Chapter 1: FORCES IN THEORIES OF PERSONALITY Theorists’ Personalities & Their Theories of Personality

Psychology of Science
FIRST FORCE: Psychoanalytic Theories • The empirical study of scientific thought and behavior
SECOND FORCE: Behavioral Theories (including theory construction) of the scientist
THIRD FORCE: Humanistic/Existential Theories • The personalities and psychology of different theorists
FOURTH FORCE: Trait Theories influence the kinds of theories that they develop!

What Is Personality? What Makes a Theory Useful: Criteria for Evaluating a

• Word stems from “persona” Theory
• Latin for “mask” • Generates Research
• Personality Defined: • Is Falsifiable (Verifiable)
• A pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique • Organizes Known Data – direction on what to follow
characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to • Guides Action (Practical) – ex. therapy
a person’s behavior. • Is Internally Consistent – scope & limitation is defined,
operational definition
Traits • Is Parsimonious – simpler theory is preferred
• Consistency of behavior over time
• Individual differences in behavior Dimensions for a Concept of Humanity
• Stability across situations • Determinism v. Free Choice
• Makes you unique and common at the same time! • Pessimism v. Optimism
• Pattern is different for each individual. • Causality v. Teleology – past experiences vs. future goals
• Conscious v. Unconscious Determinants of Behavior
Characteristics • Biological v. Social Influences on Personality
– Unique qualities (e.g., temperament, physique, and • Uniqueness v. Similarities
intelligence)
Research in Personality Theory
Theory • Must Generate Research
• A set of related assumptions that allows scientists to use • Theory gives meaning to data
logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable hypotheses. • Data comes from experimental research designed to test
• tools used to generate research and organize observations, hypothesis generated by the theory
but neither “truth” nor “fact” • Systematic observations
• do not deal with “oughts” and “shoulds.” (Philosophy) • Predictions are consistent and accurate
• deals with broad sets of if-then statements
Two Empirical Criteria for Instruments
Theory and Its Relatives Reliability
• Philosophy • Consistency of Measurement
– Broader than theory Validity
• Speculation • Construct Validity
–Must be tied to empirical data and science • Convergent
• Hypothesis • Divergent
– Specific guess that can be tested using scientific method • Discriminant
• Taxonomy • Predictive Validity
– Classification according to natural relationships

Ways of looking at Psychology

• Essentialist - properties are fixed at birth (innate potential)
• Socialization - humans are not blank slates but rather they
learn ‘properties’ through the environment (particularly from
parents).
• Positivist - Examines causes that influence outcome (cause-
and effect of variables)
• Social Constructionist - aspects of humanity are created
through social interactions through time.

Why Different Theories?

• Different Personal Backgrounds
– Childhood experiences
– Interpersonal relationships
• Different Philosophical Orientations
• Unique Ways of Looking at the World
• Data Chosen to Observe is Different
CHAPTER 2: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY: SIGMUND FREUD
Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
• What Made This Theory Interesting?
– Cornerstones: Sex and Aggression
– Spread by a dedicated group
Biography of Freud
• Born in Freiberg Moravia (now the Czech Republic) in 1856
• Spent most of life (80 years) in Vienna Austria
• Mother’s favorite child
• Was the eldest son of eight
• Had unconscious death wish for his brother
• Studied Medicine, specializing in psychiatry; interested in
science
• Studies on Hysteria – characterized by paralysis / Improper
functioning of parts (1895) aka “wandering womb”
• Abandoned seduction theory in 1897 and replaced it with
Oedipus Complex
• In 1900 wrote Interpretation of Dreams
• After 1900 developed international circle of followers
(Adler, Jung, and others)
• 1903, Ended friendship with Adler, Jung, and others
• Was driven out of Austria by Nazis in 1938
• Died in London in 1939
Level of Mental Life
Unconscious
– Beyond awareness
• Includes drives, urges, or instincts
• Is known only indirectly
• Can become conscious by dreams, slip of tongue, (primary
and final censor); hidden by Defense Mechanisms
• Emphasis of Freud’s theory!
Two sources of unconscious processes
• Repression-blocking of anxiety filled experiences
(Punishment and suppression)
• Phylogenetic Endowment-inherited experiences that lie
beyond an individual's personal experience.
Preconscious
– Not in conscious awareness, but can be
– Content may come down from conscious or up from
unconscious
– Contains drives, urges, instincts that motivate most
of our thinking and behaviors.
Conscious
– Mental life that is directly available, plays a minor
role
– Two sources:
>Perceptual conscious system - From either the
perception of external stimuli (using our sense
organs)
>Unconscious & Preconscious images after they
have evaded censorship.
Provinces of the Mind
• The Id
– Pleasure Principle-Seeks constant and immediate
satisfaction of instinctual needs
– Primary Process
– Is Amoral
• The Ego
– The Reality Principle
– The executive branch of personality.
– responsible for reconciling the unrealistic demands
of both the id and the superego with the demands of
the real world
– Utilizes Defense Mechanisms to reduce anxiety
– Secondary Process
• The Superego
– The Idealistic Principle-What we should
do/Moralistic
– Two Subsystems:
• Conscience - results from punishment for
improper behavior and tells us “What we should not do”;
product: guilt
• Ego-Ideal - stems from rewards for socially acceptable
behavior and tells us “What we should do”
product: inferiority feelings
Dynamics of Personality
• People are motivated to seek pleasure and reduce tension
and anxiety
• The term dynamics of personality refers to those forces
that motivate people
Drives
– Libido or Sex Drive (pleasure can be gained through the
erogenous zones.
• Eros/sex can manifest to Narcissism or Love
• Sadism - sexual pleasure through inflicting pain to others.
• Masochism - Inflicting pain to self
Thanatos or Aggression/Destructive Drive - aims to return
the person to an inorganic state or death, but it is ordinarily
directed against other people and is called aggression.
• Can take a number of forms, such as teasing, gossip,
sarcasm, humiliation, humor, and the enjoyment of other
people’s suffering.
• Impetus – a source, an aim: object that determines the
amount of force it exerts
Anxiety - it is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied
by a physical sensation that warns the person against
impending danger.
- The unpleasantness is often vague and hard to
pinpoint, but the anxiety itself is always felt.
- Only the Ego can feel or produce it.
– Neurotic Anxiety - apprehension about an unknown danger
and stems from the ego's relation with the id
– Ex. Feeling anxious towards teachers
Moral Anxiety - similar to guilt and results from the ego's
relation with the superego
– Ex. Moral anxiety, for example, would result from sexual
temptations if a child believes that yielding to the temptation
would be morally wrong.
Realistic Anxiety - similar to fear and is produced by the
ego's relation with the real world
– Ex. Riding a fast Antipolo-bound jeepney.
– However, realistic anxiety is different from fear in that it
does not involve a specific fearful object.
Defense Mechanisms
• Repression - Involves forcing unwanted, anxiety loaded
experiences into the unconscious. Most basic of all because it
is an active process in the rest.
• Reaction Formation - marked by the repression of
one impulse and the ostentatious expression of its
exact opposite.
– Ex. a teen-age boy may have deep-seated unconscious
sexual feelings for a teacher, but on the surface level he
expresses exaggerated hatred toward that teacher.
• Displacement - The redirecting of unacceptable urges
and feelings onto people and objects to disguise or conceal
their true nature.
– Ex. A woman greatly dislikes her boss but takes
her anger out on her husband and children.
• Fixation - Fixations develop when psychic energy is
blocked at one stage of development, making
psychological change difficult.
– Smoking
• Regression - Regressions take place when a person
reverts to earlier, more infantile modes of behavior.
• Projection - Is seeing in others those unacceptable
feelings or behaviors that actually reside in one's own
unconscious.
– When carried to extreme, projection can become paranoia,
which is characterized by delusions of persecution.
• Introjection - Introjection involves the incorporation of
positive qualities of another person to reduce feelings of
inadequacy.
– Ex. Hero worship might be a good example
• Sublimation - Contributes to the welfare of society. They
involve elevating the aim of the sexual instinct to a higher
level and are manifested in cultural accomplishments, such
as art, music, and other socially beneficial activities.
In Summary…
All defense mechanisms are used to protect the Ego against
anxiety.
• The aggressive tendency is present in everyone and is the
explanation for wars, atrocities, and religious persecution.
Stages of Development
• Infantile Period (Birth-5): most crucial part of personality
formation
– Oral Phase - infant is primarily motivated to receive
pleasure through the mouth. Weaning (other source of
feeding other than the mother’s) is the principal source of
anxiety during this stage.
– Anal Phase - second year of life, when toilet training is the
child's chief source of frustration.
>If parents use punitive training methods, a child may
develop the anal triad of orderliness, stinginess, and
obstinacy (stubborn), all of which mark the anal character.
However, most children escape the detrimental effects of
this stage.
– Phallic Phase: Genitals become the primary source of
pleasure
• Male Oedipus Complex - sexual feelings for one parent
and hostile feelings for the other
– Castration Complex - castration anxiety or fear of losing the
penis, breaks up the male Oedipus complex and results in a
well-formed male superego
• Female Oedipus Complex (Electra) - Same
– Penis Envy - a situation that leads to only a gradual and
incomplete shattering of the female Oedipus complex and a
weaker, more flexible female superego
• Latency Period (5-puberty) - Freud believed that
psychosexual development goes through a latency stage—
from about age 5 years until puberty—in which the sexual
instinct is partially suppressed.
• Genital Period (puberty-adulthood) - The genital period
begins with puberty when adolescents experience a
reawakening of the genital aim of Eros, and it continues
throughout adulthood. (The desire to be with a loved one)
• Maturity - the ego would be in control of the id and
superego and in which consciousness would play a more
important role in behavior.
- Happens when you passed the earlier dev. stages in
an ideal manner.
Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Free Association (patients are required to say whatever
comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant or distasteful)
– Transference = patient transfers childhood sexual or
aggressive feelings onto the therapist and away from
symptom formation
– Resistance = unconscious blocking of progress of the
patient. Can be a sign that the treatment is advancing.
Critique of Freud • Dream Analysis
• Did Freud Understand Women? – Manifest (conscious) and latent (unconscious) content
• Was Freud a Scientist? • Freudian or Unconscious Slips (Parapraxes)
– Theories are difficult to test
– Generated considerable research
– Difficult to falsify
– Very loose organizational framework
– Not a good guide to solve practical problems
– Internally consistent theory
– Obviously, not parsimonious!

Freud’s Concept of Humanity

• Deterministic and Pessimistic
• Causality (past) over Teleology (future goals)
• Unconscious over Conscious
• Biology over Culture
• Equal emphasis on Uniqueness and Similarity
 CHAPTER 3: ALFRED ADLER
 Born in Vienna Austria in 1870
 Second son of middle-class Jewish parents
 He suffered Rickets which prevented him to walk until 4
years of age
 His health problems lead him to pursue medicine and
received his medical degree in 1895
 Published Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical
Compensation in 1907
 Charter member of Freud’s organization
 Rivalry with Freud led to his departure from the group
 Founded the Society for Individual Psychology
 Died in Scotland in 1937
 Alfred Adler was an original member of Freud’s
psychoanalytic group
 Broke from Freud and advocated a theory of personality
and an approach to psychotherapy that were nearly the
exact opposite to those of Freud
 Humans either strive for success or strive for superiority
Adler’s Ideas Differed from Freud in Four Ways
 People are motivated by social influences
 People are responsible for who they are
 Behavior shaped by view of future
 Consciousness is important
Adler: Idealistic, optimistic, and socially rooted
Freud: Deterministic, pessimistic, biologically rooted
Adlerian Theory
Tenets of Individual Psychology
1. The sole dynamic force behind all our actions, is the
striving for either success or superiority.
a. The Final Goal – The final goal of success or
superiority toward which all people strive unifies
personality and makes all behavior meaningful
 People are not always conscious of their final goal, even
though they may be aware of their immediate subgoals
 Inferiority (being small and incomplete) of infants lead
them to have fictional goal (to be big, strong, complete)
 Only through feelings of Inferiority we can clearly see
our fictional goal
 Neglected/pampered children will lead to their goal
remaining unconscious
 Loved and secured children can lead to their goal to
become conscious
b. The Striving Force as Compensation
 Because people are “blessed” to be born with small,
inferior bodies, they feel inferior and attempt to
overcome these feelings through their natural tendency
to move toward completion
 As a creation of the individual, striving force can take
one of two courses-personal gain or community benefit.
 At birth, it exists as potentiality not actuality.
c. Striving for Personality Superiority
 Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal
superiority with little concern for other people
- Sometimes, they cloak themselves with interest for
others, but their basic motivation is personal benefit
d. Striving for Success
 In contrast, psychologically healthy people strive for the
success of all humanity, but they do so without losing
their personal identity
Social progress > personal credit
Need for completion – Inferiority – Goal >
Success/Superiority
Adler: Meanings aren’t determined by situations, but we
determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations
2. Subjective Perceptions - People’s subjective view of
the world-not reality-shapes their behavior
a. Fictionalism – Fictions are people’s beliefs and
expectation of the future
- Fictions guide behavior because people act as if
these fictions are true
- “Men are superior to women”
- “What goes around comes around”
b. Physical Inferiorities – all humans are “blessed”
with organ inferiorities and that these small, inferior
organs stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority
and move people toward perfection or completion
3. Unity of Personality – Adler believed that all of our
behaviors are directed toward a single purpose and
that the entire personality functions in a self-
consistent manner
a. Organ Dialect – People sometimes use a physical
disorder to express style of life, a condition that
Adler called organ dialect
 A man with Rheumatoid arthritis
 A boy who wets his bed
b. Conscious and Unconscious – Conscious and
unconscious processes are unified and operate to
achieve a single goal. The part of our goal that isn’t
clearly understood is unconscious; to the extent that
we comprehend our goal is conscious.
4. Social Interest – Human behavior has value to the
extent that it is motivated by social interest, that is,
by a feeling of oneness with all of humanity
 Social interest binds the human species together
 Our inferiorities as individuals lead us to this binding
together.
a. Origins of Social Interest – Although social interest
exists as potentiality in all people, it must be
fostered in a social environment
 Mothers and fathers have crucial roles in furthering
the social interest of their children
 Parent/child relationship is so strong that it negates
the effects of heredity
Gemeinschaft – social relations between individuals, based
on close personal and family ties
b. Importance of Social Interest – Without social interest,
societies could not exist, because individuals could not
protect themselves from danger
> Thus, an infant’s helplessness predisposes it toward a
nurturing person
> “The sole criterion of human values,” and the “barometer
of normality”
> The worthiness of all one’s actions must be viewed by these
standards
5. Style of Life – The self-consistent personality structure
develops into a person’s style of life
> It is a product of the interaction of heredity, environment,
goal of success, social interest, and creative power
> Flavor of person’s life including goals, self-concept,
attitudes, feelings for others
> Style of life is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of age
> Healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior while
unhealthy individuals are inflexible
6. Creative Power – our ability to create our own style of life
> Movement towards a specific goal (direction)
> Heredity and environment provide the building materials
for our style of life, but he insisted that ultimately style of life
is shaped by our creative power; that is by our ability to feely
choose which building materials to use and how to use them
> We have considerable ability to freely choose our actions
and personality
Abnormal Development
 Creative power is not limited to healthy people;
unhealthy individuals also create their own personalities
 The most important factor in abnormal development is
underdeveloped social interest. People with useless style
of life tend to (1) set their goals too high, (2) live in their
own private world, and (3) have a rigid and dogmatic
style of life.
External Factors in Maladjustment
Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies – Several physical defects
do not by themselves cause abnormal development, but they
Pampered Style of Life – Children who see themselves as
being pampered develop low levels of social interest and
continue to have an overriding drive to establish a
permanent parasitic relationship with their mother or a
mother substitute
Neglected Style of Life – Children who feel neglected often
use these feelings as building material for a useless style of
life one characterized by distrust of other people
Safeguarding Tendencies – Both normal and neurotic people
protect their fragile self-esteem. These safeguarding
techniques maintain a neurotic status quo and protect a
person from public disgrace. This is largely conscious.
1. Excuses – The most common safeguarding tendency
is excuses which frequently take the form of “Yes,
but” or “If only”. By making excuses for their
shortcomings, people can preserve their inflated
sense of personal worth.
 “Yes, I would like to go to college, but my parents
couldn’t pay for it.”
2. Aggression – People often safeguard a weak self-
esteem by behaving aggressively toward themselves
or others. Safeguarding through aggression may
take the form of:
a. Depreciation – Undervalue other’s achievements
and overvalue yours
b. Accusation – Blaming others for one’s failures
c. Self-accusation – guilt and self-torture. Blaming
yourself.
3. Withdrawal – People with a neurotic style of life
often try to escape from life’s problems by running
away from them; that is by withdrawal or
safeguarding through maintaining distance. People
can withdraw psychologically by:
A. Moving backward – Moving back to a more secured
period of life
B. Standing still – not moving to any direction
C. Hesitating - Procrastinating to waste time (“It’s too
late now”)
D. Constructing obstacles – creating own obstacles to
show you can knock it down
Masculine Protest – Both mean and women sometimes
overemphasize the desirability od being manly, a condition
Adler called the masculine protest. The frequently found
inferior status of women isn’t based on physiology but on
historical developments and social learning
Family constellation - Adler believed that people’s
perception of how they fit into their family is related to their
style of life
Firstborns are likely to have strong feelings of power and
superiority, to be overprotective, and to have more than
their share of anxiety
Second born (like Adler) are likely to have strong social
interest, provided they do not get trapped trying to
may contribute to it by generating subjective and overcome their older sibling
exaggerated feelings of inferiority
Youngest children are likely to be pampered and to lack
independence, whereas only children may have even less
social interest and tend to expect others to take care of them

Applications of Individual Psychology

Early Recollections – A more reliable method of determining
style of life is to ask people for their earliest recollections
(ERs)
- Adler believed that ERs aren’t chance memories but
templates on which people project their current
style of life
- ERs need not be accurate accounts of early events;
they have psychological importance because they
reflect our current view of the world

Dreams – Adler believed that dreams could provide clues to

solving future problems. However, dreams are disguised to
deceive the dreamer and usually require interpretation by
another person

Psychotherapy – The goal of Adlerian therapy is to create a

relationship between therapist and patient that fosters social
interest. To ensure that the patient’s social interest will
eventually generalize to other relationships, the therapist
adopts both a maternal and a paternal role

Adler’s Theory Is
- High on generating research, organizing known data,
and guiding action
- Moderate on Parsimony (least complex explanation
for an observation)
- Low on verification, falsification, and Internal
Consistency

Concept of Humanity
 Very high on free choice and optimism
 High on social factors and uniqueness
 Average on unconscious influences
 Very low on causality