C14: Personality

• Personality is ones characteristics and patterns of thinking, feeling and acting
• Freud was a determinist that created the psychosexual stages of development
• Freud believes every person has an ego, superego and id
• Free Association is a method of exploring the unconscious where a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind despite how embarrassing
• Psychoanalysis is Freud's theory of personality, attributing thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
• Psychoanalysis techniques are used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
• Unconscious is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories
• Contemporary psychologists process information that we are unaware of
• id is an unconscious part of the mind that strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
• The id operates on the "pleasure principle" and demands immediate gratification
• The ego functions as an "executive" part of personality and mediates the demands of id and superego
• Ego operates on the "reality principle" and satisfies the id's desires in ways
• The superego provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations and is the last to develop in a person
• Superego operates on the "moral principle"
• Psychosexual Stages of Development are childhood stages of development during which the id's pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
• The Oral stage happens from 0-18 months; pleasure is centered on the mouth with sucking, biting and chewing
• The Anal stage happens from 18-36 months; pleasure is focused on bowel and bladder elimination and coping with demands for control
• Along the Anal stage, anal retention and anal expulsive are present
• Anal retention is when a person who pays such attention to detail it becomes an obsession and may be an annoyance to others
• Anal expulsive is when pleasure obtained by expelling feces and sadistic instinct is linked to destruction of the object
• The Phallic stage happens from 3-6 years; pleasure zone is genitals and coping with incestuous sexual feelings
• The Latency stage happens from 6 to puberty and dormant sexual feelings are present
• The Genital stage happens from puberty on and focuses on the maturation of sexual interests
• Oedipus complex (Penis envy) is a boy's sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealous and hatred for the rival father
• Identification is the process in which children incorporate their parents' values into their developing superegos
• Fixation is a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage where conflicts are unresolved
• Defense mechanisms are the ego's protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
• Repression is the banishment of anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings and memories from consciousness and is the root of all defense mechanisms
• Regression is when an individual is led and faced with anxiety to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage
• Reaction formation is what causes the ego to unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites (eg. feelings of purity while suffering anxiety from unconscious feelings about sex)
• Projection leads people to disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
• Rationalization offers self-justifying explanations in place of real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one's actions
• Displacement is the shift of sexual/aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable/less threatening object/persons (redirection of anger toward a safer outlet)
• Denial is the refusal to accept reality/fact, acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling didn't exist
• Sublimation is the channel of impulses into acceptable behavior (usually uses humor)
• Compensation is the process of psychologically counterbalancing perceived weakness by emphasizing strength in other areas
• The Rorschach Inkblot Test is a widely used projective test with a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach
• The Rorschach Inkblot Test seeks to identify people's inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
• Alfred Adler believed in childhood tensions were social in nature and not sexual
• Alfred Adler believed that a child struggles with inferiority complex during growth and will strive for superiority and power; also relates to birth-order and sibling rivalry