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

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

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

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

Ways of looking at Psychology

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

Why Different Theories?

• Different Personal Backgrounds
– Childhood experiences
– Interpersonal relationships
• Different Philosophical Orientations
• Unique Ways of Looking at the World
• Data Chosen to Observe is Different
CHAPTER 2: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY: SIGMUND FREUD
Overview of Psychoanalytic Theory
• What Made This Theory Interesting? Provinces of the Mind
– Cornerstones: Sex and Aggression • The Id
– Spread by a dedicated group – Pleasure Principle-Seeks constant and immediate
satisfaction of instinctual needs
Biography of Freud – Primary Process
• Born in Freiberg Moravia (now the Czech Republic) in 1856 – Is Amoral
• Spent most of life (80 years) in Vienna Austria • The Ego
• Mother’s favorite child – The Reality Principle
• Was the eldest son of eight – The executive branch of personality.
• Had unconscious death wish for his brother – responsible for reconciling the unrealistic demands
• Studied Medicine, specializing in psychiatry; interested in of both the id and the superego with the demands of
science the real world
– Utilizes Defense Mechanisms to reduce anxiety
• Studies on Hysteria – characterized by paralysis / Improper – Secondary Process
functioning of parts (1895) aka “wandering womb” • The Superego
• Abandoned seduction theory in 1897 and replaced it with – The Idealistic Principle-What we should
Oedipus Complex do/Moralistic
• In 1900 wrote Interpretation of Dreams – Two Subsystems:
• After 1900 developed international circle of followers • Conscience - results from punishment for
(Adler, Jung, and others) improper behavior and tells us “What we should not do”;
• 1903, Ended friendship with Adler, Jung, and others product: guilt
• Was driven out of Austria by Nazis in 1938
• Died in London in 1939

Level of Mental Life

Unconscious
– Beyond awareness
• Includes drives, urges, or instincts
• Is known only indirectly
• Can become conscious by dreams, slip of tongue, (primary
and final censor); hidden by Defense Mechanisms
• Emphasis of Freud’s theory!

Two sources of unconscious processes

• Repression-blocking of anxiety filled experiences
(Punishment and suppression)
• Phylogenetic Endowment-inherited experiences that lie
beyond an individual's personal experience.
• Ego-Ideal - stems from rewards for socially acceptable
Preconscious behavior and tells us “What we should do”
– Not in conscious awareness, but can be product: inferiority feelings
– Content may come down from conscious or up from
unconscious Dynamics of Personality
– Contains drives, urges, instincts that motivate most • People are motivated to seek pleasure and reduce tension
of our thinking and behaviors. and anxiety
• The term dynamics of personality refers to those forces
Conscious that motivate people
– Mental life that is directly available, plays a minor Drives
role – Libido or Sex Drive (pleasure can be gained through the
– Two sources: erogenous zones.
>Perceptual conscious system - From either the • Eros/sex can manifest to Narcissism or Love
perception of external stimuli (using our sense • Sadism - sexual pleasure through inflicting pain to others.
organs) • Masochism - Inflicting pain to self
>Unconscious & Preconscious images after they
have evaded censorship. Thanatos or Aggression/Destructive Drive - aims to return
the person to an inorganic state or death, but it is ordinarily
directed against other people and is called aggression.
• Can take a number of forms, such as teasing, gossip,
sarcasm, humiliation, humor, and the enjoyment of other
people’s suffering.
• Impetus – a source, an aim: object that determines the • The aggressive tendency is present in everyone and is the
amount of force it exerts explanation for wars, atrocities, and religious persecution.

Anxiety - it is a felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied Stages of Development

by a physical sensation that warns the person against • Infantile Period (Birth-5): most crucial part of personality
impending danger. formation
- The unpleasantness is often vague and hard to – Oral Phase - infant is primarily motivated to receive
pinpoint, but the anxiety itself is always felt. pleasure through the mouth. Weaning (other source of
- Only the Ego can feel or produce it. feeding other than the mother’s) is the principal source of
– Neurotic Anxiety - apprehension about an unknown danger anxiety during this stage.
and stems from the ego's relation with the id – Anal Phase - second year of life, when toilet training is the
– Ex. Feeling anxious towards teachers child's chief source of frustration.
>If parents use punitive training methods, a child may
Moral Anxiety - similar to guilt and results from the ego's develop the anal triad of orderliness, stinginess, and
relation with the superego obstinacy (stubborn), all of which mark the anal character.
– Ex. Moral anxiety, for example, would result from sexual However, most children escape the detrimental effects of
temptations if a child believes that yielding to the temptation this stage.
would be morally wrong. – Phallic Phase: Genitals become the primary source of
Realistic Anxiety - similar to fear and is produced by the pleasure
ego's relation with the real world • Male Oedipus Complex - sexual feelings for one parent
– Ex. Riding a fast Antipolo-bound jeepney. and hostile feelings for the other
– However, realistic anxiety is different from fear in that it – Castration Complex - castration anxiety or fear of losing the
does not involve a specific fearful object. penis, breaks up the male Oedipus complex and results in a
well-formed male superego
Defense Mechanisms • Female Oedipus Complex (Electra) - Same
• Repression - Involves forcing unwanted, anxiety loaded
experiences into the unconscious. Most basic of all because it
is an active process in the rest.
• Reaction Formation - marked by the repression of
one impulse and the ostentatious expression of its
exact opposite.
– Ex. a teen-age boy may have deep-seated unconscious
sexual feelings for a teacher, but on the surface level he
expresses exaggerated hatred toward that teacher.
• Displacement - The redirecting of unacceptable urges
and feelings onto people and objects to disguise or conceal
– Penis Envy - a situation that leads to only a gradual and
their true nature.
incomplete shattering of the female Oedipus complex and a
– Ex. A woman greatly dislikes her boss but takes
weaker, more flexible female superego
her anger out on her husband and children.
• Fixation - Fixations develop when psychic energy is
blocked at one stage of development, making • Latency Period (5-puberty) - Freud believed that
psychological change difficult. psychosexual development goes through a latency stage—
– Smoking from about age 5 years until puberty—in which the sexual
• Regression - Regressions take place when a person instinct is partially suppressed.
reverts to earlier, more infantile modes of behavior. • Genital Period (puberty-adulthood) - The genital period
• Projection - Is seeing in others those unacceptable begins with puberty when adolescents experience a
feelings or behaviors that actually reside in one's own reawakening of the genital aim of Eros, and it continues
unconscious. throughout adulthood. (The desire to be with a loved one)
– When carried to extreme, projection can become paranoia, • Maturity - the ego would be in control of the id and
which is characterized by delusions of persecution. superego and in which consciousness would play a more
• Introjection - Introjection involves the incorporation of important role in behavior.
positive qualities of another person to reduce feelings of - Happens when you passed the earlier dev. stages in
inadequacy. an ideal manner.
– Ex. Hero worship might be a good example
• Sublimation - Contributes to the welfare of society. They Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
involve elevating the aim of the sexual instinct to a higher • Free Association (patients are required to say whatever
level and are manifested in cultural accomplishments, such comes to mind, no matter how irrelevant or distasteful)
as art, music, and other socially beneficial activities. – Transference = patient transfers childhood sexual or
aggressive feelings onto the therapist and away from
In Summary… symptom formation
All defense mechanisms are used to protect the Ego against – Resistance = unconscious blocking of progress of the
anxiety. patient. Can be a sign that the treatment is advancing.
Critique of Freud • Dream Analysis
• Did Freud Understand Women? – Manifest (conscious) and latent (unconscious) content
• Was Freud a Scientist? • Freudian or Unconscious Slips (Parapraxes)
– Theories are difficult to test
– Generated considerable research
– Difficult to falsify
– Very loose organizational framework
– Not a good guide to solve practical problems
– Internally consistent theory
– Obviously, not parsimonious!

Freud’s Concept of Humanity

• Deterministic and Pessimistic
• Causality (past) over Teleology (future goals)
• Unconscious over Conscious
• Biology over Culture
• Equal emphasis on Uniqueness and Similarity
 CHAPTER 3: ALFRED ADLER - Sometimes, they cloak themselves with interest for
others, but their basic motivation is personal benefit
 Born in Vienna Austria in 1870
 Second son of middle-class Jewish parents d. Striving for Success
 He suffered Rickets which prevented him to walk until 4  In contrast, psychologically healthy people strive for the
years of age success of all humanity, but they do so without losing
 His health problems lead him to pursue medicine and their personal identity
received his medical degree in 1895 Social progress > personal credit
 Published Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical
Compensation in 1907 Need for completion – Inferiority – Goal >
 Charter member of Freud’s organization Success/Superiority
 Rivalry with Freud led to his departure from the group
 Founded the Society for Individual Psychology Adler: Meanings aren’t determined by situations, but we
 Died in Scotland in 1937 determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations
 Alfred Adler was an original member of Freud’s
psychoanalytic group 2. Subjective Perceptions - People’s subjective view of
 Broke from Freud and advocated a theory of personality the world-not reality-shapes their behavior
and an approach to psychotherapy that were nearly the
exact opposite to those of Freud a. Fictionalism – Fictions are people’s beliefs and
 Humans either strive for success or strive for superiority expectation of the future
- Fictions guide behavior because people act as if
Adler’s Ideas Differed from Freud in Four Ways these fictions are true
 People are motivated by social influences - “Men are superior to women”
 People are responsible for who they are - “What goes around comes around”
 Behavior shaped by view of future
 Consciousness is important b. Physical Inferiorities – all humans are “blessed”
with organ inferiorities and that these small, inferior
Adler: Idealistic, optimistic, and socially rooted organs stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority
Freud: Deterministic, pessimistic, biologically rooted and move people toward perfection or completion

Adlerian Theory 3. Unity of Personality – Adler believed that all of our

Tenets of Individual Psychology behaviors are directed toward a single purpose and
1. The sole dynamic force behind all our actions, is the that the entire personality functions in a self-
striving for either success or superiority. consistent manner

a. The Final Goal – The final goal of success or a. Organ Dialect – People sometimes use a physical
superiority toward which all people strive unifies disorder to express style of life, a condition that
personality and makes all behavior meaningful Adler called organ dialect
 People are not always conscious of their final goal, even  A man with Rheumatoid arthritis
though they may be aware of their immediate subgoals  A boy who wets his bed
 Inferiority (being small and incomplete) of infants lead
them to have fictional goal (to be big, strong, complete) b. Conscious and Unconscious – Conscious and
 Only through feelings of Inferiority we can clearly see unconscious processes are unified and operate to
our fictional goal achieve a single goal. The part of our goal that isn’t
 Neglected/pampered children will lead to their goal clearly understood is unconscious; to the extent that
remaining unconscious we comprehend our goal is conscious.
 Loved and secured children can lead to their goal to
become conscious 4. Social Interest – Human behavior has value to the
extent that it is motivated by social interest, that is,
b. The Striving Force as Compensation by a feeling of oneness with all of humanity
 Because people are “blessed” to be born with small,  Social interest binds the human species together
inferior bodies, they feel inferior and attempt to  Our inferiorities as individuals lead us to this binding
overcome these feelings through their natural tendency together.
to move toward completion
 As a creation of the individual, striving force can take a. Origins of Social Interest – Although social interest
one of two courses-personal gain or community benefit. exists as potentiality in all people, it must be
 At birth, it exists as potentiality not actuality. fostered in a social environment
 Mothers and fathers have crucial roles in furthering
c. Striving for Personality Superiority the social interest of their children
 Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for personal  Parent/child relationship is so strong that it negates
superiority with little concern for other people the effects of heredity
Gemeinschaft – social relations between individuals, based
on close personal and family ties Pampered Style of Life – Children who see themselves as
being pampered develop low levels of social interest and
b. Importance of Social Interest – Without social interest, continue to have an overriding drive to establish a
societies could not exist, because individuals could not permanent parasitic relationship with their mother or a
protect themselves from danger mother substitute
> Thus, an infant’s helplessness predisposes it toward a
nurturing person Neglected Style of Life – Children who feel neglected often
> “The sole criterion of human values,” and the “barometer use these feelings as building material for a useless style of
of normality” life one characterized by distrust of other people
> The worthiness of all one’s actions must be viewed by these
standards Safeguarding Tendencies – Both normal and neurotic people
protect their fragile self-esteem. These safeguarding
techniques maintain a neurotic status quo and protect a
person from public disgrace. This is largely conscious.

1. Excuses – The most common safeguarding tendency

is excuses which frequently take the form of “Yes,
but” or “If only”. By making excuses for their
shortcomings, people can preserve their inflated
sense of personal worth.
 “Yes, I would like to go to college, but my parents
couldn’t pay for it.”

2. Aggression – People often safeguard a weak self-

esteem by behaving aggressively toward themselves
or others. Safeguarding through aggression may
take the form of:
a. Depreciation – Undervalue other’s achievements
and overvalue yours
5. Style of Life – The self-consistent personality structure b. Accusation – Blaming others for one’s failures
develops into a person’s style of life c. Self-accusation – guilt and self-torture. Blaming
> It is a product of the interaction of heredity, environment, yourself.
goal of success, social interest, and creative power
> Flavor of person’s life including goals, self-concept, 3. Withdrawal – People with a neurotic style of life
attitudes, feelings for others often try to escape from life’s problems by running
> Style of life is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of age away from them; that is by withdrawal or
> Healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior while safeguarding through maintaining distance. People
unhealthy individuals are inflexible can withdraw psychologically by:
A. Moving backward – Moving back to a more secured
6. Creative Power – our ability to create our own style of life period of life
> Movement towards a specific goal (direction) B. Standing still – not moving to any direction
> Heredity and environment provide the building materials C. Hesitating - Procrastinating to waste time (“It’s too
for our style of life, but he insisted that ultimately style of life late now”)
is shaped by our creative power; that is by our ability to feely D. Constructing obstacles – creating own obstacles to
choose which building materials to use and how to use them show you can knock it down
> We have considerable ability to freely choose our actions
and personality Masculine Protest – Both mean and women sometimes
overemphasize the desirability od being manly, a condition
Abnormal Development Adler called the masculine protest. The frequently found
 Creative power is not limited to healthy people; inferior status of women isn’t based on physiology but on
unhealthy individuals also create their own personalities historical developments and social learning
 The most important factor in abnormal development is
underdeveloped social interest. People with useless style Family constellation - Adler believed that people’s
of life tend to (1) set their goals too high, (2) live in their perception of how they fit into their family is related to their
own private world, and (3) have a rigid and dogmatic style of life
style of life.
Firstborns are likely to have strong feelings of power and
External Factors in Maladjustment superiority, to be overprotective, and to have more than
Exaggerated Physical Deficiencies – Several physical defects their share of anxiety
do not by themselves cause abnormal development, but they Second born (like Adler) are likely to have strong social
interest, provided they do not get trapped trying to
may contribute to it by generating subjective and overcome their older sibling
exaggerated feelings of inferiority
Youngest children are likely to be pampered and to lack
independence, whereas only children may have even less
social interest and tend to expect others to take care of them

Applications of Individual Psychology

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

Dreams – Adler believed that dreams could provide clues to

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

Psychotherapy – The goal of Adlerian therapy is to create a

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

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

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