THEORIES OF PERSONALITY REVIEWER
Prepared by: Alethea Patricia L. Del Castillo, MA, RPm
Reference: Feist, Feist & Roberts (2013). Theories of
Personality (Eight Edition) New York: McGraw-Hill.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY THEORY
I. What Is Personality?
- Latin word: persona = the mask people wear
or the role they play in life. (But its more than
just a façade)
- a pattern of relatively permanent traits and
unique characteristics that give both
consistency and individuality to human
behavior
- Traits: it may be unique, common to some
group, or shared by the entire species BUT the
pattern is different for each individual
(consistency & stability of behavior over time)
- Characteristics: unique qualities of an
individual that include such attributes as
temperament, physique and intelligence
II. What is a Theory?
A. Theory Defined
- Set of related assumptions that allows scientists
to use logical deductive reasoning to
formulate testable hypotheses
- Set: A single assumption can never fill all the
requirements of a good theory
- Related: Isolated assumptions can neither
generate meaningful hypotheses nor possess
internal consistency
- Assumptions: not proven facts but accepted
as if they were true
- Logical Deductive Reasoning: to deduce a
clearly stated hypothesis
- Testable: must suggest the possibility that
scientists
B. Why Different Theories?
- Theories are built not on proven facts but on
assumptions (assumed to be true) that are
subject to individual interpretations
- Reflection of their personal background, their
philosophical orientation, and the data they
chose to observe
- Its usefulness depends on its ability to
generate research and to explain research
data and other observations
C. What Makes a Theory Useful?
- It generates a number of hypotheses that can
be investigated through research, thus
yielding research data
- Organizes research data into a meaningful
structure and provides explanation for the
results
- Generates Research:
o A useful theory will stimulate both
descriptive research and hypothesis
testing.
o Descriptive research provides a
framework for an evolving theory
whereas hypothesis testing expands
our knowledge of a scientific discipline.
- Is Falsifiable:
o It must generate research that can
either confirm or disconfirm its major
tenets.
o A negative result will contradict the
theory and force the theorist to either
discard it or modify it
o A theory that can explain everything
explains nothing
- Organizes Data:
o It should be able to fit current research
data into an intelligible framework and
to integrate new information into its
structure.
- Guides Action:
o practical tools that guide a road map
for making day-to-day decisions.
o Example: what kind of psychotherapy
technique is going to be used to the
client?
- Is Internally consistent:
o includes operational definitions that
define concepts in terms of specific
operations to be carried out by the
observer. (logically compatible)
- Is Parsimonious:
o When two theories are equal on the
first five criteria, the simpler one is
preferred. (straightforward theories)
III. Dimensions for a Concept of Humanity
- Determinism versus Free choice
o Are people’s behaviors determined by
forces over which they have no control
or can people choose to be what they
wish to be?
- Pessimism versus Optimism
o Are people doomed to live miserable
or can they change and grow into
psychologically healthy and fully
functioning individual?
- Causality versus Teleology
o Causality holds that behavior is a
function of the past experiences
o Teleology is the explanation of
behavior in terms of future goals or
purposes
- Conscious versus Unconscious determinants of
behavior
 o Are they aware of what and why they
are doing it? Or do unconscious forces
impinge on them?
- Biological versus Social Influences on
personality
o Are people creatures of biology? Or
are they shaped largely by their social
relationships?
- Uniqueness versus similarities among people
o Is the salient feature of people their
individuality or is it their common
characteristics?
CHAPTER 2: PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
(PSYCHOANALYSIS)
I. Biography of Sigmund Freud
- Sisigmund (Sigmund) Freud
- Born in the Czech Republic in 1856 and died
(of cancer) in London in 1939, Freud spent
nearly 80 years of his life in Vienna.
- Freud was the first born of his father and
mother, although his father already had 2
grown sons
- He was the favorite of his mother over the 7
other siblings (he was not close to any of
them)
- His relationship with his father appears to be
cold if not occasionally hostile
- When he was 1 ½ year old, his mother gave
birth to Julius (who died at 6 months) Freud
developed hostility to his brother and
unconsciously wished him dead. He had
carried into adulthood the guilt, he thought he
was the cause of his death
- A physician who never intended to practice
general medicine, Freud was intensely curious
about human nature.
- Early in his professional career, Freud believed
that hysteria was a result of being seduced
during childhood by a sexually mature person,
often a parent or other relative. But in 1897,
he abandoned his seduction theory and
replaced it with his notion of the Oedipus
complex.
- Some scholars have contended that Freud's
decision to abandon the seduction theory in
favor of the Oedipus complex was a major
error and influenced a generation of
psychotherapists to interpret patients' reports
of early sexual abuse as merely childhood
fantasies.
- He fell in love with Martha Bernays and marry
her in 1886. They had 6 children. The youngest
is Anna Freud who held a special place in his
heart
- He was mentored by Jean-Martin Charcot
(hypnotic technique for treating hysteria) and
Josef Breuer (catharsis)
- He then gradually discovered free association
technique
- Studies of Hysteria: after its publication, Freud
and Breuer had a professional disagreement
and became estranged
- Interpretation of Dreams: contains many of
Freud’s own dreams. Soon after his publication
his friendship with Fliess began to cool
- Freud and Jung interpreted each other’s
dreams that eventually led to the end of their
relationship
II. Levels of Mental Life (Topographic Model)
A. Unconscious
- The unconscious consists of drives and instincts
that are beyond awareness, yet they motivate
many of our behaviors.
- Unconscious drives can become conscious
only in disguised or distorted form, such as
dream images, slips of the tongue, or neurotic
symptoms.
- Unconscious processes originate from two
sources: (1) repression, or the blocking out of
anxiety-filled experiences and (2)
phylogenetic endowment, or inherited
experiences that lie beyond an individual's
personal experience. (only as last resort in
explaining behavior)
- The unconscious mind of one person can
communicate with the unconscious of
another without either person being aware of
the process
- Unconscious forces constantly strive to
become conscious
B. Preconscious
- Contains images that are not in awareness but
that can become conscious either quite easily
or with some level of difficulty.
- Experiences that are forgotten are in the
preconscious.
- 2 sources:
o Conscious perception: when the focus
of attention shifts to another idea
(usually free from anxiety)
o Unconscious: ideas can slip past the
vigilant censor and enter into the
preconscious in a disguised form
C. Conscious
- Only level of mental life directly available to
us, but it plays a relatively minor role in
Freudian theory.
- Conscious ideas stem from either the
perception of external stimuli; that is, our
perceptual conscious system, or from
 unconscious and preconscious images after
they have evaded censorship.
III. Provinces of the Mind (Structural Model)
A. The Id (das Es)
- completely unconscious
- serves the pleasure principle and seeks
constant and immediate satisfaction of
instinctual needs
- not altered by the passage of time or by
experiences of the person.
- It is illogical and entertain incompatible ideas
- Primary process (basic drives)
B. The Ego (das Ich)
- secondary process, is governed by the reality
principle;
- partly conscious, preconscious and
unconscious
- responsible for reconciling the unrealistic
demands of both the id and the superego
with the demands of the real world. (decision-
making branch)
- It becomes anxious and would use defense
mechanisms as protect itself
- It has no energy of its own but borrows from id
- Psychologically healthy people have a well-
developed ego.
C. The Superego (Uber Ich)
- serves the idealistic principle, has two
subsystems—the conscience and the ego-
ideal
- The conscience results from punishment for
improper behavior (guilt),
- whereas the ego-ideal stems from rewards for
socially acceptable behavior (inferiority
feelings – when the ego fails to meet the
standards of perfection)
- Neither the id nor the superego is in contact
with reality
- Development: Age 5 to 6
IV. Dynamics of Personality
The term dynamics of personality refers to
those forces that motivate people. The concept
includes both instincts and anxiety.
A. Drives (instinct or impulse) – a stimulus within
an individual
- They cannot be avoided through flight
response
- Every basic drive is characterized by:
o Impetus – amt. of force it exerts
o Source – region of the body in tension
o Aim – seek pleasure by removing
tension
o Object – person or thing where the aim
is satisfied
- 2 primary instincts—sex (Eros) and aggression
(Thanatos, or the destructive instinct).
- Sex (libido)
o Aim: to seek pleasure, through the
erogenous zones = mouth, anus, and
genitals.
o Object: any person or thing that brings
sexual pleasure.
o For example, narcissism, love, sadism,
and masochism all possess large
components of the sexual drive even
though they may appear to be
nonsexual.
o All infants possess primary narcissism, or
self-centeredness, but the secondary
narcissism (moderate degree of self-
love) of adolescence and adulthood is
not universal.
o Sadism, which is the reception of
sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on
another, and
o Masochism, which is the reception of
sexual pleasure from painful
experiences, satisfies both sexual and
aggressive drives.
o If carried to an extreme, sadism and
masochism is considered a sexual
perversion but in moderation is a
common need
- Aggression
o The destructive instinct aims to return
the person to an inorganic state, but it
is ordinarily directed against other
people and is called aggression.
o It can take a number of form like
teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humiliation,
humor & enjoyment of other people’s
suffering
o Commandments such as “Love thy
neighbor as thyself” is a way of
inhibiting the strong drive to inflict pain
to others. These are reaction
formations
B. Anxiety
- Only the ego feels anxiety, but the id,
superego, and outside world can each be a
source of anxiety.
- Neurotic anxiety is apprehension about an
unknown danger and stems from the ego's
relation with the id;
- Moral anxiety is similar to guilt and results from
the ego's relation with the superego; and
- Realistic anxiety is similar to fear and is
produced by the ego's relation with the real
world.
V. Defense Mechanisms
A. Repression
 - Forcing unwanted, anxiety-loaded
experiences into the unconscious.
- It is the most basic of all defense mechanisms
because it is an active process in each of the
others.
- Many repressed experiences remain
unconscious for a lifetime but others become
conscious in a disguised form or in an
unaltered form
B. Reaction Formation
- Repression of one impulse and the pretentious
expression of its exact opposite.
C. Displacement
- Redirecting of unacceptable urges and
feelings onto people and objects in order to
disguise or conceal their true nature.
- Unlike, reaction formation, it does not
exaggerate or overdo the disguised behavior
D. Fixation
- When psychic energy is blocked at one stage
of development, making psychological
change difficult.
- Permanent attachment of the libido to an
earlier stage of development
- They are universal
E. Regression
- When a person reverts to earlier, more infantile
modes of behavior
- Usually, temporary
F. Projection
- 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.
G. Introjection
- Incorporation of positive qualities of another
person in order to reduce feelings of
inadequacy.
- Hero worship might be a good example.
H. Sublimation
- Contribute 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.
VI. Stages of Development
Freud saw psychosexual development as
proceeding from birth to maturity through four
overlapping stages—the infantile stage, the latency
stage, the genital stage and the psychologically
mature stage.
A. Infantile period
- Encompasses the first 4 to 5 years of life and is
divided into three subphases:
o oral phase: pleasure through sucking
Weaning is the principal source of
frustration during this stage.
o Emergence of teeth as a defense
against environment is called oral
sadistic
o anal phase: satisfaction gained
through aggressive behavior and
excretory function (sadistic-anal)
o occurs at about the second year of
life, when toilet training is the child's
chief source of frustration.
o If parents use disciplinary training
methods, a child may develop the
anal triad of orderliness, stinginess, and
obstinacy, all of which mark the anal
character.
o Phallic phase: boys and girls begin to
have differing psychosexual
development, which occurs around
ages 3 or 4 years.
o For both genders, suppression of
masturbation is the principle source of
frustration.
o young children experience the
Oedipus complex = having sexual
feelings for one parent and hostile
feelings for the other.
o The male castration complex breaks
up the male Oedipus complex and
results in a well-formed male superego.
o For girls, the castration complex, in the
form of penis envy, precedes the
female Oedipus complex, a situation
that leads to only a gradual and
incomplete shattering of the female
Oedipus complex and a weaker, more
flexible female superego.
B. Latency Period
- From about age 5 years until puberty—in
which the sexual instinct is partially
suppressed.
- It is believed that this may have roots in our
phylogenetic endowment
C. Genital Period
- Begins with puberty when adolescents
experience a reawakening of the genital aim
of Eros, and it continues throughout
adulthood.
D. Maturity
- Freud hinted at a stage of psychological
maturity in which the ego would be in control
of the id and superego and in which
consciousness would play a more important
role in behavior.
VII. Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
 A. Freud's Early Therapeutic Technique
- Freud used a very aggressive technique
whereby he strongly suggested to patients
that they had been sexually seduced as
children.
- He later abandoned this technique, with a
belief that he may have elicited memories of
seduction from his patients and that he lacked
clear evidence that these memories were real
B. Freud's Later Therapeutic Technique
- Goal: uncover repressed memories through
the free association and dream analysis = to
strengthen the ego
- Transference: strong sexual or aggressive
feelings, positive or negative, that patients
develop towards the analyst during the course
of treatment
- Negative transference: form of hostility must
be explained to the client to overcome
resistance to treatment
C. Dream Analysis
- manifest content (conscious description) from
the
- latent content (unconscious meaning of the
dream that lies hidden from the dreamer).
- Nearly all dreams are wish-fulfillments,
although the wish is usually unconscious and
can be known only through dream
interpretation.
- Dreams that are not wish-fulfillments follow the
principle of repetition compulsion and often
occur after people have had a traumatic
experience, now called a post-traumatic
stress disorder.
- To interpret dreams Freud used both dream
symbols and the dreamer's associations to the
dream content.
D. Freudian Slips
- slips of the tongue or pen, misreadings,
incorrect hearings, misplacing of objects, and
temporary forgetting of names or intentions
are not chance accidents but reveal a
person's unconscious intentions.
VIII. Critique of Freud
Freud regarded himself as a scientist, but
many critics consider his methods to be outdated,
unscientific, and permeated with gender bias. On
the six criteria of a useful theory, psychoanalysis, we
rate its ability to generate research as high, its
openness to falsification as very low, and its ability to
organize data as average. We also rate
psychoanalysis as average on its ability to guide
action and to be parsimonious. Because it lacks
operational definitions, we rate it low on internal
consistency.
IX. Concept of Humanity
Freud's view of humanity was deterministic
and pessimistic. He also emphasized causality over
teleology, unconscious determinants over conscious
processes, and biology over culture, but he took a
middle position on the dimension of uniqueness versus
similarities of people.
CHAPTER 3: INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
I. Biography of Alfred Adler
- Born in 1870 in a Viennese suburb, a second
son of middle-class Jewish parents.
- As a young child he was weak and sickly (he
nearly died of pneumonia at the age of 5), a
condition that contrasted sharply with his
strong, healthy older brother, Sigmund.
- The death of his younger brother (infant)
motivated him to become a physician
- He was interested in social relationships –
siblings and peers
- Adler developed a strong rivalry with
Sigmund—a rivalry that was similar to his later
relationship with Freud.
- Like Freud, Adler was a physician, and in 1902,
he became a charter member of the
Wednesday Psychological Society
- However, personal and professional
differences between Freud and Adler led to
Adler's departure from the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society in 1911.
- Adler soon founded his own group, the
Society for Individual Psychology.
- His strengths were his energetic oral
presentations and his insightful ability to
understand family dynamics.
- Adler married Raissa Epstein who was a
feminist. They had 4 children
- During the last few years of his life, Adler lived
in the United States and earned a reputation
as a gifted public speaker. He died in 1937 in
Scotland while on a lecture tour.
II. Introduction to Adlerian Theory
- People are born with weak and inferior bodies
 feelings of inferiority and dependence to
other people feelings of unity with others
(social interest)
A. Striving for Success or Superiority: The sole
dynamic force behind all our actions
- Transformation of drive: aggression 
masculine protest  Striving for Superiority 
 Striving for success (personal
superiority/success)
- The Final Goal
o The final goal of success or superiority
toward which all people strive unifies
personality and makes all behavior
meaningful.
o Its fictional and has no objective
existence
o Product of creative power (age 4 or 5):
people’s ability to free shape their
behavior and create their own
personality
o Reduces the pain of inferiority feelings
and leads the person to either
superiority or success
o If children felt neglected or pampered
their goals will remain unconscious
o If children experience love and
security, they set goals that are largely
conscious and clearly understood
o People are not always conscious of
their final goal, even though they may
be aware of their immediate subgoals.
o When an individual’s final goal is
known, all actions make sense and
subgoals takes on new significance
- The Striving Force as Compensation
o the striving force is innate = feelings of
inferiority  goal of superiority
o The goal is to overcome these feelings
through their natural tendency to
move toward completion.
o The goal may take many forms. It is not
necessarily a mirror image of the
deficiency even if it is a compensation
for it
o The striving force can take one of two
courses—personal gain or community
benefit.
- Striving for Personal Superiority
o Goals are personal ones (sometimes
with little or no concern for others)
o Largely motivated by exaggerated
feelings of inferiority (inferiority
complex)
o Others, although they may appear to
be interested in others, their basic
motivation is personal benefit.
- Striving for Success
o Psychologically healthy people strive
for the success of all humanity, but
they do so without losing their personal
identity.
B. Subjective Perceptions: People's subjective
view of the world—not reality—shapes their
behavior.
- Fictionalism
o People's beliefs and expectations of
the future.
o Adler held that fictions guide behavior,
because people act as if these fictions
are true.
o Example: a belief in an omnipotent
God who rewards good and punishes
evil
- Physical Inferiorities
o All humans are "blessed" with organ
inferiorities that stimulate subjective
feelings of inferiority and move people
toward perfection or completion
o Deficiencies do not cause a particular
style of life; they are motivation for
reaching goals
C. Unity of Personality: all behaviors are directed
toward a single purpose and that the entire
personality functions in a self-consistent
manner.
- Organ Dialect
o People sometimes use a physical
disorder to express style of life
o A boy wetting his bed sends a
message that he does not wish to
obey his parents
- Conscious and Unconscious
o Conscious and unconscious processes
are unified and operate to achieve a
single goal.
o The part of our goal that is not clearly
understood is unconscious (thoughts
that are not helpful)
o to the extent that we comprehend our
goal it is conscious (helpful in striving
for success)
D. Social Interest: Gemeinschaftsgefϋhl = a
feeling of oneness with all of humanity
- Origins of Social Interest
o both mothers and fathers have crucial
roles in furthering the social interest of
their children and that the parent/child
relationship is so strong that it negates
the effects of heredity. (until age 5)
- Importance of Social Interest
o Without social interest, societies could
not exist, because individuals could
not protect themselves from danger.
o Thus, an infant's helplessness
predisposes it toward a nurturing
person.
o social interest is "the sole criterion of
human values," and the "barometer of
normality." The worthiness of all one's
actions must be viewed by these
standards.
E. Style of Life: product of interaction of
heredity, environment and person’s creative
power
o healthy individuals are marked by
flexible behavior and that they have
some limited ability to change their
style of life.
F. Creative Power: freedom of choice
- Ultimately style of life is shaped by our creative
power; that is, by our ability to freely choose
which building materials to use and how to
use them.
- People have considerable ability to freely
choose their actions and their personality.
III. 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.
- In addition, people with a 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 inflexible style of life.
A. External Factors in Maladjustment
- Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies
o Severe physical defects do not by
themselves cause abnormal
development, but they may contribute
to it by generating subjective and
exaggerated feelings of inferiority.
- Pampered Style of Life
o develop low levels of social interest
o continue to have an overriding drive to
establish a permanent parasitic
relationship with their mother or a
mother substitute.
o They believe they are entitled to be
first in everything
o They have not received too much love
rather they feel unloved (parents
doing too much for them)
- Neglected Style of Life
o Children who feel neglected often use
these feelings as building material for a
useless style of life—one characterized
by distrust of other people.
B. Safeguarding Tendencies
- means of protecting their fragile self-esteem.
These safeguarding tendencies maintain a
neurotic status quo and protect a person from
public disgrace.
- Excuses
o 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.
- Aggression
o Behaving aggressively toward
themselves or others.
o May take the form of depreciating
others' accomplishments, accusing
others of being responsible for one's
own failures, and accusing self as a
means of inflicting suffering on others.
- Withdrawal
o Try to escape from life's problems by
running away from them; maintaining
distance.
o People can withdraw psychologically
by moving backward, standing still,
hesitating, or constructing obstacles.
C. Masculine Protest
- Both men and women sometimes
overemphasize the desirability of being manly
IV. Applications of Individual Psychology
A. Family Constellation
- First borns are likely to have strong feelings of
power and superiority, to be overprotective,
and to have more than their share of anxiety.
- Second borns (like Adler himself) are likely to
have strong social interest, provided they do
not get trapped trying to overcome their older
sibling.
- 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.
B. Early Recollections
- Adler believed that ERs are not 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.
C. Dreams
- provide clues to solving future problems.
- dreams are disguised to deceive the dreamer
and usually require interpretation by another
person.
D. Psychotherapy
- create a relationship between therapist and
patient that fosters social interest. The therapist
adopts both a maternal and a paternal role.
V. Critique of Adler
 - High in: generate research, organize data,
and guide the practitioner.
- Moderate in: parsimony,
- Low in: internal consistency & falsification
VI. Concept of Humanity
Adler saw people as forward moving, social
animals who are motivated by goals they set (both
consciously and unconsciously) for the future. People
are ultimately responsible for their own unique style of
life. Thus, Adler's theory rates high on free-choice,
social influences, and uniqueness; very high on
optimism and teleology; and average on
unconscious influences.
CHAPTER 4: ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
I. Biography of Carl Jung
- born in Switzerland in 1875,
- the oldest by about 9 years of two surviving
children.
- A son before Carl only lived for 3 days
- Jung's father was an idealistic Protestant
minister and his mother was a strict believer in
mysticism and the occult.
- Jung's early experience with parents—who
were quite opposite of each other—probably
influenced his own theory of personality,
including his fanciful No. 1 and Number 2
personalities.
- He saw his mother as having 2 separate
dispositions
- His no.2 personality = an old man long since
dead
- He married Emma Rauschenbach and had 5
children
- Soon after receiving his medical degree Jung
became acquainted with Freud's writings and
eventually with Freud himself.
- During their first meeting, they talked for 13
straight hours
- Not long after he traveled with Freud to the
United States, Jung became disenchanted
with Freud's pansexual theories, broke with
Freud, and began his own approach to theory
and therapy, which he called analytical
psychology. (when they began interpreting
each other’s dreams)
- He had affairs with Sabina (former patient)
and Antonia (another former patient – but
had longer relationship with her)
- He said he was sexually abused when he was
18 yo by an older man whom he saw as a
fatherly friend
- From a critical midlife crisis during which he
nearly lost contact with reality, Jung emerged
to become one of the leading thinkers of the
20th century.
- He died in 1961 at age 85.
II. Levels of the Psyche
A. Conscious
- Ego as the center of consciousness but not
the core of personality
- In the psychologically mature individual, the
ego is secondary to the self.
B. Personal Unconscious
- psychic images not sensed by the ego.
- Some unconscious processes flow from our
personal experiences
- contains the complexes (emotionally toned
groups of related ideas) and the collective
unconscious, which includes various
archetypes.
C. Collective Unconscious
- beyond our personal experiences and that
originate from the repeated experiences of
our ancestors.
- not inherited ideas, but rather they refer to our
innate tendency to react in a particular way
whenever our personal experiences stimulate
an inherited predisposition toward action.
- Love at first sight?
D. Archetypes - Contents of the collective
unconscious
- originate through the repeated experiences of
our ancestors and that they are expressed in
certain types of dreams, fantasies, delusions,
and hallucinations.
- Persona—the side of our personality that we
show to others.
- Shadow—the dark side of personality. In order
for people to reach full psychological
maturity, they must first realize or accept their
shadow.
- Anima - A second hurdle in achieving maturity
is for men to accept their anima—their
feminine side—irrational moods & feelings
- Animus - and for women to embrace their
animus—their masculine side. – irrational
thinking & opinions
- the great mother - the archetype of
nourishment and destruction
- the wise old man - the archetype of wisdom
and meaning
- the hero - image we have of a conqueror who
vanquishes evil but who has a single fatal flaw
- Self - The most comprehensive archetype is
the self; that is, the image we have of
fulfillment, completion, or perfection.
- The ultimate in psychological maturity is self-
realization, which is symbolized by the
mandala, or perfect geometric figure.
III. Development of Personality
- Jung's emphasis on the second half of life.
Jung saw middle and old age as times when
people may acquire the ability to attain self-
realization.
 A. Stages of Development
- childhood, which lasts from birth until
adolescence
- youth, the period from puberty until middle
life: a time for extraverted development & for
being grounded to the real world of schooling,
occupation, courtship, marriage, and family;
- middle life, from about 35 or 40 until old age
and a time when people should be adopting
an introverted, or subjective attitude; and
- old age, which is a time for psychological
rebirth, self-realization, and preparation for
death.
B. Self-Realization/Individuation
- a psychological rebirth and an integration of
various parts of the psyche into a unified or
whole individual. Self-realization represents
the highest level of human development.
IV. Jung's Methods of Investigation
A. Word Association Test
- to uncover complexes embedded in the
personal unconscious. The technique requires
a patient to utter the first word that comes to
mind after the examiner reads a stimulus word.
B. Dream Analysis
- dreams may have both a cause and a
purpose and thus can be useful in explaining
past events and in making decisions about the
future. "Big dreams" and "typical dreams,"
both of which come from the collective
unconscious
C. Active Imagination
- used active imagination to arrive at collective
images.
- This technique requires the patient to
concentrate on a single image until that
image begins to appear in a different form.
(archetypes)
D. Psychotherapy
- help neurotic patients become healthy and to
move healthy people in the direction of self-
realization. Jung was eclectic in his choice of
therapeutic techniques and treated old
people differently than the young.
V. Critique of Jung
- many of his writings have more of a
philosophical than a psychological flavor.
- As a scientific theory, it rates below average
on its ability to generate research, but very
low on its ability to withstand falsification. It is
about average on its ability to organize
knowledge but low on each of the other
criteria of a useful theory.
VI. Concept of Humanity
Jung saw people as extremely complex
beings who are a product of both conscious and
unconscious personal experiences. However, people
are also motivated by inherited remnants that spring
from the collective experiences of their early
ancestors. Because Jungian theory is a psychology of
opposites, it receives a moderate rating on the issues
of free will versus determinism, optimism versus
pessimism, and causality versus teleology. It rates
very high on unconscious influences, low on
uniqueness, and low on social influences.
CHAPTER 5: OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
I. Biography of Melanie Klein
- born in Vienna in 1892, the youngest of four
children.
- She felt rejected by her parents, especially her
father
- She developed fondness to her older siblings,
Sidonie and Emmanuel who both died
- She married Arthur Klein, Emmanuel’s close
friend, at age 21
- They had 3 children; she has an estranged
relationship with her eldest child, Melitta
- Klein separated from her husband
- She had neither a PhD nor an MD degree but
became an analyst
- As an analyst, she specialized in working with
young children.
- She believed that children develop superego
much earlier than Freud believed (4-6 months
after birth)
- She died in 1960.
II. Introduction to Object Relations Theory
- differs from Freudian theory in three important
ways:
o it places more emphasis on
interpersonal relationships,
o it stresses the infant's relationship with
the mother rather than the father, and
o it suggests that people are motivated
primarily for human contact rather than
for sexual pleasure.
- The term “object” refers to any person or part
of a person that infants introject, or take into
their psychic structure and then later project
onto other people
III. Psychic Life of the Infant
- infants begin life with an inherited
predisposition to reduce the anxiety that they
experience as a consequence of the clash
between the life instinct and the death instinct
A. Phantasies
- very young infants possess an active,
unconscious phantasy life.
- Their most basic fantasies are images of the
"good" breast and the "bad" breast.
B. Objects
- drives have an object (hunger: good breast;
sex: sexual organ)
- child's relationship with these objects (parents'
face, hands, breast, penis, etc.), which she
saw as having a life of their own within the
child's phantasy world.
IV. Positions
- In their attempts to reduce the conflict
produced by good and bad images, infants
organize their experience into positions
A. Paranoid-Schizoid Position: the first 3-4
months of life
- The struggles that infants experience with the
good breast and the bad breast lead to two
separate and opposing feelings—a desire to
harbor the breast and a desire to bite or
destroy it.
- To tolerate these two feelings, the ego splits
itself by retaining parts of its life and death
instincts while projecting other parts onto the
breast.
- It then has a relationship with the ideal breast
and the persecutory breast.
- To control this situation, infants adopt the
paranoid-schizoid position, which is a
tendency to see the world as having both
destructive and omnipotent qualities.
B. Depressive Position: the first 5-6 months of
life
- the anxiety that infants experience around 6
months of age over losing their mother and
yet, at the same time, wanting to destroy her.
- resolved when infants phantasize that they
have made up for their previous offenses
against their mother and also realize that their
mother will not abandon them.
V. Psychic Defense Mechanisms
- children adopt various psychic defense
mechanisms to protect their ego against
anxiety aroused by their own destructive
fantasies.
A. Introjection
- phantasy of taking into one's own body the
images that one has of an external object,
especially the mother's breast.
- Infants usually introject good objects as a
protection against anxiety, but they also
introject bad objects in order to gain control of
them.
B. Projection
- phantasy that one's own feelings and impulses
reside within another person
- Children project both good and bad images
so that they ease the unbearable anxiety of
being destroyed by the dangerous internal
forces
C. Splitting
- mentally keeping apart, incompatible images
to tolerate good and bad aspects of
themselves and of external objects.
- Splitting can be beneficial to both children
and adults, because it allows them to like
themselves while still recognizing some
unlikable qualities.
D. Projective Identification
- split off unacceptable parts of themselves,
project them onto another object, and finally
introject them in an altered form.
VI. Internalizations
- After introjecting external objects, infants
organize them into a psychologically
meaningful framework
A. Ego
- Internalizations are supported by the early
ego's ability to feel anxiety, to use defense
mechanisms, and to form object relations in
both phantasy and reality.
- a unified ego emerges only after first splitting
itself into the two parts—the life instinct and
the death instinct.
B. Superego
- the superego preceded rather than followed
the Oedipus complex. Klein also saw the
superego as being quite harsh and cruel.
C. Oedipus Complex
- begins during the first few months of life, then
reaches its peak during the genital stage, at
about 3 or 4 years of age
- based on children's fear that their parents will
seek revenge against them for their phantasy
of emptying the parent's body.
- For healthy development, children should
retain positive feelings for each parent.
- the little boy adopts a "feminine" position very
early in life and has no fear of being castrated
as punishment for his sexual feelings toward his
mother. Later, he projects his destructive drive
onto his father, whom he fears will bite or
castrate him. It is resolved when the boy
establishes good relations with both parents.
- The little girl also adopts a "feminine" position
toward both parents quite early in life. She
has a positive feeling for both her mother's
breast and her father's penis, which she
believes will feed her with babies. Sometimes
the girl develops hostility toward her mother,
whom she fears will retaliate against her and
rob her of her babies, but in most cases, the
 female Oedipus complex is resolved without
any jealousy toward the mother.
VII. Later Views of Object Relations
A. Margaret Mahler's View
- From careful observations of infants as they
bonded with their mothers during their first 3
years of life.
- three major developmental stages.
o normal autism (first 3 to 4 weeks of life)
a time when infants satisfy their needs
within the all-powerful protective orbit
of their mother's care.
o normal symbiosis, when infants
behave as if they and their mother
were an all-powerful, interdependent
unit.
o separation-individuation (4 months
until about 3 years) a time when
children are becoming psychologically
separated from their mothers and
achieving individuation, or a sense of
personal identity.
B. Heinz Kohut's View
- emphasized the development of the self.
- In caring for their physical and psychological
needs, adults treat infants as if they had a
sense of self.
- The parents' behaviors and attitudes
eventually help children form a sense of self
that gives unity and consistency to their
experiences.
C. John Bowlby's Attachment Theory
- three stages of separation anxiety:
o protest
o apathy and despair
o emotional detachment from people,
including the primary caregiver.
Children who reach the third stage
lack warmth and emotion in their later
relationships.
D. Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation
- developed a technique called the Strange
Situation for measuring one of three the types
of attachment styles—secure attachment,
anxious-resistant attachment, and anxious-
avoidant attachment.
VIII. Psychotherapy
The goal of Klein's therapy was to reduce
depressive anxieties and persecutory fears and to
lessen the harshness of internalized objects. To do this,
Klein encouraged patients to reexperience early
fantasies and pointed out the differences between
conscious and unconscious wishes.
IX. Critique of Object Relations Theory
Object relations theory shares with Freudian
theory an inability to be either falsified or verified
through empirical research. Nevertheless, some
clinicians regard the theory as being a useful guide to
action and as possessing substantial internal
consistency. However, the theory must be rated low
on parsimony and also low on its ability to organize
knowledge and to generate research.
X. Concept of Humanity
Object relations theorists see personality as
being a product of the early mother-child
relationship, and thus they stress determinism over
free choice. The powerful influence of early
childhood also gives these theories a low rating on
uniqueness, a very high rating on social influences,
and high ratings on causality and unconscious forces.
Klein and other object relations theorists rate average
on optimism versus pessimism.
CHAPTER 6: PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL THEORY
I. Biography of Karen Horney
- born in Germany in 1885, only daughter of her
parents and she has an older brother
- Her mother is 18 years younger than her father
(he had other children from his previous
marriage)
- She is mad at her father and idolized her
mother
- She was not a happy child = superficially
independent but dependent to men inside
- She married Oskar Horney and had 3
daughters
- She had several love affairs (Erich Fromm)
- Horney was one of the first women in
Germany admitted to medical school, where
she specialized in psychiatry.
- Horney died in 1952 at age 65.
II. Introduction to Psychoanalytic Social
Theory
Her theories are also appropriate to normal
development. She agreed with Freud that early
childhood traumas are important, but she placed far
more emphasis on social factors.
A. Horney and Freud Compared
- Neuroses are not instincts but a person’s
attempt to find its paths in the society
- Criticisms to Freudian theory:
o its rigidity toward new ideas
o its skewed view of feminine psychology
 o its overemphasis on biology and the
pleasure principle.
B. The Impact of Culture
- Feelings of isolation  needs for affection 
overvalue love  neuroses
- See love and affection as the solution to
problems
- Both normal and neurotic personalities
experience intrapsychic conflicts through their
desperate attempts to find love
C. The Importance of Childhood Experiences
- Lack of genuine love  neurotic needs(rigid
behavioral patterns  gain feeling of
safety/love
III. Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety
- Protection from basic anxiety (does not
necessarily indicate neurosis):
o Affection: not real love
o Submissiveness: in order to gain
affection
o Power/prestige/possesion: dominate,
humiliate, deprive others
o Withdrawal: emotionally detached
from people
- Normal people have the flexibility to use any
or all of these approaches, but neurotics are
compelled to rely rigidly on only one.
IV. Compulsive Drives
Neurotics frequently are trapped in a vicious circle in
which their compulsive need to reduce basic anxiety
leads to a variety of self-defeating behaviors; these
behaviors then produce more basic anxiety, and the
circle continues.
A. Neurotic Needs: a single person may use
more than one
- for affection and approval
- for a powerful partner
- to restrict one's life within narrow borders
- for power
- to exploit others
- for social recognition or prestige
- for personal admiration
- for ambition and personal achievement
- for self-sufficiency and independence
- for perfection and unassailability.
B. Neurotic Trends: applies to normal
individual; neurotics are limited to a single
trend
- Moving Toward People
o undue compliance to others' wishes to
protect against the feeling of
helplessness
o strives for affection, seek a powerful
partner
o they see themselves as loving,
generous, humble, unselfish and
sensitive to feelings
- Moving Against People
o assume that everyone is hostile, and,
therefore, should be aggressive
people who exploits other for their own
benefit
o they seldom admit their mistakes and
need to appear perfect, powerful and
superior
o They play to win than to enjoy
- Moving Away From People
o People who feel isolated from others
insist on privacy, independence, and
self-sufficiency.
o Their greatest need is to need other
people
V. Intrapsychic Conflicts
- people experience inner tensions
- become part of people's belief system and
take on a life of their own, separate from the
interpersonal conflicts that created them.
A. The Idealized Self-Image
- No love and affection during childhood 
blocked self-realization and stable sense of
identity
- extravagantly positive picture of themselves
that exists only in their mind. Horney
recognized three aspects of the idealized self-
image.
- 1. The Neurotic Search for Glory
o Comprehensive drive to actualize the
idealized self-image
o tyranny of the should, neurotic
ambition, and the drive toward a
vindictive triumph
- 2. Neurotic Claims
o They believe that they are entitled to
special privileges and make neurotic
claims on other people that are
consistent with their idealized view of
themselves.
- 3. Neurotic Pride
o a false pride based not on reality but
on a distorted and idealized view of
self.
B. Self-Hatred: because reality always falls
short of their idealized view of self.
- relentless demands on self
- merciless self-accusation
- self-contempt
- self-frustration
- self-torment or self-torture
- self-destructive actions and impulses
 VI. Critique of Horney
Although Horney's theory has not generated
much research, it has provided an interesting way of
looking at humanity. The strength of her theory was
her vivid portrayal of the neurotic personality. As
scientific theory, however, it rates very low in
generating research, low on its ability to be falsified,
to organize knowledge, and to serve as a guide to
action. The theory receives a moderate rating on
internal consistency and parsimony.
VII. Concept of Humanity
Horney's concept of humanity was based
mostly on her clinical experiences with neurotic
patients, but it can easily be extended to normal
people. In summary, Horney's view of humanity is
rated high on free choice, optimism, unconscious
influences, and social factors; average on causality
vs. teleology; and low on uniqueness.
CHAPTER 7: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS
I. Biography of Erich Fromm
- born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1900, the only
child of orthodox Jewish parents.
- His humanistic philosophy grew out of an early
reading of the biblical prophets and an
association with several Talmudic scholars.
- Fromm's first wife was Frieda Fromm-
Reichmann but divorced
- Fromm moved to the United States and
began a psychoanalytic practice in New York,
where he resumed his friendship with Karen
Horney and became lovers and then
separated
- He then married Henny Gurland, two years
younger than him but died
- He met Annis Freeman and got married again
- He died in Switzerland in 1980.
II. Fromm's Basic Assumptions
- human personality can only be understood in
the light of history.
- humans have been torn away from their
prehistoric union with nature and left with no
powerful instincts to adapt to a changing
world.
- they have acquired the ability to reason,
which means they can think about their
isolated condition.
- Fromm called this situation the human
dilemma
- Existential Dichotomies
o Life & Death
o Goal of complete self-realization &
shortness of life to reach the goal
o Alone & cannot tolerate isolation
III. Human Needs (existential needs)
Our human dilemma cannot be solved by
satisfying our animal needs, but it can only be
addressed by fulfilling our human needs, which would
move us toward a reunification with the natural world.
A. Relatedness: desire for union with another
person/s
- Submission: transcends separateness of his
existence by becoming part of something
bigger than oneself
- Power: welcome submissive partners:
symbiotic relationship
- Love: solve our basic human dilemma. It is the
ability to unite with another while retaining
one's own individuality and integrity.
B. Transcendence: urge to rise above a passive
and accidental existence
- to transcend their nature by destroying or
creating people or things.
- Humans can destroy through malignant
aggression (killing for reasons other than
survival; not common to all humans) but they
can also create and care about their
creations
C. Rootedness: establish roots and to feel at
home again in the world
- Like the other existential needs, rootedness
can take either a productive or a
nonproductive mode.
- With the productive strategy, we grow
beyond the security of our mother and
establish ties with the outside world.
- With the nonproductive strategy, we become
fixated and afraid to move beyond the
security and safety of our mother or a mother
substitute.
D. Sense of Identity: awareness of ourselves as a
separate person.
- The drive for a sense of identity is expressed
nonproductively as conformity to a group and
productively as individuality.
E. Frame of Orientation: a road map which we
find our way through the world
- Expressed nonproductively as a striving for
irrational goals
- Express productively as movement toward
rational goals.
F. Summary of Human Needs
People are highly motivated to satisfy the five
existential, or human, needs because if they are
unsatisfied in these needs, they are driven to insanity.
Each of the needs has both a positive and a negative
component, but only the satisfaction of positive
needs leads to psychological health.
IV. The Burden of Freedom
 - humans are the freaks of the universe
- High freedom = High isolation from others
- Freedom  basic anxiety (a burden of being
alone)
A. Mechanisms of Escape: To reduce the
frightening sense of isolation and
aloneness
- Authoritarianism
o The tendency to give up one's
independence and to unite with a
powerful partner
o Take the form of either masochism or
sadism.
o Masochism stems from feelings of
powerlessness and can be disguised as
love or loyalty.
o Sadism involves attempts to achieve
unity through dominating, exploiting, or
hurting others.
- Destructiveness
o Feelings of isolation; an escape
mechanism that is aimed at doing
away with other people or things.
o To restore feeling of power
- Conformity
o surrendering of one's individuality in
order to meet the wishes of others.
B. Positive Freedom
- It is the successful solution to the human
dilemma of being part of the natural world
and yet separate from it.
V. Character Orientations
People relate to the world by acquiring and using
things (assimilation) and by relating to self and others
(socialization), and they can do so either
nonproductively or productively.
A. Nonproductive Orientations: those that fail to
move people closer to positive freedom and
self-realization.
- Receptive
o only way they can relate to the world
is to receive things, including love,
knowledge, and material objects.
o Positive qualities include loyalty and
trust;
o negative ones are passivity and
submissiveness.
- Exploitative
o aggressively take what they want
rather than passively receiving it.
o Positive qualities of exploitative people
include pride and self-confidence;
o negative ones are arrogance and
conceit.
- Hoarding
o try to save what they have already
obtained, including their opinions,
feelings, and material possessions.
o Positive qualities include loyalty,
o negative ones are obsessiveness and
possessiveness.
- Marketing
o see themselves as commodities and
value themselves against the criterion
of their ability to sell themselves.
o They have fewer positive qualities than
the other orientations, because they
are essentially empty.
o They can be open-minded and
adaptable, as well as opportunistic
and wasteful.
B. The Productive Orientation:
- work toward positive freedom through
productive work, love, and thoughts.
- Productive love necessitates a passionate
love of all life and is called biophilia.
VI. Personality Disorders: failures to work, think,
and especially to love productively.
A. Necrophilia
- the love of death and the hatred of all
humanity.
- their destructiveness is a reflection of a basic
character.
B. Malignant Narcissism
- Convinced that everything belonging to them
is of great value and anything belonging to
others is worthless.
- Narcissistic people often suffer from moral
hypochondrias, or preoccupation with
excessive guilt.
C. Incestuous Symbiosis
- Extreme dependence on one's mother or
mother surrogate to the extent that one's
personality is blended with that of the host
person
- Hitler, possessed all three of these disorders, a
condition he termed the syndrome of decay.
**Syndrome of growth: love, biophilia and positive
freedom
VII. Critique of Fromm
Fromm evolved a theory that provide insightful
ways of looking at humanity. The strength of his
theory is his lucid writings on a broad range of human
issues. As a scientific theory, however, Fromm's
assumptions rate very low on their ability to generate
research and to lend themselves to falsification;
Fromm rates low on usefulness to the practitioner,
internal consistency, and parsimony. Because it is
quite broad in scope, Fromm's theory rates high on
organizing existing knowledge.
 VIII. Concept of Humanity
Fromm's concept of humanity came from a
rich variety of sources—history, anthropology,
economics, and clinical work. Because humans have
the ability to reason but few strong instincts, they are
the freaks of nature. To achieve self-actualization,
they must satisfy their human, or existential, needs
through productive love and work. In summary, we
rated Fromm's theory as average on free choice,
optimism, unconscious influences, and uniqueness;
low on causality; and very high on social influences.
CHAPTER 8: POST-FREUDIAN THEORY
I. Biography of Erik Erikson
- born in Germany in 1902: Erik Salomonsen.
- After his mother married Theodor Homberger,
Erik eventually took his stepfather's name.
- At age 18 he left home to pursue the life of a
wandering artist and to search for self-identity.
- Married Joan Serson and they had 4 children;
one had a down syndrome whom they sent to
a facility
- In mid-life, Erik Homberger moved to the
United States, changed his name to Erikson,
and took a position at the Harvard Medical
School.
- Later, he taught at Yale, the University of
California at Berkeley, and several other
universities. He died in 1994, a month short of
his 92nd birthday.
II. The Ego in Post-Freudian Psychology
- emphasis on ego rather than id functions
- ego is the center of personality and is
responsible for a unified sense of self.
- Ego is the person’s ability to unify experiences
and actions in an adoptive manner
- Childhood: weak and fragile
- Adult: formation and strengthening
- It consists of three interrelated facets:
o body ego – seeing our physical self as
different from other people
o ego ideal – image of ourselves vs an
established ideal
o ego identity – image of ourselves in the
social roles we play
A. Society's Influence
- Society (cultural environment) shapes the ego
- influenced by child-rearing practices and
other cultural customs.
- Pseudospecies = fictional notion that they are
superior to other cultures.
- around.
B. Epigenetic Principle
- it grows according to a genetically
established rate and in a fixed sequence.
- A step-by-step growth
- It does not replace the earlier stage
III. Stages of Psychosocial Development
- marked by an interaction of opposites -- a
syntonic (harmonious) element and a
dystonic (disruptive) element, which produces
a basic strength or ego quality (must have
both experiences)
- Also, from adolescence on, each stage is
characterized by an identity crisis or turning
point, which may produce either adaptive or
maladaptive adjustment
- Too little basic strength will result to a core
pathology for that stage
A. Infancy: Trust versus Mistrust
- (the 1st year) was similar to Freud's concept of
the oral stage
- include sense organs such as the eyes and
ears.
- psychosexual mode: oral-sensory, which is
characterized by both receiving and
accepting.
- Trust: the mother provides food (or relates)
regularly
- Mistrust: if no correspondence between their
needs and their environment
- basic strength: hope
- core pathology: withdrawal
B. Early Childhood: Autonomy versus Shame
& Doubt
- (2nd to 3rd year) a period that compares to
Freud's anal stage
- includes mastery of other body functions such
as walking, urinating, and holding.
- psychosexual mode: anal-urethral-muscular,
children behave both impulsively and
compulsively
- Autonomy: faith in themselves
- Shame & Doubt: self-consciousness,
uncertainty
- basic strength: will
- core pathology: compulsion.
C. Play Age: Initiative versus Guilt
- (3rd to the 5th year) a period that parallels
Freud's phallic phase.
- Oedipus complex as an early model of lifelong
playfulness and a drama played out in
children's minds as they attempt to
understand the basic facts of life
- psychosexual mode: genital-locomotor,
children have both an interest in genital
activity and an increasing ability to move
- Initiative: to act with purpose and set goals
- Guilt: too little purpose
 - Basic strength: Purpose
- Core pathology: inhibition
D. School Age: Industry versus Inferiority
- (6 to about 13 years) a time of psychosexual
latency, but it is also a time of psychosocial
growth beyond the family.
- learn the customs of their culture, including
both formal and informal education.
- Industry: work hard & finish the job
- Inferiority: work is not sufficient to achieve
goals
- Basic strength: competence
- Core pathology: inertia
E. Adolescence: Identity versus identity
confusion
- (puberty) a time of psychosexual growth &
psychosocial latency.
- psychosexual mode: genital maturation
- Identity emerges from a) childhood
identifications and b) historical and social
context
- Identity: having a sense of who they are
- Identity confusion: divided self-image
- Basic strength: fidelity
- Core pathology: role denial
F. Young Adulthood: Intimacy versus
Isolation
- (18 - 30 years)
- psychosexual mode: genitality, expressed as
mutual trust between partners in a stable
sexual relationship.
- Intimacy: ability to fuse one's identity with that
of another person without fear of losing it
- Isolation: fear of losing one's identity in an
intimate relationship.
- Basic strength: capacity to love
- Core pathology: exclusivity
G. Adulthood: Generativity versus Stagnation
- (31 to 60 years) a time when people make
significant contributions to society
- psychosexual mode: procreativity, or the
caring for one's children, the children of
others, and the material products of one's
society.
- Generativity: guiding the next generation
- Stagnation: too self-indulgent, too much self-
absorption
- Basic Strength: Care
- Core pathology: rejectivity (of certain
individuals)
Old Age: Integrity versus Despair
- (age 60 until death)
- psychosexual mode: generalized sensuality;
taking pleasure in a variety of sensations and
an appreciation of the traditional life style of
people of the other gender.
- Integrity: the maintenance of ego-identity
(social roles)
- Despair: the surrender of hope (originated
from infancy)
- Basic strength: wisdom
- Core pathology: Disdain = feelings of being
finished or helpless
As Erikson himself aged, he and his wife began to
describe a ninth stage—a period of very old age
when physical and mental infirmities rob people of
their generative abilities and reduce them to waiting
for death.
IV. Critique of Erikson
Although Erikson's work is a logical extension of
Freud's psychoanalysis, it offers a new way of looking
at human development. As a useful theory, it rates
high on its ability to generate research, about
average on its ability to be falsified, to organize
knowledge, and to guide the practitioner. It rates
high on internal consistency and about average on
parsimony.
V. Concept of Humanity
Erikson saw humans as basically social animals who
have limited free choice and who are motivated by
past experiences, which may be either conscious or
unconscious. In addition, Erikson is rated high on both
optimism and uniqueness of individuals.
CHAPTER 9: HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC THEORY
H. Biography of Abraham H. Maslow
- born in New York City in 1908, the oldest of
seven children of Russian Jewish immigrants.
- Had the most lonely and miserable childhood
(shy, inferior, depressed)
- Oldest of the seven children
- He never overcame the intense hatred he
had towards his mother. He refused to attend
her funeral.
- After 2 or 3 mediocre years as a college
student, Maslow's academic work improved
at about the time he was married.
- He married his first cousin, Bertha Goodman
- He received both a bachelor's degree and a
PhD from the University of Wisconsin, where he
worked with Harry Harlow conducting animal
studies (monkeys).
- Poor health forced him to move to California,
where he died in 1970 at age 62.
II. Maslow's View of Motivation
1. the whole organism is motivated at any one
time;
 2. motivation is complex, and unconscious
motives often underlie behavior;
3. people are continually motivated by one
need or another;
4. people in different cultures are motivated by
the same basic needs; and
5. needs can be arranged on a hierarchy
A. Hierarchy of Needs
- lower level needs have prepotency over
higher level needs; that is, lower needs must
be satisfied before higher needs become
motivators.
- Called CONATIVE needs: have a striving or
motivational character
- As long as the need is not yet satisfied, the
person will continue to strive to satisfy it
(almost doing anything to obtain it)
- physiological needs
o oxygen, food, water
- safety needs
o physical security, stability,
dependency, protection, and
freedom from danger
o Children: threats, animals, strangers,
punishments
- love and belongingness needs
o desire for friendship, the wish for a
mate and children, and the need to
belong
o 1st group: need fully satisfied; feels
accepted and will not feel devastated
if rejected
o 2nd group: never experienced love;
thus, incapable of giving love
o 3rd group: received the need in small
doses; strongest motivation to seek
love
o Children: straightforward and direct
o Adults: disguise; self-defeating
behaviors
- esteem needs
o satisfaction of love needs and which
include self-esteem and the
recognition that we have a positive
reputation
- self-actualization needs
o self-fulfillment, realization of one’s own
potential
o they become independent of the
lower needs
o should embrace the B-values as truth,
beauty, oneness, justice, etc
*Other categories of needs include aesthetic needs,
cognitive needs, and neurotic needs.
B. Aesthetic Needs
- desire for beauty and order, and some people
have much stronger aesthetic needs than do
others.
- Will get sick if not met
- people with strong aesthetic needs do not
automatically reach self-actualization
- Not universal
C. Cognitive Needs
- desire to know, to understand, and to be
curious.
- Knowledge is a prerequisite for each of the
five conative needs. (only for those who have
this need)
- people who are denied knowledge and kept
in ignorance become sick, paranoid, and
depressed.
- people who have satisfied cognitive needs do
not necessarily become self-actualized.
D. Neurotic Needs
- desire to dominate, to inflict pain, or to subject
oneself to the will of another person.
- lead to pathology whether or not they are
satisfied
E. General Discussion of Needs
- Reversed Order Needs
o Maslow insisted that much of our
surface behaviors are actually
motivated by more basic and often
unconscious needs.
o For example, a starving mother may
be motivated by love needs to give up
food in order to feed her starving
children. However, if we understand
the unconscious motivation behind
many apparent reversals, we might
see that they are not genuine reversals
at all.
- Unmotivated Behavior
o Some behaviors are not motivated
even though all behaviors have a
cause
o Conditioned reflexes, maturation, or
drugs
- Expressive and Coping Behavior
o have no aim or goal but are merely a
person's mode of expression
o deal with a person's attempt to cope
with the environment
- Deprivation of Needs
o leads to pathology of some sort
- Instinctoid Nature of Needs
o Innately determined needs that can
be modified by learning
o Thwarting of instinctoid needs
produces pathology whereas the
frustration of noninstinctoid needs does
not
 o Specie-specific
- Comparison of Higher and Lower Needs
o higher level needs (love, esteem, and
self-actualization) are later on the
evolutionary scale than lower level
needs and that they produce more
genuine happiness and more peak
experiences.
o Seems like these needs follow a
development course
III. Self-Actualization
- an ultimate level of psychological health
called self-actualization.
- (1) absence of psychopathology,
- (2) satisfaction of each of the four lower level
needs,
- (3) full realization of one's potentials for
growth, and (4) acceptance of the B-values.
A. Values of Self-Actualizers
- Self-actualizing people are metamotivated by
such B-values as truth, goodness, beauty,
justice, and simplicity.
- If people’s metaneeds are not met they
experience existential illness
B. Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People
- not all self-actualizers possess each of these
characteristics to the same extent.
- (1) more efficient perception of reality; they
often have an almost uncanny ability to
detect phoniness in others, and they are not
fooled by sham;
- (2) acceptance of self, others, and nature;
- (3) spontaneity, simplicity, and naturalness;
they have no need to appear complex or
sophisticated;
- (4) problem-centered; they view age-old
problems from a solid philosophical position;
- (5) the need for privacy, or a detachment
that allows them to be alone without being
lonely;
- (6) autonomy; they have grown beyond
dependency on other people for their self-
esteem;
- (7) continued freshness of appreciation and
the ability to view everyday things with a fresh
vision and appreciation;
- (8) frequent reports of peak experiences, or
those mystical experiences that give a person
a sense of transcendence and feelings of
awe, wonder, ecstasy, reverence, and
humility;
- (9) Gemeinschaftsgefühl, that is, social interest
or a deep feeling of oneness with all humanity;
- (10) profound interpersonal relations but with
no desperate need to have a multitude of
friends;
- (11) the democratic character structure; or
the ability to disregard superficial differences
between people;
- (12) discrimination between means and ends,
meaning that self-actualizing people have a
clear sense of right and wrong, and they
experience little conflict about basic values;
- (13) a philosophical sense of humor; or humor
that is spontaneous, unplanned, and intrinsic
to the situation;
- (14) creativeness; they possess a keen
perception of truth, beauty, and reality;
- (15) resistance to enculturation; they have the
ability to set personal standards and to resist
the mold set by the dominate culture.
C. Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization
- Maslow compared D-love (deficiency love) to
B-love (love for the being or essence of
another person).
- Self-actualizing people are capable of B-love;
that is, they have the ability to love without
expecting something in return.
- B-love is mutually felt and shared and not
based on deficiencies within the lovers.
IV. Measuring Self-Actualization
- The most widely used of these is Everett
Shostrom's Personal Orientation Inventory
(POI), a 150-forced-choice inventory that
assesses a variety of self-actualization facets.
V. The Jonah Complex
- fear of being or doing one's best, a condition
that all of us have to some extent.
- False humility that stifle creativity and that fall
short of self-actualization
VI. Critique of Maslow
Maslow's theory has been popular in
psychology and other disciplines, such as marketing,
management, nursing, and education. The hierarchy
of needs concept seems both elementary and
logical, which gives Maslow's theory the illusion of
simplicity. However, the theory is somewhat complex,
with four dimensions of needs and the possibility of
unconsciously motivated behavior. As a scientific
theory, Maslow's model rates high in generating
research but low in falsifiability. On its ability to
organize knowledge and guide action, the theory
rates quite high; on its simplicity and internal
consistency, it rates only average.
VII. Concept of Humanity
Maslow believed that people are structured in
such a way that their activated needs are exactly
what they want most. Hungry people desire food,
frightened people look for safety, and so forth.
Although he was generally optimistic and hopeful,
Maslow saw that people are capable of great evil
and destruction. He believed that, as a species,
humans are becoming more and more fully human
and motivated by higher level needs. In summary,
Maslow's view of humanity rates high on free choice,
optimism, teleology, and uniqueness and about
average on social influences.
CHAPTER 10: PERSON-CENTERED THEORY
l. Biography of Carl Rogers
- born into a devoutly religious family in a
Chicago suburb in 1902.
- Carl became interested in scientific farming
and learned to appreciate the scientific
method.
- When he graduated from the University of
Wisconsin, Rogers intended to become a
minister, but he gave up that notion and
completed a PhD in psychology from
Columbia University in 1931.
- In 1940, after nearly a dozen years working as
a clinician, he took a position at Ohio State
University. Later, he held positions at the
University of Chicago and the University of
Wisconsin.
- In 1964, he moved to California where he
helped found the Center for Studies of the
Person.
- His personal life was marked by change and
openness to experience
- He was shy and social inept but he got
married to Helen Elliott and had 2 children
- He died in 1987 at age 85.
II. Person-Centered Theory
A. Basic Assumptions
- the formative tendency that states that all
matter, both organic and inorganic, tends to
evolve from simpler to more complex forms
and
- an actualizing tendency, which suggests that
all living things, including humans, tend to
move toward completion, or fulfillment of
potentials.
o Maintenance = of needs
o Enhancement = willingness to face
pain because of the biological
tendency to fulfill basic nature wc is
actualization
- relationship with another person who is
genuine, or congruent, and who
demonstrates complete acceptance and
empathy for that person. Lead people to
become actualized
B. The Self and Self-Actualization
- A sense of self during infancy, once
established, allows a person to strive toward
self-actualization
- The self has two subsystems:
o self-concept: aspects of one's identity
that are perceived in awareness, and
o ideal self: view of our self as we would
like it to be or what we would aspire to
be.
Once formed, the self-concept tends to resist
change, and gaps between it and the ideal self result
in incongruence and various levels of
psychopathology.
C. Awareness
- People are aware of both their self-concept
and their ideal self, although awareness need
not be accurate.
- Any experience not consistent with the self-
concept—even positive experiences—will be
distorted or denied.
o Person distrusts the giver
o Recipient does not feel deserving of
them
o Compliment carries an implied threat
- three levels of awareness:
o (1) those that are symbolized below
the threshold of awareness and are
ignored, denied, or not allowed into
the self-concept;
o (2) those that are distorted or
reshaped to fit it into an existing self-
concept; and
o (3) those that are consistent with the
self-concept and thus are accurately
symbolized and freely admitted to the
self-structure.
D. Needs
- As awareness of self emerges, an infant begins
to receive positive regard from another
person, that is, to be loved or accepted.
- Incongruence: experienced when basic
organismic needs are denied or distorted in
favor of needs to be loved or accepted.
- Self-regard: people acquire only after they
perceive that someone else cares for them
and values them
- Once established, however, self-regard
becomes autonomous and no longer
dependent on another person's continuous
positive evaluation.
- Contact (with another person)  Positive
regard (from others)  positive self-regard
E. Barriers to Psychological Health
- Conditions of Worth
o not unconditionally accepted
o they feel that they are loved and
accepted only when and if they meet
the conditions set by others.
 o External evaluations: our perceptions
of other people’s view of us that do
not foster psychological health
- Incongruence
o Organismic experience versus self-
experiences
o The greater the incongruence
between self-concept and the
organismic experience, the more
vulnerable that person becomes.
o Anxiety exists whenever the person
becomes dimly aware of the
discrepancy
o threat is experienced whenever the
person becomes more clearly aware
of this incongruence
- Defensiveness
o To prevent incongruence
o With distortion, people misinterpret an
experience so that it fits into their self-
concept
o with denial, people refuse to allow the
experience into awareness
o When people's defenses fail to operate
properly, their behavior becomes
disorganized or psychotic
- Disorganization
o people sometimes behave consistently
with their organismic experience and
sometimes in accordance with their
shattered self-concept.
III. Psychotherapy
For client-centered psychotherapy to be
effective, six conditions are necessary:
(1) A vulnerable or anxious client must
(2) have contact of some duration
(3) with a congruent counselor
(4) who demonstrates unconditional positive regard
(5) and who listens with empathy to a client
(6) who perceives the congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathy.
If these conditions are present, then the process of
therapy will take place and certain predictable
outcomes will result.
A. Conditions
- counselor congruence, or a therapist whose
organismic experiences are matched by
awareness and by the ability and willingness
to openly express these feelings.
- Unconditional positive regard exists when the
therapist accepts and prizes the client without
conditions or qualifications.
- Empathic listening is the ability of the therapist
to sense the feeling of a client and also to
communicate these perceptions so that the
client knows that another person has entered
into his or her world of feelings without
prejudice, projection, or evaluation.
B. Process
- Rogers saw the process of therapeutic
change as taking place in seven stages:
- (1) clients are unwilling to communicate
anything about themselves;
- (2) they discuss only external events and other
people;
- (3) they begin to talk about themselves, but
still as an object;
- (4) they discuss strong emotions that they
have felt in the past;
- (5) they begin to express present feelings;
- (6) they freely allow into awareness those
experiences that were previously denied or
distorted; and
- (7) they experience irreversible change and
growth.
C. Outcomes
- (1) become more congruent, less defensive,
more open to experience, and more realistic;
- (2) experience a narrowing of the gap
between ideal self and true self;
- (3) experience less physiological and
psychological tension;
- (4) improve their interpersonal relationships:
and
- (5) become more accepting of self and
others.
IV. The Person of Tomorrow
- these people would be more adaptable and
more flexible in their thinking.
- they would be open to their experiences,
accurately symbolizing them in awareness
rather than denying or distorting them. would
listen to themselves and hear their joy, anger,
discouragement, fear, and tenderness.
- a tendency to live fully in the moment,
experiencing a constant state of fluidity and
change. They would see each experience
with a new freshness and appreciate it fully in
the present moment; tendency to live in the
moment as existential living.
- remain confident of their own ability to
experience harmonious relations with others.
They would feel no need to be liked or loved
by everyone, because they would know that
they are unconditionally prized and accepted
by someone.
 - they would be more integrated, more whole,
with no artificial boundary between conscious
processes and unconscious ones. Because
they would be able to accurately symbolize
all their experiences in awareness, they would
see clearly the difference between what is
and what should be.
- have a basic trust of human nature. They
would experience anger, frustration,
depression, and other negative emotions, but
they would be able to express rather than
repress these feelings.
- open to all their experiences, they would
enjoy a greater richness in life than do other
people. They would live in the present and
thus participate more richly in the ongoing
moment.
V. Critique of Rogers
Rogers' person-centered theory is one of the
most carefully constructed of all personality theories,
and it meets quite well each of the six criteria of a
useful theory. It rates very high on internal
consistency and parsimony, high on its ability to be
falsified and to generate research, and high average
on its ability to organize knowledge and to serve as a
guide to the practitioner.
VI. Concept of Humanity
Rogers believed that humans have the
capacity to change and grow—provided that certain
necessary and sufficient conditions are present.
Therefore, his theory rates very high on optimism. In
addition, it rates high on free choice, teleology,
conscious motivation, social influences, and the
uniqueness of the individual.
CHAPTER 11: EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY
l. Biography of Rollo May
- born in Ohio in 1909, but grew up in Michigan
- he spent 3 years as an itinerant artist roaming
throughout eastern and southern Europe.
- he entered the Union Theological Seminary,
from which he received a Master of Divinity
degree.
- He then served for 2 years as a pastor, but quit
in order to pursue a career in psychology.
- He received a PhD in clinical psychology from
Columbia in 1949 at the relatively advanced
age of 40.
- During his professional career, he served as
lecturer or visiting professor at a number of
universities, conducted a private practice as a
psychotherapist, and wrote a number of
popular books on the human condition.
- May died in 1994 at age 85.
II. Background of Existentialism
- Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher
and theologian, is usually considered to be
the founder of modern existentialism.
- he emphasized a balance between freedom
and responsibility.
- People acquire freedom of action by
expanding their self-awareness and by
assuming responsibility for their actions.
- However, this acquisition of freedom and
responsibility is achieved at the expense of
anxiety and dread.
A. What Is Existentialism?
- existence takes precedence over essence,
meaning that process and growth are more
important than product and stagnation.
- existentialists oppose the artificial split
between subject and object.
- stress people's search for meaning in their lives.
- insist that each of us is responsible for who we
are and what we will become.
- take an antitheoretical position, believing that
theories tend to objectify people.
B. Basic Concepts
- Being-in-the-world (Dasein)
o a basic unity exists between people
and their environments
o a phenomenological approach that
intends to understand people from
their own perspective
o Three simultaneous modes of the world
characterize us in our Dasein:
 Umwelt, or the environment
around us;
 Mitwelt, or our world with other
people; and
 Eigenwelt, or our relationship
with our self.
- Nonbeing
o People are both aware of themselves
as living beings and also aware of the
possibility of nonbeing or nothingness.
o Death is the most obvious form of
nonbeing, which can also be
experienced as retreat from life's
experiences.
o Other forms: addictions, promiscuous
sexual activity, other compulsive
behaviors, blind conformity to society’s
expectations
III. Anxiety
People experience anxiety when they
become aware that their existence or something
identified with it might be destroyed. The acquisition
of freedom inevitably leads to anxiety, which can be
either pleasurable and constructive or painful and
destructive.
A. Normal Anxiety
- proportionate to the threat, does not involve
repression, and can be handled on a
conscious level.
B. Neurotic Anxiety
- a reaction that is disproportionate to the threat
and that leads to repression and defensive
behaviors.
- It is felt whenever one's values are transformed
into dogma. Neurotic anxiety blocks growth
and productive action.
IV. Guilt
Guilt arises whenever people deny their
potentialities, fail to accurately perceive the needs of
others, or remain blind to their dependence on the
natural world. Both anxiety and guilt are ontological;
that is, they refer to the nature of being and not to
feelings arising from specific situations.
V. Intentionality
- The structure that gives meaning to
experience and allows people to make
decisions about the future
- permits people to overcome the dichotomy
between subject and object because it
enables them to see that their intentions are a
function of both themselves and their
environment.
VI. Care, Love, and Will
- Care is an active process that suggests that
things matter.
- Love means to care, to delight in the
presence of another person, and to affirm that
person's value as much as one's own.
- Care is also an important ingredient in will,
defined as a conscious commitment to
action.
A. Union of Love and Will
May believed that our modern society has lost
sight of the true nature of love and will, equating love
with sex and will with will power. He further held that
psychologically healthy people are able to combine
love and will because both imply care, choice,
action, and responsibility.
B. Forms of Love
- Sex: A biological function through sexual
intercourse
- Eros is a psychological desire that seeks an
enduring union with a loved one. It may
include sex, but it is built on care and
tenderness.
- Philia, an intimate nonsexual friendship
between two people, takes time to develop
and does not depend on the actions of the
other person.
- Agape is an altruistic or spiritual love that
carries with it the risk of playing God. Agape is
undeserved and unconditional.
VII. Freedom and Destiny
Psychologically healthy individuals are
comfortable with freedom, able to assume
responsibility for their choices, and willing to face their
destiny.
A. Freedom Defined
Freedom comes from an understanding of our
destiny. We are free when we recognize that death is
a possibility at any moment and when we are willing
to experience changes even in the face of not
knowing what those changes will bring.
B. Forms of Freedom
May recognized two forms of freedom: (1)
freedom of doing, or freedom of action, which he
called existential freedom, and (2) freedom of being,
or an inner freedom, which he called essential
freedom.
C. Destiny Defined
May defined destiny as "the design of the
universe speaking through the design of each one of
us." In other words, our destiny includes the limitations
of our environment and our personal qualities,
including our mortality, gender, and genetic
predispositions. Freedom and destiny constitute a
paradox because freedom gains vitality from destiny,
and destiny gains significance from freedom.
VIII. Psychopathology
May saw apathy and emptiness—not anxiety
or depression—as the chief existential disorders of our
time. People have become alienated from the
natural world (Umwelt), from other people (Mitwelt)
and from themselves (Eigenwelt). Psychopathology is
a lack of connectedness and an inability to fulfill one's
destiny.
IX. Psychotherapy
The goal of May's psychotherapy was not to
cure patients of any specific disorder, but rather to
make them more fully human. May said that the
purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free, that is
to allow them to make choices and to assume
responsibility for those choices.
X. Critique of May
May's psychology has been legitimately
criticized as being antitheoretical and unjustly
criticized as being anti-intellectual. May's
antitheoretical approach calls for a new kind of
science—one that considers uniqueness and personal
freedom as crucial concepts. However, according to
the criteria of present science, May's theory rates low
on most standards. More specifically, we give it a
very low rating on its ability to generate research, to
be falsified, and to guide action; low on internal
consistency (because it lacks operationally defined
terms), average on parsimony, and high on its
organizational powers, due to its consideration of a
broad scope of the human condition.
XI. Concept of Humanity
May viewed people as complex beings,
capable of both tremendous good and immense evil.
People have become alienated from the world, from
other people, and, most of all, from themselves. On
the dimensions of a concept of humanity, May rates
high on free choice, teleology, social influences, and
uniqueness. On the issue of conscious or unconscious
forces, his theory takes a middle position.
CHAPTER 12: PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
1. Biography of Gordon Allport
- born in Indiana in 1897, the son of a physician
and former school teacher.
- He received an undergraduate degree in
philosophy and economics and a PhD from
Harvard,
- spent 2 years studying under some of the
great German psychologists, but he returned
from Europe to teach at Harvard.
- Two years later he took a position at
Dartmouth, but after 4 years at Dartmouth, he
returned to Harvard, where he remained until
his death in 1967.
2. Allport's Approach to Personality Theory
A. What Is Personality?
- "the dynamic organization within the
individual of those psychophysical systems
that determine [the person's] behavior and
thought.
- Dynamic organization: patterned yet subject
to change
- Psychophysical: importance of both
psychological and physical aspects of
personality
- Determine: not merely the mask we wear but
the person behind that
- Characteristics: uniqueness of the individual
- Behavior and thinking: anything the person
does (external or internal)
B. What is the Role of Conscious Motivation?
- began with his short-lived discussion with
Freud, when Allport had not yet selected a
career in psychology.
- Whereas Freud would attribute an
unconscious desire in the story of the young
boy on the tram car, Allport saw the story as
an expression of a conscious motive.
- He was inclined to accept self-reports at face
value
C. What Are the Characteristics of a Healthy
Person?
- Proactive behavior: not only reacting to
external stimuli but causing their environment
to react to them
- Motivated by conscious process: flexible and
autonomous
- Relatively trauma-free childhood
- Extension of the sense of self: not self-
centered; social interest are important to
them
- Warm relating of self to others: intimate and
compassionate; love other unselfishy
- Emotional security or self-acceptance: not
overly upset when things do not go as
planned
- Realistic perception: problem oriented
- Insight & humor: no need to attribute their own
mistakes and weakness to others; can laugh
at themselves; see themselves objectively
- Unifying philosophy of life: have a clear view
of the purpose of life (not necessarily religious)
3. Structure of Personality
- most important structures of personality are
those that permit description of the individual
in terms of individual characteristics, and he
called these individual structures personal
dispositions.
A. Personal Dispositions
- “common traits” which permit inter-individual
comparisons
- “personal dispositions” which are unusual to
the individual.
- Interpersonal comparisons are inappropriate
to personal dispositions and any attempt of
comparison transforms it to a common trait
- Levels (continuum) of personal dispositions:
o Cardinal dispositions: characteristics
that are so obvious and dominating
that they cannot be hidden from other
people. Not everyone have this
o Central dispositions: all people have 5
to 10 central dispositions, or
characteristics around which their lives
revolve
o Secondary dispositions: are less reliable
and less conspicuous than central
traits. Occur with some regularity
B. Motivational and Stylistic Dispositions
- Allport further divided personal dispositions
into
o motivational dispositions - strong
enough to initiate action
o stylistic dispositions - the manner in
which an individual behaves and
 which guide action (does not really
have an exact drive or instinct that
causes the behavior)
C. Proprium
- all those behaviors and characteristics that
people regard as warm and central in their
lives.
- self/ego could imply an object or thing within
a person that controls behavior,
- whereas proprium suggests the core of one's
personhood (values/conscience)
4. Motivation
- motives change as people mature and also
that people are motivated by present drives
and wants.
A. Theory of Motivation
- people not only react to their environment,
but they also shape their environment and
cause it to react to them.
- His proactive approach emphasized the idea
that people often seek additional tension and
that they purposefully act on their
environment in a way that fosters growth
toward psychological health.
B. Functional Autonomy
- some (but not all) human motives are
functionally independent from the original
motive responsible for a particular behavior.
- two levels of functional autonomy:
o perseverative functional autonomy:
tendency of certain basic behaviors
(such as addictive behaviors) to
perseverate or continue in the
absence of reinforcement
o propriate functional autonomy: self-
sustaining motives (such as interests)
that are related to the proprium.
- a behavior is functionally autonomous to the
extent that it seeks new goals, as when a
need (eating) turns into an interest (cooking).
- Not all behaviors are functionally autonomous:
o biological drives = eating, breathing,
and sleeping
o reflex actions such as an eye blink
o physique, intelligence, and
temperament
o habits in the process of being formed;
o patterns of behavior that require
primary reinforcement
o sublimations that can be tied to
childhood sexual desires
o some neurotic or pathological
symptoms.
5. Critique of Allport
His views are based more on philosophical
speculation and common sense than on scientific
studies. His theory rates low on its ability to organize
psychological data and to be falsified. It rates high
on parsimony and internal consistency and about
average on its ability to generate research and to
help the practitioner.
6. Concept of Humanity
Allport saw people as thinking, proactive,
purposeful beings who are generally aware of what
they are doing and why. On the six dimensions for a
concept of humanity, Allport rates higher than any
other theorist on conscious influences and on the
uniqueness of the individual. He rates high on free
choice, optimism, and teleology and about average
on social influences.
CHAPTER 13: FIVE-FACTOR TRAIT THEORY
1. The Pioneering Work of Raymond B. Cattell
- Raymond Cattell used factor analysis to
identify a large number of traits, including
personality traits.
- Included in personality traits were
temperament traits, which are concerned
with how a person behaves.
- Temperament traits include both normal and
abnormal traits. Of the 23 normal traits, 16 are
measured by Cattell's famous 16 PF scale.
- Whereas, McRae and Costa’s work yielded
scores on only 5 personality traits (NEO-PI
Inventory)
2. Basics of Factor Analysis
- a mathematical procedure for reducing a
large number of scores to a few general
variables or factors.
- Correlations of the original, specific scores with
the factors are called factor loadings.
- Traits generated through factor analysis may
be either unipolar (scaled from zero to some
large amount) or bipolar (having two
opposing poles, such as introversion and
extraversion).
- For factors to have psychological meaning,
the analyst must rotate the axes on which the
scores are plotted.
- Eysenck used an orthogonal rotation whereas
Cattell favored an obiique rotation. The
oblique rotation procedure ordinarily results in
more traits than the orthogonal method.
3. The Big Five: Taxonomy or Theory?
A large number of researchers, including
Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, Jr., have insisted that
all personality structure can be narrowed down to
five, and only five, and no fewer than five dominant
traits to emerge from factor analytic techniques.
 4. In Search of the Big Five
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Costa and
McCrae quickly discovered the traits of extraversion
(E), neuroticism (N), and openness to experience (O).
A. Five Factors Found
- the five factors have been found across a
variety of cultures and languages. In addition,
the five factors show some permanence with
age; that is, adults tend to maintain a
consistent personality structure as they grow
older.
B. Description of the Five Factors
- McCrae and Costa agreed with Eysenck that
personality traits are basically bipolar, with
some people scoring high on one factor and
low on its counterpart.
- Neuroticism: people who score high on N tend
to be anxious, temperamental, self-pitying,
self-conscious, emotional, and vulnerable to
stress-related disorders, whereas people with
low scores on N tend to have opposite
characteristics.
- Extraversion: People who score high on E tend
to be affectionate, jovial, talkative, a joiner,
and fun-loving, whereas low E scorers tend to
have opposing traits.
- Openness (to experience): High O scorers
prefer variety in their life and are contrasted to
low O scorers who have a need for closure
and who gain comfort in their association with
familiar people and things.
- Agreeableness: People who score high on A
tend to be trusting, generous, yielding,
acceptant, and good natured. Low A scorers
are generally suspicious, stingy, unfriendly,
irritable, and critical of other people.
- Conscientiousness: people high on the C
scale tend to be ordered, controlled,
organized, ambitious, achievement-focused,
and self-disciplined.
5. Evolution of the Five-Factor Theory
- their Five-Factor taxonomy was being
transformed into a Five-Factor Theory (FFT)
A. Units of the Five-Factor Theory
- The three core components include:
o basic tendencies - the universal raw
material of personality; define the
individual’s potential & direction; basis
in biology and their stability over time
and situation
o characteristic adaptations - are
acquired personality structures that
develop as people adapt to their
environment (flexibility); what we learn
o self-concept – an important
characteristic adaptation which are
the knowledge and attitudes about
oneself
- Peripheral components include:
o biological bases - which are the sole
cause of basic tendencies (genes,
hormones, brain structures)
o objective biography - everything a
person does or thinks over a lifetime
(objectively = not how they view
experiences)
o external influence - or knowledge,
views, and evaluations of the self;
“how we respond” to the opportunities
and demands
B. Basic Postulates
- Basic tendencies: four postulate:
o individuality - every adult has a unique
pattern of traits
o origin - all personality traits originate
solely from biological factors, such as
genetics, hormones, and brain
structures
o development - traits develop and
change through childhood,
adolescence, and mid-adulthood
o structure - traits are organized
hierarchically from narrow and specific
to broad and general.
6. Critique of Trait and Factor Theories
The factor theories of Eysenck and of McCrae
and Costa rate high on parsimony, on their ability to
generate research, and on their usefulness in
organizing data; they are about average on
falsifiability, usefulness to the practitioner, and internal
consistency.
7. Concept of Humanity
Factor theories generally assume that human
personality is largely the product of genetics and not
the environment. Thus, we rate these two theories
very high on biological influences and very low on
social factors. In addition, we rate both about
average on conscious versus unconscious influences
and high on the uniqueness of individuals. The
concepts of free choice, optimism versus pessimism,
and causality versus teleology are not clearly
addressed by these theories.
CHAPTER 14: COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
1. Overview of Cognitive Social Learning Theory
Both Julian Rotter and Walter Mischel believe
that cognitive factors, more than immediate
reinforcements, determine how people will react to
environmental forces. Both theorists suggest that our
expectations of future events are major determinants
of performance.
2. Biography of Julian Rotter
Julian Rotter was born in Brooklyn, New York n
in 1916. As a high school student, he became familiar
with some of the writings of Freud and Adler, but he
majored in chemistry rather than psychology while at
Brooklyn College. In 1941, he received a PhD in
clinical psychology from Indiana University. After
World War II, he took a position at Ohio State, where
one of his students was Walter Mischel. In 1963, he
moved to the University of Connecticut and has
remained there since retirement.
3. Introduction to Rotter's Social Learning Theory
- it assumes that humans interact with their
meaningful environments: that is, human
behavior stems from the interaction of
environmental and personal factors.
- human personality is learned, which suggests
that it can be changed or modified as long as
people are capable of learning.
- personality has a basic unity, suggesting that
personality has some basic stability.
- motivation is goal directed.
- people are capable of anticipating events,
and thus they are capable of changing their
environment and their personality.
4. Predicting Specific Behaviors - must be
analyzed in order to make accurate
predictions in any specific situation.
A. Behavior Potential - possibility that a particular
response will occur at a given time and place
in relation to its likely reinforcement.
B. Expectancy - their confidence that a
particular reinforcement will follow a specific
behavior in a specific situation or situations.
Expectancies can be either general or
specific, and the overall likelihood of success is
a function of both generalized and specific
expectancies.
C. Reinforcement Value - person's preference for
any particular reinforcement over other
reinforcements if all are equally likely to occur.
Internal reinforcement is the individual's
perception of an event, whereas external
reinforcement refers to society's evaluation of
an event. Reinforcement-reinforcement
sequences suggest that the value of an event
is a function of one's expectation that a
particular reinforcement will lead to future
reinforcements.
D. Psychological Situation - part of the external
and internal world to which a person is
responding. Behavior is a function of the
interaction of people with their meaningful
environment.
E. Basic Prediction Formula - Hypothetically, in
any specific situation, behavior can be
predicted by the basic prediction formula,
which states that the potential for a behavior
to occur in a particular situation in relation to
a given reinforcement is a function of people's
expectancy that their behavior will be
followed by that reinforcement in that
situation.
5. Predicting General Behaviors
The basic prediction is too specific to give
clues about how a person will generally behave.
A. Generalized Expectancies
To make more general predictions of
behavior, one must know people's generalized
expectancies, or their expectations based on similar
past experiences that a given behavior will be
reinforced. Generalized expectancies include
people's needs, that is, behaviors that move them
toward a goal.
B. Needs
Needs refer to functionally related categories
of behaviors. Rotter listed six broad categories of
needs, with each need being related to behaviors
that lead to the same or similar reinforcements: (1)
recognition-status refers to the need to excel, to
achieve, and to have others recognize one's worth;
(2) dominance is the need to control the behavior of
others, to be in charge, or to gain power over others;
(3) independence is the need to be free from the
domination of others; (4) protection-dependence is
the need to have others take care of us and to
protect us from harm; (5) love and affection are
needs to be warmly accepted by others and to be
held in friendly regard; and (6) physical comfort
includes those behaviors aimed at securing food,
good health, and physical security. Three need
components are: (1) need potential, or the possible
occurrences of a set of functionally related behaviors
directed toward the satisfaction of similar goals; (2)
freedom of movement, or a person's overall
expectation of being reinforced for performing those
behaviors that are directed toward satisfying some
general need; and (3) need value, or the extent to
which people prefer one set of reinforcements to
another. Need components are analogous to the
more specific concepts of behavior potential,
expectancy, and reinforcement value.
C. General Prediction Formula
The general prediction formula states that
need potential is a function of freedom of movement
and need value. Rotter's two most famous scales for
measuring generalized expectancies are the Internal-
External Control Scale and the Interpersonal Trust
Scale.
 D. Internal and External Control of
Reinforcement
The Internal-External Control Scale (popularly
called "locus of control scale") attempts to measure
the degree to which people perceive a causal
relationship between their own efforts and
environmental consequences.
E. Interpersonal Trust Scale
The Interpersonal Trust Scale measures the
extent to which a person expects the word or promise
of another person to be true.
6. Introduction to Mischel's Personality System
Like Bandura and Rotter, Mischel believes that
cognitive factors, such as expectancies, subjective
perceptions, values, goals, and personal standards
are important in shaping personality. In his early
theory, Mischel seriously questioned the consistency
of personality, but more recently, he and Yuichi
Shoda have advanced the notion that behavior is
also a function of relatively stable cognitive-affective
units.
7. Biography of Walter Mischel
Walter Mischel was born in Vienna in 1930, the
second son of upper-middle-class parents. When the
Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, his family moved to the
United States and eventually settled in Brooklyn.
Mischel received an MA from City College of New
York and a PhD from Ohio State, where he was
influenced by Julian Rotter. He is currently a professor
at Columbia University.
8. Background of the Cognitive-Affective
Personality System
Mischel originally believed that human
behavior was mostly a function of the situation, but
more lately he has recognized the importance of
relatively permanent cognitive-affective units.
Nevertheless, Mischel's theory continues to recognize
the apparent inconsistency of some behaviors.
A. The Consistency Paradox
The consistency paradox refers to the
observation that, although both lay people and
professionals tend to believe that behavior is quite
consistent, research suggests that it is not. Mischel
recognizes that, indeed, some traits are consistent
over time, but he contends that there is little evidence
to suggest that they are consistent from one situation
to another.
B. Person-Situation Interaction
Mischel believes that behavior is best
predicted from an understanding of the person, the
situation, and the interaction between person and
situation. Thus, behavior is not the result of some
global personality trait, but rather of people's
perceptions of themselves in a particular situation.
9. Cognitive-Affective Personality System
However, Mischel does not believe that
inconsistencies in behavior are due solely to the
situation; he recognizes that inconsistent behaviors
reflect stable patterns of variation within a person. He
and Shoda see these stable variations in behavior in
the following framework: If A, then X; but if B, then Y.
People's pattern of variability is their behavioral
signature, or their unique and stable pattern of
behaving differently in different situations.
A. Behavior Prediction
Mischel's basic theoretical position for
predicting and explaining behavior is as follows: If
personality is a stable system that processes
information about the situation, then as people
encounter different situations, they should behave
differently as those situations vary. Therefore, Mischel
believes that, even though people's behavior may
reflect some stability over time, it tends to vary as
situations vary.
B. Situation Variables
Situation variables include all those stimuli that
people attend to in a given situation.
C. Cognitive-Affective Units
Cognitive-affective units include all those
psychological, social, and physiological aspects of
people that permit them to interact with their
environment with some stability in their behavior.
Mischel identified five such units. First are encoding
strategies, or people's individualized manner of
categorizing information they receive from external
stimuli. Second are the competencies and self-
regulatory strategies. One of the most important of
these competencies is intelligence, which Mischel
argues is responsible for the apparent consistency of
other traits. In addition, people use self-regulatory
strategies to control their own behavior through self-
formulated goals and self-produced consequences.
The third cognitive-affective units are expectancies
and beliefs, or people's guesses about the
consequences of each of the different behavioral
possibilities. The fourth cognitive-affective unit
includes people's subjective goals and values, which
tend to render behavior fairly consistent. Mischel's fifth
cognitive-affective unit includes affective responses,
including emotions, feelings, and the affect that
accompanies physiological reactions.
10. Critique of Cognitive Social Learning Theory
Cognitive social learning theory combines the
rigors of learning theory with the speculative
assumption that people are forward-looking beings. It
rates high on generating research and on being
internally consistent; it rates about average on its
ability to be falsified, to organize data, and to guide
action.
11. Concept of Humanity
 Rotter and Mischel see people as goal-
directed, cognitive animals whose perceptions of
events are more crucial than the events themselves.
Cognitive social learning theory rates very high on
social influences, and high on uniqueness of the
individual, free choice, teleology, and conscious
processes. On the dimension of optimism versus
pessimism, Rotter's view is slightly more optimistic,
whereas Mischel's is about in the middle.
CHAPTER 15: PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONAL
CONSTRUCTS
1. Overview of Kelly's Personal Construct Theory
Kelly's theory of personal constructs can be
seen as a metatheory, or a theory about theories. It
holds that people anticipate events by the meanings
or interpretations that they place on those events.
Kelly called these interpretations personal constructs.
His philosophical position, called constructive
alternativism, assumes that alternative interpretations
are always available to people.
2. Biography of George Kelly
George Kelly was born on a farm in Kansas in
1905. During his school years and his early
professional career, he dabbled in a wide variety of
jobs, but he eventually received a PhD in psychology
from the University of Iowa. He began his academic
career at Fort Hays State College in Kansas, then after
World War II, he took a position at Ohio State. He
remained there until 1965 when he joined the faculty
at Brandeis. He died 2 years later at age 61.
3. Kelly's Philosophical Position
Kelly believed that people construe events
according to their personal constructs, rather than
reality.
A. Person as Scientist
People generally attempt to solve everyday
problems in much the same fashion as do scientists;
that is, they observe, ask questions, formulate
hypotheses, infer conclusions, and predict future
events.
B. Scientist as Person
Because scientists are people, their
pronouncements should be regarded with the same
skepticism as any other data. Every scientific theory
can be viewed from an alternate angle, and every
competent scientist should be open to changing his
or her theory.
C. Constructive Alternativism
Kelly believed that our interpretations of the
world are subject to revision or replacement, an
assumption he called constructive alternativism. He
further stressed that, because people can construe
their world from different angles, observations that are
valid at one time may be false at a later time
4. Personal Constructs
Kelly believed that people look at their world
through templates that they create and then attempt
to fit over the realities of the world. He called these
templates personal constructs, which he believed
shape behavior.
A. Basic Postulate
Kelly expressed his theory in one basic
postulate and 11 supporting corollaries. The basic
postulate assumes that human behavior is shaped by
the way people anticipate the future.
B. Supporting Corollaries
The 11 supporting corollaries can all be
inferred from this basic postulate. (1) Although no two
events are exactly alike, we construe similar events as
if they were the same, and this is Kelly's construction
corollary. (2) The individuality corollary states that
because people have different experiences, they
can interpret the same event in different ways. (3) The
organizational corollary assumes that people
organize their personal constructs in a hierarchical
system, with some constructs in a superordinate
position and other subordinate to them. (4) The
dichotomy corollary assumes that people construe
events in an either/or manner, e.g., good or bad. (5)
Kelly's choice corollary assumes that people tend to
choose the alternative in a dichotomized construct
that they see as extending the range of their future
choices. (6) The range corollary states that constructs
are limited to a particular range of convenience; that
is, they are not relevant to all situations. (7) Kelly's
experience corollary suggests that people continually
revise their personal constructs as the result of their
experiences. (8) The modulation corollary assumes
that only permeable constructs lead to change;
concrete constructs resist modification through
experience. (9) The fragmentation corollary states
that people's behavior can be inconsistent because
their construct systems can readily admit
incompatible elements. (10) the commonality
corollary suggests that our personal constructs tend
to be similar to the construction systems of other
people to the extent that we share experiences with
them. (11) The sociality corollary states that people
are able to communicate with other people because
they can construe those people's constructions. With
the sociality corollary, Kelly introduced the concept of
role, which refers to a pattern of behavior that stems
from people's understanding of the constructs of
others. Each of us has a core role and numerous
peripheral roles. A core role gives us a sense of
identity whereas peripheral roles are less central to
our self-concept.
5. Critique of Kelly
 Kelly's theory probably is most applicable to
relatively normal, intelligent people. Unfortunately, it
pays scant attention to problems of motivation,
development, and cultural influences. On the six
criteria of a useful theory, it rates very high on
parsimony and internal consistency and about
average on its ability to generate research. However
it rates low on its ability to be falsified, to guide the
practitioner, and to organize knowledge.

6. Concept of Humanity
Kelly saw people as anticipating the future
and living their lives in accordance with those
anticipations. His concept of elaborative choice
suggests that people increase their range of future
choices by the present choices they freely make.
Thus, Kelly's theory rates very high in teleology and
high in choice and optimism. In addition, it receives
high ratings for conscious influences and for its
emphasis on the uniqueness of the individual. Finally,
personal construct theory is about average on social
influences.