Personality
An Introduction
Sheldon
1
Personality
Personality
- A unique pattern of
consistent
feelings, thoughts,and behaviors
 that originate within the individual.
2
Freudian Classical Psychoanalytic
Theory of Personality

Developed by Sigmund Freud in the late
nineteenth century and continued until
his death in 1939

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Believed sex was a primary cause of
emotional problems and was a critical
component of his personality theory
Remains an important influence in
Western culture

especially pop culture
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Freud’s Three Levels of Awareness
1.
2.
3.
4.
The conscious mind is what you are presently aware
of, what you are thinking about right now
The preconscious mind is stored in your memory that
you are not presently aware of but can gain access to
The unconscious mind is the part of our mind of which
we cannot become aware
Freudian slips
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Freud’s
Three-Part Personality Structure
Id
Ego
Superego
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The Id (The Devil)

Is the original personality, the only part present at birth.

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Resides in the unconscious mind
Includes our biological instinctual drives:
 Life instincts (EROS) for survival,
reproduction, and pleasure
Death instincts, (THANATOS)
destructive and aggressive drives
detrimental to survival: VIOLENCE
both to oneself and others
Operates on a pleasure principle demands immediate gratification for these
drives without the concern for the
consequences of this gratification
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
The Superego (The Angel)

Represents one’s conscience and idealized
standards of behavior in their culture

Operates on a morality principle, threatening to
overwhelm us with guilt and shame if we misbehave
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The Ego (The
Decider/Mediator)

Starts developing during the first year or so
of life to find realistic and sociallyacceptable outlets for the id’s needs


Operates on the reality principle, finding
gratification for instinctual drives within the
constraints of reality (the norms and laws of
society)
Makes decisions based on the desires of the id
and the morality of the superego.
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

To prevent being overcome with anxiety because of trying
to satisfy the id and superego demands, the ego uses what
Freud called…
Defense mechanisms - processes that distort reality and
protect us from anxiety
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Defense Mechanisms
Repression
Regression
Displacement
Unknowingly placing an
unpleasant memory or
thought in the unconscious
so that we are not anxious
about them; the primary
defense mechanism
Reverting back to
immature behavior from an
earlier stage of
development
Redirecting unacceptable
feelings from the original
source to a safer substitute
target
Not remembering a
traumatic incident in
which you witnessed a
crime
Throwing temper tantrums
as an adult when you
don’t get your way
Taking your anger toward
your boss out on your
spouse or children by
yelling at them and not
your boss
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Defense Mechanisms
Sublimation
Replacing socially
unacceptable impulses
with socially acceptable
behavior
Channeling aggressive
drives into playing football
or inappropriate sexual
desires into art
Reaction
Formation
Acting in exactly the
opposite way to one’s
unacceptable impulses
Being overprotective of
and lavishing attention on
an unwanted child
Projection
Attributing one’s own
unacceptable feelings and
thoughts to others and not
yourself
Accusing your boyfriend
of cheating on you
because you have felt like
cheating on him
Rationalization Creating false excuses for
one’s unacceptable
feelings, thoughts, or
behavior
Justifying cheating on an
exam by saying that
everyone else cheats
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Freud’s
Psychosexual Stage Theory


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Was developed chiefly from his own childhood
memories and from his interactions with his
patients.
An erogenous zone is the area of the body
where the id’s pleasure-seeking psychic energy
is focused during a particular stage of
psychosexual development
Fixation occurs when a portion of the id’s
pleasure-seeking energy remains in a stage
because of excessive gratification or frustration
of our instinctual needs.
Educational Video
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Five Psychosexual Stages
Oral Stage (birth – 18 months)
Anal Stage (18 months – 3 years)
Phallic Stage (3 – 6 years)
Latency Stage (6 years – puberty)
Genital Stage (puberty – adulthood)
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Freud’s Psychosocial States
of Personality Development
Stage (age range)
Erogenous Zone Activity Focus
Oral (birth - 1½ years) Mouth, lips, and
tongue
Sucking, biting, and
chewing
Anal (1½ - 3 years)
Anus
Bowel retention and
elimination
Phallic (3 - 6 years)
Genitals
Identifying with same-sex
parent to learn gender role
and sense of morality
Latency (6 years puberty)
None
Cognitive and social
development
Genital (puberty adulthood)
Genitals
Mature sexual orientation
and experience of intimate
relationships
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Potty Training

Parents try to get the child to have self-control
during toilet training


If the child reacts to harsh toilet training by trying to get
even with the parents by withholding bowel movements, an
anal-retentive personality with the traits
of orderliness, neatness, stinginess,
and obstinacy develops
The anal-expulsive personality
develops when the child rebels
against the harsh training and
has bowel movements
whenever and wherever
he desires
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Identification

In the process of
identification, the child
adopts the
characteristics of the
same-sexed parents
and learns their gender
role (the set of
behaviors expected of
someone of a
particular sex)
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Phallic Stage Conflicts

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
In the Oedipus conflict, the little boy
becomes sexually attracted to his
mother and fears the father (his rival)
will find out and castrate him
Family Guy
In the Electra conflict, the little girl is
attracted to her father because he
has a penis; she wants one and feels
inferior without one (penis envy)
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Evaluation of Freud’s
Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

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So, was Freud right about the Id, Ego,
Superego, and defense mechanisms?
First, you’ll need to remember that Freud was
practicing in the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s.
Recent research contradicts many of Freud
theories.
Freud believed that sexual repression caused
vast psychological disorder.
Well….that has been proven to be false on many
counts.
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SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING
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Neo-Freudian
Theories of Personality

Agree with many of Freud’s basic ideas,
but differ in one or more important ways
Carl Jung’s
Collective
Unconscious
Alfred Adler’s
Striving for
Superiority
Karen Horney
and the
Need for
Security
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Neo-Freudian thoughts

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Many of Freud’s followers joined the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society.
This society, led by Freud, focused on Freud’s
view of personality.
Freud disagreed strongly with anyone who
challenged his views.
Several members of the group, left to form their
own views of personality (schools, associations).
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Neo-freudian criticisms of Freud’s
theory:


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1.Rejected idea that adult personality is
completely formed by 5- or 6-years old.
2.Argued that Freud’s focused too much on
biological instincts/nature and ignored social
factors/nurture.
3.Rejected overall negative tone of Freud’s
theories.
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Carl Jung (1875-1961)
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Born in Switzerland, the son of a
Protestant Minister, Jung was a
quiet, introspective child who
kept to himself.
Pondered the nature of dreams
& visions he experienced.
Jung earned his M.D. degree in
1900 & went on to study
schizophrenia, consciousness, &
hypnosis.
He became interested in Freud
after reading The Interpretation
of Dreams.
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More about Jung

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Jung & Freud met in 1907 & became
close colleagues.
Jung formally left Freud’s group in
1913.
Jung spent the next 7 years in intense
introspection—led to his theory of
personality.
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Carl JUNG: The Collective
Unconscious
There are common themes & experiences
that all people in all cultures experience.
 These give every individual a shared,
inherited reservoir of memory traces from
our species’ history.
 Every human is born with these
 Example: Spirituality and God beliefs are
found in every culture and person.

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The collective unconscious is
made up of archetypes.
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These are emotionally
charged images and
thought forms that have
universal meaning.
These are not individual
memories but are
passed along in our
DNA.
Example: The mother
archetype
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The collective unconscious is
made up of archetypes .

These are the universal
symbolic images of a
particular person,
object, or experience.

Example: the archetype of
mother is in the child’s
collective unconscious.
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Mythology: Common themes
across cultures (ancient, recent)
If you look throughout all human
history you can identify these
following themes:
 Hero & heroine
(Luke or Leia)
 Villain
(Darth Vader)
 Naïve youth & wise old-sage
(Luke and Obi-Wan)

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Shadow – Our dark side
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This is the
unconscious part of
ourselves that is
negative.
Jung argued you
couldn’t have good
without evil.
This concept is found
throughout every
culture.
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Other common archetypes
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Mother/Father
God/Devil
Hero/Heroine (Knight,
Warrior)
Damsel (Princess)
Alchemist (Wizard,
Magician, Scientist,
Inventor)
Fairy Godmother
/Godfather
Teacher (Instructor,
Mentor)
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Jung’s ideas of archetypes have been more
studied and adopted by the disciplines of
art, philosophy, anthropology, religious
studies and popular culture
than by psychologists.
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Jung was the first to describe the
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Introvert and extravert personality types.
Introverts tend to be preoccupies with the
internal world of their own thoughts, feelings
and experiences.
Extraverts tend to be interested in the
external world of people and things.

Talkative, friendly outgoing
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Carl Jung’s
Other Terms:

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Jung proposed two main personality
attitudes, extraversion and introversion
Extraversion – Outgoing
and excitable.
Introversion – Quiet and
slower to warm up.
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Alfred Adler’s
Striving for Superiority

An Austrian physician, Adler
was one of the first to break
from Freud’s group (1911).

Rejected Freud’s notion of
“penis envy,” argued that
women really envy men’s
power & status.

Adler emphasized
importance of conscious
goal-directed behavior &
down played unconscious
influences.
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Adler’s main ideas:

All humans begin life
with a sense of
inferiority.

We are helpless as
children & need adults
to survive.

Adler argued we
struggle the rest of our
lives to overcome this
feeling of inferiority.
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We struggle to overcome
inferiority.

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Adler called this natural
instinct striving for
superiority.
“Striving for
superiority” doesn’t
mean being superior
over others, rather to
improve ourselves.
Our primary motivation
is to improve ourselves.
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What happens if we fail?

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If we fail to overcome
feelings of vulnerability
& weakness, we
develop an inferiority
complex.
Here, an individual
believes they are
inferior & feel
powerless, weak, &
helpless.
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Alternative Approaches

Humanistic theories developed in the
1960s
 The humanistic approach
emphasizes conscious free will in
one’s actions,
 the uniqueness of the individual
person,
 and personal growth
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The Humanistic
Approach to Personality

Abraham Maslow is considered
the father of the humanistic
movement

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He studied the lives of very healthy
and creative people to develop his
theory of personality
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is
an arrangement of the innate
needs that motivate our behavior
and should lead to Self
Actualization: the
development or achievement
of one’s potential.
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
SelfActualization
SelfEsteem
Social
Safety
Physiological
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
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Self-Actualization

Characteristics of self-actualized people include
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Accepting themselves, others, and the nature of world for
what they are
Having a need for privacy
and only a few close,
emotional relationships
Being autonomous and
independent, democratic,
and very creative
Having peak experiences,
which are experiences of deep
insight in which you experience
whatever you are doing as fully as possible
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How Did Maslow Determine
WHO was self-actualized?

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Maslow interviewed people he both knew and admired.
He would :
 1. Interview a sample of people he thought were selfactualized.
 He would write down a list of traits he felt each person
possessed and compiled their common traits
 By refining his trait list again and again, he eventually
came up with what he felt was a stable list of attributes
which would define the self-actualized individual.
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Traits of Self-Actualized
People:
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Truth, rather than
dishonesty.
Goodness, rather than evil.
Beauty, not ugliness or
vulgarity.
Unity, wholeness, and
transcendence of
opposites, not arbitrariness
or forced choices
Aliveness, not deadness or
the mechanization of life
Uniqueness, not bland
uniformity.
Perfection and necessity,
not sloppiness,
inconsistency, or accident.
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Completion, rather than
incompleteness.
Justice and order, not
injustice and lawlessness.
Simplicity, not
unnecessary complexity.
Richness, not
environmental
impoverishment.
Effortlessness, not strain.
Playfulness, not grim,
humorless, drudgery.
Self-sufficiency, not
dependency.
Meaningfulness, rather
than senselessness.
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Critique

Maslow hierarchy
of needs is criticized
for being based on nonempirical vague studies of a
small number of people that
he subjectively selected as
self-actualized
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Trait Theories of Personality
and Personality Assessment
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Trait Theories of Personality

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Personality traits are internally based, relatively stable
characteristics that define an individual’s personality

Each trait is called a dimension,

and there is a continuum
ranging from one extreme of the
dimension to the other
Factor analysis identifies clusters of
test items that measure the same factor/trait
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Number and Kind
of Personality Traits
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Raymond B. Cattell, using factor analysis,
found that 16 traits were necessary to
describe human personality
Hans Eysenck, also using factor analysis,
argued for three trait dimensions
Eysenck’s theory is at more general than
Cattell’s
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Raymond B. Cattell 16
personality factors
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Eysenck’s Three-Factor Theory
ExtraversionIntroversion
Neuroticism/
(emotionally unstable)-
Emotional
stability
Psychoticism
(no self control)Impulse
control
Eysenck argued that these traits are determined by heredity
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Eysenck’s Three-Factor Theory
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People who are high on the
neuroticism-emotional stability
dimension tend to be overly anxious,
emotionally unstable, and easily upset
The psychoticism-impulse control
trait is concerned with aggressiveness,
impulsiveness, and empathy
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More Common Today: FiveFactor Model of Personality

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These five factors
appear to be universal
and are consistent
from about age 30 to
late adulthood
The first 5 factor model
was advanced by
Ernest Tupes and
Raymond Christal in
1961
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Five-Factor Model of Personality
Dimension
High End
Low End
Openness
Imaginative, independent,
having broad interests,
receptive to new ideas
Conforming, practical,
narrow interests, closed to
new ideas
Conscientiousness
Well-organized,
dependable, careful,
disciplined
Disorganized,
undependable, careless,
impulsive
Extraversion
Sociable, talkative,
friendly, adventurous
Reclusive, quiet, aloof,
cautious
Agreeableness
Sympathetic, polite, goodnatured, soft-hearted
Tough-minded, rude,
irritable, ruthless
Neuroticism
Emotional, insecure,
nervous, self-pitying
Calm, secure, relaxed, selfsatisfied
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Personality Assessment


The main uses of personality tests are to aid
in diagnosing people with problems,
counseling, and making personnel decisions
There are two types
Personality
Inventories
Projective
Tests
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Personality Inventories

Are designed to measure multiple traits of
personality, and in some cases, disorders


Are a series of questions or statements for which the
test taker must indicate whether they
apply to him or not
Uses a “True/False/Cannot Say” format with simple
statements (e.g., “I like to cook”)
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Projective Tests


Contain a series of ambiguous stimuli, such
as inkblots, to which the test taker must
respond about his perceptions
of the stimuli
Sample tests

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Rorschach Inkblots Test
Thematic Apperception Test
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Rorschach Inkblots Test

Contains 10 symmetric inkblots used in
the test,

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
The test taker then describes what he or she
sees in the shapes
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
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Rorschach inkblots
What do you see?
More blots
What do you see?
More blots
Thematic Apperception Test
Thematic Apperception Test
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Mickey Mouse
Kanga
Pooh
Owl
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