Theories of Personality Summarized

Theories Of Personality Summarized
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
OUTLINE
Introduction to Personality Theory
Psychodynamic Theories
Freud: Psychoanalysis
Adler: Individual Psychology
Jung: Analytical Psychology
Klein: Object Relations Theory
Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Theory
Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis
Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory
Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory
Learning Theories
Skinner: Behavioral Analysis
Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory
Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social
Learning Theory
Dispositional Theories
Cattel and Eysenck: Trait and Factor
Theories
Allport: Psychology of the Individual
Humanistic/Existential Theories
Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs
Rogers: Person Centered Theory
Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic Theory
May: Existential Psychology
INTRODUCTION OF PERSONALITY
THEORY
Overview of Personality Theory
Personality theorists (1) make controlled
observations of human behavior and
(2) speculate on the meaning of those
observations. Differences in theories are due
to more than differences in terminology; they
stem from differences among theorists
on basic issues concerning the nature of humanity.
What Is Personality?
The term personality has several definitions. In
everyday language, the word personality refers
to one's social skills, charisma, and popularity.
However, scientists use the term to mean more

than a person's persona, or public image. To
them, personality is a pattern of relatively
permanent traits or characteristics that give some
consistency to a person's behavior.
What Is a Theory?
Theories are tools used by scientists to generate
research and organize observations.
Theory Defined
A theory is a set of related assumptions
that allows scientists to use logical
deductive reasoning to formulate
testable hypotheses.
Theory and Its Relatives
The term theory is often used incorrectly
to imply something other than a scientific
concept. Although theory has some
relationship with philosophy, speculation,
hypothesis, and taxonomy, it is not the
same as any of these. Philosophy-the
love of wisdom-is a broader term than
theory, but one of its branchesepistemology-relates to the nature of
knowledge, and theories are used by
scientists in the pursuit of knowledge.
Theories rely on speculation, but
speculation in the absence of controlled
observations and empirical research is
essentially worthless. Hypothesis, or
educated guess, is a narrower term than
theory. A single theory may generate
hundreds of hypotheses. Taxonomy
means a classification system, and
theories often rely on some sort of
classification
of
data.
However,
taxonomies do not generate hypotheses.
Why Different Theories?
Psychologists and other scientists
generate a variety of theories because
they have different life experiences and
different ways of looking at the same
data.
Theorists' Personalities and Their Theories
of Personality
Because personality theories flow from
an individual theorist's personality, some
psychologists have proposed the
psychology of science, a discipline that
Page 1 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
studies the personal characteristics of

theorists.
motives, which permit varying explanations for

the same observations.
What Makes a Theory Useful?

A useful theory must (1) generate
research-both descriptive research and
hypothesis testing, (2) be falsifiable; that
is, research findings should be able to
either support of refute the theory, (3)
organize data into an intelligible
framework
and
integrate
new
information into its structure; (4) guide
action, or provide the practitioner with a
road map for making day-to-day
decisions; (5) be internally consistent and
have a set of operational definitions;
and (6) be parsimonious, or as simple as
possible.
Biography of Sigmund Freud

Born in the Czech Republic in 1856, Sigmund
Freud spent most of his life in Vienna. In his
practice as a psychiatrist, he was more interested
in learning about the unconscious motives of
patients than in curing neuroses. 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. In 1897, however, he abandoned
his seduction theory and replaced it with his
notion of the Oedipus complex, a concept that
remained the center of his psychoanalytic theory.
Dimensions for a Concept of Humanity

Personality theorists have had different
conceptions of human nature, and the authors list
six dimensions for comparing these conceptions.
These dimensions include determinism versus free
choice, pessimism versus optimism, causality
versus teleology, conscious versus unconscious
determinants of behavior, biological versus social
influences on personality, and uniqueness versus
similarities among people.
Research in Personality Theory
In researching human behavior, personality
theorists often use various measuring procedures,
and these procedures must be both reliable and
valid. Reliability refers to a measuring
instrument's consistency whereas validity refers to
its accuracy or truthfulness.
PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES
FREUD: PSYCHOANALYSIS
Overview of Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis has endured
because it (1) postulated the primacy of sex and
aggression-two universally popular themes, (2)
attracted a group of followers who were
dedicated to spreading psychoanalytic doctrine,
and (3) advanced the notion of unconscious
Levels of Mental Life

Freud saw mental functioning as operating on
three levels: unconscious, preconscious, and
conscious.
Unconscious
The unconscious includes drives and
instincts that are beyond awareness but
that motivate most human 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.
Preconscious
The preconscious contains images that
are not in awareness but that can
become conscious either quite easily or
with some level of difficulty.
Conscious
Consciousness plays a relatively minor
role in Freudian theory. Conscious ideas
stem from either the perception of
external stimuli (our perceptual conscious
system) or from the unconscious and
preconscious after they have evaded
censorship.
Page 2 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Provinces of the Mind

Freud conceptualized three regions of the mind:
the id, the ego, and the superego.
The Id
The id, which is completely unconscious,
serves the pleasure principle and
contains our basic instincts. It operates
through the primary process.
The Ego
The ego, or secondary process, is
governed by the reality principle and is
responsible for reconciling the unrealistic
demands of the id and the superego.
The Superego
The superego, which serves the idealistic
principle, has two subsystems-the
conscience and the ego-ideal. The
conscience results from punishment for
improper behavior whereas the egoideal stems from rewards for socially
acceptable behavior.
Dynamics of Personality
Dynamics of personality refers to those forces
that motivate people.
Instincts
Freud grouped all human drives or urges
under two primary instincts-sex (Eros or
the life instinct) and aggression (the
death or destructive instinct). The aim of
the sexual instinct is pleasure, which can
be gained through the erogenous zones,
especially the mouth, anus, and genitals.
The object of the sexual instinct is any
person or thing that brings sexual
pleasure. All infants possess primary
narcissism, or self-centeredness, but the
secondary narcissism of adolescence and
adulthood is not universal. Both sadism
(receiving sexual pleasure from inflicting
pain on another) and masochism
(receiving sexual pleasure from painful
experiences) satisfy both sexual and
aggressive drives. The destructive instinct
aims to return a person to an inorganic
state, but it is ordinarily directed against
other people and is called aggression.
Anxiety
Freud believed only the ego feels
anxiety, but the id, superego, and
outside world can each be a source of
anxiety. Neurotic anxiety 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, which is similar to fear,
is produced by the ego's relation with
the real world.
Defense Mechanisms
According to Freud, defense mechanisms operate
to protect the ego against the pain of anxiety.
Repression
Repression involves 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.
Undoing and Isolation
Undoing is the ego's attempt to do away
with unpleasant experiences and their
consequences, usually by means of
repetitious ceremonial actions. Isolation,
in contrast, is marked by obsessive
thoughts and involves the ego's attempt
to isolate an experience by surrounding
it with a blacked-out region of
insensibility.
Reaction Formation
A reaction formation is marked by the
repression of one impulse and the
ostentatious expression of its exact
opposite.
Displacement
Displacement takes place when people
redirect their unwanted urges onto other
objects or people in order to disguise the
original impulse.
Fixation
Fixations develop when psychic energy is
blocked at one stage of development,
making psychological change difficult.
Page 3 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Regression
Regressions occur whenever a person
reverts to earlier, more infantile modes
of behavior.
Projection
Projection is seeing in others those
unacceptable feelings or behaviors that
actually reside in one's own unconscious.
When carried to extreme, projection can
become paranoia, which is characterized
by delusions of persecution.
Introjection
Introjections take place when people
incorporate positive qualities of another
person into their own ego to reduce
feelings of inferiority.
Sublimation
Sublimations involve the elevation of the
sexual instinct's aim to a higher level,
which permits people to make
contributions to society and culture.
Stages of Development
Freud saw psychosexual development as
proceeding from birth to maturity through four
overlapping stages.
Infantile Period
The infantile stage encompasses the first
4 to 5 years of life and is divided into
three subphases: oral, anal, and phallic.
During the oral phase, an infant is
primarily motivated to receive pleasure
through the mouth. During the second
year of life, a child goes through an
anal phase. If parents are too punitive
during the anal phase, the child may
become an anal character, with the anal
triad of orderliness, stinginess, and
obstinacy. During the phallic phase, boys
and girls begin to have differing
psychosexual development. At this time,
boys and girls experience the Oedipus
complex in which they have sexual
feelings for one parent and hostile
feelings for the other. The male
castration complex, which takes the form
of castration anxiety, breaks up the
male Oedipus complex and results in a
well-formed male superego. For girls,
however, 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.
Latency Period
Freud believed that psychosexual
development goes through a latency
stage-from about age 5 until puberty-in
which the sexual instinct is partially
suppressed.
Genital Period
The genital period begins with puberty,
when
adolescents
experience
a
reawakening of the genital aim of Eros.
The term "genital period" should not be
confused with "phallic period."
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.
Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud erected his theory on the dreams, free
associations, slips of the tongue, and neurotic
symptoms of his patients during therapy. But he
also gathered information from history,
literature, and works of art.
Freud's Early Therapeutic Technique
During the 1890s, Freud used an
aggressive therapeutic technique in
which he strongly suggested to patients
that they had been sexually seduced as
children.
He later dropped this technique and
abandoned his belief that most patients
had been seduced during childhood.
Freud's Later Therapeutic Technique
Beginning in the late 1890s, Freud
adopted a much more passive type of
psychotherapy, one that relied heavily
on
free
association,
dream
interpretation, and transference. The
goal of Freud's later psychotherapy was
to uncover repressed memories, and the
therapist uses dream analysis and free
Page 4 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
association to do so. With free

association, patients are required to say
whatever comes to mind, no matter how
irrelevant or distasteful. Successful
therapy rests on the patient's
transference of childhood sexual or
aggressive feelings onto the therapist
and away from symptom formation.
Patients' resistance to change can be
seen as progress because it indicates
that therapy has advanced beyond
superficial conversation.
the long term, maximize gratification,

and have the least amount of distortion
Dream Analysis
In
interpreting
dreams,
Freud
differentiated the manifest content
(conscious description) from the latent
content (the unconscious meaning).
Nearly all dreams are wish-fulfillments,
although the wish is usually unconscious
and can be known only through dream
interpretation. To interpret dreams,
Freud used both dream symbols and the
dreamer's associations to the dream
content.
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
is rated high on its ability to generate research,
very low on its openness to falsification, and
average on organizing data, guiding action, and
being parsimonious. Because it lacks operational
definitions, it rates low on internal consistency.
Freudian Slips
Freud believed that parapraxes, or socalled Freudian slips, are not chance
accidents but reveal a person's true but
unconscious intentions.
Related Research
Freudian theory has generated a large amount
of related research, including studies on defense
mechanisms and oral fixation.
Defense Mechanisms
George Valliant has added to the list of
Freudian defense mechanisms and has
found evidence that some of them are
neurotic (reaction formation, idealization,
and undoing), some are immature and
maladaptive
(projection,
isolation,
denial, displacement, and dissociation),
and some are mature and adaptive
(sublimation, suppression, humor, and
altruism). Valliant found that neurotic
defense mechanisms are successful over
the short term; immature defenses are
unsuccessful and have the highest degree
of distortion; whereas mature and
adaptive defenses are successful over
Oral Fixation
Some recent research has found that
aggression is higher in people who bite
their finger nails than it is in non-nail
biters, especially in women. Other
research found that people who are
orally fixated tend to see their parents
more negatively than did people who
were less orally fixated.
Concept of Humanity
Freud's concept of humanity was deterministic
and pessimistic. He 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 among people.
ADLER: INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Overview of Adler's Individual Psychology
An original member of Freud's psychoanalytic
group, Alfred Adler broke from that group and
advocated a theory of personality that was
nearly diametrically opposed to that of Freud.
Whereas Freud's view of humanity was
pessimistic and rooted in biology, Adler's view
was optimistic, idealistic, and rooted in family
experiences.
Biography of Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler was born in 1870 in a town near
Vienna, a second son of middle-class Jewish
parents. Like Freud, Adler was a physician, and
in 1902, he became a charter member of Freud's
organization.
However,
personal
and
Page 5 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
professional differences between the two men

led to Adler's departure from the Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society in 1911. Adler soon
founded his own group, the Society for Individual
Psychology. Adler's strengths were his energetic
oral presentations and his insightful ability to
understand family dynamics. He was not a gifted
writer, a limitation that may have prevented
individual psychology from attaining world
recognition equal to Freud's psychoanalysis.
Introduction to Adlerian Theory
Although Adler's individual psychology is both
complex and comprehensive, its main tenets can
be stated in simple form.
Striving for Success or Superiority
The sole dynamic force behind people's actions is
the striving for success or superiority.
The Final Goal
The final goal of either success or
superiority toward which all people
strive unifies personality and makes all
behavior meaningful.
The Striving Force as Compensation
Because people are born with small,
inferior bodies, they feel inferior and
attempt to overcome these feelings
through their natural tendency to move
toward completion. The striving force can
take one of two courses: personal gain
(superiority) or community benefit
(success).
Striving for Personal Superiority
Psychologically unhealthy individuals
strive for personal superiority with little
concern for other people. Although they
may appear to be interested in other
people, their basic motivation is personal
benefit.
Striving for Success
In contrast, psychologically healthy
people strive for the success of all
humanity, but they do so without losing
their personal identity.
Subjective Perceptions
People's subjective view of the world-not realityshapes their behavior.
Fictionalism
Fictions are people's expectations of the
future. Adler held that fictions guide
behavior, because people act as if these
fictions are true. Adler emphasized
teleology over causality, or explanations
of behavior in terms of future goals
rather than past causes.
Organ Inferiorities
Adler believed that all humans are
"blessed" with organ inferiorities, which
stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority
and move people toward perfection or
completion.
Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality
Adler believed that all behaviors are directed
toward a single purpose. When seen in the light
of that sole purpose, seemingly contradictory
behaviors can be seen as operating in a selfconsistent manner.
Organ Dialect
People often use a physical disorder to
express style of life, a condition Adler
called organ dialect.
Conscious and Unconscious
Conscious and unconscious processes are
unified and operate to achieve a single
goal. The part of our goal that we do
not clearly understood is unconscious; the
part of our goal that we fail to fully
comprehend is conscious.
Social Interest
Human behavior has value to the extent that it is
motivated by social interest, that is, a feeling of
oneness with all of humanity.
Origins of Social Interest
Although social interest exists as
potentiality in all people, it must be
fostered in a social environment. Adler
believed
that
the
parent-child
relationship can be so strong that it
negates the effects of heredity.
Importance of Social Interest
According to Adler, social interest is "the
sole criterion of human values," and the
worthiness of all one's actions must be
seen by this standard. Without social
Page 6 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
interest, societies could not exist;

individuals in antiquity could not have
survived without cooperating with others
to protect themselves from danger. Even
today,
an
infant's
helplessness
predisposes it toward a nurturing person.
Style of Life
The manner of a person's striving is called style
of life, a pattern that is relatively well set by 4
or 5 years of age. However, Adler believed that
healthy individuals are marked by flexible
behavior and that they have some limited ability
to change their style of life.
Creative Power
Style of life is partially a product of heredity
and environment-the building blocks of
personality-but ultimately style of life is shaped
by people's creative power, that is, by their
ability to freely choose a course of action.
Abnormal Development
Creative power is not limited to healthy people;
unhealthy individuals also create their own
personalities. Thus, each of us is free to choose
either a useful or a useless style of life.
General Description
The most important factor in abnormal
development is lack of social interest. In
addition, people with a useless style of
life tend to (1) set their goals too high,
(2) have a dogmatic style of life, and (3)
live in their own private world.
External Factors in Maladjustment
Adler listed three factors that relate to
abnormal
development:
(1)
exaggerated physical deficiencies, which
do not by themselves cause abnormal
development, but which may contribute
to it by generating subjective and
exaggerated feelings of inferiority; (2)
a pampered style of life, which
contributes to an overriding drive to
establish
a
permanent
parasitic
relationship with the mother or a mother
substitute; and (3) a neglected style of
life, which leads to distrust of other
people.
Safeguarding Tendencies
Both normal and neurotic people create
symptoms as a means of protecting their
fragile self-esteem. These safeguarding
tendencies maintain a neurotic style of
life and protect a person from public
disgrace.
The
three
principal
safeguarding tendencies are (1) excuses,
which allow people to preserve their
inflated sense of personal worth; (2)
aggression, which may take the form of
depreciating others' accomplishments,
accusing others of being responsible for
one's own failures, or self-accusation;
and (3) withdrawal, which can be
expressed by psychologically moving
backward, standing still, hesitating, or
constructing obstacles.
Masculine Protest
Both men and women sometimes
overemphasize the desirability of being
manly, a condition Adler called the
masculine protest. The frequently found
inferior status of women is not based on
physiology
but
on
historical
developments and social learning.
Applications of Individual Psychology
Adler applied the principles of individual
psychology to family constellation, early
recollections, dreams, and psychotherapy.
Family Constellation
Adler believed that people's perception
of how they fit into their family is related
to their style of life. He claimed that
firstborns are likely to have strong
feelings of power and superiority, to be
overprotective, and to have more than
their share of anxiety. Second-born
children 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 have some of the
characteristics of both the oldest and the
youngest child.
Early Recollections
A more reliable method of determining
style of life is to ask people for their
earliest recollections. Adler believed that
Page 7 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
early memories are templates on which

people project their current style of life.
These recollections need not be accurate
accounts of early events; they have
psychological importance because they
reflect a person's current view of the
world.
Dreams
Adler believed that dreams can provide
clues to solving future problems.
However, dreams are disguised to
deceive the dreamer and usually must
be interpreted by another person.
Psychotherapy
The goal of Adlerian therapy is to
create a relationship between therapist
and patient that fosters social interest.
To ensure that the patient's social interest
will eventually generalize to other
relationships, the therapist adopts both a
maternal and a paternal role.
Related Research
Although family constellation and birth order
have been widely researched, a topic more
pertinent to Adlerian theory is early recollections.
Research shows that early recollections are
related to a number of personal traits, such as
depression, alcoholism, criminal behavior, and
success in counseling. Other research has shown
that a change in style of life may be capable of
producing a change in early recollections. Still
other research suggests that made-up early
recollections may be as meaningful as actual
ones.
Critique of Adler
Individual psychology rates high on its ability to
generate research, organize data, and guide the
practitioner. It receives a moderate rating on
parsimony, but because it lacks operational
definitions, it rates low on internal consistency. It
also rates low on falsification because many of
its related research findings can be explained
by other theories.
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.
JUNG: ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Overview of Jung's Analytical Psychology
Carl Jung believed that people are extremely
complex beings who possess a variety of
opposing qualities, such as introversion and
extraversion, masculinity and femininity, and
rational and irrational drives.
Biography of Carl Jung
Carl Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875, the
oldest surviving child of an idealistic Protestant
minister and his wife. Jung's early experience
with parents (who were quite opposite of each
other) probably influenced his own theory of
personality. Soon after receiving his medical
degree he became acquainted with Freud's
writings and eventually with Freud himself. 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. 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.
Levels of the Psyche
Jung saw the human psyche as being divided into
a conscious and an unconscious level, with the
latter further subdivided into a personal and a
collective unconscious.
Conscious
Images sensed by the ego are said to be
conscious. The ego thus represents the
conscious side of personality, and in the
psychologically mature individual, the
ego is secondary to the self.
Personal Unconscious
The unconscious refers to those psychic
images not sensed by the ego. Some
unconscious processes flow from our
personal experiences, but others stem
Page 8 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
from our ancestors' experiences with

universal themes. Jung divided the
unconscious into the personal unconscious,
which
contains
the
complexes
(emotionally toned groups of related
ideas) and the collective unconscious, or
ideas that are beyond our personal
experiences and that originate from the
repeated experiences of our ancestors.
Collective Unconscious
Collective unconscious images are 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. Contents of
the collective unconscious are called
archetypes.
Archetypes
Jung believed that archetypes originate
through the repeated experiences of our
ancestors and that they are expressed in
certain types of dreams, fantasies,
delusions, and hallucinations. Several
archetypes
acquire
their
own
personality, and Jung identified these by
name. One is the persona-the side of our
personality that we show to others.
Another is the shadow-the dark side of
personality. To reach full psychological
maturity, Jung believed, we must first
realize or accept our shadow. A second
hurdle in achieving maturity is for men to
accept their anima, or feminine side, and
for women to embrace their animus, or
masculine disposition. Other archetypes
include the great mother (the archetype
of nourishment and destruction); the wise
old man (the archetype of wisdom and
meaning); and the hero, (the image we
have of a conqueror who vanquishes
evil, but who has a single fatal flaw).
The most comprehensive archetype is the
self; that is, the image we have of
fulfillment, completion, or perfection. The
ultimate in psychological maturity is selfrealization, which is symbolized by the
mandala, or perfect geometric figure.
Dynamics of Personality
Jung believed that the dynamic principles that
apply to physical energy also apply to psychic
energy. These forces include causality and

teleology as well as progression and regression.
Causality and Teleology
Jung accepted a middle position
between the philosophical issues of
causality and teleology. In other words,
humans are motivated both by their past
experiences and by their expectations of
the future.
Progression and Regression
To achieve self-realization, people must
adapt to both their external and internal
worlds. Progression involves adaptation
to the outside world and the forward
flow of psychic energy, whereas
regression refers to adaptation to the
inner world and the backward flow of
psychic energy. Jung believed that the
backward step is essential to a person's
forward
movement toward
selfrealization.
Psychological Types
Eight basic psychological types emerge from the
union of two attitudes and four functions.
Attitudes
Attitudes are predispositions to act or
react in a characteristic manner. The two
basic attitudes are introversion, which
refers to people's subjective perceptions,
and extraversion, which indicates an
orientation toward the objective world.
Extraverts are influenced more by the
real world than by their subjective
perception, whereas introverts rely on
their individualized view of things.
Introverts and extraverts often mistrust
and misunderstand one another.
Functions
The two attitudes or extroversion and
introversion can combine with four basic
functions to form eight general
personality types. The four functions are
(1) thinking, or recognizing the meaning
of stimuli; (2) feeling, or placing a value
on something; (3) sensation, or taking in
sensory stimuli; and (4) intuition, or
perceiving elementary data that are
beyond our awareness. Jung referred to
thinking and feeling as rational functions
Page 9 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
and to sensation
irrational functions.
and intuition
as
Development of Personality
Nearly unique among personality theorists was
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.
Jung divided development into four
broad stages: (1) childhood, which lasts
from birth until adolescence; (2) youth,
the period from puberty until middle life,
which is a time for extraverted
development and for being grounded to
the real world of schooling, occupation,
courtship, marriage, and family; (3)
middle life, which is a time from about
35 or 40 until old age when people
should be adopting an introverted
attitude; and (4) old age, which is a time
for
psychological
rebirth,
selfrealization, and preparation for death.
Self-Realization
Self-realization,
or
individuation,
involves 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.
Jung's Methods of Investigation
Jung used the word association test, dreams, and
active imagination during the process of
psychotherapy, and all these methods
contributed to his theory of personality.
Word Association Test
Jung used the word association test early
in his career 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.
Unusual responses indicate a complex.
Dream Analysis
Jung believed that 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, have meanings that lie
beyond the experiences of a single
individual.
Active Imagination
Jung also 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. Eventually, the patient should see
figures that represent archetypes and
other collective unconscious images.
Psychotherapy
The goal of Jungian therapy is to 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.
Related Research
Although Jungian psychology has not generated
large volumes of research, some investigators
have used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to
examine the idea of psychological types. Some
research suggests that extraverts and introverts
have different preferences in their choice of
partners. Other researchers have reported that
personality type is related to academic
performance and success.
Critique of Jung
Although Jung considered himself a scientist,
many of his writings have more of a
philosophical than a psychological flavor. As a
scientific theory, it rates 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.
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
Page 10 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
determinism, optimism versus pessimism, and

causality versus teleology. It rates very high on
unconscious influences, low on uniqueness, and
low on social influences.
KLEIN: OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

Overview of Object Relations Theory
Many personality theorists have accepted some
of Freud's basic assumptions while rejecting
others.
One
approach
to
extending
psychoanalytic theory has been the object
relations theories of Melanie Klein and others.
Unlike Jung and Adler, who came to reject
Freud's ideas, Klein tried to validate Freud's
theories. In essence, Klein extended Freud's
developmental stages downward to the first 4 to
6 months after birth.
Biography of Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein was born in Vienna in 1892, the
youngest of four children. She had neither a
Ph.D. nor an M.D. degree but became an analyst
by being psychoanalyzed. As an analyst, she
specialized in working with young children. In
1927, she moved to London where she practiced
until her death in 1960.
Introduction to Object Relations Theory
Object relations theory differs from Freudian
theory in at least three ways: (1) it places more
emphasis on interpersonal relationships, (2) it
stresses the infant's relationship with the mother
rather than the father, and (3) it suggests that
people are motivated primarily for human
contact rather than for sexual pleasure. The term
object in object relations theory 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.
Psychic Life of the Infant
Klein believed that 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.
Fantasies
Klein assumed that very young infants
possess an active, unconscious fantasy
life. Their most basic fantasies are
images of the "good" breast and the
"bad" breast.
Objects
Klein agreed with Freud that drives have
an object, but she was more likely to
emphasize the 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 fantasy world.
Positions
In their attempts to reduce the conflict produced
by good and bad images, infants organize their
experience into positions, or ways of dealing
with both internal and external objects.
Paranoid-Schizoid Position
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 paranoidschizoid position, which is a tendency to
see the world as having both destructive
and omnipotent qualities.
Depressive Position
By depressive position, Klein meant the
anxiety that infants experience around 6
months of age over losing their mother
and yet, at the same time, wanting to
destroy her. The depressive position is
resolved when infants fantasize that they
have made up for their previous
transgressions against their mother and
also realize that their mother will not
abandon them.
Psychic Defense Mechanisms
According to Klein, children adopt various
psychic defense mechanisms to protect their ego
Page 11 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
against anxiety aroused by their own destructive

fantasies.
Introjection
Klein defined introjection as the fantasy
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.
Projection
The fantasy that one's own feelings and
impulses reside within another person is
called projection. Children project both
good and bad images, especially onto
their parents.
Splitting
Infants tolerate good and bad aspects
of themselves and of external objects by
splitting, or mentally keeping apart,
incompatible images. Splitting can be
beneficial to both children and adults,
because it allows them to like themselves
while still recognizing some unlikable
qualities.
Projective Identification
Projective identification is the psychic
defense mechanism whereby infants split
off unacceptable parts of themselves,
project them onto another object, and
finally introject them in an altered form.
Internalizations
After introjecting external objects, infants
organize them into a psychologically meaningful
framework, a process that Klein called
internalization.
Ego
Internalizations are aided by the early
ego's ability to feel anxiety, to use
defense mechanisms, and to form object
relations in both fantasy and reality.
However, a unified ego emerges only
after first splitting itself into two parts:
those that deal with the life instinct and
those that relate to the death instinct.
Superego
Klein believed that the superego
emerged much earlier than Freud had
held. To her, the superego preceded
rather than followed the Oedipus
complex. Klein also saw the superego as
being quite harsh and cruel.
Oedipus Complex
Klein believed that the Oedipus complex
begins during the first few months of life,
then reaches its zenith during the genital
stage, at about 3 or 4 years of age, or
the same time that Freud had suggested
it began. Klein also held that much of the
Oedipus complex is based on children's
fear that their parents will seek revenge
against them for their fantasy of
emptying the parent's body. For healthy
development during the Oedipal years,
children should retain positive feelings
for each parent. According to Klein, the
little boy adopts a "feminine" position
very early in life and has no fear of
being castrated as punishment for his
sexual feelings for his mother. Later, he
projects his destructive drive onto his
father, whom he fears will bite or
castrate him. The male Oedipus complex
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.
Later Views on Object Relations
A number of other theorists have expanded and
altered Klein's theory of object relations.
Notable among them are Margaret Mahler, Otto
Kernberg, Heinz Kohut, and John Bowlby.
Margaret Mahler's View
Mahler, a native of Hungary who
practiced psychoanalysis in both Vienna
and New York, developed her theory of
object
relations
from
careful
Page 12 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
observations of infants as they bonded

with their mothers during their first 3
years of life. In their progress toward
achieving a sense of identity, children
pass through a series of three major
developmental stages. First is normal
autism, which covers the 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.
Second is normal symbiosis, when infants
behave as if they and their mother were
an omnipotent, symbiotic unit. Third is
separation-individuation, from about 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.
Heinz Kohut's View
Kohut was a native of Vienna who spent
most of his professional life in the United
States. More than any of the other
object
relations
theorists,
Kohut
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.
Otto Kernberg's View
Kernberg, a native of Vienna who has
spent most of his professional career in
the United States, believes that the key
to understanding personality is the
mother-child relationship. Children who
experience a healthy relationship with
their mother develop an integrated ego,
a punitive superego, a stable selfconcept, and satisfying interpersonal
relations. In contrast, children who have
poor relations with their mother will have
difficulty integrating their ego and may
suffer
from
some
form
of
psychopathology during adulthood.
John Bowlby's Attachment Theory
Bowlby, a native of England, received
training in child psychiatry from Melanie
Klein. By studying human and other
primate infants, Bowlby observed three

stages of separation anxiety: (1) protest,
(2) apathy and despair, and (3)
emotional detachment from people,
including the primary caregiver. Children
who reach the third stage lack warmth
and emotion in their later relationships.
Psychotherapy
The goal of Kleinian 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.
Related Research
Some research on attachment theory has found
that children with secure attachment have both
better attention and better memory than do
children with insecure attachment. Other research
suggests that securely attached young children
grow up to become adolescents who feel
comfortable in friendship groups that allow new
members to easily become part of those groups.
Still other studies have shown that
8- and 9-year-old children who were securely
attached during infancy produced family
drawings that reflect that security.
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.
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.
Page 13 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
needs for affection and cause people to

overvalue love.
HORNEY: PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL THEORY

Overview of Horney's Psychoanalytic Social
Theory
Karen Horney's psychoanalytic social theory
assumes that social and cultural conditions,
especially during childhood, have a powerful
effect on later personality. Like Melanie Klein,
Horney accepted many of Freud's observations,
but she objected to most of his interpretations,
including his notions on feminine psychology.
Biography of Karen Horney
Karen Horney, who was born in Germany in
1885, was one of the first women in that country
admitted to medical school. There, she became
acquainted with Freudian theory and eventually
became a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist. In
her mid-40s, Horney left Germany to settle in the
United States, first in Chicago and then in New
York.
She
soon
abandoned
orthodox
psychoanalysis in favor of a more socially
oriented theory-one that had a more positive
view of feminine development. She died in 1952
at age 67.
Introduction to Psychoanalytic Social Theory
Although Horney's writings deal mostly with
neuroses and neurotic personalities, her theories
also appropriate suggest much that is
appropriate to normal development. She agreed
with Freud that early childhood traumas are
important, but she placed far more emphasis on
social factors.
Horney and Freud Compared
Horney criticized Freudian theory on at
least three accounts: (1) its rigidity
toward new ideas, (2) its skewed view of
feminine psychology, and (3) its
overemphasis on biology and the
pleasure principle.
The Impact of Culture
Horney insisted that modern culture is too
competitive and that competition leads
to hostility and feelings of isolation.
These conditions lead to exaggerated
The Importance of Childhood Experiences

Neurotic conflict stems largely from
childhood traumas, most of which are
traced to a lack of genuine love.
Children who do not receive genuine
affection feel threatened and adopt
rigid behavioral patterns in an attempt
to gain love.
Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety
All children need feelings of safety and security,
but these can be gained only by love from
parents. Unfortunately, parents often neglect,
dominate, reject, or overindulge their children,
conditions that lead to the child's feelings of
basic hostility toward parents. If children repress
feelings of basic hostility, they will develop
feelings of insecurity and a pervasive sense of
apprehension called basic anxiety. People can
protect themselves from basic anxiety through a
number of protective devices, including (1)
affection, (2) submissiveness, (3) power, prestige,
or possession, and (4) withdrawal. Normal
people have the flexibility to use any or all of
these approaches, but neurotics are compelled to
rely rigidly on only one.
Compulsive Drives
Neurotics are frequently trapped in a vicious
circle in which their compulsive need to reduce
basic anxiety leads to a variety of selfdefeating behaviors; these behaviors then
produce more basic anxiety, and the cycle
continues.
Neurotic Needs
Horney identified 10 categories of
neurotic needs that mark neurotics in
their attempt to reduce basic anxiety.
These include needs (1) for affection and
approval, (2) for a powerful partner (3)
to restrict one's life within narrow
borders, (4) for power, (5) to exploit
others, (6) for social recognition or
prestige, (7) for personal admiration, (8)
for ambition and personal achievement,
(9)
for
self-sufficiency
and
independence, and (10) for perfection
and unassailability.
Page 14 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Neurotic Trends
Later, Horney grouped these 10 neurotic
needs into three basic neurotic trends,
which apply to both normal and neurotic
individuals in their attempt to solve basic
conflict. The three neurotic tends are (1)
moving toward people, in which
compliant people protect themselves
against feelings of helplessness by
attaching themselves to other people; (2)
moving against people, in which
aggressive people protect themselves
against perceived hostility of others by
exploiting others; and (3) moving away
from people, in which detached people
protect themselves against feelings of
isolation by appearing arrogant and
aloof.
Intrapsychic Conflicts
People also experience inner
intrapsychic conflicts that become
belief system and take on a life
separate from the interpersonal
created them.
tensions or
part of their
of their own,
conflicts that
The Idealized Self-Image

People who do not receive love and
affection during childhood are blocked
in their attempt to acquire a stable sense
of identity. Feeling alienated from self,
they create an idealized self-image, or
an extravagantly positive picture of
themselves. Horney recognized three
aspects of the idealized self-image: (1)
the neurotic search for glory, or a
comprehensive drive toward actualizing
the ideal self; (2) neurotic claims, or a
belief that they are entitled to special
privileges; and (3) neurotic pride, or a
false pride based not on reality but on a
distorted and idealized view of self.
Self-Hatred
Neurotics dislike themselves because
reality always falls short of their
idealized view of self. Therefore, they
learn self-hatred, which can be
expressed as: (1) relentless demands on
the self, (2) merciless self-accusation, (3)
self-contempt, (4) self-frustration, (5)
self-torment or self-torture, and (6) selfdestructive actions
and impulses.
Feminine Psychology
Horney believed that psychological differences
between men and women are not due to
anatomy but to culture and social expectations.
Her view of the Oedipus complex differed
markedly from Freud's in that she insisted that
any sexual attraction or hostility of child to
parent would be the result of learning and not
biology.
Psychotherapy
The goal of Horney's psychotherapy was to help
patients grow toward self-realization, give up
their idealized self-image, relinquish their
neurotic search for glory, and change self-hatred
to self-acceptance. Horney believed that
successful therapy is built on self-analysis and
self-understnding.
Related Research
Horney's concepts of morbid dependency and
hypercompetitiveness have both stimulated some
recent research.
Morbid Dependency
The current concept of codependency,
which is based on Horney's notion of
morbid dependency, has produced
research showing that people with
neurotic needs to move toward others
will go to great lengths to win the
approval of other people. A study by
Lyon and Greenberg (1991) found that
women with an alcoholic parent,
compared with women without an
alcoholic parent, were much more
nurturant toward a person they
perceived as exploitative than toward a
person they perceived as nurturing.
Hypercompetitiveness
Horney's idea of moving against people
relates to the concept of hypercompetitiveness, a topic that has
received some recent research interest.
Some of this research indicates that,
although hypercompetitiveness is a
negative personality trait, some types of
competitiveness can be positive. Other
research
has
found
that
hypercompetitive European American
women frequently have some type of
eating disorder.
Page 15 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Critique of Horney
Although Horney painted a vivid portrayal of the
neurotic personality, her theory rates very low in
generating research and low on its ability to be
falsified, to organize data, and to serve as a
useful guide to action. Her theory is rated about
average on internal consistency and parsimony.
Concept of Humanity
Horney's concept of humanity is rated very high
on social factors, high on free choice, optimism,
and unconscious influences, and about average
on causality versus teleology and on the
uniqueness of the individual.
FROMM: HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS

Overview
of
Fromm's
Humanistic
Psychoanalysis
Erich Fromm's humanistic psychoanalysis looks at
people from the perspective of psychology,
history, and anthropology. Influenced by Freud
and Horney, Fromm developed a more culturally
oriented theory than Freud's and a much broader
theory than Horney's.
Biography of Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm was born in Germany in 1900, the
only child of orthodox Jewish parents. A
thoughtful young man, Fromm was influenced by
the bible, Freud, and Marx, as well as by
socialist ideology. After receiving his Ph.D.,
Fromm began studying psychoanalysis and
became an analyst by being analyzed by Hanns
Sachs, a student of Freud. In 1934, Fromm
moved to the United States and began a
psychoanalytic practice in New York, where he
also resumed his friendship with Karen Horney,
whom he had known in Germany. Much of his
later years were spent in Mexico and
Switzerland. He died in 1980.
Fromm's Basic Assumptions
Fromm believed that humans have been torn
away from their prehistoric union with nature and
left with no powerful instincts to adapt to a
changing world. But because humans have
acquired the ability to reason, they can think
about their isolated condition-a situation Fromm
called the human dilemma.
Human Needs
According to Fromm, our human dilemma cannot
be solved by satisfying our animal needs. It can
only be addressed by fulfilling our uniquely
human needs, an accomplishment that moves us
toward a reunion with the natural world. Fromm
identified five of these distinctively human or
existential needs.
Relatedness
First is relatedness, which can take the
form of (1) submission, (2) power, and
(3) love. Love, or the ability to unite with
another while retaining one's own
individuality and integrity, is the only
relatedness need that can solve our
basic human dilemma.
Transcendence
Being thrown into the world without their
consent, humans have to transcend their
nature by destroying or creating people
or things. Humans can destroy through
malignant aggression, or killing for
reasons other than survival, but they can
also create and care about their
creations.
Rootedness
Rootedness is the need to establish roots
and to feel at home again in the world.
Productively, rootedness enables us to
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.
Sense of Identity
The fourth human need is for a sense of
identity, or an 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.
Frame of Orientation
By frame of orientation, Fromm meant a
road map or consistent philosophy by
which we find our way through the
world. This need is expressed
nonproductively as a striving for
Page 16 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
irrational goals and productively as

movement toward rational goals.
The Burden of Freedom
As the only animal possessing self-awareness,
humans are what Fromm called the "freaks of the
universe." Historically, as people gained more
political freedom, they began to experience
more isolation from others and from the world
and to feel free from the security of a
permanent place in the world. As a result,
freedom becomes a burden, and people
experience basic anxiety, or a feeling of being
alone in the world.
Mechanisms of Escape
To reduce the frightening sense of
isolation and aloneness, people may
adopt one of three mechanisms of
escape: (1) authoritarianism, or the
tendency to give up one's independence
and to unite with a powerful partner; (2)
destructiveness, an escape mechanism
aimed at doing away with other people
or things; and (3) conformity, or
surrendering of one's individuality in
order to meet the wishes of others.
Positive Freedom
The human dilemma can only be solved
through positive freedom, which is the
spontaneous activity of the whole,
integrated personality, and which is
achieved when a person becomes
reunited with others.
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.
Nonproductive Orientations
Fromm identified four nonproductive
strategies that fail to move people closer
to positive freedom and self-realization.
People with a receptive orientation
believe that the source of all good lies
outside themselves and that the only way
they can relate to the world is to receive
things, including love, knowledge, and
material objects. People with an
exploitative orientation also believe that
the source of good lies outside
themselves, but they aggressively take

what they want rather than passively
receiving it. Hoarding characters try to
save what they have already obtained,
including their opinions, feelings, and
material possessions. People with a
marketing orientation see themselves as
commodities and value themselves
against the criterion of their ability to
sell themselves. They have fewer positive
qualities than the other orientations
because they are essentially empty.
The Productive Orientation
Psychologically healthy people work
toward positive freedom through
productive work, love, and reasoning.
Productive love necessitates a passionate
love of all life and is called biophilia.
Personality Disorders
Unhealthy people have nonproductive ways of
working, reasoning, and especially loving. Fromm
recognized three major personality disorders: (1)
necrophilia, or the love of death and the hatred
of all humanity; (2) malignant narcissism, or a
belief that everything belonging to one's self is
of great value and anything belonging to others
is worthless; and incestuous symbiosis, or an
extreme dependence on one's mother or mother
surrogate.
Psychotherapy
The goal of Fromm's psychotherapy was to work
toward satisfaction of the basic human needs of
relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense
of identity, and
a frame of orientation. The therapist tries to
accomplish this through shared communication in
which the therapist is simply a human being
rather than
a scientist.
Fromm's Methods of Investigation
Fromm's personality theory rests on data he
gathered from a variety of sources, including
psychotherapy, cultural anthropology, and
psychohistory.
Social Character in a Mexican Village
Fromm and his associates spent several
years investigating social character in a
isolated farming village in Mexico and
Page 17 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
found evidence of all the character

orientations except the marketing one.
A Psychohistorical Study of Hitler
Fromm applied the techniques of
psychohistory to the study of several
historical people, including Adolf Hitlerthe person Fromm regarded as the
world's most conspicuous example of
someone with the syndrome of decay,
that is, necrophilia, malignant narcissism,
and incestuous symbiosis.
Related Research
Fromm's theory ranks near the bottom of
personality theories with regard to stimulating
research. Recently, Shaun Saunders and Don
Munro have developed the Saunders Consumer
Orientation Index (SCOI) to measure Fromm's
marketing character. To date, much of their work
has consisted in establishing the validity of this
instrument. In general, Saunders has found that
people with a strong consumer orientation tend
to place low value on freedom, inner harmony,
equality, self-respect, and community.
Critique of Fromm
The strength of Fromm's theory is his lucid writings
on a broad range of human issues. As a scientific
theory, however, Fromm's theory rates very low
on its ability to generate research and to lend
itself to falsification; it 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.
Concept of Humanity
Fromm believed that humans were "freaks of the
universe" because they lacked strong animal
instincts while possessing the ability to reason. In
brief, his view is rated average on free choice,
optimism, unconscious influences, and uniqueness;
low on causality; and high on social influences.
SULLIVAN: INTERPERSONAL THEORY

Overview of Sullivan's Interpersonal Theory
Although Sullivan had a lonely and isolated
childhood, he evolved a theory of personality
that emphasized the importance of interpersonal

relations. He insisted that personality is shaped
almost entirely by the relationships we have with
other people. Sullivan's principal contribution to
personality theory was his conception of
developmental stages.
Biography of Harry Stack Sullivan
Harry Stack Sullivan, the first American to
develop a comprehensive personality theory,
was born in a small farming community in upstate
New York in 1892. A socially immature and
isolated child, Sullivan nevertheless formed one
close interpersonal relationship with a boy five
years older than himself. In his interpersonal
theory, Sullivan believed that such a relationship
has the power to transform an immature
preadolescent into a psychologically healthy
individual. Six years after becoming a physician,
and with no training in psychiatry, Sullivan
gained a position at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in
Washington, D.C., as a psychiatrist. There, his
ability to work with schizophrenic patients won
him a reputation as a therapeutic wizard.
However, despite achieving much respect from
an influential group of associates, Sullivan had
few close interpersonal relations with any of his
peers. He died alone in Paris in 1949, at age
56.
Tensions
Sullivan conceptualized personality as an energy
system, with energy existing either as tension
(potentiality for action) or as energy
transformations (the actions themselves). He
further divided tensions into needs and anxiety.
Needs
Needs can relate either to the general
well-being of a person or to specific
zones, such as the mouth or genitals.
General
needs
can
be
either
physiological, such as food or oxygen, or
they can be interpersonal, such as
tenderness and intimacy.
Anxiety
Unlike needs-which are conjunctive and
call for specific actions to reduce themanxiety is disjunctive and calls for no
consistent actions for its relief. All infants
learn to be anxious through the empathic
relationship that they have with their
mothering one. Sullivan called anxiety
Page 18 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
the chief disruptive force in interpersonal

relations. A complete absence of anxiety
and other tensions is called euphoria.
Dynamisms
Sullivan used the term dynamism to refer to a
typical pattern of behavior. Dynamisms may
relate either to specific zones of the body or to
tensions.
Malevolence
The disjunctive dynamism of evil and
hatred is called malevolence, defined by
Sullivan as a feeling of living among
one's enemies. Those children who
become malevolent have much difficulty
giving and receiving tenderness or being
intimate with other people.
Intimacy
The conjunctive dynamism marked by a
close personal relationship between two
people of equal status is called intimacy.
Intimacy
facilitates
interpersonal
development while decreasing both
anxiety and loneliness.
Lust
In contrast to both malevolence and
intimacy, lust is an isolating dynamism.
That is, lust is a self-centered need that
can be satisfied in the absence of an
intimate interpersonal relationship. In
other
words,
although
intimacy
presupposes tenderness or love, lust is
based solely on sexual gratification and
requires no other person for its
satisfaction.
Self-System
The most inclusive of all dynamisms is the
self-system, or that pattern of behaviors
that protects us against anxiety and
maintains our interpersonal security. The
self-system is a conjunctive dynamism,
but because its primary job is to protect
the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle
personality change. Experiences that are
inconsistent with our self-system threaten
our security and necessitate our use of
security operations, which consist of
behaviors
designed
to
reduce
interpersonal tensions. One such security
operation is dissociation, which includes
all those experiences that we block from

awareness.
Another
is
selective
inattention, which involves blocking only
certain experiences from awareness.
Personifications
Sullivan believed that people acquire certain
images of self and others throughout the
developmental stages, and he referred to these
subjective perceptions as personifications.
Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
The bad-mother personification grows
out of infants' experiences with a nipple
that does not satisfy their hunger needs.
All infants experience the bad-mother
personification, even though their real
mothers may be loving and nurturing.
Later, infants acquire a good-mother
personification as they become mature
enough to recognize the tender and
cooperative behavior of their mothering
one. Still later, these two personifications
combine to form a complex and
contrasting image of the real mother.
Me Personifications
During infancy, children acquire three
"me" personifications: (1) the bad-me,
which grows from experiences of
punishment and disapproval, (2) the
good-me, which results from experiences
with reward and approval, and (3) the
not-me, which allows a person to
dissociate or selectively inattend the
experiences related to anxiety.
Eidetic Personifications
One of Sullivan's most interesting
observations was that people often
create imaginary traits that they project
onto others. Included in these eidetic
personifications are the imaginary
playmates that preschool-aged children
often have. These imaginary friends
enable children to have a safe, secure
relationship with another person, even
though that person is imaginary.
Levels of Cognition
Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or
ways of perceiving things-prototaxic, parataxic,
and syntaxic.
Page 19 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Prototaxic Level
Experiences that are impossible to put
into words or to communicate to others
are called prototaxic. Newborn infants
experience images mostly on a
prototaxic level, but adults, too,
frequently have preverbal experiences
that are momentary and incapable of
being communicated.
Childhood
The stage that lasts from the beginning
of syntaxic language until the need for
playmates of equal status is called
childhood.
The
child's
primary
interpersonal relationship continues to be
with the mother, who is now
differentiated from other persons who
nurture the child.
Parataxic Level
Experiences that are prelogical and
nearly
impossible
to
accurately
communicate to others are called
parataxic. Included in these are
erroneous assumptions about cause and
effect, which Sullivan termed parataxic
distortions.
Juvenile Era
The juvenile stage begins with the need
for peers of equal status and continues
until the child develops a need for an
intimate relationship with a chum. At this
time, children should learn how to
compete, to compromise, and to
cooperate. These three abilities, as well
as an orientation toward living, help a
child develop intimacy, the chief
dynamism of the next developmental
stage.
Syntaxic Level
Experiences that can be accurately
communicated to others are called
syntaxic. Children become capable of
syntaxic language at about 12 to 18
months of age when words begin to
have the same meaning for them that
they do for others.
Sullivan saw interpersonal development as taking
place over seven stages, from infancy to mature
adulthood. Personality changes can take place at
any time but are more likely to occur during
transitions between stages.
Infancy
The period from birth until the
emergence of syntaxic language is
called infancy, a time when the child
receives tenderness from the mothering
one while also learning anxiety through
an empathic linkage with the mother.
Anxiety may increase to the point of
terror, but such terror is controlled by the
built-in protections of apathy and
somnolent detachment that allow the
baby to go to sleep. During infancy
children use autistic language, which
takes place on a prototaxic or parataxic
level.
Preadolescence
Perhaps the most crucial stage is
preadolescence, because mistakes made
earlier can be corrected during
preadolescence, but errors made during
preadolescence are nearly impossible to
overcome in later life. Preadolescence
spans the time from the need for a single
best friend until puberty. Children who
do
not
learn
intimacy
during
preadolescence have added difficulties
relating to potential sexual partners
during later stages.
Early Adolescence
With puberty comes the lust dynamism
and the beginning of early adolescence.
Development during this stage is
ordinarily marked by a coexistence of
intimacy with a single friend of the same
gender and sexual interest in many
persons of the opposite gender.
However, if children have no preexisting
capacity for intimacy, they may confuse
lust with love and develop sexual
relationships that are devoid of true
intimacy.
Late Adolescence
Chronologically, late adolescence may
start at any time after about age 16,
Page 20 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
but psychologically, it begins when a

person is able to feel both intimacy and
lust toward the same person. Late
adolescence is characterized by a stable
pattern of sexual activity and the growth
of the syntaxic mode, as young people
learn how to live in the adult world.
Adulthood
Late adolescence flows into adulthood, a
time when a person establishes a stable
relationship with a significant other
person and develops a consistent pattern
of viewing the world.
Psychological Disorders
Sullivan believed that disordered behavior has
an interpersonal origin, and can only be
understood with reference to a person's social
environment.
Psychotherapy
Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as
a participant observer, who establishes an
interpersonal relationship with the patient. He
was primarily concerned with understanding
patients and helping them develop foresight,
improve interpersonal relations, and restore their
ability to operate mostly on a syntaxic level.
Related Research
In recent years, a number of researchers have
studied the impact of two-person relationships,
involving both therapy and non-therapy
encounters.
Therapist-Patient Relationships
Hans Strupp, William Henry, and
associates at Vanderbilt developed the
Structural Analysis of Social Behavior, an
instrument for studying the dynamics
between therapist and patient. This
group of researchers found that patients
tended to have relatively stable
behaviors that were consistent with the
way their therapists treated them. Later,
these researchers reported therapists'
professional training was less important
to successful therapy than the therapists'
own developmental history.
Intimate Relationships with Friends
Elizabeth Yaughn and Stephen Nowicki
studied
intimate
interpersonal
relationships in same-gender dyads and
found that women-but not men-had

complementary interpersonal styles with
their close women friends. Also, women
were more likely than men to engage in
a wide variety of activities with their
intimate friend, a finding that suggests
that women develop deeper samegender friendships than do men.
Imaginary Friends
Other researchers have studied Sullivan's
notion of imaginary playmates and have
found that children who have identifiable
eidetic playmates tend to be more
socialized, less aggressive, more
intelligent, and to have a better sense of
humor than children who do not report
having an imaginary playmate.
Critique of Sullivan
Despite Sullivan's insights into the importance of
interpersonal relations, his theory of personality
and his approach to psychotherapy have lost
popularity in recent years. In summary, his theory
rates very low in falsifiability, low in its ability to
generate research, and average in its capacity
to organize knowledge and to guide action. In
addition, it is only average in self-consistency
and low in parsimony.
Concept of Humanity
Because Sullivan saw human personality as being
largely formed from interpersonal relations, his
theory rates very high on social influences and
very low on biological ones. In addition, it rates
high on unconscious determinants, average on
free choice, optimism, and causality, and low on
uniqueness.
ERIKSON: POST-FREUDIAN THEORY

Overview of Erikson's Post-Freudian Theory
Erikson postulated eight stages of psychosocial
development through which people progress.
Although he differed from Freud in his emphasis
on the ego and on social influences, his theory is
an extension, not a repudiation, of Freudian
psychoanalysis.
Page 21 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Biography of Erik Erikson

When Erik Erikson was born in Germany in 1902
his name was Erik Salomonsen. After his mother
married Theodor Homburger, Erik eventually
took his step-father's name. At age 18 he left
home to pursue the life of a wandering artist and
to search for self-identity. He gave up that life to
teach young children in Vienna, where he met
Anna Freud. Still searching for his personal
identity, he was psychoanalyzed by Ms. Freud,
an experience that allowed him to become a
psychoanalyst. In mid-life, Erik Homburger
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.
The Ego in Post-Freudian Psychology
One of Erikson's chief contributions to personality
theory was his emphasis on ego rather than id
functions. According to Erikson, the ego is the
center of personality and is responsible for a
unified sense of self. It consists of three
interrelated facets: the body ego, the ego ideal,
and ego identity.
Society's Influence
The ego develops within a given society
and is influenced by child-rearing
practices and other cultural customs. All
cultures and nations develop a
pseudospecies, or a fictional notion that
they are superior to other cultures.
Epigenetic Principle
The ego develops according to the
epigenetic principle; that is, it grows
according to a genetically established
rate and in a fixed sequence.
Stages of Psychosocial Development
Each of the eight stages of development is
marked by a conflict between a syntonic
(harmonious) element and a dystonic (disruptive)
element, which produces a basic strength or ego
quality. Also, from adolescence on, each stage is
characterized by an identity crisis or turning
point, which may produce either adaptive or
maladaptive adjustment.
Infancy
Erikson's view of infancy (the first year of
life) was similar to Freud's concept of the
oral stage, except that Erikson
expanded the notion of incorporation
beyond the mouth to include sense
organs such as the eyes and ears. The
psychosexual mode of infancy is oralsensory, which is characterized by both
receiving and accepting. The psychosocial crisis of infancy is basic trust versus
basic mistrust. From the crisis between
basic trust and basic mistrust emerges
hope, the basic strength of infancy.
Infants who do not develop hope retreat
from the world, and this withdrawal is
the core pathology of infancy.
Early Childhood
The second to third year of life is early
childhood, a period that compares to
Freud's anal stage, but it also includes
mastery of other body functions such as
walking, urinating, and holding. The
psychosexual mode of early childhood is
anal-urethral-muscular, and children of
this age behave both impulsively and
compulsively. The psychosocial crisis of
early childhood is autonomy versus
shame and doubt. The psychosocial crisis
between autonomy on the one hand and
shame and doubt on the other produces
will, the basic strength of early
childhood. The core pathology of early
childhood is compulsion.
Play Age
From about the third to the fifth year,
children experience the play age, a
period that parallels Freud's phallic
phase. Unlike Freud, however, Erikson
saw the 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. The primary psychosexual
mode of the play age is genitallocomotor, meaning that children have
both an interest in genital activity and an
increasing ability to move around. The
psychosocial crisis of the play age is
initiative versus guilt. The conflict
between initiative and guilt helps
children to act with purpose and to set
Page 22 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
goals. But if children have too little

purpose, they develop inhibition, the
core pathology of the play age.
School Age
The period from about 6 to 12 or 13
years of age is called the school age, a
time of psychosexual latency, but it is
also a time of psychosocial growth
beyond the family. Because sexual
development is latent during the school
age, children can use their energies to
learn the customs of their culture,
including both formal and informal
education. The psychosocial crisis of this
age is industry versus inferiority.
Children need to learn to work hard, but
they also must develop some sense of
inferiority. From the conflict of industry
and inferiority emerges competence, the
basic strength of school age children.
Lack of industry leads to inertia, the core
pathology of this stage.
Adolescence
Adolescence begins with puberty and is
marked by a person's struggle to find
ego identity. It is a time of psychosexual
growth, but it is also a period of
psychosocial latency. The psychosexual
mode of adolescence is puberty or
genital maturation. The psychosocial
crisis of adolescence is identity versus
identity
confusion.
Psychologically
healthy individuals emerge from
adolescence with a sense of who they
are and what they believe; but some
identity confusion is normal. The conflict
between identity and identity confusion
produces fidelity, or faith in some
ideological view of the future. Lack of
belief in one's own selfhood results in
role repudiation, or an inability to bring
together one's various self-images.
Young Adulthood
Young adulthood begins with the
acquisition of intimacy at about age 18
and ends with the development of
generativity at about age 30. The
psychosexual mode of young adulthood
is genitality, which is expressed as
mutual trust between partners in a stable
sexual relationship. Its psychosocial crisis
is intimacy versus isolation. Intimacy is the

ability to fuse one's identity with that of
another without fear of losing it;
whereas isolation is the fear of losing
one's identity in an intimate relationship.
The crisis between intimacy and isolation
results in the capacity to love. The core
pathology of young adulthood is
exclusivity, or inability to love.
Adulthood
The period from about 31 to 60 years
of age is adulthood, a time when people
make significant contributions to society.
The psychosexual mode of adulthood is
procreativity, or the caring for one's
children, the children of others, and the
material products of one's society. The
psychosocial crisis of adulthood is
generativity versus stagnation, and the
successful resolution of this crisis results in
care. Erikson saw care as taking care of
the persons and products that one has
learned to care for. The core pathology
of adulthood is rejectivity, or the
rejection of certain individuals or groups
that one is unwilling to take care of.
Old Age
The final stage of development is old
age, from about age 60 until death. The
psychosexual mode of old age is
generalized sensuality; that is, taking
pleasure in a variety of sensations and
an appreciation of the traditional
lifestyle of people of the other gender.
The psychosocial crisis of old age is the
struggle
between
integrity
(the
maintenance of ego-identity) and
despair (the surrender of hope). The
struggle between integrity and despair
may produce wisdom (the basic strength
of old age), but it may also lead to
disdain (a core pathology marked by
feelings of being finished or helpless).
Erikson's Methods of Investigation
Erikson relied mostly on anthropology,
psychohistory, and play construction to explain
and describe human personality.
Anthropological Studies
Erikson's
two
most
important
anthropological studies were of the
Page 23 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Sioux of South Dakota and the Yurok

tribe of northern California. Both studies
demonstrated his notion that culture and
history help shape personality.
Psychohistory
Erikson combined the methods of
psychoanalysis and historical research to
study several personalities, most notably
Gandhi and Luther. In both cases, the
central figure experienced an identity
crisis that produced a basic strength
rather than a core pathology.
Play Construction
Erikson's technique of play construction
became controversial when he found that
10- to 12-year-old boys used toys to
construct elongated objects and to
produce themes of rising and falling. In
contrast, girls arranged toys in low and
peaceful scenes. Erikson concluded that
anatomical differences between the
sexes play a role in personality
development.
Related Research
Erikson's theory has generated a moderately
large body of research, must of it investigating
the concept of identity. In addition, some
researchers have looked at Erikson's concept of
generativity.
Identity in Early Adulthood
A longitudinal study by Jennifer Pals and
Ravenna Helson found that identity
established in early adulthood is
associated with stable marriage and
high levels of creativity. Additional
research by Helson and Pals found that
women who had solid identity and high
creative potential at age 21 were more
likely than other women to have had a
challenging
and
creative
work
experience at age 52.
Generativity in Midlife
People high in generativity should have
a lifestyle marked by creating and
passing on knowledge, values, and
ideals to a younger generation, and
should benefit from a pattern of helping
younger people. Research by Dan
McAdams and colleagues found that
adults at midlife who contributed to the

well-being of young people had a clear
sense of who they were and what life
had to offer them. Other research found
that people high in generativity are
typically concerned with the well-being
of others.
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, and 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.
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.
LEARNING THEORIES
SKINNER: BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS
Overview of Skinner's Behavioral Analysis
Unlike any theory discussed to this point, the
radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner avoids
speculations about hypothetical constructs and
concentrates almost exclusively on observable
behavior. Besides being a radical behaviorist,
Skinner was also a determinist and an
environmentalist; that is, he rejected the notion of
free will, and he emphasized the primacy of
environmental influences on behavior.
Biography of B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner was born in Susquehanna,
Pennsylvania in 1904, the older of two brothers.
While in college, Skinner wanted to be a writer,
but after having little success in this endeavor, he
turned to psychology. After earning a Ph.D. from
Harvard, he taught at the Universities of
Minnesota and Indiana before returning to
Page 24 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Harvard, where he remained until his death in

1990.
Precursors to Skinner's Scientific Behaviorism
Modern learning theory has roots in the work of
Edward L. Thorndike and his experiments with
animals during the last part of the 19th century.
Thorndike's law of effect stated that responses
followed by a satisfier tend to be learned, a
concept that anticipated Skinner's use of positive
reinforcement to shape behavior. Skinner was
even more influenced by John Watson, who
argued that psychology must deal with the
control and prediction of behavior and that
behavior-not introspection, consciousness, or the
mind-is the basic data of scientific psychology.
Scientific Behaviorism
Skinner believed that human behavior, like any
other natural phenomena, is subject to the laws
of science, and that psychologists should not
attribute inner motivations to it. Although he
rejected internal states (thoughts, emotions,
desires, etc.) as being outside the realm of
science, Skinner did not deny their existence.
He simply insisted that they should not be used to
explain behavior.
Philosophy of Science
Skinner believed that, because the
purpose of science is to predict and
control,
psychologists
should
be
concerned
with
determining
the
conditions under which human behavior
occurs so that they can predict and
control it.
Characteristics of Science
Skinner held that science has three
principle characteristics: (1) its findings
are cumulative, (2) it rests on an attitude
that values empirical observation, and
(3) it searchers for order and lawful
relationships.
Conditioning
Skinner recognized two kinds of conditioning:
classical and operant.
Classical Conditioning
In classical conditioning, a neutral
(conditioned) stimulus is paired with an
unconditioned stimulus until it is capable
of bringing about a previously
unconditioned response, now called the

conditioned response. For example,
Watson and Rayner conditioned a
young boy to fear a white rat (the
conditioned stimulus) by associating it
with a loud, sudden noise (an
unconditioned
stimulus).
Eventually,
through the process of generalization,
the boy learned to fear stimuli that
resembled the white rat.
Operant Conditioning
With operant conditioning, reinforcement
is used to increase the probability that a
given behavior will recur. Three factors
are essential in operant conditioning: (1)
the antecedent, or environment in which
behavior takes place; (2) the behavior,
or response; and (3) the consequence
that follows the behavior. Psychologists
and others use shaping to mold complex
human behavior. Different histories of
reinforcement
result
in
operant
discrimination, meaning that different
organisms will respond differently to the
same
environmental
contingencies.
People may also respond similarly to
different environmental stimuli, a process
Skinner called stimulus generalization.
Anything within the environment that
strengthens a behavior is a reinforcer.
Positive reinforcement is any stimulus that
when added to a situation increases the
probability that a given behavior will
occur. Negative reinforcement is the
strengthening of behavior through the
removal of an aversive stimulus. Both
positive and negative reinforcement
strengthen behavior. Any event that
decreases a behavior either by
presenting an aversive stimulus or by
removing a positive one is called
punishment. The effects of punishment
are much less predictable than those of
reward.
Both
punishment
and
reinforcement can result from either
natural consequences or from human
imposition. Conditioned reinforcers are
those stimuli that are not by nature
satisfying (e.g., money), but that can
become so when they are associated
with a primary reinforcer, such as food.
Generalized reinforcers are conditioned
reinforcers that have become associated
Page 25 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
with several primary reinforcers.

Reinforcement can follow behavior on
either a continuous schedule or on an
intermittent schedule. There are four
basic intermittent schedules: (1) fixedratio, on which the organism is reinforced
intermittently according to the number of
responses it makes; (2) variable-ratio, on
which the organism is reinforced after an
average of a predetermined number of
responses; (3) fixed-interval, on which
the organism is reinforced for the first
response following a designated period
of time; and (4) variable interval, on
which the organism is reinforced after
the lapse of varied periods of time. The
tendency of a previously acquired
response to become progressively
weakened upon nonreinforcement is
called extinction. Such elimination or
weakening of a response is called
classical extinction in a classical
conditioning
model
and operant
extinction when the response was
acquired through operant conditioning.
The Human Organism
Skinner believed that human behavior is shaped
by three forces: (1) natural selection, (2) cultural
practices, and (3) the individual's history of
reinforcement, which we discussed above.
Natural Selection
As a species, our behavior is shaped by
the contingencies of survival; that is,
those behaviors (e.g., sex and
aggression) that were beneficial to the
human species tended to survive,
whereas those that did not tended to
drop out.
Cultural Evolution
Those societies that evolved certain
cultural practices (e.g. tool making and
language) tended to survive. Currently,
the lives of nearly all people are
shaped, in part, by modern tools
(computers, media, various modes of
transportation, etc.) and by their use of
language. However, humans do not
make cooperative decisions to do what is
best for their society, but those societies
whose members behave in a cooperative
manner tended to survive.
Inner States
Skinner recognized the existence of such
inner states as drives and selfawareness, but he rejected the notion
that they can explain behavior. To
Skinner, drives refer to the effects of
deprivation and satiation and thus are
related to the probability of certain
behaviors, but they are not the causes of
behavior. Skinner believed that emotions
can be accounted for by the
contingencies of survival and the
contingencies of reinforcement; but like
drives, they do not cause behavior.
Similarly, purpose and intention are not
causes of behavior, although they are
sensations that exist within the skin.
Complex Behavior
Human behavior is subject to the same
principles of operant conditioning as
simple animal behavior, but it is much
more complex and difficult to predict or
control. Skinner explained creativity as
the result of random or accidental
behaviors that happen to be rewarded.
Skinner believed that most of our
behavior is unconscious or automatic and
that not thinking about certain
experiences is reinforcing. Skinner
viewed dreams as covert and symbolic
forms of behavior that are subject to the
same contingencies of reinforcement as
any other behavior.
Control of Human Behavior
Ultimately, all of a person's behavior is
controlled by the environment. Societies
exercise control over their members
through laws, rules, and customs that
transcend any one person's means of
countercontrol. There are four basic
methods of social control: (1) operant
conditioning, including positive and
negative reinforcement and punishment;
(2) describing contingencies, or using
language to inform people of the
consequence of their behaviors; (3)
deprivation and satiation, techniques
that increase the likelihood that people
will behave in a certain way; and (4)
physical restraint, including the jailing of
criminals. Although Skinner denied the
existence of free will, he did recognize
Page 26 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
that people manipulate variables within

their own environment and thus exercise
some measure of self-control, which has
several techniques: (1) physical restraint,
(2) physical aids, such as tools; (3)
changing environmental stimuli; (4)
arranging the environment to allow
escape from aversive stimuli; (5) drugs;
and (6) doing something else.
The Unhealthy Personality
Social control and self-control sometimes produce
counteracting strategies and inappropriate
behaviors.
Counteracting Strategies
People can counteract excessive social
control by (1) escaping from it,
(2) revolting against it, or (3) passively
resisting it.
Inappropriate Behaviors
Inappropriate behaviors follow from
self-defeating
techniques
of
counteracting social control or from
unsuccessful attempts at self-control.
Psychotherapy
Skinner was not a psychotherapist, and he even
criticized psychotherapy as being one of the
major obstacles to a scientific study of human
behavior. Nevertheless, others have used
operant conditioning principles to shape
behavior in a therapeutic setting. Behavior
therapists play an active role in the treatment
process, using behavior modification techniques
and pointing out the positive consequences of
some behaviors and the aversive effects of
others.
Related Research
Skinner's theory has generated more research
than any other personality theory. Much of this
research can be divided into two questions: (1)
How does conditioning affect personality? and
(2) How does personality affect conditioning?
How Conditioning Affects Personality
A plethora of studies have demonstrated
that operant conditioning can change
personality (that is, behavior). For
example, a recent study by Stephen
Higgens et al. demonstrated that a
contingent management program can be

successful in decreasing cocaine use.
How Personality Affects Conditioning
Research has also found that different
personalities may react differently to the
same environmental stimuli. This means
that the same reinforcement strategies
will not have the same effect on all
people. For example, Alan Pickering and
Jeffrey Gray have developed and
tested a reinforcement sensitivity theory
that suggests that impulsivity, anxiety,
and introversion/extraversion relate to
ways people respond to environmental
reinforcers.
Critique of Skinner
On the six criteria of a useful theory, Skinner's
approach rates very high on its ability to
generate research and to guide action, high on
its ability to be falsified, and about average on
its ability to organize knowledge. In addition, it
rates very high on internal consistency and high
on simplicity.
Concept of Humanity
Skinner's concept of humanity was a completely
deterministic and causal one that emphasized
unconscious behavior and the uniqueness of each
person's history of reinforcement within a mostly
social environment. Unlike many determinists,
Skinner is quite optimistic in his view of humanity.
BANDURA: SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY

Overview of Bandura's Social Cognitive
Theory
Bandura's social cognitive theory takes an
agentic perspective, meaning that humans have
some limited ability to control their lives. In
contrast to Skinner, Bandura (1) recognizes that
chance encounters and fortuitous events often
shape one's behavior; (2) places more emphasis
on observational learning; (3) stresses the
importance of cognitive factors in learning; (4)
suggests that human activity is a function of
behavior and person variables, as well as the
environment; and (5) believes that reinforcement
is mediated by cognition.
Page 27 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Biography of Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura was born in Canada in 1925,
but he has spent his entire professional life in the
United States. He completed a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology at the University of Iowa in 1951
and since then has worked almost entirely at
Stanford University, where he continues to be the
most active of all personality theorists in
investigating his own hypotheses.
Human Agency
Bandura believes that human agency is the
essence of humanness; that is, humans are
defined by their ability to organize, regulate,
and enact behaviors that they believe will
produce desirable consequences. Human agency
has four core features: (1) intentionality, or a
proactive commitment to actions that may bring
about desired outcomes; (2) foresight, or the
ability to set goals; (3) self-reactiveness, which
includes people monitoring their progress toward
fulfilling their choices; and (4) self-reflectiveness,
which allows people to think about and evaluate
their motives, values, and life goals.
Reciprocal Determinism
Social cognitive theory holds that human
functioning is molded by the reciprocal
interaction of (1) behavior; (2) person variables,
including cognition; and (3) environmental eventsa model Bandura calls reciprocal determinism.
Differential Contributions
Bandura does not suggest that the three
factors in the reciprocal determinism
model make equal contributions to
behavior. The relative influence of
behavior, environment, and person
depends on which factor is strongest at
any particular moment.
Chance Encounters and Fortuitous Events
The lives of many people have been
fundamentally changed by a chance
meeting with another person or by a
fortuitous, unexpected event. Chance
encounters and fortuitous events enter
the reciprocal determinism paradigm at
the environment point, after which they
influence behavior in much the same way
as do planned events.
Self-System
The self-system gives some consistency to
personality by allowing people to observe and
symbolize their own behavior and to evaluate it
on the basis of anticipated future consequences.
The self-system includes both self-efficacy and
self-regulation.
Self-Efficacy
How people behave in a particular
situation depends in part on their selfefficacy-that is, their beliefs that they
can or cannot exercise those behaviors
necessary to bring about a desired
consequence.
Efficacy
expectations
differ from outcome expectations, which
refer to people's prediction of the likely
consequences of their behavior. Selfefficacy combines with environmental
variables, previous behaviors, and other
personal variables to predict behavior. It
is acquired, enhanced, or decreased by
any one or combination of four sources:
(1) mastery experiences or performance,
(2) social modeling, or observing
someone of equal ability succeed or fail
at a task; (3) social persuasion, or
listening to
a trusted person's
encouraging words; and (4) physical and
emotional states, such as anxiety or fear,
which usually lowers self-efficacy. High
self-efficacy
and
a
responsive
environment are the best predictors of
successful outcomes.
Proxy Agency
Bandura has recently recognized the
influence of proxy agency through which
people exercise some partial control
over everyday living. Successful living in
the 21st century requires people to seeks
proxies to supply their food, deliver
information, provide transportation, etc.
Without the use of proxies, modern
people would be forced to spend most
of their time securing the necessities of
survival.
Collective Efficacy
Collective efficacy is the level of
confidence that people have that their
combined efforts will produce social
change. At least four factors can lower
collective efficacy. First, events in other
Page 28 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
parts of the world can leave people with

a sense of helplessness; second, complex
technology can decrease people's
perceptions of control over their
environment;
third,
entrenched
bureaucracies discourage people from
attempting to bring about social change;
and fourth, the size and scope of worldwide problems contribute to people's
sense of powerlessness.
Self-Regulation
By using reflective thought, humans can
manipulate their environments and
produce consequences of their actions,
giving them some ability to regulate
their own behavior. Bandura believes
that behavior stems from a reciprocal
influence of external and internal
factors. Two external factors contribute
to self-regulation: (1) standards of
evaluation,
and
(2)
external
reinforcement. External factors affect
self-regulation by providing people with
standards for evaluating their own
behavior. Internal requirements for selfregulation include: (1) self-observation
of performance; (2) judging or
evaluating performance; (3) and selfreactions, including self-reinforcement or
self-punishment.
Internalized
selfsanctions prevent people from violating
their own moral standards either through
selective activation or disengagement of
internal control. Selective activation
refers to the notion that self-regulatory
influences are not automatic but operate
only if activated. It also means that
people react differently in different
situations, depending on their evaluation
of the situation. Disengagement of
internal control means that people are
capable of separating themselves from
the negative consequences of their
behavior. People in ambiguous moral
situations-who are uncertain that their
behavior is consistent with their own
social and moral standards of conductmay separate their conduct from its
injurious consequences through four
general techniques of disengagement of
internal standards or selective activation.
First is redefining behavior, or justifying
otherwise reprehensible actions by
cognitively restructuring them. People

can use redefinition of behavior to
disengage
themselves
from
reprehensible conduct by: (1) justifying
otherwise culpable behavior on moral
grounds; (2) making advantageous
comparisons between their behavior and
the even more reprehensible behavior of
others; and (3) using euphemistic labels
to change the moral tone of their
behavior. A second method of
disengagement from internal standards
is to distort or obscure the relationship
between behavior and its injurious
consequences. People can do this by
minimizing, disregarding, or distorting
the consequences of their behavior. A
third set of disengagement procedures
involves blaming the victims. Finally,
people can disengage their behavior
from its consequences by displacing or
diffusing responsibility.
Learning
People learn through observing others and by
attending to the consequences of their own
actions. Although Bandura believes that
reinforcement aids learning, he contends that
people can learn in the absence of reinforcement
and even of a response.
Observational Learning
The heart of observational learning is
modeling, which is more than simple
imitation, because it involves adding and
subtracting from observed behavior. At
least three principles influence modeling:
(1) people are most likely to model highstatus people, (2) people who lack skill,
power, or status are most likely to
model, and (3) people tend to model
behavior that they see as being
rewarding to the model. Bandura
recognized four processes that govern
observational learning: (1) attention, or
noticing what a model does; (2)
representation,
or
symbolically
representing new response patterns in
memory; (3) behavior production, or
producing the behavior that one
observes; and (4) motivation; that is, the
observer must be motivated to perform
the observed behavior.
Page 29 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Enactive Learning
All behavior is followed by some
consequence,
but
whether
that
consequence reinforces the behavior
depends on the person's cognitive
evaluation of the situation.
Related Research
Bandura's concept of self-efficacy has generated
a great deal of research demonstrating that
people's beliefs are related to their ability to
enact a wide variety of performances, including
stopping smoking and academic performance.
Dysfunctional Behavior
Dysfunctional behavior is learned through the
mutual interaction of the person (including
cognitive and neurophysiological processes), the
environment (including interpersonal relations),
and behavioral factors (especially previous
experiences with reinforcement).
Self-Efficacy and Smoking Cessation

Saul Shiffman and his colleagues studied
the effects of daily fluctuations in selfefficacy on smoking lapses and relapses
among ex-smokers who had quit on their
own for at least 24 hours. They found
that when these participants smoked
even a single cigarette, their daily selfefficacy became more variable, leading
to future lapses and, with some exsmokers, a complete relapse. Ex-smokers
who believed in their ability to quit
smoking were able to maintain high selfefficacy and to avoid lapses and
relapse.
Depression
People who develop depressive
reactions often (1) underestimate their
successes and overestimate their failures,
(2) set personal standards too high, or
(3) treat themselves badly for their
faults.
Phobias
Phobias are learned by (1) direct
contact,
(2)
inappropriate
generalization, and (3) observational
experiences. Once learned they are
maintained by negative reinforcement,
as the person is reinforced for avoiding
fear-producing situations.
Aggressive Behaviors
When carried to extremes, aggressive
behaviors can become dysfunctional. In a
study of children observing live and
filmed models being aggressive,
Bandura and his associates found that
aggression tends to foster more
aggression.
Therapy
The goal of social cognitive therapy is selfregulation. Bandura noted three levels of
treatment: (1) induction of change, (2)
generalization of change to other appropriate
situations, and (3) maintenance of newly
acquired functional behaviors. Social cognitive
therapists
sometimes
use
systematic
desensitization, a technique aimed at diminishing
phobias through relaxation.
Self-Efficacy and Academic Performance

Bandura and a group of Italian
researchers studied levels of selfefficacy and their relation to academic
performance in middle-school children
living near Rome. They found that
children who believed that their parents
had confidence in their academic ability
were likely to have high academic
aspirations, high academic self-efficacy,
and high self-regulatory efficacy, and
that each of these factors related either
directly or indirectly to high academic
performance.
Critique of Bandura
Bandura's theory receives the highest marks of
any in the text largely because it was
constructed through a careful balance of
innovative speculation and data from rigorous
research. In summary, the theory rates very high
on its ability to generate research and on its
internal consistency. In addition, it rates high on
parsimony and on its ability to be falsified,
organize knowledge, and guide the practitioner.
Concept of Humanity
Bandura sees humans as being relatively fluid
and flexible. People can store past experiences
and then use this information to chart future
actions. Bandura's theory rates near the middle
Page 30 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
on teleology versus causality and high on free

choice, optimism, conscious influences, and
uniqueness. As a social cognitive theory, it rates
very high on social determinants of personality.
ROTTER AND MISCHEL: COGNITIVE SOCIAL

LEARNING THEORY
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. Each suggests that our
expectations of future events are major
determinants of performance.
Biography of Julian Rotter
Julian Rotter was born in Brooklyn 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 Ph.D. 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.
Introduction to Rotter's Social Learning Theory
Rotter's interactionist position holds that human
behavior is based largely on the interaction of
people with their meaningful environments. Rotter
believes that, although personality can change at
any time, it has a basic unity that preserves it
from changing as a result of minor experiences.
His empirical law of effect assumes that people
choose a course of action that advances them
toward an anticipated goal.
Predicting Specific Behaviors
Human behavior is most accurately predicted by
an understanding of four variables: behavior
potential, expectancy, reinforcement value, and
the psychological situation.
Behavior Potential
Behavior potential is the possibility that
a particular response will occur at a
given time and place in relation to its

likely reinforcement.
Expectancy
People's expectancy in any given
situation is 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.
Reinforcement Value
Reinforcement value is a 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. Reinforcementreinforcement sequences suggest that the
value of an event is a function of one's
expectation
that
a
particular
reinforcement will lead to future
reinforcements.
Psychological Situation
The psychological situation is that 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.
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 the behavior will be
followed by that reinforcement in that
situation.
Predicting General Behaviors
The basic prediction is too specific to give clues
about how a person will generally behave.
Generalized Expectancies
To make more general predictions of
behavior, one must know people's
generalized expectancies, or their
Page 31 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
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.
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-dependency 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.
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.
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.
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.
Maladaptive Behavior
Rotter defined maladaptive behavior as any
persistent behavior that fails to move a person
closer to a desired goal. It is usually the result of
unrealistically high goals in combination with low
ability to achieve them.
Psychotherapy
In general, the goal of Rotter's therapy is to
achieve harmony between a client's freedom of
movement and need value. The therapist is
actively involved in trying to (1) change the
importance of the client's goals and (2) eliminate
their unrealistically low expectancies for success.
Changing Goals
Maladaptive behaviors follow from
three categories of inappropriate goals:
(1) conflict between goals, (2) destructive
goals, and (3) unrealistically lofty goals.
Eliminating Low Expectancies
In
helping
clients
change
low
expectancies of success, Rotter uses a
variety of approaches, including
reinforcing positive behaviors, ignoring
inappropriate behaviors, giving advice,
modeling appropriate behaviors, and
pointing
out
the
long-range
consequences of both positive and
negative behaviors.
Introduction to Mischel's Cognitive-Affective
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
Page 32 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
the consistency of personality, but more recently,

he and Yuichi Shoda have advanced the notion
that behavior is also a function of relatively
stable personal dispositions and cognitiveaffective processes interacting with a particular
situation.
Biography of Walter Mischel
Walter Mischel was born in 1930, in Vienna, 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 M.A.
from City College of New York and a Ph.D. from
Ohio State, where he was influenced by Julian
Rotter. He is currently a professor at Columbia
University.
Background
of
the
Cognitive-Affective
Personality System
Mischel originally believed that human behavior
was mostly a function of the situation, but
presently he has recognized the importance of
relatively permanent cognitive-affective units.
Nevertheless, Mischel's theory continues to
recognize the apparent inconsistency of some
behaviors.
Consistency Paradox
The consistency paradox refers to the
observation that, although both laypeople 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.
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 by people's
perceptions of themselves in a particular
situation.
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 of personality, or their unique and
stable pattern of behaving differently in
different situations.
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 individuals encountering
different situations should behave
differently as situations vary. Therefore,
Mischel believes that, even though
people's behavior may reflect some
stability over time, it tends to vary as
situations vary.
Situation Variables
Situation variables include all those
stimuli that people attend to in a given
situation.
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 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 goals and values, which
tend to render behavior fairly consistent.
Mischel's fifth cognitive-affective unit
includes affective responses, including
Page 33 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
emotions, feelings, and the affects that

accompany physiological reactions.
Related Research
The theories of both Rotter and Mischel have
sparked an abundance of related research, with
Rotter's locus of control being one of the most
frequently researched areas in psychology and
Mischel's notion of delay of gratification and his
cognitive-affective personality system also
receiving wide attention.
Locus of Control and Health-Related
Behaviors
One adjunct of the locus of control
concept is the health locus of control, and
research in this area suggests that selfmastery of health and people's belief
about their personal control over healthrelated behaviors predict subsequent
health status. This body of research has
included such health-related behaviors
as smoking, abusing alcohol, and unwise
eating. In general, this research indicates
that people high on internal locus of
control, compared with those high on
external locus of control, are more likely
to enact health-related behaviors.
An Analysis of Reactions to the O. J.
Simpson Verdict
Mischel, Shoda, and two of their
colleagues used the cognitive-affective
personality system to analyze the verdict
in the O. J. Simpson murder trial. They
found that European Americans and
African Americans had different ways of
looking at the Simpson verdict. Although
their reactions tended to follow along
racial lines, participants' race itself was
not as important as their thoughts and
feelings in determining their reactions to
the verdict. More specifically, European
Americans who agreed with the verdict
had thoughts and emotions very similar
to those of African Americans who were
elated by the verdict. Moreover, African
Americans who disagreed with the
verdict thought and felt much the same
as European Americans who were
dismayed by the not-guilty verdict.
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 internal consistency, and it rates about
average on its ability to be falsified, to organize
data, and to guide action.
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.
DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES
CATTEL AND EYSENCK: TRAIT AND FACTOR
THEORIES
Overview of Factor Analytic Theory
Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck have each
used factor analysis to identify traits (that is,
relatively permanent dispositions of people).
Cattell has identified a large number of
personality traits, whereas Eysenck has extracted
only three general factors.
Biography of Raymond B. Cattell
Raymond B. Cattell was born in England in 1905,
educated at the University of London, but spent
most of his professional career in the United
States. He held positions at Columbia University,
Clark University, Harvard University, and the
University of Illinois, where he spent most of his
active career. During the last 20 years of his life,
he was associated with the Hawaii School of
Professional Psychology. He died in 1998, a few
weeks short of his 93rd birthday.
Basics of Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is a mathematical procedure for
reducing a large number of scores to a few more
general variables or factors. Correlations of the
Page 34 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
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 oblique rotation. The oblique rotation
procedure ordinarily results in more traits than
the orthogonal method.
Introduction to Cattell's Trait Theory
Cattell used an inductive approach to identify
traits; that is, he began with a large body of
data that he collected with no preconceived
hypothesis or theory.
P Technique
Cattell's P technique is a correlational
procedure that uses measures collected
from one person on many different
occasions and is his attempt to measure
individual or unique, rather than
common, traits. Cattell also used the dR
(differential
R)
technique,
which
correlates the scores of a large number
of people on many variables obtained
at two different occasions. By combining
these two techniques, Cattell has
measured both states (temporary
conditions within an individual) and traits
(relatively permanent dispositions of an
individual).
Media of Observation
Cattell used three different sources of
data that enter the correlation matrix:
(1) L data, or a person's life record that
comes from observations made by
others; (2) Q data, which are based on
questionnaires; and (3) T data, or
information obtained from objective
tests.
Source Traits
Source traits refer to the underlying factor or
factors responsible for the intercorrelation
among surface traits. They can be distinguished
from trait indicators, or surface traits.
Personality Traits
Personality traits include both common traits
(shared by many people) and unique traits
(peculiar to one individual). Personality traits can
also be classified into temperament, motivation
(dynamic), and abiliy.
Temperament Traits
Temperament traits are concerned with
how a person behaves. Of the 35
primary or first-order traits Cattell has
identified, all but one (intelligence) is
basically a temperament trait. Of the 23
normal traits, 16 were obtained through
Q media and compose Cattell's famous
16 PF scale. The additional seven factors
that make up the 23 normal traits were
originally identified only through L data.
Cattell believed that pathological
people have the same 23 normal traits
as other people, but, in addition, they
exhibit one or more of 12 abnormal
traits. Also, a person's pathology may
simply be due to a normal trait that is
carried to an extreme.
Second-Order Traits
The 35 primary source traits tend to
cluster together, forming eight clearly
identifiable second-order traits. The two
strongest of the second-order traits might
be called extraversion/introversion and
anxiety.
Dynamic Traits
In addition to temperament traits, Cattell
recognized motivational or dynamic traits, which
include attitudes, ergs, and sems.
Attitudes
An attitude refers to a specific course of
action, or desire to act, in response to a
given situation. Motivation is usually
quite complex, so that a network of
motives, or dynamic lattice, is ordinarily
involved with an attitude. In addition, a
subsidiation chain, or a complex set of
subgoals, underlies motivation.
Ergs
Ergs are innate drives or motives, such as
sex, hunger, loneliness, pity, fear,
curiosity, pride, sensuousness, anger, and
Page 35 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
greed that humans share with other

primates.
Sems
Sems are learned or acquired dynamic
traits that can satisfy several ergs at the
same time. The self-sentiment is the most
important sem in that it integrates the
other sems.
The Dynamic Lattice
The dynamic lattice is a complex network
of attitudes, ergs, and sems underlying a
person's motivational structure.
Genetic Basis of Traits
Cattell and his colleagues provided estimates of
heritability of the various source traits.
Heritability is an estimate of the extent to which
the variance of a given trait is due to heredity.
Cattell has found relatively high heritability
values for both fluid intelligence (the ability to
adapt to new material) and crystallized
intelligence (which depends on prior learning),
suggesting that intelligence is due more to
heredity than to environment.
Introduction to Eysenck's Factor Theory
Compared to Cattell, Eysenck (1) was more likely
to theorize before collecting and factor
analyzing data; (2) extracted fewer factors; and
(3) used a wider variety of approaches to
gather data.
Biography of Hans J. Eysenck
Hans J. Eysenck was born in Berlin in 1916, but
as a teenager, he moved to England to escape
Nazi tyranny and made London his home for
more than 60 years. Eysenck was trained in the
psychometrically
oriented
psychology
department of the University of London, from
which he received a bachelor's degree in 1938
and a Ph.D. in 1940. Eysenck was perhaps the
most prolific writer of any psychologist in the
world, and his books and articles often caused
world-wide controversy. He died in September
of 1997.
Measuring Personality
Eysenck believed that genetic factors were far
more important than environmental ones in
shaping personality and that personal traits
could be measured by standardized personality
inventories.
Criteria for Identifying Factors

Eysenck insisted that personality factors
must (1) be based on strong
psychometric evidence, (2) must possess
heritability and fit an acceptable genetic
model, (3) make sense theoretically, and
(4) possess social relevance.
Hierarchy of Measures
Eysenck
recognized
a
four-level
hierarchy of behavior organization: (1)
specific acts or cognitions; (2) habitual
acts or cognitions; (3) traits, or personal
dispositions;
and (4) types or
superfactors.
Dimensions of Personality
Eysenck's methods of measuring personality
limited the number of personality types to a
relatively small number. Although many traits
exist, Eysenck identified only three major types.
What Are the Major Personality Factors?
Eysenck's theory revolves around only
three
general
bipolar
types:
extraversion/introversion,
neuroticism/stability,
and
psychoticism/superego function. All three
have a strong genetic component.
Extraverts
are
characterized
by
sociability, impulsiveness, jocularity,
liveliness, optimism, and quick-wittedness,
whereas introverts are quiet, passive,
unsociable, careful, reserved, thoughtful,
pessimistic, peaceful, sober, and
controlled. Eysenck, however, believes
that the principal differences between
extraverts and introverts is one of
cortical arousal level. Neurotic traits
include anxiety, hysteria, and obsessive
compulsive disorders. Both normal and
abnormal individuals may score high on
the neuroticism scale of the Eysenck's
various personality inventories. People
who score high on the psychoticism scale
are egocentric, cold, nonconforming,
aggressive, impulsive, hostile, suspicious,
and antisocial. Men tend to score higher
than women on psychoticism.
Measuring Superfactors
Eysenck and his colleagues developed
four personality inventories to measure
superfactors, or types. The two most
Page 36 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
frequently used by current researchers

are the Eysenck Personality Inventory
(which measures only E and N) and the
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (which
also measures P).
Biological Bases of Personality
Eysenck believed that P, E, and N all
have a powerful biological component,
and he cited as evidence the existence
of these three types in a wide variety of
nations and languages.
Personality and Behavior
Eysenck
argued
that
different
combinations of P, E and N relate to a
large number of behaviors and
processes,
such
as
academic
performance, creativity, and antisocial
behavior.
He
cautioned
that
psychologists can be misled if they do
not consider the various combinations of
personality dimensions.
Personality and Disease
For many years, Eysenck researched the
relationship between personality factors
and disease. He teamed with Ronald
Grossarth-Maticek
to
study
the
connection between characteristics and
both cancer and cardiovascular disease
and found that people with a
helpless/hopeless attitude were more
likely to die from cancer, whereas
people who reacted to frustration with
anger and emotional arousal were much
more likely to die from cardiovascular
disease.
Related Research
The theories of both Cattell and Eysenck have
been highly productive in terms of research, due
in part to Cattell's 16 PF questionnaire and
Eysenck's various personality inventories. Some of
this research has looked at personality factors
and the creativity of scientists and artists. In
addition, some of Eysenck's research attempted
to show a biological basis of personality.
Personalities of Creative Scientists and
Artists
Early research using the 16 PF found
that creative scientists, compared with
either the general population or less
creative scientists, were more intelligent,

outgoing, adventurous, sensitive, selfsufficient, dominant, and driven. Other
research found that female scientists,
compared to other women, were more
dominant, confident, intelligent, radical,
and adventurous. Research on the
personality of artists found that writers
and artists were more intelligent,
dominant, adventurous, emotionally
sensitive, radical, and self-sufficient than
other people. Later research found that
creative artists scored high on Eysenck's
neuroticism and psychoticism scales,
indicating that they were more anxious,
sensitive, obsessive, impulsive, hostile,
and willing to take risks than other
people.
Biology and Personality
If personality has a strong biological
foundation, then researchers should find
very similar personality types in various
cultures around the world. Studies in 24
countries found a high degree of
similarity among these different cultures.
Eysenck's later work investigated
personality factors across 35 European,
Asian, African, and American cultures
and found that personality factors are
quite universal, thus supporting the
biological nature of personality.
Critique of Trait and Factor Theories
Cattell and Eysenck's theories 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.
Concept of Humanity
Cattell and Eysenck believe that human
personality is largely the product of genetics and
not the environment. Thus, both are rated very
high on biological influences and very low on
social factors. In addition, both rate 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
do not apply to Cattell and Eysenck.
Page 37 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Structure of Personality
According to Allport, the basic units of
personality are personal dispositions and the
proprium.
ALLPORT: PSYCHOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Overview of Allport's Psychology of the
Individual
Gordon Allport, whose major emphasis was on
the uniqueness of each individual, built a theory
of personality as a reaction against what he
regarded as the non-humanistic positions of both
psychoanalysis and animal-based learning
theory. However, Allport was eclectic in his
approach and accepted many of the ideas of
other theorists.
Biography of Gordon Allport
Gordon W. Allport was born in Indiana in 1897.
He received an undergraduate degree in
philosophy and economics from Harvard, and
taught in Europe for a year. While in Europe, he
had a fortuitous meeting with Sigmund Freud in
Vienna, which helped him decide to complete a
Ph.D. in psychology. After receiving his Ph.D.
from Harvard, Allport spent two years studying
under some of the great German psychologists,
but he returned to teach at Harvard. Two years
later he took a position at Dartmouth, but after
four years at Dartmouth, he again returned to
Harvard, where he remained until his death in
1967.
Allport's Approach to Personality
Allport believed that psychologically healthy
humans are motivated by present, mostly
conscious drives and that they not only seek to
reduce tensions but to establish new ones. He
also believed that people are capable of
proactive behavior, which suggests that they can
consciously behave in new and creative ways
that foster their own change and growth. He
called his study of the individual morphogenic
science and contrasted it with traditional
nomothetic methods.
Personality Defined
Allport defined personality as "the dynamic
organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his
characteristic behavior and thought."
Personal Dispositions
Allport distinguished between common
traits, which permit inter-individual
comparisons, and personal dispositions,
which are peculiar to the individual. He
recognized three overlapping levels of
personal dispositions, the most general
of which are cardinal dispositions that
are so obvious and dominating that they
cannot be hidden from other people. Not
everyone has a cardinal disposition, but
all people have 5 to 10 central
dispositions, or characteristics around
which their lives revolve. In addition,
everyone has a great number of
secondary dispositions, which are less
reliable and less conspicuous than central
traits. Allport further divided personal
dispositions
into
(1)
motivational
dispositions, which are strong enough to
initiate action and (2) stylistic
dispositions, which refer to the manner in
which an individual behaves and which
guide rather than initiate action.
Proprium
The proprium refers to all those
behaviors and characteristics that
people regard as warm and central in
their lives. Allport preferred the term
proprium over self or ego because the
latter terms could imply an object or
thing within a person that controls
behavior, whereas proprium suggests the
core of one's personhood.
Motivation
Allport insisted that an adequate theory of
motivation must consider the notion that motives
change as people mature and also that people
are motivated by present drives and wants.
Reactive and Proactive Theories of
Motivation
To Allport, 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
Page 38 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
seek additional tension and that they

purposefully act on their environment in
a way that fosters growth toward
psychological health.
Functional Autonomy
Allport's
most
distinctive
and
controversial concept is his theory of
functional autonomy, which holds that
some (but not all) human motives are
functionally independent from the
original motive responsible for a
particular behavior. Allport recognized
two levels of functional autonomy: (1)
perseverative functional autonomy, which
is the tendency of certain basic
behaviors (such as addictive behaviors)
to continue in the absence of
reinforcement, and (2) propriate
functional autonomy, which refers to selfsustaining motives (such as interests) that
are related to the proprium.
Conscious and Unconscious Motivation
Although Allport emphasized conscious
motivation more than any other
personality theorist, he did not
completely overlook the possible
influence of unconscious motives on
pathological behaviors. Most people,
however, are aware of what they are
doing and why they are doing it.
The Psychologically Healthy Personality
Allport believed that people are motivated by
both the need to adjust to their environment and
to grow toward psychological health; that is,
people are both reactive and proactive.
Nevertheless, psychologically healthy persons
are more likely to engage in proactive
behaviors. Allport listed six criteria for
psychological health: (1) an extension of the
sense of self, (2) warm relationships with others,
(3) emotional security or self-acceptance, (4) a
realistic view of the world, (5) insight and humor,
and (6) a unifying philosophy of life.
The Study of the Individual
Allport strongly felt that psychology should
develop and use research methods that study the
individual rather than groups.
Morphogenic Science
Traditional
psychology
relies
on
nomothetic science, which seeks general
laws from a study of groups of people,
but Allport used idiographic or
morphogenic procedures that study the
single case. Unlike many psychologists,
Allport was willing to accept self-reports
at face value.
The Diaries of Marion Taylor
In the late 1930's, Allport and his wife
became acquainted with diaries written
by woman they called Marion Taylor.
These diaries-along with descriptions of
Marion Taylor by her mother, younger
sister, favorite teacher, friends, and a
neighbor-provided the Allports with a
large quantity of material that could
be studied using morphogenic methods.
However, the Allports never published
this material.
Letters from Jenny
Even though Allport never published
data from Marion Taylor's dairies, he
did publish a second case study-that of
Jenny Gove Masterson. Jenny had
written a series of 301 letters to Gordon
and Ada Allport, whose son had been a
roommate of Jenny's son. Two of Gordon
Allport's students, Alfred Baldwin and
Jeffrey Paige used a personal structure
analysis and factor analysis respectively,
while Allport used a commonsense
approach to discern Jenny's personality
structure as revealed by her letters. All
three approaches yielded similar results,
which suggests that morphogenic studies
can be reliable.
Related Research
Allport believed that a deep religious
commitment was a mark of a mature person, but
he also saw that many regular churchgoers did
not have a mature religious orientation and were
capable of deep racial and social prejudice. In
other words, he saw a curvilinear relationship
between church attendance and prejudice.
The Religious Orientation Scale
This insight led Allport to develop and
use the Religious Orientation Scale to
assess both an intrinsic orientation and
Page 39 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
an extrinsic orientation toward religion.

Allport and Ross found that people with
an extrinsic orientation toward religion
tend to be quite prejudiced, whereas
those with an intrinsic orientation tend to
be low on racial and social prejudice.
Religious Orientation and Psychological
Health
Research has found that people who
score high on the Intrinsic scale of the
ROS tend to have overall better
personal functioning than those who
score high on the Extrinsic scale. In
general, these studies have found that
some highly religious people have strong
psychological health whereas others
suffer from a variety of psychological
disorders. The principal difference
between the two groups is one of
intrinsic or extrinsic religious orientation;
that is, people with an intrinsic
orientation tend to be psychologically
healthy, but those with an extrinsic
orientation
suffer
from
poor
psychological health.
Critique of Allport
Allport has written eloquently about personality,
but his views are based more on philosophical
speculation and common sense than on scientific
studies. As a consequence, his theory is very
narrow, being limited mostly to a model of
human motivation. Thus, it 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.
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.
HUMANISTIC/EXISTENTIAL
THEORIES
KELLY: PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY
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.
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
Ph.D. in psychology from the State 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 two years later at
age 61.
Kelly's Philosophical Position
Kelly believed that people construe events
according to their personal constructs rather than
reality.
Person as Scientist
People generally attempt to solve
everyday problems in much the same
fashion as scientists; that is, they observe,
ask questions, formulate hypotheses,
infer conclusions, and predict future
events.
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.
Page 40 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Constructive Alternativism
Kelly
believed
that
all
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.
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 or transparent patterns
personal constructs, which he believed shape
behavior.
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.
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 construe the same
event in different ways. (3) The
organization corollary assumes that
people organize their personal constructs
in a hierarchical system, with some
constructs in a superordinate position
and others 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.
Applications of Personal Construct Theory
Kelly's many years of clinical experience
enabled him to evolve concepts of abnormal
development and psychotherapy, and to
develop a Role Construct Repertory (Rep) Test.
Abnormal Development
Kelly saw normal people as analogous
to competent scientists who test
reasonable hypotheses, objectively view
the results, and willingly change their
theories when the data warrant it.
Similarly, unhealthy people are like
incompetent
scientists
who
test
unreasonable hypotheses, reject or
distort legitimate results, and refuse to
amend
outdated
theories.
Kelly
identified four common elements in most
human disturbances: (1) threat, or the
perception that one's basic constructs
may be drastically changed; (2) fear,
which requires an incidental rather than
a comprehensive restructuring of one's
construct system; (3) anxiety, or the
recognition that one cannot adequately
Page 41 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
deal with a new situation; and (4) guilt,

defined as "the sense of having lost one's
core role structure."
Psychotherapy
Kelly insisted that clients should set their
own goals for therapy and that they
should be active participants in the
therapeutic process. He sometimes used
a procedure called fixed-role therapy in
which clients act out a predetermined
role for several weeks. By playing the
part of a psychologically healthy person,
clients may discover previously hidden
aspects of themselves.
The Rep Test
The purpose of the Rep test is to discover
ways in which clients construe significant
people in their lives. Clients place names
of people they know on a repertory grid
in order to identify both similarities and
differences among these people.
Related Research
Kelly's personal construct theory and his Rep test
have generated a substantial amount of
empirical research in both the United States and
the United Kingdom.
The Rep Test and Children
Use of the Rep test with children reveals
that the self-constructs of depressed
adolescents are marked by low selfesteem, pessimism, and an external locus
of control. Other research with children
and the Rep test shows that
preadolescents construe themselves and
others in ways consistent with the Big
Five personality factors (extraversion,
agreeableness,
conscientiousness,
emotional stability, and intelligence), thus
demonstrating that the Big Five factors
can come from instruments other than
standard personality tests.
The Rep Test and the Real Self Versus the
Ideal Self
Other research has found that the Rep
test was useful in (1) predicting
adherence to a physical activity
program, (2) detecting differences
between the real self and the ideal self,
and (3) measuring neuroticism.
The Rep Test and the Pain Patient

A number of studies, including the Large
and Strong (1997) study, have found
that the Rep test can be a reliable and
valid instrument for measuring pain.
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.
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.
ROGERS: PERSON-CENTERED THEORY

Overview of Rogers's Person-Centered Theory
Although Carl Rogers is best known as the
founder of client-centered therapy, he also
developed an important theory of personality
that underscores his approach to therapy.
Biography of Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers was born into a devoutly religious
family in a Chicago suburb in 1902. After the
family moved to a farm near Chicago, 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
Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in
1931. In 1940, after nearly a dozen years
Page 42 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
away from an academic life 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. He died in 1987 at age 85.
Person-Centered Theory
Rogers carefully crafted his person-centered
theory of personality to meet his own demands
for a structural model that could explain and
predict outcomes of client-centered therapy.
However, the theory has implications far beyond
the therapeutic setting.
Basic Assumptions
Person-centered theory rests on two
basic assumptions: (1) the formative
tendency, which states that all matter,
both organic and inorganic, tends to
evolve from simpler to more complex
forms, and (2) an actualizing tendency,
which suggests that all living things,
including humans, tend to move toward
completion, or fulfillment of potentials.
However, in order for people (or plants
and animals) to become actualized,
certain identifiable conditions must be
present. For a person, these conditions
include a relationship with another
person who is genuine, or congruent, and
who demonstrates complete acceptance
and empathy for that person.
The Self and Self-Actualization
A sense of self or personal identity
begins to emerge during infancy, and,
once established, it allows a person to
strive toward self-actualization, which is
a subsystem of the actualization
tendency and refers to the tendency to
actualize the self as perceived in
awareness. The self has two subsystems:
(1) the self-concept, which includes all
those aspects of one's identity that are
perceived in awareness, and (2) the
ideal self, or our view of our self as we
would like to be or 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.
Awareness
People are aware of both their selfconcept and their ideal self, although
awareness need not be accurate or at a
high level. Rogers saw people as having
experiences on three levels of
awareness: (1) those that are symbolized
below the threshold of awareness and
are either ignored or denied, that is,
subceived, or not allowed into the selfconcept; (2) those that are distorted or
reshaped to fit it into an existing selfconcept; and (3) those that are consistent
with the self-concept and thus are
accurately symbolized and freely
admitted to the self-structure. Any
experience not consistent with the selfconcept-even positive experiences-will
be distorted or denied.
Needs
The two basic human needs are
maintenance and enhancement, but
people also need positive regard and
self-regard. Maintenance needs include
those for food, air, and safety, but they
also include our tendency to resist
change and to maintain our self-concept
as it is. Enhancement needs include needs
to grow and to realize one's full human
potential. As awareness of self emerges,
an infant begins to receive positive
regard from another person-that is, to
be loved or accepted. People naturally
value those experiences that satisfy their
needs for positive regard, but,
unfortunately, this value sometimes
becomes more powerful than the reward
they receive for meeting their organismic
needs. This sets up the condition of
incongruence, which is experienced when
basic organismic needs are denied or
distorted in favor of needs to be loved
or accepted. As a result of experiences
with positive regard, people develop the
need for self-regard, which they 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's continuous
positive evaluation.
Page 43 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Conditions of Worth
Most people are not unconditionally
accepted.
Instead,
they
receive
conditions of worth; that is, they feel that
they are loved and accepted only when
and if they meet the conditions set by
others.
Psychological Stagnation
When the organismic self and the selfconcept are at variance with one
another, a person may experience
incongruence,
which
includes
vulnerability, threat, defensiveness, and
even disorganization. The greater the
incongruence between self-concept and
the organismic experience, the more
vulnerable that person becomes. Anxiety
exists whenever the person becomes
dimly aware of the discrepancy between
organismic experience and self-concept,
whereas threat is experienced whenever
the person becomes more clearly aware
of this incongruence. To prevent
incongruence,
people
react
with
defensiveness, typically in the forms of
distortion and denial. With distortion,
people misinterpret an experience so
that it fits into their self-concept; with
denial, people refuse to allow the
experience into awareness. When
people's defenses fail to operate
properly, their behavior becomes
disorganized
or
psychotic.
With
disorganization,
people
sometimes
behave consistently with their organismic
experience and sometimes in accordance
with their shattered self-concept.
Psychotherapy
For client-centered psychotherapy to be
effective, certain conditions are necessary: A
vulnerable client must have contact of some
duration with a counselor who is congruent, and
who demonstrates unconditional positive regard
and listens with empathy to a client. The client
must in turn perceive the congruence,
unconditional positive regard, and empathy of
the therapist. If these conditions are present, then
the process of therapy will take place and
certain predictable outcomes will result.
Conditions
Three conditions are crucial to clientcentered therapy, and Rogers called
them the necessary and sufficient
conditions for therapeutic growth. The
first is counselor congruence, or a
therapist whose organismic experiences
are matched by an awareness and by
the ability and willingness to openly
express these feelings. Congruence is
more basic than the other two conditions
because it is a relatively stable
characteristic of the therapist, whereas
the other two conditions are limited to a
specific
therapeutic
relationship.
Unconditional positive regard exists
when the therapist accepts the client
without conditions or qualifications.
Empathic listening is the therapist's
ability to sense the feelings 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.
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.
Outcomes
When client-centered therapy is
successful,
clients
become
more
congruent, less defensive, more open to
experience, and more realistic. The gap
between their ideal self and their true
self narrows and, as a consequence,
clients experience less physiological and
psychological tension. Finally, clients'
interpersonal
relationships
improve
because they are more accepting of self
and others.
Page 44 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
The Person of Tomorrow

Rogers was vitally interested in the
psychologically healthy person, called the "fully
functioning person" or the "person of tomorrow."
Rogers listed seven characteristics of the person
of tomorrow. The person of tomorrow (1) is able
to adjust to change, (2) is open to experience, (3)
is able to live fully in the moment, (4) is able to
have harmonious relations with others, (5) is more
integrated with no artificial boundaries between
conscious and unconscious processes, (6) has a
basic trust of human nature, and (7) enjoys a
greater richness in life. The factors have
implications both for the individual and for
society.
Rogers agreed with Maslow that scientists must
care about and be involved in the phenomena
they study and that psychologists should limit
their objectivity and precision to their
methodology, not to the creation of hypotheses
or to the communication of research findings.
The Chicago Study
When he taught at the University of Chicago,
Rogers, along with colleagues and graduate
students, conducted a sophisticated and complex
study on the effectiveness of psychotherapy.
Hypotheses
This study tested four broad hypotheses.
As a consequence of therapy (1) clients
will become more aware of their
feelings and experiences, (2) the gap
between the real self and the ideal self
will lessen; (3) clients' behavior will
become more socialized and mature;
and (4) clients will become both more
self-accepting and more accepting of
others.
Method
Participants were adults who sought
therapy at the University of Chicago
counseling center. Experimenters asked
half of them to wait 60 days before
receiving therapy while beginning
therapy with the other half. In addition,
they tested a control group of "normals"
who were matched with the therapy
group. This control group was also
divided into a wait group and a nonwait group.
Findings
Rogers and his associates found that the
therapy group-but not the wait groupshowed a lessening of the gap between
real self and ideal self. They also found
that clients who improved during
therapy-but not those rated as least
improved-showed changes in social
behavior, as noted by friends.
Summary of Results
Although client-centered therapy was
successful in changing clients, it was not
successful in bringing them to the level of
the fully functioning persons or even
to the level of "normal" psychological
health.
Related Research
More recently, other researchers have
investigated Rogers's facilitative conditions both
outside therapy and within therapy.
Facilitative Conditions Outside Therapy
In the United Kingdom, Duncan Cramer
has conducted a series of studies
investigating the therapeutic qualities of
Rogers's facilitative conditions in
interpersonal relationships outside of
therapy.
Cramer
found
positive
relationships between self-esteem, as
measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem
Scale, and the four facilitative conditions
that make up the Barrett-Lennard
Relationship Inventory-level of regard,
unconditionality of regard, congruence,
and empathy. Moreover, the direction of
the relationship strongly suggested that
Rogers's facilitative conditions precede
the acquisition of higher levels of selfesteem.
Facilitative Conditions and Couples
Therapy
In Belgium, Alfons Vansteenwegen
(1996) used a revised form of the
Barrett-Lennard to determine if Rogers's
facilitative conditions related to success
during couples therapy. He found that
client-centered couples therapy can
bring about positive changes in couples,
and that some of these changes lasted
for at least seven years after therapy.
Page 45 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Critique of Rogers
Rogers's 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.
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.
MASLOW'S HOLISTIC-DYNAMIC THEORY

Overview of Maslow's Holistic-Dynamic
Theory
Abraham Maslow's holistic-dynamic theory holds
that people are continually motivated by one or
more needs, and that, under the proper
circumstances, they can reach a level of
psychological health called self-actualization.
Biography of Abraham H. Maslow
Abraham H. Maslow was born in New York in
1908, the oldest of seven children of Russian
Jewish immigrants. After two or three mediocre
years as a college student, his work improved at
about the time he was married. He received both
a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D. from the
University of Wisconsin where he worked with
Harry Harlow conducting animal studies. Most of
his professional career was spent at Brooklyn
College and at Brandeis University. Poor health
forced him to move to California where he died
in 1970 at age 62.
Maslow's View of Motivation
Maslow's theory rests on five basic assumptions
about 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 all motivated by the same basic
needs; and (5) needs can be arranged on a
hierarchy.
Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow held that lower level needs have
prepotency over higher level needs; that
is, they must be satisfied before higher
needs become motivators. Maslow's
hierarchy includes (1) physiological
needs, such as oxygen, food, water, and
so on; (2) safety needs, which include
physical security, stability, dependency,
protection, and freedom from danger,
and which result in basic anxiety if not
satisfied; (3) love and belongingness
needs, including the desire for friendship,
the wish for a mate and children, and
the need to belong; (4) esteem needs,
which follow from the satisfaction of love
needs and which include self-confidence
and the recognition that one has a
positive reputation; and (5) selfactualization needs, which are satisfied
only by the psychologically healthiest
people. Unlike other needs that
automatically are activated when lower
needs are met, self-actualization needs
do not inevitably follow the satisfaction
of esteem needs. Only by embracing
such B-values as truth, beauty, oneness,
and justice, can people achieve selfactualization. The five needs on Maslow's
hierarchy are conative needs. Other
needs include aesthetic needs, cognitive
needs, and neurotic needs.
Aesthetic Needs
Aesthetic needs include a desire for
beauty and order, and some people
have much stronger aesthetic needs than
do others. When people fail to meet
their aesthetic needs, they become sick.
Cognitive Needs
Cognitive needs include the desire to
know, to understand, and to be curious.
Knowledge is a prerequisite for each of
the five conative needs. Also, people
who are denied knowledge and kept in
ignorance become sick, paranoid, and
depressed.
Page 46 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
Neurotic Needs
With each of the above three dimensions
of needs, physical or psychological
illness results when the needs are not
satisfied. Neurotic needs, however,
lead to pathology regardless of whether
they are satisfied or not. Neurotic needs
include such motives as a desire to
dominate, to inflict pain, or to subject
oneself to the will of another person.
Neurotic needs are nonproductive and
do not foster health.
General Discussion of Needs
Maslow believed that most people
satisfy lower level needs to a greater
extent than they do higher levels needs,
and that the greater the satisfaction of
one need, the more fully the next highest
need is likely to emerge. In certain rare
cases, the order of needs might be
reversed. 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
understood the unconscious motivation
behind many apparent reversals, we
would see that they are not genuine
reversals at all. Thus, Maslow insisted
that much of our surface behavior is
actually motivated by more basic and
often unconscious needs. Maslow also
believed that some expressive behaviors
are unmotivated, even though all
behaviors have a cause. Expressive
behavior has no aim or goal but is
merely a person's mode of expression. In
comparison, coping behaviors (which are
motivated) deal with a person's attempt
to cope with the environment. The
conative needs ordinarily call forth
coping behaviors. Deprivation of any of
the needs leads to pathology of some
sort. For example, people's inability to
reach self-actualization results in
metapathology, defined as an absence
of values, a lack of fulfillment, and a loss
of meaning in life. Maslow suggested
that instinctoid needs are innately
determined even though they can be
modified by learning. Maslow also
believed that 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.
Self-Actualization
Maslow believed that a very small percentage
of people reach an ultimate level of
psychological health called self-actualization.
Values of Self-Actualizers
Maslow held that self-actualizers are
metamotivated by such B-values as truth,
goodness, beauty, justice, and simplicity.
Criteria for Self-Actualization
Four criteria must be met before a
person achieves self-actualization: (1)
absence of psychopathology, (2)
satisfaction of each of the four lower
level needs, (3) acceptance of the Bvalues, and (4) full realization of one's
potentials for growth.
Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People
Maslow listed 15 qualities that
characterize self-actualizing people,
although not all self-actualizers possess
each of the characteristics to the same
extent. These characteristics are (1) more
efficient perception of reality, meaning
that self-actualizers 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, meaning that
self-actualizers have no need to appear
complex or sophisticated; (4) problemcentered which is the ability to view
age-old problems from a solid
philosophical position; (5) the need for
privacy, or a detachment that allows
self-actualizing people to be alone
without being lonely; (6) autonomy,
meaning that they no longer are
dependent 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;
Page 47 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
(9) Gemeinschaftsgefhl, 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 that is spontaneous,
unplanned, and intrinsic to the situation;
(14) creativeness, with a keen perception
of truth, beauty, and reality; (15)
resistance to enculturation, or the ability
to set personal standards and to resist
the mold set by culture.
Love, Sex, and Self-Actualization
Maslow compared D-love (deficiency
love) to B-love (love for being or essence
of another person). Self-actualizing
people are capable of B-love because
they can love without expecting
something in return. B-love is mutually
felt and shared and not based on
deficiencies within the lovers.
Maslow criticized traditional science as being
value free, with a methodology that is sterile and
nonemotional. He argued for a Taoistic attitude
for psychology in which psychologists are willing
to resacralize their science, or to instill it with
human values and to view participants with awe,
joy, wonder, rapture, and ritual.
Measuring Self-Actualization
Maslow's method for measuring self-actualization
were consistent with his philosophy of science. He
began his study of self-actualizing people with
little evidence that such a classification of people
even existed. He looked at healthy people,
learned what they had in common, and then
established a syndrome for psychological health.
Next, he refined the definition of selfactualization, studied other people, and changed
the syndrome. He continued this process until he
was satisfied that he had a clear definition of
self-actualization. Other researchers have
developed personality inventories for measuring
self-actualization. The most widely used of these

is Everett Shostrom's Personal Orientation
Inventory (POI), a 150-item forced-choice
inventory that assesses a variety
of self-actualization facets.
The Jonah Complex
Because humans are born with a natural
tendency to move toward psychological health,
any failure to reach self-actualization can
technically be called abnormal development.
One such abnormal syndrome is the Jonah
complex, or fear of being or doing one's best, a
condition that all of us have to some extent.
Maslow believed that many people allow false
humility to stifle their creativity, which causes
them to fall short of self-actualization.
Psychotherapy
The hierarchy of needs concept has obvious
ramifications for psychotherapy. Most people
who seek psychotherapy probably do so
because they have not adequately satisfied their
love and belongingness needs. This suggests that
much of therapy should involve a productive
human relationship and that the job of
a therapist is to help clients satisfy love and
belongingness needs.
Related Research
Researchers have investigated Maslow's concept
of self-actualization in many divergence settings
and for a variety of purposes.
Self-Actualization
and
Intimate
Interpersonal Relations
Michael Sheffield and his colleagues
used the POI as a measure of selfactualization and found that high scores
on the POI were inversely related
to
interpersonal
relations.
More
specifically, people who approached
self-actualization tended to be selfmotivated,
accepted
feelings
of
aggression, and were able to sustain
intimacy.
Self-Actualization and Creativity
Mark Runco and his colleagues used the
Short Index of Self-Actualization to
assess self-actualization and found a
positive relationship between selfactualization scores and two measures of
creativity. Although the relationships
Page 48 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
were not strong, they suggest that, as

Maslow's hypothesized, creativity is at
least partly related to self-actualization.
Self-Actualization and Self-Acceptance
Some researchers have tested Maslow's
assumption that self-actualizing people
accept themselves. One study (Sumerlin
& Bundrick, 2000) with African-American
businessmen found that those who scored
high on self-actualization tended to have
increased happiness and self-fulfillment.
Another study by William Compton and
his colleagues found that selfactualization related to openness to
experience and to seeking out new and
exciting experiences.
Critique of Maslow
Maslow's theory has been popular in psychology
and other disciplines, such as 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.
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.
MAY'S EXISTENTIAL THEORY

Overview of May's Existential Theory
Existential psychology began in Europe shortly
after World War II and spread to the United
States, where Rollo May played a large part in
popularizing it. A clinical psychologist by
training, May took the view that modern people
frequently run away both from making choices
and from assuming responsibility.
Biography of Rollo May
Rollo May was born in Ohio in 1909, but grew
up in Michigan. After graduating from Oberlin
College in 1930, he spent three years roaming
throughout eastern and southern Europe as an
itinerant artist. When he returned to the United
States, he entered the Union Theological
Seminary, from which he received a Master of
Divinity degree. He then served for two years as
a pastor, but quit in order to pursue a career in
psychology. He received a Ph.D. in clinical
psychology from Columbia in 1949 at the 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.
Background of Existentialism
Sren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and
theologian, is usually considered to be the
founder of modern existentialism. Like later
existentialists, 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.
What Is Existentialism?
The first tenet of existentialism is that
existence take precedence over essence,
meaning that process and growth are
more important than product and
stagnation.
Second,
existentialists
oppose the artificial split between
subject and object. Third, they stress
people's search for meaning in their
lives. Fourth, they insist that each of us is
responsible for who we are and what
we will become. Fifth, most take an
Page 49 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
antitheoretical position, believing that

theories tend to objectify people.
Basic Concepts
According to existentialists, a basic unity
exists between people and their
environments, a unity expressed by the
term Dasein, or being-in-the-world.
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. People are both aware of
themselves as living beings and also
aware of the possibility of nonbeing or
nothingness. Death is the most obvious
form of nonbeing, which can also be
experienced as retreat from life's
experiences.
The Case of Philip
Rollo May helped illustrate his notion of
existentialism with the case of Philip, a successful
architect in his mid-50s. Despite his apparent
success, Philip experienced severe anxiety when
his relationship with Nicole (a writer in her mid40s) took a puzzling turn. Uncertain of his future
and suffering from low self-esteem, Philip went
into therapy with Rollo May. Eventually, Philip
was able to understand that his difficulties with
women were related to his early experiences
with a mother who was unpredictable and an
older sister who suffered from severe mental
disorders. However, he began to recover only
after he accepted that his "need" to take care of
unpredictable Nicole was merely part of his
personal history with unstable women.
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.
Normal Anxiety
Growth produces normal anxiety,
defined as that which is proportionate to
the threat, does not involve repression,
and can be handled on a conscious level.
Neurotic Anxiety
Neurotic anxiety is 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.
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.
Intentionality
The structure that gives meaning to experience
and allows people to make decisions about the
future is called intentionality. May believed that
intentionality 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.
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.
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.
Forms of Love
May identified four kinds of love in
Western tradition: sex, eros, philia, and
agape. May believed that Americans no
longer view sex as a natural biological
function, but have become preoccupied
with it to the point of trivialization. Eros is
a psychological desire that seeks an
Page 50 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
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.
Freedom and Destiny
Psychologically
healthy
individuals
are
comfortable with freedom, able to assume
responsibility for their choices, and willing to
face their destiny.
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.
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.
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.
Philip's Destiny
After some time in therapy, Philip was
able to stop blaming his mother for not
doing what he thought she should have
done. The objective facts of his childhood
had not changed, but Philip's subjective
perceptions had. As he came to terms
with his destiny, Philip began to be able
to express his anger, to feel less trapped
in his relationship with Nicole, and to
become more aware of his possibilities.

In other words, he gained his freedom of
being.
The Power of Myth
According to May, the people of contemporary
Western civilization have an urgent need for
myths. Because they have lost many of their
traditional myths, they turn to religious cults,
drugs, and popular culture to fill the vacuum. The
Oedipus myth has had a powerful effect on our
culture because it deals with such common
existential crises as birth, separation from
parents, sexual union with one parent and
hostility toward the other, independence in one's
search for identity, and, finally, death.
Psychopathology
May saw apathy and emptiness-not anxiety and
guilt-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.
Psychotherapy
The goal of May's psychotherapy was not to cure
patients of any specific disorder, but to make
them more fully human. May said that the
purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free,
to allow them to make choices and to assume
responsibility for those choices.
Related Research
May's theory of personality does not lend itself
to easily testable hypotheses, and, therefore, it
has not generated much research. Nevertheless,
Jeff Greenberg and his colleagues have
investigated the concept of terror management,
which is based on the notion of existential
anxiety. In general, Greenberg's findings are
consistent with May's definition of existential
anxiety as an apprehension of threats to one's
existence. However, this research can also be
explained by other psychological theories.
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,
Page 51 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213
according to the criteria of present science,

May's theory rates low on most standards.
Currently, his theory is very low 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.
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.
Reference:
http://highered.mcgrawhill.com/sites/0072316799/student_view0/
Page 52 of 52
ASLagnadaIII/090213

Theories of Personality Summarized

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Theories of Personality Summarized

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Read this document in other languages

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Theories of Personality Summarized

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Theories Of Personality Summarized

Introduction to Personality Theory

However, scientists use the term to mean more