Chapter 1 - Introduction
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The term personality is hard to define because there is little common agreement on how the term
should be used. In everyday speech it usually refers to someone’s public image. Different
personality theorists present their own definitions of the word based on their theoretical
positions.
A theory is a set of abstract concepts that we make about a group of facts or events in order to
explain them.
Two traditions inform contemporary theories of personality: 1) Psychological laboratories and
academic research 2) Psychoanalysis and clinical psychology. These two traditions have never
fully merged.
Personality theories may function as philosophy, science, and art.
o Scientists: develop hypotheses to understand human behavior
o Philosophers: explore what it means to be a person
o Artists: seek to apply what is known about human behavior to make a better life
Philosophical issues that theorists differ on are:
o Freedom vs. Determinism
o Heredity vs. Environment
o Uniqueness vs. Universality
o Proactivity vs. Reactivity
o Optimism vs. Pessimism
Philosophical Assumptions: things are not necessarily what they appear to be. They are based on
epiphanic vision, which goes beyond the ordinary perception of our sense organs. Philosophical
statements tend to be global and do not allow for exceptions, often implicit rather than explicit.
o They are evaluated by the following criteria: coherence, relevance, comprehensiveness,
all of which add up to compellingness.
Science has its basis in philosophy because the ordinary observation on which science relies
depends on a prior paradigm, a model of concept of the world that is shared by members of a
community and governs their activities.
o Scientific statements: statements about the world based on are empirical, or directly
based on observation arising from currently accepted paradigms. The data on which these
statements are based may be objective or subjective.
o The most important scientific statements are scientific constructs, which are imaginary or
hypothetical and cannot be seen with the naked eye. They are elusive by direct
observation but indirectly confirmed by their necessary existence (i.e. IQ).
Scientists use a variety of techniques to evaluate their work, all of which must be verifiable.
o Scientific statements must be open to falsification and should be judged for their
usefulness rather than truth.
o When scientists end up with more than one hypothesis, the criteria they use to decide
between rival hypotheses are:
 Compatibility: agreement of hypothesis to previously well-established info
 Predictive power: range of scope of statement
 Simplicity/Parsimony: accounts for the complexity of the material in the simples
way
Application of Personality Theories: assessment and research
o Assessment: psychometric and projective techniques
 Psychometric: Tests/questionnaires designed using theoretical/statistical
techniques (i.e. MMPI).
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Projective: Deliberately ambiguous stimuli presented to participant, who is asked
to express personal attitudes/feelings/needs (i.e. Rorschach Inkblot). They
disguise the purpose of the assessment.
o Research: clinical, psychometric, and experimental approach
 Clinical: Intensive interviews and observation of participant. May ask questions
or give tests. Case history used as a tool to study the participant in depth rather
than focus on large numbers of subjects.
 Psychometric: Uses math/statistical tools to measure personality. Correlation is
major statistical tool used by psychometricians.
 Experimental: considered the most precise method. Permits experimenter to post
a clear cause-and-effect relationship but is limited because not all aspects of
personality can be studied by manipulation
Three major goals of psychotherapy
o Scholarly: therapy is a means of understanding the self and human nature. Should be
evaluated on the basis of their contributions to the understanding of the self and human
nature
o Ethical: therapy is a means of helping the individual to change/improve/grow. Should be
evaluated in terms of the suitability of the climate they create for fostering change and
life improvement
o Curative: aims directly at eliminating troublesome symptoms and substituting more
suitable behavior. Should be evaluated on the basis of symptom remission and number of
cures
Chapter 2 – Psychotherapy
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The beginning of psychoanalysis is associated with Anna O. She suffered from a conversion
disorder, the symptoms for which began to go away only when she began to tell a doctor under
hypnosis about her father’s illness and death.
o Freud began to use this “talking method” with his own patients and concluded that
patients were unconscious or unaware of strong emotions associated with pain/trauma.
His concept of unconscious process included forces that repress undesirable thoughts that
actively resist becoming conscious.
An emotion that is prevented from expressing itself may be expressed through a neurotic
symptom. Wishes are repressed because they are at odds with the person’s self-concept.
Emotions that accompany events must ultimately be expressed; if they cannot find direct
expression, they will find them indirectly such as neurotic symptoms.
o Ideally, the expression of these emotions is nondestructive.
Free Association: Patient is asked to verbalize whatever comes to mind no matter how
insignificant/trivial/unpleasant it might be and later reflect on those associations.
Freud considers slips and dreams to be the “royal road” to the unconscious. They are analyzed by
free-associating to the slip itself or elements of the dream. Analysis can help us distinguish
between the manifest dream and the latent dream that underlies it.
The nature of our repressed wishes/desires is sexual (to Freud, sexuality means pleasure seeking).
o Sexual activity of children is polymorphous perverse: focus on seeking pleasure from
their own bodies rather than from another person (sucking thumbs, exploring genitals).
Drive: psychological/mental representation of an inner bodily source of excitement.
o Characterized by four features: source, impetus, aim, and object
o Two groups of impulsive drives
 Eros: life impulses, forces that maintain life processes and ensure reproduction
 Thanatos: death impulses, a biological reality and the source of aggressiveness,
reflects the ultimate resolution of all of life’s tensions in death
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Psychosexual Stages (autoerotic to mature reproductive activity).
o Libido (emotional/psychic energy derived from the biological drive of sexuality) invests
itself in various erogenous zones
 Oral stage: birth to age 1. Major source of pleasure/conflict is from the mouth.
 Anal stage: Year 2. Major source of pleasure/conflict is from anus due to toilet
training. Represents transition from involuntary activity to voluntary, child’s first
attempt to regulate instinctual impulses.
 Phallic stage: Years 3-6. Pleasurable/conflicting feelings associated with genital
organs. Curiosity around sex, masturbation, birth process.
 Latency period: Year 7 to puberty. Inhibited sexual drive. Sexual impulses are
channeled and elevated into more culturally acceptable things like sports,
intellectual interests, peer relations.
 Genital stage: When the genital organs mature. Rebirth of the sexual and
aggressive desires. The sexual drive, formerly autoerotic, now seeks gratification
from others rather than the self.
The effects of the psychosexual stages can be seen in adult character traits and disorders.
o If the libido is frustrated or overindulged at an early stage, it may become fixated at that
certain stage, creating excessive needs characteristic of an earlier stage.
Oedipus Complex: Child’s unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sex parent and do away
with the same-sex parent.
Castration Anxiety: the dual feeling of hostility and love towards the same-sex parent results in
fear of physical retaliation from the same-sex parent.
Electra Complex: Girl child’s primary love is her mother but abandons her mother when she
discovers the genitals of the opposite sex.
Penis Envy: Jealousy felt by the male upon the disappointment and shame felt by the girl for
viewing the penis as superior. The male resents the mother.
Dynamic Functions of Personality
o Id: oldest and original structure. Includes our genetic inheritance, reflexes, and instincts
and drives that motivate us. Operates using the pleasure principle and uses primary
processes.
o Ego: develops in order to realistically meet the wishes of the Id. It follows the reality
principle and uses secondary processes.
o Superego: consists of the conscience and the ego-ideal, an ideal self-image consisting of
approved and rewarded behaviors. It strives for perfection.
In a mature/well-adjusted personality, the ego is the executor controlling and governing the id and
superego, mediating their demands and the external world. In a maladjusted personality, either the
id or superego takes control.
Types of Anxiety
o Reality anxiety
o Neurotic anxiety
o Moral anxiety
In order to protect us against anxiety, the ego develops defense mechanisms that occur on an
unconscious level and deny/distort reality to make it less threatening. By strengthening the ego,
we can become more aware of our impulses and deal with them more effectively.
o Examples: repression, denial, projection, reaction formation, regression, rationalization,
identification, displacement, and sublimation
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Freud’s concepts have been difficult to translate into operational procedures that allow for an
unequivocal test.
Freud’s theory should be evaluated as a philosophy, rather than science as he originally intended
it.
Transference: a process whereby the patient transfers to the analyst emotional attitudes felt as a
child towards important persons.
o Positive: friend, affectionate feelings
o Negative: hostile, angry feelings
Chapter 3 – Analytical Psychology, developed by Carl Jung
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Psyche (Jung): all psychological processes, emphasis on embracing both conscious and
unconscious processes.
Libido (Jung): undifferentiated energy that moves a person forward.
Ego (Jung): one’s conscious perception of self.
Two basic attitudes: introversion and extraversion
o Four functions: sensation, thinking, feeling, intuition
o One of the attitudes and one of the functions is dominant, the opposite is weaker. The
other two functions play an auxiliary role.
Personal unconscious: experiences of an individual’s history that have been repressed or
forgotten.
o Experiences in the personal unconscious are grouped into clusters called complexes, an
organized group of thoughts/feelings/memories about a particular concept. It has
constellating power, which means that the complex can draw new ideas into itself and
interpret them.
Collective unconscious: potential ways of being that all humans share.
Archetypes: universal thought forms of the collective unconscious and predispositions to
perceive the world in certain ways.
Persona: social role or mask
Shadow: unsocial thoughts/feelings/behaviors we potentially possess and other
characteristics that we do not accept.
o Anima: feminine side of the male psyche
o Animus: masculine side of the female psyche
o Self: ultimate unit of the personality. The central archetype and true midpoint of
personality.
Self-realization: teleological process of development that involves individuation and
transcendence. The systems of the psyche achieve their fullest degree of differentiation and are
integrated in identity with all of humanity.
Synchronicity: events are related to one another through simultaneity and meaning (i.e. you
dream of a friend you haven’t seen in a long time then learn they died the night before).
Jung’s thinking foreshadowed the quest today for spirituality.
Jung believed that dreams had a prospective and compensatory function.
o By interpreting them, he used the method of amplification
Jung is considered largely philosophical
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Chapter 4 – Interpsychic Theories
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Theories of Adler and Sullivan mark a shift from an emphasis on intrapsychic to interpsychic.
Adler
o Human beings have an innate urge, social interest, to adapt to the conditions of the
environment. This urge needs to be cultivated.
o Finalism: individuals are oriented toward goals that guide their behavior.
o Fictional Finalisms: cannot be proven and are judged by their usefulness.
o Objective of the psyche is 1) the goal of superiority, the desire to be competent and
effective in what one does
 Inferiority feelings as children lead us to seek ways which we can compensate for
our weaknesses.
o Each individual develops a unique way of striving for superiority that’s called the style of
life.
 Style of life is influenced by factors such as:
 Family constellation: birth order
 Family atmosphere
 Quality of emotional relationships
o Creative self: interprets the experiences of the organism and establishes a person’s style
of life.
 Adler poses that the creative self is conscious, as opposed to Freud.
o Adlerian therapy: aimed at restoring patient’s sense of reality, examining and disclosing
the errors in goals/style of life, cultivating social interest.
o Emphasizes philosophical POV rather than effort to study personality empirically.
Sullivan
o Defined personality as characteristic ways in which an individual deals with other people.
o Thought anxiety was interpersonal in origin and observable. It may lead people to be
unconscious or unaware of his/her motives and to develop security operations,
interpersonal devices that minimize anxiety. Security operations are observable and arise
during interpersonal relationships.
o Dynamisms: patterns of energy transformations that characterize an individual’s
interpersonal relations. Most significant is the self-system.
o Personification: groups of feelings, attitudes, thoughts that have risen out of one’s
interpersonal experience.
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6 Stages of Development
During adolescence:
3 Cognitive Processes
 Prototaxic: no distinction between self and the external world.
 Parataxic: perceives causal relations between events that happen
together. Child may believe that his or her behavior caused a sensory
experience.
 Syntaxic: uses symbols and relies on consensual validation, or agreement
among persons.
Used concept of participant observation to define the nature of psychiatric injury and
treatment. An observer is also a participant in the event being observed.
 Inception: beginning
 Reconnaissance: therapist raises questions to develop case history and tentative
hypotheses
 Detailed Inquiry: therapist tests hypotheses, observes patient’s
behavior/responses
 Termination: therapist summarizes what has been learned and prescribes action.
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Chapter 5 – Psychoanalytic Social Psychology
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Basic Anxiety: insidiously increasing, all-pervading feeling of being lonely and helpless in a
hostile world. Results from feelings of insecurity in interpersonal relations. Did not believe that
anxiety is an inevitable part of the human condition, but results from cultural forces (unlike
Freud).
o Reflected in 10 neurotic needs/trends, which lead to:
 Primary modes of relating: moving towards/against/away, which lead to
o Basic orientations
 Self-effacing solution: appeal to be loved
 Self-expansive solution: attempt at mastery
 Resignation solution: desire to be free of others
Basic Evil: all of the negative factors in the environment that can provoke insecurity in a child.
Real Self: that which a person actually is.
Idealized Self: represents that which a person thinks he/she should be.
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In a normal individual, the real self and idealized self closely coincide. In a neurotic individual
they are more separate. In extreme cases of alienation, a person may completely abandon the real
self for the sake of the idealized self.
Horney believes that neurotics are governed by the tyranny of the should. For example, if I
believe that a good person doesn’t get jealous, I will posit an ideal self that doesn’t permit the
feelings of jealousy even though it denies the real self that does experience it.
Womb Envy vs. Penis Envy
o Horney’s view of women is almost a direct inversion of Freud’s. She emphasized the
superiority of women as indicated by their capacity for motherhood and stressed that a
woman’s sense of inferiority is not constitutional but acquired.
Horney considered self-analysis to be an important assessment tool.
Hypercompetitiveness: sweeping desire to compete and win in order to keep/heighten beliefs
that one is worthy.
Attachment Theory (influenced by Horney): way of understanding the tendency of people to
bond to specific others and to account for the distress that may follow separation and loss.
Parenting Styles: normal variations in parenting by focusing on two important dimensions –
parental warmth/support and parental demands/behavioral control.
Fromm identifies the basic human condition to be freedom.
o 3 common mechanisms of escape from it:
 Authoritarianism: submitting to a new form of domination.
 Destructiveness: elimination of others and/or the outside world.
 Automaton Conformity: cease to be themselves and adopt the type of
personality proffered by the culture in which they live.
Marketing Orientation:
Productive Orientation:
Biophilous: able to love and work in the broadest sense.
Terror Management Theory: seeks to explain why people react the way they do to the threat of
death and how this reaction influences their cognition and emotions. Inborn annihilation anxiety
together with the knowledge of the inevitability of death created an ever-present possibility of
terror. When we are reminded of the fallibility of our constructs, we feel frightened and seek to
strengthen our beliefs. We may also strike out at those who are different or those whom we blame
for the threat or whom we blame for the threat.
Scientism: Exclusive reliance on a narrow conception of science, deeming it inadequate for the
full comprehension of human nature. Rejected by Fromm.
Chapter 6 – Ego Analytic Psychology
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Anna Freud
o Diagnostic profile: classification system of childhood symptoms that reflects
developmental issues. Is intended to yield a complete picture of the various functionings
of the patient’s personality and an indication of their developmental appropriateness.
o Developmental Line: series of id-ego interactions in which children decrease their
dependance on external controls and increase ego mastery of themselves and their world.
o Emphasized the role of the ego and extended the interest of psychoanalysis to the study
of the child.
Erikson
o Extended Freudian psychoanalysis by:
 Increase understanding of the ego
 Elaborated on stages of development
 Extended concept of development to include entire life span
 Explored the impact of culture, society, and history on the developing personality
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Emphasized the adaptive qualities of the ego, whereas Freud tended to emphasize
defensiveness. Described the social and historical forces that influence the ego’s strengths
and weaknesses, stressing its constructive rather than its repressive effects on
development. Suggested that ego reaches its climax during adolescence.
Psychosocial Stages (made explicit the social dimension implied in Freud’s work)
 First four stages correspond to Freud’s stages, then subdivides the genital stage
into four phases that represent growth and development throughout maturity
 Stages are epigenetic, meaning one stages develops on top of another in a
sequential and hierarchical pattern. At each successive level, the human
personality becomes more complex.
 Each of the 8 stages entails its own life crisis, a crucial period in which the
individual cannot avoid a decisive turn one way or another.
 Each stage provided opportunities for a basic ego strength, or virtue, to grow.
Trust vs. Mistrust  hope
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt  will
Initiative vs. Guilt  purpose
Industry vs. Inferiority  competence
Ego identity vs Role Confusion  fidelity
Intimacy vs. Isolation  love
Generativity (concern for and commitment to future generations) vs. Stagnation  care
Ego Integrity vs. Despair  wisdom
Chapter 7 – Human Relations
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Object Relations Theory: how people develop intrapsychic patterns of live out of their early
relationships with significant others, particularly mothers.
Relational-cultural theory: emphasize interpsychic experience of relationships, or
connections/disconnections that occur between people in relationships.
o Challenges the I-centeredness that has pervaded Western conceptualizations of and
thought about the person/personality.
Splitting: Because of anxiety over aggressive impulses, children split objects/feelings into good
and bad aspects in an effort to retain good ones as part of the self while getting rid of bad ones
and projecting them onto others.
Separation-individuation: processes by which a child emerges from symbiotic fusion with the
mother and develops individual characteristics.
Narcissism: occurs when an individual fails to develop an independent sense of self.
Characterized by an exaggerated self-importance and self-involvement to hide a fragile sense of
self worth.
Borderline personality disorder: unable to engage in introspection, develop insight, and work
through problems. Frequently have strong mood swings and are inclined to see S/Os as all good
or all bad.
o Transference-focused psychotherapy
Chodorow
o Mothering by women reproduces cyclically, producing daughters with the desire/capacity
to mother but sons whose nurturing abilities are limited/repressed.
Stone Group Center: group of women who developed a new collaborative theory of human
development within relationships.
Jean Baker Miller
o Both sexes have been constrained by a framework of inequity and the concepts of
affiliation/relationship are central to the development of human beings.
Chapter 8 – Experimental Analysis of Behavior
 Law of effect: when a behavior/performance is accompanied by satisfaction, it tends to happen
again.
 Dollard and Miller
o Learning Process
 Drive: stimulus impelling organism to act
 Cue: stimulus tells organism when/where/how to respond
 Response: one’s reaction to the cue
 Reinforcement or Extinction
 Extinction doesn’t eliminate a response but inhibits it.
 If present responses aren’t reinforcing the individual is placed in a
learning dilemma and will try different responses until one satisfies the
drive.
o Habit: learned association between a stimulus and a response that makes them occur
together frequently.
o The primary dynamic underlying personality development and acquisition of habits is
drive reduction, where learning occurs only if a response of an organism is followed by
the reduction of some need or drive, a strong stimulation that produces discomfort.
 Primary drive: associated with physiological processes necessary for survival
(hunger, thirst, sleep)
 Secondary drive: learned on the basis of primary ones (needing money to buy
food).
o Reinforcer: any event that increases the likelihood of a particular response.
 Primary reinforcer: reduce primary drives.
 Secondary reinforcer: things that are normally neutral but acquire value when
they are associated with primary reinforcers (money)
o Frustration: one is unable to reduce a drive because the response that would satisfy it
has been blocked.
o Conflict: when frustration arises from a situation in which incompatible responses are
occurring at the same time.
 Approach-approach conflict: simultaneously attracted to two goals that have
positive value but incompatible (in love with two people, have to choose one)
 Avoidance-avoidance conflict: two undesirable alternatives (hot plate burning
your hands but if you drop it you’ll spill the food)
 Approach-avoidance conflict: one goal both attracts and repels the individual
(date is attractive and obnoxious)
 Double approach-avoidance: pros/cons to both outcomes
o 4 critical training stages in child development
 Feeding situation (oral)
 Cleanliness training (anal)
 Early sex training (phallic)
 Training for control of anger/aggression (phallic)
 Skinner
o For Skinner, personality was superfluous because over behavior can be completely
comprehended in terms of responses to environmental factors. Suggested that we
concentrate on the environmental consequences that determine/maintain someone’s
behavior.
o Two types of behavior
 Respondent: reflexes/automatic responses elicited by stimuli
 Operant: responses emitted without a stimulus necessarily being present.
Spontaneous.
Operant conditioning: spontaneous behaviors whose consequences determine
their subsequent frequency.
Shaping: deliberately shaping or molding an organism’s behavior in order to achieve the
desired behavior.
 Discrimination: ability to tell the difference between stimuli that are/aren’t
reinforced
 Generalization: application of a response learned in one situation to a different
but similar situation.
Ratio Enforcement: rate of reinforcement determined by number of appropriate
responses that the organism emits.
 Continuous schedule of reinforcement is most effective for initially
developing/strengthening a behavior. Variable is most effective thereafter to
maintain the behavior.
Positive Reinforcement: behavior is followed by a situation that increases likelihood of
behavior.
Negative Reinforcement: behavior is followed by termination of an unpleasant situation,
increasing likelihood of that behavior.
Punishment: behavior followed by an unpleasant situation to eliminate the behavior.
 Most common technique of behavioral control in our society. Creates fear, but if
the fear is diminished the behavior will recur. Can also lead to undesired side
effects
Satiation: permitting behavior to occur until the individual tires of it.
Behavior modification: seeks to eliminate undesired behaviors by changing the
environment in which they occur.
Advocated development of a social utopia, a behaviorally engineered society in which
positive reinforcers would shape behavior.
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Chapter 9 – Social Learning Theories
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Bandura
o Agentic perspective: viewed people as agents/originators of experience. Both producers
and products of their environment, people have capacities that influence behavior and
provide some measure of control over it.
o Triadic Reciprocal Causation: regulation of human behavior by the interplay of
behavioral, cognitive, and environmental factors.
o Observational learning: can be intentional or accidental. Observers solve problems
correctly even after the model fails to solve the problem by drawing on different things
they’ve observed.
o Experiment: The Bobo doll. Children observed adult playing with a doll in either an
aggressive/neutral manner and imitated what they had seen.
o Believes that adults are motivated by self-regulation: influencing one’s own behavior. Is
a result of self-monitoring, self-judgment, and affective self-reaction.
o Moral Disengagement: supports destructive behavior by reducing prosocial feeling and
prior self-censure and by encouraging cognitive/emotional reactions that favor
aggression.
o Self-Efficacy: people’s belief that they can successfully perform behaviors that will
produce desired effects, judgments of personal capacity.
o Therapeutic Strategies: help patients improve their perception of their own efficacy
through guided mastery experiences.
Rotter
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Locus of control: extent to which a person believes the reinforcements are controlled by
his/her own behavior or by people/outside forces.
 I-E scale: tool that measures an individual’s perception of control. (I) individuals
assume their own behaviors/actions are responsible for the consequences that
happen to them. (E) individuals believe that control is out of their hands.
 Internal locus of control appears to protect against unquestioning
submission to authority, as they are more resistant to be influenced.
Externals are more likely to conform and prefer not to make a choice.
 Females have shown to be more external.
Behavior potential: likelihood that a particular response behavior will occur in a given
situation.
Expectancy: individuals’ subjective expectations about the outcome of their behavior.
Reinforcement value: important/preference of a particular reinforcement for an
individual.
Psychological situation: psychological context in which the individual responds. It is the
situation as defined from the perspective of the person.
Mischel
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Behavioral specificity: an individual’s behavior is influenced by the specific situation.
We behave consistently in the same manner in different situation only to the extent that
these situations lead to similar consequences and have similar meaning for the person.
Cognitive-affective system theory of personality (CAPS): considers both the stability
of personality and the variability of behaviors across situations. Personality is a stable
system that mediates the selection/construction/processing of social information that
generates social behavior. Patterns of variability in behavior are not unwanted error but
reflections of the same stable underlying personality.
Behavioral signature: personality consistencies found in distinctive and stable IF-THEN
patterns of variability across situations.
 “I am ___” vs. “I am ___ when ___”
Chapter 10 – Traits and Personology
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Allport
o Personality: dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems
that determine his characteristic behavior and thought.”
o Continuity Theories vs. Discontinuity Theories
 Continuity: closed and admit little change. Personality is the accumulation of
habits/skills/discriminations.
 Discontinuity: open and provide for extensive growth. Personality can grow and
change with experience.
o Explored the concept of trait more than any other personality theorist.
o Trait: determining tendency or predisposition to respond to the world in certain ways.
Are consistent and enduring; account for consistency in behavior.
o Common Trait: hypothetical construct that permits us to compare individuals within a
given culture. Roughly comparable traits.
o Personal disposition: a general determining characteristic, but is unique to the individual
who has it.
 If a personal disposition is so pervasive that almost every behavior of the
individual appears to be influenced by it, it is a cardinal disposition
o Central disposition: highly characteristic tendencies of an individual. They provide the
adjectives/phrases a person might use in describing the essential characteristics of an
individual.
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Secondary disposition: more specific, focused tendencies that are often situational in
character and less crucial to the personality structure. (i.e. man is domineering and
aggressive at home in his role as father but is submissive when confronted by a police
officer).
Proprium: central experiences of self-awareness that people have as they grow and
move forward.
7 Propriate Functions
Functional Autonomy
 1) Perseverative: acts/behaviors that are repeated even though they may have lost
their original functions. Have no connection with the proprium. Refers to repetitive
activities such as compulsions, addictions to drugs/alcohol, ritualistic/routine
behaviors.
 2) Propriate: acquired interests/values/attitudes/intentions/lifestyles that are
directed from the proprium
Maturity: expression of the propriate functions to a high degree and freedom from one’s
past.
Nomothetic approach: studying large groups of individuals to determine the frequency
with which certain events occur, and from this to infer common traits, general variables,
universal principles.
Murray
o Personology: study of individual human lives and the factors that influence their course.
o Proceeding: short, significant behavior pattern that has a clear beginning and ending.
Interactions between subject and another person or object in environment.
o Serial: successios of proceedings (friendship/relationship)
o Serial Program: planned series of proceedings (steps to become a lawyer)
o Most significant contribution: research on human needs
 Need: construct representing a force in the brain that organizes our
perception/understanding/behavior to change an unsatisfying situation and
increase our satisfaction. A need may be aroused by an internal state (i.e. hunger,
sleep).
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Press: forces from objects or persons within the environment that help/hinder an
individual in reaching goals (i.e. poverty, accident, loss of possessions, friendship,
cultural discord).
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): ambiguous figures shown to subject, who is asked
to make up stories for the pictures, telling what led up to the event, what is happening,
etc.
Chapter 11 – Factor Analytic, Genetic and Evolutionary Theories

Cattell
o Personality: that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation
o A response is a function of the person and the stimuli.
o Cattell was concerned with the power of a construct to predict future events, as compared
to Freud who cared more about the compelling character of the vision of one’s
self/humanity psychoanalysis could provide.
o Surface Traits vs Source Traits
 Surface: clusters of overt behavior responses that appear to go together (integrity,
honesty, self-discipline, thoughtfulness)
 Source: underlying variables that seem to determine the surface manifestation.
He identified 16 that he considered the building blocks of personality (i.e.
outgoing, intelligent, assertive, humble)
o Primary tool was factor analysis: correlational procedure that describes large amounts of
data in smaller more manageable units by interrelating many correlations at one time.
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Procedure: Make a correlational matrix by computing correlational coefficient for
each variable, then look for any patterns that emerge. Then compute correlation
between each of the identified factors and the original variables.
 Syntality: dimensions that permit us to describe/differentiate among groups and
institutions.
 Laid theoretical groundwork for much of the current research in measurement of
personality.
 The Big Five Personality Traits
 OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeable,
neuroticism
 Big Five arose out of 2 attempts to identify basic personality factors
 Study of Language: attempt to cluster words we use to describe the most
important attributes; eventually whittled down to 5
 Five Factor Model (FFM): used to create the revised NEO Personality
Inventory, where 6 facets are measured within each of the 5 factors.
 Differences: Big 5 is a description not an explanation. FFM is an
interpretation of the Big 5 and seeks to advance some additional claims
 Applications of Big Five Research
 The Big 5 have been linked to emotional intelligence and psychological
well-being, which can be seen as having 2 dimensions: 1) subjective
well-being and satisfaction with life.
 Have been found to predict job performance
 The 5 have been replicated in both Western and non-Western languages
Implications for Diagnosis of Dysfunctional Behavior
o Correlated individuals’ scores of psychopathy/antisocial behavior with the FFM
prototype and self-reports of behavior.
o DSM was influenced by the FFM
Behavioral Genetics explores hereditary causes of individual differences.
o Twin studies are useful because they permit us to make comparisons that suggest genetic
determination of traits
Evolutionary psychology helps us understand that psychological mechanisms such as the Big 5
evolve because they solve specific adaptive problems in human ancestral environments.
Factor Analytic Trait Theories are excellent samples of scientific theories of personality.
Chapter 12 – Biological Traits

Eysenck
o Advocated a biosocial approach
o Personality: more or less stable and enduring organization of a person’s character,
temperament, intellect, and physique which determines his unique adjustment to the
environment
 He viewed personality as a hierarchy: specific responses at the bottom, habitual
responses above which are clusters of specific behaviors that recur in similar
circumstances, then traits. At the top, related clusters of traits make up broad
general dimensions or basic types
o Psychoticism: loss or distortion of reality and the inability to distinguish between reality
and fantasy. Also includes some degree of psychopathy
o Three major superfactors: extraversion, neuroticism, and psychotism (PEN).
o Constructed personality inventory questionnaire using method called criterion analysis:
begin with a hypothesis concerning an underlying variable then identified two criterion
o
o
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groups and give them a questionnaire. If there is a greater tendency for one group to
answer a particular question in the affirmative/negative then that question may be a good
item for distinguishing between the two groups.
Hypothesized that introverts can be more readily conditioned than extraverts because
they have a higher drive and weaker inhibitory processes.
Hypothesized that specific biological functions were responsible for excitation/inhibition.
 Traced difference between extraversion/introversion to levels of cortical arousal
 Introversion/extraversion related to arousal thresholds in the ascending reticular
activating system (RAS) which primarily functions to regulate levels of arousal
and that emotional stability (neuroticism) is related to difference in visceral
brain activation
 Thought psychoticism might be linked to hormone levels
Thought that intelligence is related to evoked potential, electrical activity in the brain that
is activated by sensory stimulation.
 More complex evoked potential patterns are present in people with high
intelligence
Chapter 13 – Humanism

Maslow
o Believed that humans are interested in growing rather than restoring balance/avoiding
frustration.
o Motivation: reduction of tension by satisfying deficit states/lacks
o D-needs: deficiency needs, arise out of one’s requirements for physiological survival or
safety
o Metamotivation: growth tendencies
o B-needs: being needs, arise out of one’s drive to self-actualize and fulfill its inherent
being needs.
o Motivation and D-needs take priority over metamotivation and B-needs.
o Hierarchy of Needs
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Self-actualizing persons: fulfilling themselves and doing the best they are capable of
doing.
Peak experience: intensification of any experience to the degree that there is a loss of
transcendence of self.
Rogers
o Influenced by phenomenology: study of human awareness and perception.
o Phenomenal field: total sum of experiences.
Organismic valuing process: subconsciously guides us toward productive growth
experiences if it has not been overlaid with external rules and societal values that
preclude healthy self-actualization
o Self-concept: the person as she or he perceives himself or herself.
o Congruence: person’s symbolized experiences reflect all of the actual experiences.
Person is free from inner tension and psychologically adjusted.
 If not, incongruence and possible maladjustment
o Young child has 2 basic needs: positive regard by others and positive self-regard
 Positive regard: being loved and accepted for who one is.
 Unconditional positive regard: the ideal.
 Conditional positive regard: children are led to think their parents will not love
them unless they do what they want them to, conditions of worth.
 Positive self-regard: comes automatically if child has received unconditional
positive regard. Children view themselves favorably with acceptance.
o His studies suggested that 3 attitudes on the part of therapists are necessary/sufficient for
change
 Empathy
 Acceptance
 Genuineness
o Most responses fall into 1 of 5 categories:
 Evaluative
 Interpretive
 Reassuring
 Probing
 Reflective
o Reconstructive Psychotherapy: through analysis of the resistances and transference the
analyst seeks to remove defeses so that the analysand can communicate true feelings
o Supportive Psychotherapy: strengthen adaptive instincts an defenses without necessarily
tampering with the underlying personality structure.
Positive Psychology
o Five building blocks of a fulfilling life PERMA: positive emotion, engagement,
relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.
Transpersonal Psychology: studies transcendent or spiritual dimensions of persons.
o Psychosynthesis sought to extend psychoanalysis by aligning personality with the
transpersonal self through understanding and practical application.
o Emphasizes health and human potential, seeking a balance of the whole person
o Spirituality: person’s relationship to existential issues that go beyond everyday reality.
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Chapter 14 – Existential Psychoanalysis

May
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Existentialism: focuses on the human being as he/she is emerging and becoming.
 There is no truth or reality for us as human beings except as we participate in
it/are conscious of it/have relation to it.
Essence of being: unchangeable principles and laws that are believed to govern
existence.
May said that the central problem we face is a feeling of powerlessness, which are
compounded by anxiety and the loss of traditional values.
Anxiety: apprehension cued off by a threat to some value that the individual holds
essential to is/her existence.
May assumed that all living organisms are potentially centered in themselves and seek to
preserve that center. Second, human beings have the need and the possibility of going out
from their centeredness to participate with other people. Third, sickness is a method by
which one seeks to preserve his/her being. Finally, human beings can participate in a
level of self-consciousness that permits them to transcend the immediate situation and to
consider/actualize a wider range of possibilities.
o 4 Stages of Consciousness of Self:
 Stage of innocence
 Stage of rebellion
 Ordinary consciousness of self
 Creative consciousness of self: ability to see something outside one’s usual
limited viewpoint and gain a glimpse of the ultimate truth as it exists in reality.
o Daimonic: any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person (i.e.
sex, anger, craving for power).
o Intentionality: intention gives meaning to experience by informing our actions.
o Psychotherapy application: central task of the therapist is to understand the patient’s
mode of being and non-being in the world. Warned against drug use in psychotherapy
because by removing anxiety they remove motivation for change and deny an opportunity
for learning.
o Researched anxiety and dreams
 Believed that dreams reflect how we perceive/cope/give meaning.
 Every dream has a theme and a motif. Theme is the unity/inner consistency.
Motif is a central thread running through the various drams and the goal one is
moving forward.
Conclusion
o May criticized contemporary research for being impressed with data at the expense of
theory.
o Existential approach suggests 3 basic changes in methods of research:
 Cut through the tendency to believe we understand things only if we know their
causes
 Must recognize all ways of understanding what it means to be a human being
 Must ask the question of the nature of person as person, knowing vs. knowing
about
o Social media may have the potential to change our feelings of powerlessness and help us
explore new values
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Chapter 15 – Personal Constructs
 Kelly (Cognitive theorist)
o Personal Constructs: serve as hypotheses that make the world meaningful to us.
o Personal construct theory: if these constructs appear to fit our subsequent experience,
we find them useful and hold on to them. If they don’t help we will alter/change the
construct to develop a better one.
o Constructive alternativism: one event is open to a variety of interpretations.
o One basic assumption: A person’s processes are psychologically channelized by the way
which he anticipates events
 Supported by 11 Corollaries
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Role: process/behavior that people engage in based on their understanding of the
behavior and constructs of others.
Rep Test: permits a person to reveal constructs by comparing/contrasting a number of
significant persons in their life.
Cognitive Complexity: ability to perceive differences in the way which one construes
other people
According to Kelly, psychological disorders arise when a person clings to and continues
with personal constructs despite knowing that they fail to validate them.
Kelly considered therapeutic methods as “reconstruction” rather than psychotherapy. He
wanted to help the patient reconstrue the world in a manner that would foster better
predictions and control.
Developed and fostered the use of role-playing in therapy
Chapter 16 – Cognitive Behavioral Theories

Ellis
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Rational emotive behavior therapy: free individuals to commit themselves to actions
that are congruent with their true value systems.
 Principal therapeutic techniques: cognitive, emotive-evocative, behavior therapy.
 Modern precursor: Alfred Adler
Humans are “sign- symbol- language-creating” animals who use four interrelated
processes: perception, movement, thinking, and emotion.
Evaluative thinking gives rise to “self-talk”: internalized sentences that shape our
thoughts and emotions.
People have a strong innate tendency to engage in dysfunctional behaviors, but also have
the potential to change and self-actualize.
Emotional disturbance arises when people care too much about what others think of
them.
A-B-C theory of personality: people develop irrational and musturbatory belief systems
when a highly charged emotional consequences (C) follows a significant activating event
(A). A may seem to cause C but actually doesn’t, when actually it may be created by
inappropriate irrational beliefs (B).
Humans have an innate tendency to raise cultural preferences into musts and social norms
into absolute shoulds.
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Beck
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Cognitive therapy: seeks to remove systematic biases in thinking by correcting faulty
information processing, helping clients modify assumptions that maintain maladaptive
behaviors/emotions.
Schemas: cognitive structures that consist of an individual’s core beliefs and
assumptions about how the world operates.
Automatic thoughts: involuntary/unintentional/preconscious thoughts that are hard to
regulate
Cognitive distortions: systematic errors in reasoning.
Sociotropic dimension: dependence on interpersonal relationships and need for
closeness/nurturance.
Autonomous dimension: characterized by independence.
Cognitive Triad: consists of a depressed individual’s negative view of him or herself/the
world/the future.
Beck’s cognitive therapy is centered around helping the client experience effective
arousal, arousing emotions and testing reality at the same time.
 Hot cognition: the actual phrase/fear/critical self-blaming thought such as “Oh
what a klutz I am.”
Cognitive therapy is best suited for cases in which problems can be delineated and
cognitive distortions are apparent. It is not designed for personal growth or
developmental work.
Believes it is essential that people understand their unrealistic views of the world/their
lives are responsible for their depression.
Lazarus
o Developed a personality-appraisal tool called the BASIC-ID: behavior, affect, sensation,
imagery, cognition, interpersonal relations, drugs.
o People have different physical thresholds, or tolerance levels, and tend to favor some
BASIC-ID modality.
o Multimodal therapy: performance based. It uses modality profiles, structural profiles,
bridging, tracking, and emphasis on technical eclecticism.
 Modality profiles: specific list of problems and proposed treatments spanning the
client’s BASIC-ID
 Structural profile: quantitative assessment of the relative ID
 Bridging: deliberately start work using their client’s preferred modality. Starts
where the client is and bridges into more challenging areas)
 Tracking: paying careful attention to the “firing order” of the modalities, how
each of them interact to cause the client’s problems.
 Technical Eclecticism: good treatment methods may be derived from sources
without necessarily agreeing with the theories that generated them.
o Greater number of coping skills clients develop, the less they will backslide. Emphasizes
importance of accountability and of understanding the mechanisms of one’s treatment of
choice. He starts by observing behavior and develops a reduction plan custom-made for
each client.
Hayes
o Mindfulness: noting thoughts and feelings without becoming enmeshed in them.
o Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): helps individuals identify a set of personal
core values based on what matters most to them and then commit to behaviors that will
advance those values.
o Relational frame theory: in our attempts to solve problems through verbal refutation we
draw on the same language skills and cognitive processes that lure us into persistent but
o
futile attempts to combat our inner demons, instead of making healthy contact with the
thoughts/feelings we seek to avoid.
Mindfulness teaches the West a technique of detachment reminiscent of Eastern practices
Chapter 17 – Zen Buddhism
 Suzuki is credited with introducing Zen Buddhism to the West.
 Zen: school of Buddhism that claims to represent the purest essence of Buddhist teachings.
 Buddha’s teachings were written down in the form of three “baskets”:
o Tripitaka: the three collections
 Hinayana/Theravada: Dominant today is parts of SE Asia.
 Mahayana: Zen belongs to the Mahayana tradition.
 Differences between Theravada and Mahayana:
o Theravada stresses renunciation of worldly life and monastic lifestyle, who through
practice/discipline is liberated from suffering. Stresses wisdom.
o Mahayana accepts that enlightenment is possible also for lay practitioners. Its ideal is the
bodhisattva, person who vows to dedicate life to the salvation of all sentient beings, not
accepting full liberation until all others are free from suffering. Stresses compassion.
 Atman: individual souls who transmigrated through many lives in order to become purified and
rejoin the universal Brahma.
 Dependent origination is at the core of Dharma. It is a law of causality that implies that all
phenomena, whether external or internal, come into existence depending on causes and conditions
without which they could not be.
o There are necessary causal conditions without which emotions/perceptions/thoughts
could be created.
 Characteristics of Existence
o Anicca: means that everything is changing.
o Dukkha: dissatisfaction and distress that results from both attachment and aversion.
o Anatta: the idea of a personal self is an imaginary, false belief that has no corresponding
reality. There is no separate essence, self, soul that could exist by itself apart from the
component parts and conditions.
 Solution to the problem of suffering  the Four Noble Truths
 Craving is one of the links in the chain of dependent origination and suffering is the end product.
 What we call a person is the composite of 5 groups of elements called skandhas: form, feeligs,
perceptions, impulses, consciousness
 Nirvana: mental state in which all cravings, desires, dualistic ideas have been completely
extinguished
 8 Forms of Consciousnesses
o First 5 correspond to the 5 senses
o Manovijnana: integrating basis of the five sensory consciousnesses
o Manas: illusion of a separate “I” or “ego” arises
o Alayvijnana: “storehouse” from which all potential activities of the other seven
consciousnesses emerge by watering positive seeds while not watering the negative
seeds.
 Zazen: sitting meditation.
 Soto school of Zen: views zazen as “just sitting,” or shikantaza. Thinks that practice and
enlightenment are one and the same.
 Rinzai school uses koans, paradoxical statements/questions/anecdotes as a focus of concentration
during zazen.
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Western psychotherapy emphasizes change for neurotic/disturbed individuals. Eastern disciplines
are similarly concerned with change in the consciousness of normal/health people. Distress is
caused by maya, or illusion.
Eastern theories are most accurately characterized as art.