Question

Define personality. Describe the four basic theoretical perspectives in personality, including the psychoanalytic, humanistic, social cognitive, and trait theories.

Describe the id, ego, and superego, and the interaction of these three components of the self, according to Freud. How do these components relate to the distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind (e.g., which are conscious and which are unconscious)? Discuss Freud’s view of the mind as an iceberg to describe these relationships.

Discuss Freud’s notion of the ego defense mechanisms. Provide an everyday example of each of the major ego defense mechanisms: repression, displacement, sublimation, rationalization, projection, reaction formation, denial undoing, and regression. (see Table 10.1)

Name, define, and describe the psychosexual stages of development, focusing on the core conflict of each stage. Explain the cause and consequence of fixation.

Compare (i.e., how are they similar) and contrast (i.e., how are they different) the views of the neo-Freudians with Freud’s original theory.

Identify criticisms of Freud’s theory and, more generally, of the psychoanalytic perspective.

10b: The Humanistic Perspective on Personality; Social Cognitive Perspective on Psychology

Describe the humanistic (or “third force”) perspective and contrast it with psychoanalytic theory and behaviorism.

Discuss the key components of Carl Rogers’ humanistic personality theory, including the importance of the actualizing tendency, the self-concept, conditional and unconditional positive regard, and the fully functioning person.

Identify the key strengths and weaknesses of the humanistic perspective.

Discuss the key components of Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory of personality, noting the role of self-efficacy beliefs in the development of a person’s self system.

Identify the key strengths and weaknesses of the social cognitive perspective.

10c: Trait Perspective on Personality; Assessing Personality

Describe how trait theories differ from the other perspectives on personality.

List and describe the Big Five personality factors (i.e., Five-Factor model of personality), giving examples of the types of characteristics involved in each trait.

Identify criticisms of the trait perspective.

Distinguish between typologies (e.g., Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and dimensional trait theories of personality (e.g., Big Five). What are the criticisms of the Myers-Briggs?

Answer 1

Personality is a mechanism by which a person thinks, react, respond and feel .

The Psychoanalytic Perspective

This perspective of personality revolves around early childhood experiences and its importance when individual possess the unconscious mind. This perspective on personality shows that things hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in a number of different ways, including through dreams, free association, and slips of the tongue.

The Humanistic Perspective

The humanistic perspective of personality revolves around psychological growth, freedom, will power, and personal awareness. It is centred on how each person can achieve their individual potential.

The Trait Perspective

The trait perspective of personality is emphasize on identifying, describing and measuring the specific traits that make up human personality. This trait can help a to find the differences between individuals.

The Social Cognitive Perspective

The social cognitive perspective of personality emphasizes the importance of observational learning, training, self-efficacy, situational influences and cognitive processes.

Id -

The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality. It consists of all the inherited components of personality present at birth, including the misbehave and inherited from parents.It is developed in unconscious mind.

Ego -

Ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world and experience. It is developed in conscious mind.

Superego -

The superego consists of experience from society and nearby which are learned from one's parents and others. It is developed in unconscious mind.

Freud made the analogy of the id being a horse while the ego is the rider. The ego is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.

If the ego fails in its attempt to use the reality principle, and anxiety is experienced, unconscious defence mechanisms are employed, to help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e., anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.

Sigmund Freud observed a number of ego defences which he refers to throughout his written works.

Defence mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings.

We use defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding. They are not under our conscious control, and are non-voluntarist.

Ego-defence mechanisms are natural and normal. When they get out of proportion (i.e., used with frequency), neuroses develop, such as anxiety states, phobias, obsessions, or hysteria.

When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is understandable if you feel threatened, overwhelmed, as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy.

In order to deal with conflict and problems in life, Freud stated that the ego employs a range of defence mechanisms. Defence mechanisms operate at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e., anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual.

Examples of Defences Mechanisms

There are a large number of defence mechanisms. The main ones are summarized below.

Identification with the Aggressor

A focus on negative or feared traits. I.e. if you are afraid of someone, you can practically conquer that fear by becoming more like them.

An extreme example of this is the Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages identify with the terrorists. E.g., Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Patty was abused and raped by her captors, yet she joined their movement and even took part in one of their bank robberies. At her trial, she was acquitted because she was a victim suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

Repression

This was the first defence mechanism that Freud discovered, and arguably the most important. Repression is an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious.

Thoughts that are often repressed are those that would result in feelings of guilt from the superego. For example, in the Oedipus complex, aggressive thoughts about the same sex parents are repressed.

This is not a very successful defence in the long term since it involves forcing disturbing wishes, ideas or memories into the unconscious, where, although hidden, they will create anxiety.

Projection

This involves individuals attributing their own thoughts, feeling, and motives to another person Thoughts most commonly projected onto another are the ones that would cause guilt such as aggressive and sexual fantasies or thoughts.

For instance, you might hate someone, but your superego tells you that such hatred is unacceptable. You can 'solve' the problem by believing that they hate you.

Displacement

Displacement is the redirection of an impulse (usually aggression) onto a powerless substitute target. The target can be a person or an object that can serve as a symbolic substitute. Someone who feels uncomfortable with their sexual desire for a real person may substitute a fetish.

Someone who is frustrated by his or her superiors may go home and kick the dog, beat up a family member, or engage in cross-burnings.

Sublimation

This is similar to displacement, but takes place when we manage to displace our emotions into a constructive rather than destructive activity . This might, for example, be artistic.

Many great artists and musicians have had unhappy lives and have used the medium of art of music to express themselves. Sport is another example of putting our emotions (e.g., aggression) into something constructive.

Sublimation for Freud was the cornerstone of civilized life, arts and science are all sublimated .

Denial

Anna Freud proposed denial involves blocking external events from awareness. If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it.

As you might imagine, this is a primitive and dangerous defense - no one disregards reality and gets away with it for long! It can operate by itself or, more commonly, in combination with other, more subtle mechanisms that support it.

For example, smokers may refuse to admit to themselves that smoking is bad for their health.

Regression

This is a movement back in psychological time when one is faced with stress. When we are troubled or frightened, our behaviours often become more childish or primitive.

A child may begin to suck their thumb again or wet the bed when they need to spend some time in the hospital. Teenagers may giggle uncontrollably when introduced into a social situation involving the opposite sex.

Rationalization

Rationalization is the cognitive distortion of "the facts" to make an event or an impulse less threatening . We do it often enough on a fairly conscious level when we provide ourselves with excuses.

But for many people, with sensitive egos, making excuses comes so easy that they never are truly aware of it. In other words, many of us are quite prepared to believe our lies.

Reaction Formation

This is where a person goes beyond denial and behaves in the opposite way to which he or she thinks or feels . By using the reaction formation, the id is satisfied while keeping the ego in ignorance of the true motives.

Conscious feelings are the opposite of the unconscious. Love - hate. Shame - disgust and moralizing are reaction formation against discrimination. Usually, a reaction formation is marked by showiness and compulsiveness.

For example, Freud claimed that men who are prejudice against homosexuals are making a defense against their own homosexual feelings by adopting a harsh anti-homosexual attitude which helps convince them of their heterosexuality.