Personality Adjustment and Conflict
The Healthy Personality
Self Defense Mechanisms
Do Now: Who controls what happens in your life?
If you’re having a bad day, can you change
it?
Have you ever blamed someone other than
yourself for a bad grade?
Are some people luckier than others?
How do our learned beliefs and habits
help us…or not
• There are three habits that have a
tremendous impact on our lives:
1. Locus of control
2. Self-efficacy
3. Optimism
What is Locus of Control?
Individual perception
about main causes of
events in their life
Concept developed by
Julian Rotter
1950’s
Do you believe outside
forces, fate, God, luck
or powerful others
control your destiny?
Do you believe your
destiny is controlled by
yourself?
External Locus of
Control
Internal Locus of
Control
What is locus of control?
• It is the measure of how responsible you feel
for your success and failures.
• Internal Locus: believe you are responsible
• External Locus: believe others, luck, chance
and fate are responsible.
What is your locus of control?
Page 478 to 480 in your textbook.
What is Self Efficacy?
The belief in one's capabilities to
achieve a goal or an outcome.
Students
with a
Verbal
strong
sense of persuasion efficacy are Teachers
can boost
more likely
self-efficacy
to
with
challenge
credible
themselves motivation.
with
difficult
tasks
Emotional
Vicarious
state -A
experience Successful Observing a
positive
mood can experiences
peer
Be
boost one's boost self- succeed at a
intrinsically
beliefs in
efficacy,
task can
while
self-efficacy,
strengthen motivated
failures
while
beliefs in
erode it.
anxiety can
one's own
undermine
abilities.
it.
Who’s in the Driver’s Seat?
• Alfred Adler: psychologist who studied competence and
achievement
I will win this
game if I have
good luck
I’m not in
control
I will win this
game because I
am skilled at it
=more
possibility of
losing
I am in some
control over it
=higher
possibility of
winning
How does this all relate to control?
• When we feel we have lost control over our
lives – we tend to become ill easier
• In cases where control isn’t possible – if there
can be information and control of reaction,
effects of stress are reduced dramatically.
• Difficult people will always exist – how YOU
react to them can control your situation better
than you think.
Do Now:
When you feel physically
threatened, what do you do?
When you feel emotionally
threatened, what do you do?
Defense Mechanisms
• Defense mechanisms help
us cope with unbearable thoughts, feelings
and wishes.
• The idea of this comes from Freud
• Some are: repression, suppression, projection,
rationalization, reaction formation,
displacement and sublimation.
Why do we use defense mechanisms?
• How do we keep our personalities from
getting beat up while we are building them?
• Defense Mechanisms do for anxiety, what
endorphins do for physical pain – reduce
impact
• They can be helpful – lead our lives in difficult
times
• They can be dangerous – distort reality, keep
us from taking action in bad situations
What are Conversion Disorders?
• Serious psychological trauma that converts itself
into a real dysfunction.
• Severe examples: hysterical blindness, false
pregnancy, hysterical paralysis. These physical
symptoms DO exist, but are rare.
• Hypochondrasis: more common conversion
disorder. Over concern about health. Can begin
from childhood when great attention was paid to
them when they were sick, and not under healthy
conditions.
How strong is the power of suggestion?
• Psychological issues can impact biology
• Extreme examples: voo-doo, sudden death
syndrome, etc.
• Somatoform Disorders: condition in which
psychological issues are expressed in bodily
symptoms in the absence of any real physical
problem.
• Mild examples: man feels morning sickness
due to wife’s pregnancy, etc.
Hey, we only
have a week to
go!
Yes, but mine’s
going to be gone
after that.
What is repression, suppression and
denial?
• Repression: first line of defense
• Pushing out of bad memories after first
acknowledging them – actually forgetting them.
• Often found in child abuse victims
• Suppression: pushing bad memories away while
being aware you are doing it.
• Denial: Totally denying a problem exists
• Freud: “repression is damming up a pool, repressed
wishes, thoughts will leak through the barriers that
separate the unconscious from the conscious.”
What is displacement?
I hate this pie!!!
I can’t believe
Bertha broke up
with me.
• Venting our feelings on someone or
something other than ourselves
Separation of emotion from its real object and redirection of the intense
emotion toward someone or something that is less offensive or threatening in
order to avoid dealing directly with what is frightening or threatening
What is Reaction Formation?
•Expressing the opposite
of what we really feel
•Sometimes someone
with very vocal and strong
opinions about a topic
actually practices the
opposite of what they
preach.
Another example of reaction formation?
You smell!
You have cooties!
She’s really
pretty, I wonder
if she likes me?
Wow, he’s
talking to me!!
The process of
expressing the
opposite of what we feel
What is intellectualization?
• The process of removing our feelings about an
event and discussing it in a calm rational and
unemotional way …and then it burned down, can
you believe that? Yup, lost
everything. Can I have more iced
tea?
What is projection?
• The process of attributing
our own thoughts to
someone else.
Example: a woman insists
that her husband is
cheating on her, yet she is
the one who is considering
it.
What is sublimation
• The process of channeling
emotional energy into constructive or
creative activities
“Drive past any school playground and find the kid sitting by himself looking
miserable…that’s your future successful writer”
• Sublimation is probably the most useful and
constructive of the defense mechanisms as it
takes the energy of something that is
potentially harmful and turns it to doing
something good and useful.
What is rationalization?
• The process of explaining a problem so as not
to associate blame
Victims of domestic
violence are often told “You
deserved it” or “I didn’t
want to hit you, but you
asked for it”. This is a form
of rationalization. Victims
also sometimes exhibit the
defense mechanism
“Identification with
Aggressor”
Identification with aggressor
Taking on characteristics of someone who
• has mistreated us in order to
psychologically avoid abuse.
• Stockholm Syndrome: The behavior of kidnap victims who,
over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name
derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden.
The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of
interpersonal abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, abused
children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors
What is regression?
• The process of going backwards in thoughts
and behavior to a period when we were taken
care of as children.
Summary
1. The key to handling life’s problems seems to be actual control,
or at least the belief that you are in some control
2. Psychological defense mechanisms are used to protect us–
using them in moderation helps to protect our sense of wellbeing to recover from: personality defects, mistakes,
emotional pain or problems.
3. Using them for too long or in absence of having a real life can
cause long-term damage and impact quality of life.
4. Healthy Personality: accepting yourself and others, being
flexible, realistic but still optimistic, and exhibiting control over
your life, even when faced with difficulties. A sense of humor
helps too!