exists for defenses that defend self-esteem & self-image.

• Today's researchers acknowledge that sometimes we spare our egos by neglecting threatening info
• But many content that repression, if it even occurs, is a rare mental response to terrible trauma
• Some researchers believe that extreme, prolonged stress might disrupt memory by damaging the hippocampus
• However, far more common reality is that high stress and associated stress hormones actually enhance memory

• a phenomenon that Freud called projection 
• the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors

• his theory rests on few objective observations and parts of it offer few testable hypotheses
• It offers after-the-fact explanations of any characteristic yet fails to predict such behaviors and traits

• Freud never claimed that psychoanalysis was predictive science, merely that psychoanalysts could find meaning in our state of mind. 
• They also content that some of his ideas are enduring

• focused on the ways "healthy" people strive for self-determination and self realization (in contrast to Freud's study of the base motives of "sick" people)
• They studied people through their own self-reported experiences and feelings
• Two pioneering theorists: Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers ~ emphasized human potential

• a pioneering humanistic psychologist that emphasized human potential
• proposed we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs
• Proposed order is we become concerned w personal safety; then seek we love; then we seek self-esteem; then we seek self-actualization and self-transcendence

• according to Maslow, one of the ultimate psychological needs that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved
• the motivation to fulfill one's potential
• people are open, spontaneous, loving, self-accepting and productive

meaning, purpose, and communion beyond the self

• studied those who seemed notable for their rich and productive lives - including Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Eleanor Roosevelt
• Reported these people shared certain characteristics: open, spontaneous, loving, self-accepting and productive
• *Maslow called these mature adult qualities

• pioneering humanistic psychologist that agreed w much of Maslow's thinking
• believed that people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies
• Unless thwarted by an environment
• that inhibits growth, we r primed for growth and fulfillment
• *a growth-promoting climate required three conditions: Genuineness, Acceptance, Empathy

When people are genuine, they are open with their own feelings, drop their facades, and are transparent and self-disclosing.

• When people are accepting, they offer unconditional positive regard
• It is a profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that
• we are still accepted.

an attitude of grace that values us even knowing our failings

When people are empathic, they share and mirror others’ feelings and reflect their meanings.

• all the thoughts and feelings we have in response to the question, “Who am I?” 
• for Maslow and Rogers, a central feature of personality
• If our self-concept is positive, we tend to act and perceive the world positively
• If it is negative—if in our own eyes we fall far short of our ideal self—we feel dissatisfied and unhappy

• some humanistic psychologists assessed personality through questionnaires on which people reported their self-concept
• Others believed the only acceptable approach is understanding others' subjective personal experiences in face-to-face situations

• helped to renew psychology's interest in the concept of self
• It's critics complain it's concepts are vague and subjective, values self-centered, and it's assumptions naively optimistic

• said to be encouraged by humanistic psychology
• trusting and acting on one's feelings, being true to oneself, fulfilling oneself

• Rather than explain the hidden aspects of personality, trait theorists attempt to describe our stable and enduring characteristics.
• Through factor analysis, researchers have isolated important dimensions of personality
• Genetics also influence many traits

• 22 yr old psychology student who interviewed Freud and discovered just how preoccupied Freud was with finding hidden motives
• He came to define personality in terms of fundamental traits
• He was concerned less with explaining individual traits than with describing them

• people's characteristic behavior patterns and conscious motives
• a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report and peer reports.

the statistical procedure to identify clusters of test items that tap basic components of intelligence

• a questionnaire (often true-false or agree-disagree) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
• used to assess several personality traits

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
• the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests
• originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered it's most appropriate use) this test is now used for many other screening purposes
• Items on test are empirically derived and tests are objectively scored

a test (such as the MMPI) developed by testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminate btwn groups

make predictions from handwriting samples

• a technique used by palm readers
• builds on the observation that each of us is in some ways like no one else and in other ways just like everyone

the acceptance of stock, positive descriptions (in regards to palm reading)

• The Big Five personality dimensions; offer a reasonable comprehensive picture of personality
• have been tested world-wide

• Conscientiousness
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism
• Openness
• Extraversion
• "CANOE"
• Think "You can buy a CANOE at BIG FIVE SPORTS"

• Trait of Big Five
• Organized/disorganized; careful/careless; Disciplined/impulsive

• Trait of Big Five
• Soft-heartedness/Ruthless; Trusting/Suspicious; Helpful/Uncooperative

• Trait of Big Five - (emotional stability vs. instability)
• Calm/Anxious; Secure/Insecure; Self-satisfied/Self-pitying

• Trait of Big Five
• Imaginative/Practical; Preference for variety/preference for routine; independent/conforming

• Trait of Big Five
• Sociable/Retiring; Fun-loving/Sober; Affectionate/Reserved

• People's traits persist over time, but their behaviors vary widely from situation to situation.
• A person's average behavior across different situations tends to be fairly consistent

• proposed by Albert Bandura
• social-cognitive theorists view behavior as influenced by the interaction btwn people's traits (including their thinking) and their social context

• How Bandura viewed the person-environment interaction
• that personal-cognitive factors interact w the environment to influence people's behavior

the extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless

• By studying how people vary in their perceived locus of control (external or internal), researchers have found that a sense of personal control helps people to cope w life
• Research on learned helplessness evolved into research on the effects of optimism and pessimism, which led to a broader positive psychology movement

the perception that chance or outside forces beyond your personal control determine your fate

• the perception that you control your own fate
• these people achieve more in school and work, independant, enjoy better health, feel less depressed than "externals"; they score higher on measures of self-control

• the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated bad events
• Ex: the experiment that shocked dogs; when they could avoid the shocks by jumping a hurdle, many didn't cause they were hopeless

• the ability to control impulses and delay gratification
• in turn predicts good adjustment, better grades, and social success
• but requires attention and energy; is replenished w rest and becomes stronger with exercise

• the scientific study of optimal human functioning; aims to discover and promote strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive
• an umbrella term for the study of positive emotions & character traits, and enabling institutions
• Martin Seligman

where you stand on optimism vs. pessimism

Social-cognitive researchers tend to believe that the best way to predict someone's behavior in a given situation is to observe that person's behavior in similar situations

• It's builds on psychology's well-established concepts of learning and cognition and reminds us of the power of social situations
• has been faulted for under emphasizing the importance of inner traits

• Research confirms the benefits of high self-esteem, but also warns of the dangers of narcissism
• The self-serving bias leads us to perceive ourselves favorably, often causing us to overestimate our abilities and underestimate our faults

in contemporary psychology, assumed to be the center of personality, the organizer of our thoughts, feelings and actions

• put forth by Hazel Markus & colleagues
• include your visions of the self you dream of becoming (the rich self, successful self, etc.)and the self you fear becoming (the unemployed self, the lonely self, etc.)
• such selves motivate us by laying out specific goals and calling forth the energy to work toward them

overestimating others' noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders (as if we presume a spotlight shines on us)

one's feelings of high or low self-worth

a readiness to perceive oneself favorably

• 4 reasons:
• 1. protect from repeating mistakes (How could I be so stupid?)
• 2. Sometimes putdowns are subtly strategic: They elicit reassuring strokes
• 3. prepare us for possible failure
• 4. frequently pertains to one's old self

• is fragile; focuses on sustaining itself, which makes failures and criticism feel threatening. 
• exposes one to perceived threats, which feed anger and disorder

• less fragile cause it's less contingent on external evaluations
• to feel accepted ofr who we are, not for our looks, wealth, etc, relieves pressures to succeed and enables us to focus beyond ourselves