Chapter 3: Psychological Theories on Personality

1. Three Psychological Models of the Person and Theoretical Variations
2. Comprehensive theory must address these questions
3. What is the personality made of?
4. How does the personality work or function?
5. How and why does the personality change?
6. Frameworks
7. Psychoanalytical: homo volens. The irrational person who strives to reduce inner tensions and conflicts accumulated from his/her past which is largely unconscious.
8. Behavioral: homo mechanicus. The rational reactive person whose behavior is determined by the consequences of his/her responses to the immediate environment.
9. Phenomenological: homo creator. The creative thinking person who has free will to choose alternatives, to create meaning in life, and to fulfill his/her own potentialities.
10. Psychoanalytic Theory

• Eros (Oedipus/Electra Complex)
• Unconscious motivation (slip of the pen or tongue)
• Defense mechanism (displacement)

1. Freud’s Basic Assumptions about Human Nature

• Two innate drives, eros and Thanatos; the urge to live and the urge to die
• We are not always aware why we do what we do, unconscious motivation
• Conscious
• Preconscious – a certain part of the unconscious can become easily conscious (memory tracing)
• Unconscious – prime source of personality but mostly inaccessible to our awareness without special efforts

2. Structure of Personality in Psychoanalysis

• Id – (it) the seedbed of our basic instincts that generate the psychic energy (excitations)
• Born with it, but inaccessible
• Transforms the bodily need (hunger, thirst, sex, to psychological tensions
• Ego – (I) not present at birth but evolves out of the id in early infancy
• Dwells on all three levels of consciousness
• Capable of distinguishing what is real and unreal
• Moderator between the id and the external world
• Superego – (above-I) evolves out of ego in early childhood
• Has no direct contact with the external reality
• Makes unrealistic demands
• Strives relentlessly for moral perfection

3. Dynamics of Personality

• Anxiety – the expression of a retreat from danger
• Felt only by the ego when it cannot satisfy the three ‘master’ anxieties
• Reality – danger in the external environment
• Neurotic – dangerous id impulse
• Moral – conflict with the superego
• Defense Mechanisms – unconscious mental strategies used by the ego in an effort to reduce anxiety
• Defend the ego from impending dangers, at least temporarily
• Repression – the generic form of the ego defense, a mental process that forces anxiety-provoking impulses, ideas, feelings and events away from the consciousness; feelings are locked away
• Denial – resistance to accept the painful reality
• Reaction formation – inversion process, transforming the original impulses or feelings to exactly the opposite
• Projection – shifting the burden
• Displacement – repressed impulses are shifted from their true object and expressed toward a less threatening innocent target
• Rationalization – a process of fining acceptable reasons or excuses for unacceptable thoughts or actions
• Fixation – the permanent attachment of libido to a certain stage of psychosexual development
• Regression – reverting to an earlier stage of development
• Sublimation – process of rechanneling the misdirected psychic energy to socio-culturally valued aims

4. Psychosexual Development

• The Oral Stage
• First 12-18 months of life
• Pleasure sensations center around mouth, lips, gums and tongue
• Sucking and biting
• The Anal Stage
• Age one and one half years
• Erotic gratification by defecation and urination
• The Phallic Stage
• 3^rd year of life to about 5-6 years old
• Genital area becomes the main erogenous zone for both sexes
• Male child develops sexual attraction towards mother and wishes to displace father (Oedipus complex)
• Female child hates mother because she brought her into the world without penis and wants to share penis with her father (Electra complex)
• The Latency Stage
• From 5 or 6 to puberty (around 12)
• Sexual development becomes latent due to parent’s suppression and internalized guilt, shame and morality
• The Genital Stage
• Begins age 12
• Adolescent’s libido is now usually cathected in a person of the opposite sex toward genital union

5. Psychopathology and Therapy

• Concerns the ego’s conflict with its three ‘masters’, the id, the external reality and the super ego
• In a healthy person, the ego is both strong and flexible enough
• Main goal of psychoanalytical therapy is to help the patient recall, uncover, and reintegrate unconscious (repressed) materials and deal with them consciously

1. Behaviorism

• Modification of behavior

1. Skinner’s Science of Human Behavior

• Behavior is what an organism is doing, observed by the observer
• Behavior is determined, lawful, and hence, can be predicted and controlled
• Occurrence, change and elimination of behavior are determined by external conditions, rather than internal forces
• Human beings are subjected to the same principles of conditioning as animals are; so testing of animals can be used to predict human behavior
• There is no enduring structure of ‘personality’ or ‘self’

2. Respondent and operant Behavior

• Respondent – either an unconditioned (unlearned) or a conditioned (learned response, elicited by a specific stimulus
• Eye blinking due to light exposure
• Operant – behavior which operates upon the environment to generate consequences

3. The Shaping of Behavior

• Shaping – a procedure of fine-tuning behavior by rewarding ‘successive approximations’ to the desired goal

4. Schedules of Reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement and intermittent reinforcement
• Intermittent reinforcement schedule
• Fixed-interval reinforcement schedule – the organism is reinforced for its correct response at specifically fixed intervals (once every four minutes)
• Variable-interval reinforcement schedule – the organism is reinforced for its correct response at specific but random intervals (4,2,4 minute intervals)
• Fixed-ratio reinforcement schedule – the organism is reinforced for performing a specific fixed number of responses (every 4^th occurrence)
• Variable-ratio reinforcement schedule – the organism is reinforced for performing a specific but random number of responses (2^nd, 5^th and 3^rd occurrence)

5. Maladjusted Behavior and Modification

• Goal is to eliminate or modify the overt behaviors which appear to be dangerous to the individual and/or to others

6. Alternatives to Radical Behaviorism: Social Learning Theories

• Two major perspectives
• An adherence to the traditional view of behaviorism that human behavior is acquired through the principles of learning, rather than caused by unconscious motives or underlying dispositions
• A significant departure from the radical behaviorism, however, that human responses to reinforcement are not automatic but depend on the individual’s subjective interpretation, expectation and evaluation
• Observational learning – (modeling) learning through observation of others in a particular situation without experiencing direct reinforcement
• Walter Mischel’s five major cognitive variables
• Competencies – What can you do?
• Encoding strategies – How do you see it?
• Expectancies – What will happen?
• Subjective values – What is it worth?
• Self-regulatory systems and plans – How can you achieve it?

1. Phenomenological Theory
2. What is Phenomenology?

• Encompasses various humanistic and existential theories on personality
• Phenomenological reduction
• an act of eliminating or suspending all assumptions and beliefs that influence our perception and cognition, so that we can understand the true essence of human consciousness
• Phenomenological perspectives
• The person’s free choice (selectivity) – we choose what we see, think and do
• Subjective meaning and experience as one’s reality – we can reject and change our environment or even create a new one
• Holistic view (Gestalt) of personality in the process of becoming (self-actualization) – personality is therefore not merely determined by instinctual needs or environmental stimuli but a formative process of becoming a whole person

2. Person-Centered Theory of Carl Rogers

• All organisms have an inherent tendency to maintain and enhance their quality of life to the fullest
• Every organism has innate force to grow and actualize its constructive potentials

3. Core Constructs of Personality

• Basic source of personality is the phenomenal field – the inner subjective world experienced by the organism
• The self or self-concept is the most essential construct of personality – the organized, consistent conceptual gestalt composed of perceptions of the characteristic of the ‘I’ or ‘me’ and the perception of the relationship of the ‘I’ or ‘me’ to others and to various aspects of life, together with the values attached to these perceptions

4. Personality Development

• No specific developmental phases or stages are theorized
• Simply put emphasis on the internal force for personality growth, the direction of maturation, and conditions influencing the maturation process.

5. Person-Centered Psychopathology and Therapy

• Primary task is to help the client give up the defenses (denial and distortion of experiences) so that he/she can change and reorganize the self-concept to be consistent with true organismic experiences

6. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs

• Based on the assumption that human beings are motivated by five universal basic needs that can be satisfied in a hierarchical order in terms of priority or relative potency of the needs
• Physiological – food, water, oxygen, etc.
• Safety – security, stability, dependency, freedom of fear, anxiety and chaos, need for structure, order, law, limits, strength in the protector, etc.
• Belongingness and love – intimate feelings of tenderness, affection, caring and sharing ecstasy and responsibility with close persons
• Esteem – the desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, mastery and competency, confidence, independence and freedom and the desire for reputation or prestige, status, dominance, recognition, attention, importance or appreciation
• Self-actualization – desire for self-fulfillment, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially

7. Qualifications about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Although basic needs are biologically based, they are growth-fostering forces that can be stifled by growth-discouraging forces such as regression, fear, pain of growth, ignorance, etc.
• Hierarchy of needs should not be understood as a fixed order
• Basic needs are largely unconscious in the average person

8. Rogers/Maslow and Beyond

• Criticisms
• Too optimistic and simplified view of human nature
• How do we study subjective experience objectively?
• Empirical validity of theoretical constructs