Chapter 12 Personality
Persona
 An
The Definition
individual’s characteristic
pattern of thinking, feeling,
and acting (text book)
 The pattern of psychological
and behavioral characteristics
by which each person can be
compared and contrasted with
others (from another text
book)
Theories of personality
~ are hypothetical statements about
the structure and functioning of
individual personalities.
 They help to achieve two of the major
goals of psychology:
1. Understanding the structure, origins,
and correlates of personalities;
2. Predicting behavior and life events
based on what we know about
personnality

Freud’s psychoanalytic or
psychodynamic approach
•Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
•Background
Psychoanalysis
A
set of theoretical ideas about
personality and a method of
psycho-therapy
 The technique of treating
psychological disorders by
seeking to expose and interpret
unconscious tensions.
 Psychiatrists vs psychologists in
the field
Exploring the Unconscious
 Conscious
 Preconscious
— information that is
not conscious but is retrievable into
conscious awareness
 Unconscious — according to Freud, a
reservoir of mostly unacceptable
thoughts, wishes, feelings, and
memories. According to contemporary
research, information processing of
which we are unaware
Personality Structure
 id
— the unconscious portion of
personality that contains basic
impulses and urges
 Libido — the psychic energy
contained in the id
 Pleasure principle — the id’s
operating principle, which guides
people toward whatever feels good
Ego
 The
part of the personality that
mediates conflicts between and
among the demands of the id, the
superego, and the real world
 Reality principle — the operating
principle of the ego that creates
compromises between id’s demands
and those of the real world
Superego — a voice of conscience that
forces the ego to consider not only the real
but the ideal
 The
component of personality
that tells people what they
should and should not do
 As children learn about the rules
and values of society, they tend
to adopt them — the process of
internalizing parental and
cultural values
Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure
Ego defense mechanisms
 Anxiety
is the price we pay for
civilization. Anxiety is hard to cope
with, as when we feel unsettled but
are unsure why
 Freud proposed that the ego protects
itself against anxiety in various ways,
all of them distorting reality
 Reducing the anxiety — the
dynamics of the personality
Stages in personality development:
pass through a series of psychosexual stages
 id’s
pleasure - seeking energies
focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive
areas of the body called
erogenous zones
 Oedipus complex & Electra
complex
 Identification
 Fixation
 Regression
Freud’s practice in psychotherapy



Psychological disorders
DSM-IV
Neurosis
Classical psychoanalytic treatment aims to
help clients gain insight into their
problems by recognizing unconscious
thoughts and emotions and then to
discover, or work through, the many
ways in which those unconscious elements
affect their everyday lives
Hypnosis
state or condition in which
subjects are able to respond to
appropriate suggestions with
distortions of perception and
memory
 Could everyone be hypnotized?
 Using hypnosis to treat patients
suffering from disorders — he
“discovered” the unconscious
 …that
Free Association
 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
 It can produce a chain of thought
leading into the patient’s
unconscious, thereby retrieving and
releasing painful unconscious memory,
often from childhood
Dream Analysis
royal road to the
unconscious”
 Manifest content — the
remembered content of dreams
 Latent content — dreamer’s
unconscious wishes
 example
 “the
 Analysis
of resistance
resist talking or thinking about
certain topic;
even won’t come to the clinic
next time
 Analysis
of transference
Neo-Freudians and
Psychodynamic Theorists
Alfred Adler,
1870~1937
Individual Psychology
“Drive” or motivating force behind
all our behavior and experience
— Striving for superiority
 “Feelings of Inferiority”
organ inferiorities  psychological ~
 Compensation—striving to
overcome
 Style of life: how you live your life,
how you handle problems and
interpersonal relations




1.
2.
3.

Inferiority complex (neurosis)
Superiority complex
Prototype of lifestyle in
childhood
Neglect
Pampering
Social interest
Birth order
Carl G. Jung (1875-1961)
Jung’s Analytic Psychology



1.
2.
Libido — broader than
Freud’s
Introversion — extroversion
Unconscious
Personal ~ complex
Collective ~ archetypes
The Mother Archetype
The mother archetype is our
built-in ability to recognize a
certain relationship, that of
"mothering."
We are likely to project the
archetype out into the world
and onto a particular person,
usually our own mothers.
 The
Shadow: sex and the
life instincts in general are
represented in Jung's
system
 It is the "dark side" of the
ego, and the evil that we are
capable of is often stored
there
The Persona
The persona represents
your public image. The
word is, obviously,
related to the word
person and personality,
and comes from a Latin
word for mask
Anima and Animus
A
part of our persona is the
role of male or female we
must play
 Jung, like Freud and Adler
and others, felt that we are
all really bisexual in nature
The Self—the self is the ultimate
unity of the personality
A mandala is a drawing
that is used in
meditation because it
tends to draw your
focus back to the center,
and it can be as simple
as a geometric figure or
as complicated as a
stained glass window
The dynamics of psyche
 Principle
of opposites
 Principle of equivalence
 Principle of entropy—the
tendency for oppositions to
come together, and so for
energy to decrease, over a
person's lifetime
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
Specifically, she saw
neurosis as an attempt
to make life bearable,
as a way of
"interpersonal control
and coping."
Development


1.
2.
3.

Parental indifference—the
basic evil
Children’s reaction
Basic hostility—aggression
Basic anxiety—compliance
Withdraw
Love (in family)
Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
 From
individual, family to
the society
 The Fear of Freedom, 1942
 Beyond the Chains of
Illusion—My encounter with
Marx & Freud, 1980
 The Art of Loving, 1982
Assessing Unconscious Processes
Projective Tests
1. Rorschach inkblot test
2. Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT)
3. Our spaces express our
personalities……

Evaluation of the
Psychoanalytic Perspective



1.
2.
3.
Influenced modern Western
thinking about……
Most comprehensive and
influential psychological
theory ever proposed
Several weakness
Limited subjects
Value—west world, male
Scientific?