5 - Theories of Personality

Encarnita Raya-Ampil, MD
Personality

Directly observable behavior

o
Accumulated pattern of identification and
introjection
o
Habitual adaptation to internal drive forces and
external environmental forces
o
Development of capacity to delay impulse discharge
and neutralize instinctual energy
Theories of Personality

Developmental stages that should (normally) be successfully

accomplished by every person

Differences
o
Piaget - cognitive development
o
Mahler - development of social relationship
o
Jung - personality organization
o
Bowlby - attachment in early life
o
Adler - individual psychology
Jean Piaget (1898-1980)

Born in Switzerland

Child psychologist

"Genetic epistemologist"
o
Study of the development of abstract thought on
the basis of a biological or innate substrate
o
Progressive development of human knowledge
Organization of Cognition

Cognitive Organization
o
Process of learning and knowing that occurs in a
predictable manner

Adaptation
o
Ability to adjust and interact with the environment
o
Occurs as a result of assimilation and
accommodation

Assimilation
o
People take in new experiences through their own
system of knowledge

Accommodation
o
People adjust to their own system of knowledge to
the reality demands of the environment

Assimilation + Accommodation = Schemata or specific

cognitive structures
o
Sucking, grasping, seeing

Schemata become more complex as infants grow

Later schemata (operations) include imitation, abstraction and

higher intelligence
Cognitive Development Stages

4 major stages leading to the capacity for adult thought

Each stage a prerequisite for the next one

The Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years)

Learn through sensory observation and gain motor control

Initially basic motor reflexes grasping, sucking, eye

movements, orientation to sound, etc.

With use and coordination of basic reflexes, intentionality

develops
Intentionality
o
Ability to act in a goal-directed manner in other
words, to do one thing in order that something else
occurs
o
Understanding of cause and effect

Object permanence
o
Critical achievement
o
Objects have existence independent of child's
involvement with them
o
Differentiate themselves from the world
o
Maintain mental image of an object

Symbolization
o
At 18 mos develop and use mental symbols

Ex. Visual image of ball and mental

symbol of the word "ball"
o
Start of higher conceptual thinking
o
Refers to the understanding that objects continue
to exist even when no longer in view

Piaget's Sensorimotor Period of Cognitive Development

Age

Characteristics

Birth - 2
mos
2-5
mos

Uses inborn motor and sensory reflexes (e.g., grasp) to

interact and accommodate to the external world
Primary circular reaction - coordinates activities of own
body and five senses (e.g., sucking thumb); reality
remains subjective; does not seek stimuli outside visual
field; displays curiosity
Secondary circular reaction - seeks out new stimuli in the
environment; starts both to anticipate consequences of
own behavior and act purposefully to change the
environment; beginning of intentional behavior
Shows preliminary signs of object permanence; has a
vague concept that objects exist apart from itself; plays
peek-a-boo; imitates novel behaviors
Tertiary circular reaction - seeks out new experiences;
produces novel behavior
Symbolic thought: Uses symbolic representations of
events and objects; shows signs of reasoning (e.g., uses
one toy to reach for and get another); attains object
permanence

5-9
mos

9 mos 1 yr
1 yr - 18
mos
18 mos
- 2 yrs

Stage of Preoperational Thought (2 to 7 Years)

More extensive use of symbols and language

Intuitive thinking and reasoning

o
No reasoning or deductive thinking

Ex. Can name but not classify objects

o
No logic, no cause and effect
o
Cannot grasp sameness of object in different
circumstances
o
Things represented by their function

Ex. Bike - "to ride" , hole - "to dig"

More elaborate language and drawings

o
Noun and a verb or a noun and an objective

Cannot deal with moral dilemmas, although they have a sense

of what is good and bad

Sense of immanent justice

o
Punishment for bad deeds is inevitable

Egocentric
o
Unable to modify behavior for someone else

Magical thinking called phenomenalistic causality

o
Events that occur together are thought to cause
one another

Thunder causes lightning and bad

thoughts cause accidents

Animistic thinking
o
Endow physical events and objects with life-like
psychological attributes, such as feelings and
intentions

Semiotic Function
o
Represent something such as an object, an event,
or a conceptual scheme with a signifier, which
serves a representative function

Through language, mental image,

symbolic gesture (e.g., drawing)
Stage of Concrete Operations (7 to 11 Years)

"Operate" and act on the "concrete" and perceivable world of

objects and events

Egocentric thought replaced by operational thought

o
Involves dealing with a wide array of information
outside the child
o
Can now see things from someone else's
perspective

Syllogistic reasoning
o
Can serialize, order and group things into classes
o
Logical conclusion is formed from two premises

Ex. all horses are mammals, all mammals

are warm-blooded, therefore all horses
are warm-blooded
Able to reason and to follow rules and regulations
Develop a moral sense and a code of values
o
Should attain respect for rules and understand
legitimate exception to the rules
Conservation
o
Objects maintain/conserve other characteristics for
recognition despite change in shape
Reversibility
o
Understand the relation between things
o
One thing can turn into another and back again

Ex. ice and water

Pre-operational thinking and problems of conservation

Why do pre-operational children fail problems of

conservation?
Because their thinking is not governed by principles of
reversibility, compensation and identity

Reversibility

The pouring of water into the small container can be reversed

Compensation

A decrease in the length of the new container is compensated

by an increase in its width
Identity

No amount of liquid has been added or taken away

Most important sign that children are still in this stage is that
they have not achieved conservation or reversibility
Understand concepts of quantity
o
Measures of substance, length, number, liquids and
area
Must be able to organize and order occurrences in the real
world
Dealing with the future and its possibilities occurs in the
formal operational stage

Stage of Formal Operations (11- End of Adolescence)

Thinking "operates" in a "formal", highly logical, systematic,

and symbolic manner

Characterized by the ability to think abstractly, to reason

deductively and to define concepts

Can grasp the concept of probabilities

Deal with all possible relations and hypotheses to explain data

and events

Complex language use

Abstract thinking prominent

o
Interest in philosophy, religion, ethics, politics

Reflect on their own and others thinking

o
Self-conscious behavior

Hypotheticodeductive thinking
o
Highest organization of cognition
o
Enables persons to make a hypothesis or
proposition and to test it against reality
o
Deductive reasoning

Moves from the general to the particular

More complicated process than inductive

reasoning (from particular to general)

Stages of Intellectual Development Postulated by Piaget

Age (Yr)

Period

Cognitive Developmental
Characteristics
0 - 1.5 (to 2) Sensorimotor
Divided into six stages,
characterized by:
1. Inborn motor and sensory
reflexes
2. Primary circular reaction
3. Secondary circular reaction
4. Use of familiar means to obtain
ends
5. Tertiary circular reaction and
discovery through active
experimentation
6. Insight and object permanence
2-7
Preoperational Deferred imitation, symbolic play,
graphic imagery (drawing), mental
imagery, and language
7 - 11
Concrete
Conservation of quantity, weight,
operations
volume, length, and time based on
reversibility by inversion or
reciprocity; operations; class
inclusion and seriation
11 - end of
Formal
Combinatorial system, whereby
adolescence operations
variables are isolated and all
possible combinations are
examined; hypothetical-deductive
thinking
* This subperiod is considered by some authors to be a separate
developmental period.
Psychiatric Applications

Separation anxiety in sensorimotor stage

At the preoperational stage

o
Unable to deal with concepts and abstractions
o
Benefit from role-playing proposed medical
procedures and situations than by having them
verbally described in detail

At the stage of formal operations, may appear overly abstract

Adolescent turmoil
o
May result from a normal adolescent's coming to
grips with newly-acquired abilities to deal with the
unlimited possibilities of the surrounding world

Adults under stress may regress cognitively as well as

emotionally
o
Thinking can become preoperational, egocentric
and sometimes animistic
Attachment Theory

John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst (1907-1990)

Normal attachment in infancy crucial to a persons healthy

development
o
Warm, intimate and continuous relationship with
the mother in which both find satisfaction and
enjoyment

Develops gradually
o
Results in an infant's wanting to be with a preferred
person, who is perceived as stronger, wiser, and
able to reduce anxiety or distress

Gives sense of security (secure base)

Quality time between mother-child

o
Essence is proximity

Attachment
o
Emotional tone between children and their
caregivers
o
Evidenced by an infant's seeking and clinging to the
caregiving person

Bonding
o
Mother's feelings for her infant
o
Facilitated by skin, voice, eye contact and even
representational models of babies in utero

Attachment Theory: Ethological Studies

Darwinian evolutionary basis for attachment behavior

o
Behavior ensures that adults protect their young
o
Instinctual ; an inborn tendency

Imprinting
o
Certain stimuli elicit innate behavior patterns
during first few hours of an animals behavioral
development
Phases of Attachment
1. Preattachment (birth - 8 or 12 weeks)
o
Orient by following eyes over 180 degrees range,
o
Turn towards mothers voice
2. Attachment in the making (8-12 weeks to 6 months)
o
Attachment to one or more persons in environment
3. Clear-cut attachment (6 - 24 months)
o
Infants cry and show other signs of distress when
separated from caretaker
4. 4th Stage (25 months)
o
Mother seen as independent figure
o
More complex relationship
Margaret Mahlers Stages of Development

Object (Freud)
o
That which will satisfy a need
o
Significant person or thing that is the object or
target of another's feelings or drives

Object relations
o
Interpersonal relations
o
Inner residues of past relationships that shape an
individuals current interactions with people
Object Relations Theorists

Investigate early formation and differentiation of

psychological structures and how these inner structures are
manifested in interpersonal situations

Early life relationship influence psyche of individuals and

relationships with others
Object Relations

Inner experience and representation not obvious to observer

May not be an accurate reflection of the actual situation but

represents the subject's experience of relations with the
object and expresses internal psychic world of the subject
Human personality

Begins in a state of psychological fusion with another human

being and works through to a gradual psychological process of
separation

Unfinished crises and residues of earlier states influence

relationships over a lifetime
Stages of Development: Normal Autism (0 - 1 month)

Infant sleeping most of the time, with primitive orientation

Goal is to achieve homeostatic equilibrium of the organism

outside the womb

Stage of undifferentiation
o
Cannot differentiate between self and mother
(fusion and oneness)
o
Objectless
o
Absolute primary narcissism
Stages of Development: Normal Symbiosis (1-5 months)

Infant has slight awareness of the need-satisfying object

(Repeated experience of satisfaction from outside self)

Hallucinatory or delusional omnipotent fusion with the

representation of the mother (dual unity)

Gradually differentiates between pain and pleasure

Primitive memory islands

"Preobject", " I " not yet differentiated from the "not-I"

Good mothering
o
Increased sensory awareness of environment
o
Smiling

Stages of Development: Separation and Individuation

Separation
o
Intrapsychic sense of separateness from the mother

Individuation
o
" I AM" ; early sense of being, assumes own
characteristics
o
Evolution of intrapsychic autonomy

Identity
o
"WHO I AM"
Separation and Individuation: Differentiation and Body Image

5-10 months

Baby distances body slightly

o
Motor skills of sliding: playing close to mother
o
Checks back on mother as point of orientation
(differentiation)

Compares mother to non-mother

Hatching
o
Shift from inward-directed attention to
outward-directed attention and alertness
Separation and Individuation: Practicing (10-16 months)

Ability to move physically away from mother

(crawling, standing up)

Absorbed in own ventures but periodic return for emotional

refueling

Sense of omnipotence

Negativistic phase (NO period)

o
Fear of reengulfment threatens barely started
differentiation
Separation and Individuation: Rapprochement (16-24 mos)

Increased awareness of separateness

Separation anxiety
o
Need to seek closeness with mother

Toddler wants to share each newly acquired skill and

experience with mother

Feel small and separate

o
Blows to omnipotence
o
Clearer representation of self and non-self

Crisis
o
Protection of autonomy and increased need for
mother (ambivalence)
o
Fights with mother
o
Alteration between autonomy and closeness
o
Anxious reaction to strangers, indecisiveness
(conflicting wishes), clinging to mother
o
Vulnerable self esteem
o
Important: emotional availability of mother
Separation and Individuation: Constancy and Individuality

24-36 months

Depends on internalization of positive inner image of mother

that supplies comfort to child in the mother's physical
absence

Complex cognitive functions

Superego precursors

Ego development
o
Reality principle replaces pleasure principle
o
Reality testing

Negativism needed for continued development of sense of

identity
Pathology

Autistic and Symbiotic phase

o
Psychosis - no internalization of mother and unable
to differentiate serf from fusion with the part
object

Separation - lndividuation phase (practicing/rapprochement)

o
Borderline and narcissistic disorders

Omnipotence splitting grandiosity

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

Swiss psychiatrist

Therapeutic approach
o
Adequate adaptation to reality with fulfillment of
creative potentialities
o
Individuation as ultimate goal

Develop unique sense of own identity

Freud's "unconscious" "collective unconscious"

o
All common, shared mythological and symbolic past
o
Includes archetypes

Archetypes
o
Representational images and configurations with
universal symbolic meanings
o
Contribute to complexes

Feeling-toned ideas that develop as a

result of personal experience interacting
with archetypal imagery
Based on real interaction and
expectations (and the conflict
that may arise )
Personality Organization

Introversion
o
Focus on inner world of thoughts, intuitions,
emotions, sensations

Extroversion
o
More oriented to the outer world, other
persons and material goods

Mixture of both

Persona
o
Mask covering the personality
o
Face that person presents to the outside world
o
If fixed, real person hidden

Anima and Animus

o
Unconscious traits
Anima (men)
o
Undeveloped femininity
Animus (women)
o
Undeveloped masculinity

Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

Believed in aggression as important determinant of behavior

o
"Masculine protest"

Striving for power as masculine trait

Tendency to move from passive feminine

role to active masculine rote
Individual Psychology

Inferiority complex
o
Sense of inadequacy and weakness

Universal and inborn

Oedipal longings
o
Organ inferiority

Self-esteem compromised by physical

defect

Birth order influence in development, character and lifestyle

o
First born

reacts with anger to birth of siblings

Struggles against giving up position

o
Second born

Constantly strive to compete with

firstborn
Therapeutic Approach

Encouragement to overcome inferiority

Consistent human relatedness

Develop greater sense of their own dignity and worth

Renewed appreciation of their abilities and strength