PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES
1. Freud: Psychoanalysis
2. Adler: Individual Psychology
3. Jung: Analytical Psychology
4. Klein: Object Relations Theory
5. Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Theory
6. Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis
7. Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory
8. Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory
LEARNING THEORIES
1. Skinner: Behavioral Analysis
2. Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory
3. Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning Theory
DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES
1. Cattel and Eysenck: Trait and Factor Theories
2. Allport: Psychology of the Individual
HUMANISTIC/EXISTENTIAL THEORIES
1. Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs
2. Rogers: Person Centered Theory
3. Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic Theory
4. May: Existential Psychology
Introduction
Personality theorists:
1. Make controlled observations of human behavior
2. Speculate on the meaning of those observations
Personality
- Pattern of relatively permanent traits or
characteristics that give some consistency to a
person’s behavior
Theory
- Set of related assumptions that allows scientists to
use logical deductive reasoning to formulate testable
hypothesis
- Tool used by scientists to generate research and
organize observations
- Relies on speculation but speculation in the absence
of controlled observations and empirical research is
essentially worthless
- Single theory may generate hundreds of hypotheses
Hypothesis
- Educated guess
- Narrower term than theory
A useful theory must:
1. Generate research (both descriptive and hypothesis
testing)
2. Be falsifiable (research findings should be able to
support or refute the theory)
3. Organize data into an intelligible framework and
integrate new information and its structure
4. Guide action (providing a road map)
5. Must have internal consistency and operational
definitions
6. Be parsimonious or simple
PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES
1. Freud: Psychoanalysis
- Postulated the primacy of sex and aggression
- Attracted a group of followers
- Advanced the notion of unconscious motives
Levels of Mental Life
1. Unconscious (id)
- Drives and instincts that are beyond awareness
- Can become conscious only in disguised or
distorted form (ex: dream images, slips of the
tongue, neurotic symptoms)
- Unconscious processes originate from two
sources:
(1) repression -- blocking out of anxiety
filled-experiences
(2) phylogenetic endowment -- inherited
experiences that lie beyond an individual’s
personal experience
2. Preconscious (superego)
- Contains images that are not in awareness but
that can become conscious
3. Conscious (ego)
- Stem from either the perception of external
stimuli (our perception of system) or from the
unconscious and preconscious after they have
evaded censorship
Provinces of the Mind
1. Id
- Completely unconscious
- Serves the pleasure principle
2. Ego
- Governed by the reality principle
- Responsible for reconciling the unrealistic
demands of the id and the superego
3. Superego
 - Serves the idealistic principle
- 2 subsystems:
(1) Conscience -- results from punishment
for improper behavior
(2) Ego-ideal -- stems from the rewards for
socially acceptable behavior
Dynamics of Personality
- Forces that motivate people
1. Instincts
- 2 primary instincts:
(1) Sex -- eros or life instinct
-- aim is pleasure, which can be gained through
the erogenous zones
-- object of the sexual instinct: any person or
thing that brings sexual pleasure
(2) Aggression -- death or destructive instinct
-- aims to return a person to an
inorganic state, but it is ordinarily
directed against other people and is
called aggression
2. Anxiety
(1) Neurotic anxiety -- stems from the ego’s relation
with the id
(2) Moral anxiety -- similar to guilt and results from the
ego’s relation with the superego
(3) Realistic anxiety -- similar to fear; produced by the
ego’s relation with the real world
Defense Mechanisms
- Operate to protect the ego against the pain of
anxiety
1. Repression
- Forcing unwanted, anxiety-loaded experiences into
the unconscious
2. Undoing
- Ego’s attempt to do away with the unpleasant
experiences and their consequences, usually by
means of repetitious ceremonials actions
3. Isolation
- Obsessive thoughts and involves the ego’s attempt
to isolate an experience by surrounding it with a
blacked-out region of insensibility
4. Reaction Formation
- Repression of one impulse and the ostentatious
expression of its exact opposite
5. Displacement
- When people redirect their unwanted urges onto the
objects or people in order to disguise the original
impulse
6. Fixation
- Develops when psychic energy is blocked at one
stage of development
7. Regression
- Occur whenever a person reverts to earlier, more
infantile modes of behavior
8. Projection
- Seeing in others those unacceptable feelings or
behaviors that actually reside in one’s own
unconscious
9. Introjection
- When people incorporate positive qualities of
another person into their own ego to reduce feelings
of anxiety
10. Sublimation
- Elevation of the sexual instinct’s aim to a higher level
Neurotic: reaction formation, idealization, undoing ---
successful over short term
Immature and maladaptive: projection, isolation, denial,
displacement, and dissociation) --- unsuccessful and have the
highest degree of distortion
Mature and adaptive: sublimation, suppression, humor and
altruism --- successful over the long term maximize
gratification, and have the least amount of distortion
Stages of Development
(1) Infantile Period
- Encompasses the first 4 to 5 years of life
(1) Oral -- primarily motivated to receive
pleasure through the mouth
(2) Anal -- if the parents are too punitive, the
child may become an anal character --
orderliness, stinginess, and obstinacy
(3) Phallic -- begin to have differing
psychosexual development
* Oedipus complex - sexual feelings for one parent and
hostile feelings for the other
* Male castration complex in the form of castration anxiety -
breaks ups the male Oedipus complex and results in a well-
formed male superego
*Castration anxiety 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
(2) Latency Period
- About age 5 to puberty - in which the sexual instinct
is partially suppressed
 (3) Genital Period
- Begins with puberty, when adolescents experience a
reawakening of the genital aim of Eros
(4) Maturity
- 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
Passive type of psychotherapy
- relied on free association, dream interpretation and
transference.
Goal of later psychotherapy - uncover repressed memories
and the therapist uses dream analysis and free association
(patients are required to say whatever comes to mind)
* Successful therapy rests on the patient’s transference of
childhood sexual or aggressive feelings onto the therapist
Dream analysis
(1) Manifest content - conscious description
(2) Latent content - unconscious meaning
*Wish - usually unconscious and can be known only through
dream interpretation (by using dream symbols and dreamer’s
association to the dream content)
Freudian Slips
- Parapraxes
- Not chance accidents but reveal a person’s true but
unconscious intentions
Concept of Humanity
- Freud’s view was deterministic and pessimistic
- Causality over teleology
- Unconscious determinants over conscious processes
- Biology over culture
2. Adler: Individual Psychology
- Striving for success and superiority
- Rooted in family experiences
- High on optimism and teleology
- Idealistic
- Free choice
- Social influences
- Uniqueness
- Average on unconscious influencers
Striving for Success or Superiority
- Sole dynamic force behind people’s actions
- Final goal: unifies personality and makes all behavior
meaningful
Striving for Personal Superiority
- Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive
for personal superiority with little concern
for other people
- Basic motivation: personal benefit
Striving for Success
- Psychologically healthy people strive for the success
of all humanity, but they do so without losing their
personal identity
Subjective Perceptions
* subjective view of the world - shapes behavior
Fictions
- People’s expectations of the future
- Guide behavior, as if these fictions are true
- Teleology over causality: Explanations of behavior in
terms of future goals rather than past causes
Organ inferiorities
- All humans are “blessed” with organ inferiorities,
which stimulate subjective feelings of superiority
and move people toward perfection or completion
Unity and Self-Consistency of Personality
* Behaviors are directed toward a single purpose
Organ Dialect
- People often use a physical disorder to express style
of life
Conscious and Unconscious
- Conscious and unconscious processes are unified
and operate to achieve a single goal
Social Interest
- Feeling of oneness with all of humanity
- Origins: fostered in a social environment; parent-
child relationship can be so strong that it negates the
effects of heredity
- Sole criterion of human values
Style of Life
- Manner of a person’s striving
- A pattern that is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of
age
- Partially a product of heredity and environment (the
building blocks of personality)
- Shaped by people’s creative power, by their ability
to freely choose a course of action
* each of us is free to choose either a useful or a useless style
of life
* the most important factor in abnormal development is lack
of social interest
People with a useless style of life tend to:
(1) Set their goals too high
(2) Have a dogmatic style of life
(3) Live in their own private life
Factors that relate to abnormal development:
(1) Exaggerated physical deficiencies
- May contribute by generating subjective and
exaggerated feelings of inferiority
(2) Pampered style of life
- Contributes to an overriding drive to establish a
permanent parasitic relationship with the mother
or sub mother
(3) Neglected style of life
- leads to distrust of other people
Principal Safeguarding Tendencies (maintain a neurotic style
of life and protect a person from public disgrace):
(1) Excuses
- Allow people to preserve their inflated sense of
personal worth
(2) Aggression
- May take in the form of depreciating others’
accomplishments, accusing others of being
responsible for one’s own failures or self-accusation
(3) Withdrawal
- Expressed by psychologically moving backward,
standing still, hesitating or constructing obstacles
Masculine protest
- Both men and women sometimes overemphasize
the desirability of being manly
Applications of Individual Psychology
(1) Family constellation
- People’s perception of how they fit into their family
is related to their style of life
- Firstborn (likely to have strong feelings of power and
superiority, to be overprotective)
- Second-born (likely to have strong social interest)
- Younger children (likely to be pampered and to lack
independence)
- Only children (have some of the characteristics of
both the oldest and the youngest child)
(2) Early recollections
- Early memories are templates on which people
project their current style of life
- Reflect a person’s current view of the world
(3) Dreams
- Can provide clues to solving future problems
- Disguised to deceive the dreamer and usually must
be interpreted by another person
(4) Psychotherapy
- Goal of Adlerian therapy is to create a relationship
between the therapist and patient that fosters social
interest
- Therapist adopts both paternal and maternal role
Concept of Humanity
- Forward moving, social animals
- Motivated by goals they set
- Ultimately responsible for their own unique style of
life
3. Jung: Analytical Psychology
- People as complex beings who possess a variety of
opposing qualities
- Both conscious and unconscious
- Early experience with parents (were quite opposite
with one another) probably influenced his own
theory of personality
- Psychology of opposites
Levels of the Psyche
(1) Conscious
- Images sensed by the ego (represents the conscious
side of personality; secondary to the self)
(2) Unconscious
- Psychic images not sensed by the ego
- Some unconscious processes flow from our personal
experiences, but others stem from our ancestors’
experiences with universal themes
(a) Personal Unconscious
- Contains the complexes (emotionally toned
groups of related ideas)
(b) Collective Unconscious
 - Ideas that are beyond our personal
experiences and that originate from the
repeated experiences of our ancestors
- Are not inherited ideas but refer to our
innate tendency to react in a particular way
whenever our personal experience
stimulate an inherited predisposition
toward action
- Contents of the collective unconscious are
called archetypes
Archetypes
- Contents of the collective unconscious
- Originate through the repeated experiences of our
ancestors
- Expressed in certain types of dreams, fantasies,
delusions and hallucinations
(1) Persona
- Side of our personality that we show to others
(2) Shadow
- Dark side of personality
- To reach full psychological maturity, we have to
realize/accept our shadow
(3) Anima
- Feminine side of men
(4) Animus
- Masculine disposition of women
(5) Great mother
- Archetype of nourishment and destruction
(6) Wise old man
- Archetype of wisdom and meaning
(7) Hero
- Image we have of a conqueror who vanquishes
evil
(8) Self
- Most comprehensive type of archetype
- Image we have of fulfillment, completion,
perfection
* self-realization -- ultimate in psychological maturity;
symbolized by the mandala or perfect geometric figure
Dynamics of Personality
(1) Causality and teleology
- Humans are motivated both by their past
experiences and by their expectations of the future
(2) 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
Regression - adaptation to the inner world and the backward
flow of psychic energy
Psychological Types
Attitudes - predispositions to act or react in a characteristic
manner
(1) Introversion
- People’s subjective perceptions
- Rely on individualized view of self
(2) Extraversion
- Orientation toward the objective world; real world
Functions
(3) Thinking
- Recognizing the meaning of stimuli
(4) Feeling
- Placing a value on something
(5) Sensation
- Taking in sensory stimuli
(6) Intuition
- Perceiving elementary data that are beyond our
awareness
Rational functions: thinking and feeling
Irrational functions: sensation and intuition
Development of Personality
* Jung saw middle and old age as times when people may
acquire the ability to attain self-realization
Stages of Development
(1) Childhood
- Lasts from birth until adolescence
(2) Youth
- Period from puberty until middle life (time for
extraverted development and for being grounded to
the real world of schooling, occupation, courtship,
marriage and family)
(3) Middle life
- Time from about 35 or 40 until old age when people
should be adopting an introverted attitude
(4) Old age
- Time for psychological rebirth, self-realization and
preparation for death
* Self-realization or individuation
- involves psychological rebirth and an integration of
various parts of the psyche into a unified or whole
individual
- Represents the highest level of human development
Jung’s methods of investigation
 (1) Word association test
- To uncover complexes embedded in the personal
unconscious
- Requires the patient to utter the first word that
comes to mind after the examiner reads a stimulus
word
(2) Dream analysis
- May have both a cause and a purpose
- Can be useful in explaining past events and making
decisions about the future
- Come from the collective unconscious (have
meanings that lie beyond the experiences of a single
individual)
(3) Active imagination
- To arrive at collective images
- Requires the patient to concentrate on a single
image until that image begins to appear in a
different form
- The patient should see figures that represent
archetypes and other collective unconscious images
(4) Psychotherapy
- The goal of Jungian therapy is to help neurotic
patients to become healthy and to move healthy
people in the direction of self-realization
Concept of Humanity
- Extreme complex beings who are a product of both
conscious and unconscious personal experiences
- People are motivated from the collective
experiences of their early ancestors
4. Klein: Object Relations Theory
- Extended Freud’s theory
- Mother-child relationship
- Deterministic
Object Relations Theory
(1) More emphasis on interpersonal relationships
(2) Stresses the infant’s relationship with the mother
(3) People are motivated for human contact rather than
sexual pleasure
Psychic Life of the Infant
- Infants begin life with an inherited predisposition to
reduce the anxiety that they experience
Fantasies
- Very young infants possess an active, unconscious
fantasy life
- Most basic fantasies: “good” breast and “bad” breast
Objects
- She emphasized the child’s relationship with these
objects (parents’ face, hands, breast, etc) which she
saw as having a life of their own within the child’s
fantasy world
Positions
- Ways of dealing with both internal and external
objects
(1) Paranoid-Schizoid position
- Tendency to see the world as having both
destructive and omnipotent qualities (bite or
harbor the breast)
(2) Depressive Position
- Anxiety that infants experience over losing their
mother and also wanting to destroy her
- Resolved when infants fantasize that they made
up for their previous transgressions against their
mother and also realize that their mother will not
abandon them
Psychic Defense Mechanisms
- Protect the ego against anxiety aroused by their own
destructive fantasies
(1) Introjection
- Fantasy of taking into one’s own body the images
that one has an external object, esp the mother’s
breast
- Infants usually introject good objects as a protection
against anxiety by they also introject bad objects in
order to gain control of them
(2) Projection
- Fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses reside
within another person
- Children project both good and bad images,
especially onto their parents
(3) Splitting
- Mentally keeping apart incompatible images
- Allows children and adults to like themselves while
still recognizing some unlikable qualities
(4) Projective Identification
- 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
Ego
- Internalizations are aided by the early ego’s
ability to feel anxiety
- 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
- Superego emerged much earlier
- Superego preceded rather than followed the
Oedipus complex
- Superego as being quite harsh and cruel
Oedipus complex
- Begins during the first few months of life and
ends during genital stage (3 or 4 years)
- Based on children’s dear that parents will seek
revenge against them for their fantasy of
emptying the parent’s body
- Little boy adopts “feminine” position towards
his mother early in life; little girl adopts a
“feminine” position toward both parents quite
early in life
Later Views/Expansion of Object Relations
(1) Margaret Mahler
- Observed the interaction/bonding of infants and
mothers during the first 3 years
Stages:
(i) Normal autism
- 3 to 4 weeks of life
- Infants satisfy their needs within the all-
powerful protective orbit of their mother’s
care
(ii) Normal symbiosis
- Infants behave as if they and their mother
were omnipotent, symbiotic unit
(iii) Separation-individuation
- 4 mos until 3 years
- Children are becoming psychologically
separated from their mothers and achieving
individuation, or a sense of personal
identity
(2) Heinz Kohut
- Emphasized the development of the self
- Adults treat infants as if they had a sense of self
- Parents’ behaviors and attitudes help children form
a sense of self that gives unity and consistency to
their experiences
(3) Otto Kernberg
- Key to understanding personality is the mother-child
relationship -- will develop an integrated ego,
punitive superego, stable self-concept and satisfying
interpersonal relations
(4) John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
- Received training in child psychiatry from Melanie
Klein
Stages of Separation Anxiety:
(i) protest
(ii) apathy and despair
(iii) emotional detachment -- children who reach this
stage lack warmth and emotion in their later relationships
Psychotherapy
- Klein’s goal was to reduce depressive anxieties and
persecutory fears and to lessen the harshness of
internalized objects
- Encouraged patients to re-experience early fantasies
Concept of Humanity
- Sees personality as being a product of the early
mother-child relationship and thus they stress
determinism over choice
5. Horney: Psychoanalytic Social Theory
- Assumes that social and cultural conditions,
especially during childhood, have a powerful effect
on later personality
- Placed more emphasis on social factors
Impact of Culture
* Modern culture is too competitive and that competition
leads to hostility and feelings of isolation. These conditions
leads to exaggerated needs for affection and cause people to
overvalue love.
Importance of Childhood Experiences
* Neurotic conflict stems from childhood traumas (lack of
genuine love)
Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety
* All children need feelings of safety and security, but these
can be gained only by love from parents.
* Parents often neglect, dominate, etc. which lead to the
child’s feelings of basic hostility towards parents
* If children repress feelings of hostility, they will develop - A comprehensive drive toward
basic anxiety -- feelings of insecurity and a pervasive sense of actualizing the ideal self
apprehension. (2) Neurotic claims
How to protect oneself from basic anxiety: - Belief that they are entitled to
(1) Affection special privileges
(2) Submissiveness (3) Neurotic pride
(3) Power, prestige or possession - False pride based not on reality but
(4) Withdrawal on a distorted and idealized view
of self
Compulsive drives
* Neurotics are frequently trapped in a vicious cycle Self-Hatred
- Neurotics dislike themselves because reality always
Neurotic needs: falls short of their idealized view of self
(1) Affection and approval (1) Relentless demands on the self
(2) Powerful partner (2) Merciless self-accusation
(3) Restrict one’s life within narrow borders (3) Self-contempt
(4) Power (4) Self-frustration
(5) Exploit others (5) Self-torment or self-torture
(6) Social recognition/prestige (6) Self-destructive actions and impulses
(7) Personal admiration
(8) Ambition and personal achievement Feminine Psychology
(9) Self-sufficiency and independence - Psychological differences between men and women
(10) Perfection and unassailability are not due to anatomy but to culture and social
expectations
Neurotic trends - Sexual attraction or hostility of child to parent would
- Attempt to solve basic conflict be the result of learning and not biology
(1) Moving toward people
- Compliant people protect themselves Psychotherapy
against feelings of helplessness by attaching - Grow toward self-realization, give up their idealized
themselves to other people self-image, relinquish their neurotic search for glory,
and change self-hatred to self-acceptance
- Successful therapy is built on self-analysis and self-
(2) Moving against people understanding
- Aggressive people protect themselves
against perceived hostility of others by Morbid dependency
exploiting others - People with neurotic needs to move toward others
(3) Moving away from people will go to great lengths to win the approval of other
- Detached people protect themselves people
against feelings of isolation by appearing
arrogant and aloof Hypercompetitiveness
- Moving against people relates to the concept of
Intrapsychic Conflicts hypercompetitiveness
- Inner tensions
Concept of Humanity
Idealized Self-Image - Very high on social factors, high on free choice,
- Extravagantly positive picture of themselves optimism, and unconscious influences, and about
- People who don’t receive love and affection during average on causality over teleology and on the
childhood are blocked in their attempt to acquire a uniqueness of the individual
stable sense of identity, which will allow them to
create an idealized self-image
(1) Neurotic search for glory 6. Fromm: Humanistic Psychoanalysis
 - Looks at people from the perspective of psychology,
history and anthropology
- Developed a more culturally oriented theory than
Freud’s and a much broader theory than Horney
Fromm’s basic assumptions
- Humans have been torn away from their prehistoric
union with nature and left with no powerful instincts
to adapt to a changing world
- Human dilemma -- humans have acquired the ability
to reason, they can think about their isolated
condition; can only be addressed by fulfilling our
uniquely human needs
Human/Existential Needs:
(1) Relatedness
(i) submission
(ii) power
(iii) love
- ability to unite with another while retaining one’s
own individuality and integrity
- only relatedness need that can solve our basic
human dilemma
(2) Transcendence
- Humans have to transcend their nature by
destroying or creating people or things -- through
malignant aggression or killing for reasons other
than survival
(3) Rootedness
- Need to establish roots and to feel at home again in
the world
- Enables us to grow beyond the security of our
mother and establish ties with the outside world
(4) Sense of Identity
- Awareness of ourselves as a separate
person/individuality
(5) Frame of orientation
- Road map or consistent philosophy by which we find
our way through the world
- Movement through rational goals
Burden of Freedom
- “Freaks of the universe” - because we are the only
animal who possesses self awareness
- Freedom → more isolation → burden → basic
anxiety/feeling of being alone in the world
Mechanisms of Escape
(1) Authoritarianism
- Tendency to give up one’s independence to unite
with a powerful partner
(2) Destructiveness
- Aimed at doing away with other people or things
(3) Conformity
- Surrendering of one’s individuality in order to meet
the wishes of others
Positive freedom
- Human dilemma can only be solved through positive
freedom
- 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) by:
(1) Nonproductive orientations
a. Receptive orientation
- The source of all good lies outside
themselves and that the only way they can
relate to the world is to receive things
b. Exploitative orientation
- The source of all good lies outside
themselves but they aggressively take what
they want rather than passively receiving it
c. Hoarding characters
- Try to save what they have already
obtained
d. Marketing orientation
- See themselves as commodities and value
themselves against the criterion of their
ability to sell themselves
- Saunders Consumer Orientation Index
(measures this kind of orientation)
(2) Productive orientation
- Through productive work, love, and reasoning
- Biophilia -- passionate love of all life
Major Personality Disorders
(1) Necrophilia
- The love of death and the hatred of humanity
(2) Malignant narcissism
- Belief that everything belonging to one’s self is of
great value and anything belonging to others is
worthless
(3) Incestuous symbiosis
 - Extreme dependence on one’s mother or mother
figure
Psychotherapy
- Goal was to work toward satisfaction of the 5 basic
human needs.
- Therapist is simply a human being rather than a
scientist
Concept of Humanity
- Humans were “freaks of the universe” because they
lacked strong animal instincts while possessing the
ability to reason
7. Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory
- Emphasized the importance of interpersonal
relations
- Personality is shaped almost entirely by the
relationships we have with other people
Biography
- Harry Stack Sullivan
- First American to develop a comprehensive
personality theory
- Believed that such a relationship has the power to
transform an immature preadolescent into a
psychologically healthy individual
- His experience made him develop his theory
Tensions
- Personality -- energy system, with energy existing
either as tension or as energy transformation
- Tension -- potentiality for action
- Energy transformation -- actions themselves
- 2 divisions:
(1) Needs
- Conjunctive and calls for specific actions to
reduce them
- Can relate either to the general well-being
of a person or to specific zones such as
mouth or genitals
- General needs can be either physiological
(ex. food) or they can be interpersonal (ex.
intimacy)
(2) Anxiety
- Disjunctive and calls for no consistent
actions for its relief
- Chief disruptive force in interpersonal
relations
*euphoria -- complete absence of anxiety and other
tensions
Dynamism
- Refers to a typical pattern of behavior
- May relate either to specific zones of the body or to
tensions
(1) Malevolence
- Disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred
- Feeling of living among one’s enemies
- Difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being
intimate with other people
(2) Intimacy
- Conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal
relationship between 2 people of equal status
- Facilitates interpersonal development while
decreasing both anxiety and loneliness
(3) Lust
- Isolating dynamism
- Can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate
interpersonal relationship
- Based solely on sexual gratification and requires no
other person for its satisfaction
(4) Self-System
- Most inclusive of all dynamisms
- Pattern of behaviors that protects us against anxiety
and maintains our interpersonal security
- Conjunctive dynamism
- Primary job is to protect the self from anxiety, it
tends to stifle (restrain) personality change
- Dissociation -- security operation which
includes all those experiences that we block
from awareness
- Selective inattention -- involves blocking
only certain experiences from awareness
Personifications
- People acquire certain images of self and others
throughout the developmental stages // subjective
perceptions
(1) Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
- Bad-mother personification -- grows out of infants’
experiences with a nipple that does not satisfy their
hunger needs
- Good-mother personification -- infants will acquire
this once they become mature enough to recognize
the tender and cooperative behavior of their
mothering one
- These 2 combine to form a complex and contrasting
image of a real mother
 (2) Me Personifications
(i) bad-me -- grows from the experiences of
punishment and disapproval
(ii) good-me -- results from experiences with reward
and recognition
(iii) not-me -- allows a person to dissociate or
selectively inattend the experiences related to anxiety
(3) Eidetic Personifications
- People often create imaginary traits that they
project onto others
- Ex: imaginary playmates -- enable children to have a
safe, secure relationship with another person
Levels of Cognition (or ways of perceiving things)
(1) Prototaxic
- experiences that are impossible to put into
words or to communicate to others
(2) Parataxic
- Experiences that are prelogical and nearly
impossible to accurately communicate
- Parataxic distortions -- erroneous assumptions
about cause and effect
(3) Syntaxic
- Experiences that can be accurately
communicated to others
- Children are capable of this at about 12 to 18
months
Stages of Development
(1) Infancy
- Birth until emergence of syntaxic language
- When a child receives tenderness from the
mothering one while also learning anxiety and
empathic linkage with the mother
- Children use autistic language -- occurs on a
prototaxic or a parataxic level
(2) Childhood
- Lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until
the need for playmates
- Child’s primary interpersonal relationship continues
to be with the mother
(3) Juvenile Era
- Begins with the need for peers of equal status and
continues until the child develops a need for an
intimate relationship with a chum
- Children should learn how to compete, to
compromise, and to cooperate -- these plus
orientation toward living will help a child develop
intimacy (the chief dynamism of the next
developmental stage)
(4) Preadolescence
- Most crucial stage because mistakes during
preadolescence are nearly impossible to overcome
in later life
- 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
(5) Early adolescence
- With puberty comes the lust dynamism and the
beginning of early adolescence
- Coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the
same gender and sexual interest in may persons of
the opposite gender
(6) Late adolescence
- May start after about age 16
- psychologically , it begins when a person is able to
feel both intimacy and lust toward the same person
- Characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity
and the growth of the syntaxic mode
(7) 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
- Disordered behavior has an interpersonal origin and
can only be understood with reference to a person’s
social environment
Psychotherapy
- Therapist as a participant observer, who establishes
an interpersonal relationship with the patient
Structural Analysis of Social Behavior
- Instrument for studying the dynamics between
therapist and patient
Concept of Humanity
- Sullivan saw human personality as being largely
formed from interpersonal relations
8. Erikson: Post-Freudian Theory
- Postulated 8 stages of psychosocial development
through which people progress
- Extension of Freudian psychoanalysis
Erik Salomonsen then became Erik Homburger (step father’s
last name) then changed his name to Erik Erikson when he
moved to the US)
The Ego in Post-Freudian Psychology
- Emphasis on ego rather than id functions
- Ego is center of personality and is responsible for a
unified sense of self
- Ego consists of 3 interrelated facets
(1) Body ego
(2) Ego ideal
(3) Ego identity
Society’s Influence
- Ego develops within a given society
- Influenced by child-rearing practices and
other cultural norms
- All cultures and nations develop a
pseudospecies -- fictional notion that they
are superior to other cultures
Epigenetic Principle
- Ego develops according to a genetically
established rate and in a fixed sequence
Stages of Psychosocial Development
- Each of the stages is marked by a conflict between a
syntonic (harmonious) element and a dystonic
(disruptive) element, which produces a basic
strength or ego quality
- From adolescence on, each stage is characterized by
an identity crisis or turning point, which may
produce either adaptive or maladaptive adjustment
(1) Infancy -- Trust VS Mistrust
(2) Early childhood -- Autonomy VS Shame and Doubt
(3) Play age -- Initiative VS Guilt
(4) School age-- Industry VS inferiority
(5) Adolescence-- Identity VS Role Confusion
(6) Young adulthood-- Intimacy VS isolation
(7) Adulthood-- Generativity VS Stagnation
(8) Old age-- Integrity VS Despair
Erikson’s Methods of Investigation
(1) Anthropology-- Sioux of South Dakota and the Yurok
tribe of northern California were his famous studies
which demonstrated his notion that culture and
history help shape personality
(2) Psychohistory-- combined methods of
psychoanalysis and historical research, which Erikson
used in studying several personalities like Gandhi
and Luther
(3) Play construction-- anatomical differences between
the sexes play a role in personality development
Concept of Humanity
- Erikson saw humans as basically social animals who
have limited free choice and who are motivated by
past experiences
LEARNING THEORIES
1. Skinner: Behavioral Analysis
- Radical behaviorism
- Concentrates on observable behavior
- Skinner was a determinist and an environmentalist;
rejected the notion of free will
- Emphasized the primacy of environmental influences
on behavior
Precursors to Skinner’s Scientific Behaviorism
- Modern learning theory by Edward L. Thorndike
- Law of effect stated that responses
followed by a satisfier tend to be learned
- John Watson
- 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 is subject to
the laws of science and that psychologists should not
attribute inner motivations to it
- Thoughts, emotions and desires should not be used
to explain behavior
Philosophy of Science
- Psychologists should be concerned with determining
the conditions under which human behavior occurs
so that they can predict and control it
Characteristics of Science
(1) Its findings are cumulative
(2) It rests on an attitude that values empirical
observation
(3) It searches for order and lawful relationships
Conditioning
(1) Classical Conditioning
- A neutral (conditioned) stimulus is paired with an
unconditioned stimulus until it is capable of bringing
about a previously unconditioned response
 - The process of generalization will let the child fear
the stimuli that resembled the white rat
(2) Operant Conditioning
- Reinforcement is used to increase the probability
that a given behavior will recur
Factors
(1) Antecedent -- environment in which
behavior takes place
(2) Behavior -- response
(3) Consequence that follows the behavior
Operant discrimination -- different organisms will respond
differently to the same environmental contingencies
Stimulus generalization -- people respond similarly to
different environmental stimuli
Reinforcer -- anything within the environment that
strengthens a behavior
Positive reinforcement -- any stimulus that when added to a
situation increases the probability that a given behavior will
occur; pleasant stimulus is present
Negative reinforcement -- strengthening of behavior through
the removal of an aversive stimulus; aversive stimulus is
taken away
Punishment -- any event that decreases a behavior either by
presenting an aversive stimulus or by removing a positive one
Positive punishment -- aversive stimulus is presented
Negative punishment -- pleasant stimulus is taken away
Conditioned reinforcers -- are those stimuli that are not by
nature satisfying (ex: 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 with several primary reinforcers
4 basic intermittent schedules
(1) Fixed-ratio
- Organism is reinforced intermittently according to
the number of responses it makes
(2) Variable-ratio
- Organism is reinforced after an average of a
predetermined number of responses
(3) Fixed-interval
- Organism is reinforced for the first response
following a designated period of time
(4) Variable-interval
- Organism is reinforced after the lapse of varied
periods of time
Extinction -- tendency of a previously acquired response to
become progressively weakened upon nonreinforcement
Classical extinction -- such elimination or weakening of a
response
Operant extinction -- when the response was acquired
through operant conditioning
The Human Organism
- Human behavior is shaped by 3 factors:
(1) Natural selection -- our behavior is shaped by the
contingencies of survival
(2) Cultural practices -- societies that evolved certain
cultural practices tended to survive
(3) Individual’s history of reinforcement
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 behaviors
Control of Human Behavior
*all of a person’s behavior is controlled by the environment
4 basic methods of social control:
(1) Operant conditioning -- including positive and
negative reinforcement and punishment
(2) Describing contingencies -- 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
(4) Physical restraint -- include the jailing of criminals
Counteracting strategies from excessive social control
(1) Escaping from it
(2) Revolting against it
(3) Passively resisting it
Inappropriate behaviors -- follow from self-defeating
techniques of counteracting social control or from
unsuccessful attempts at self-control
Skinner criticized psychotherapy as being one of the major
obstacles to a scientific study of human behavior.
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.
*Different personalities may react differently to the same
environmental stimuli. The same reinforcement strategies
will not have the same effect on all people.
Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory -- suggests that impulsivity,
anxiety, and introversion/extraversion relate to ways people
respond to environmental reinforcers
Concept of Humanity
- Completely deterministic and causal one that
emphasized unconscious behavior and the
uniqueness of each person’s history of
reinforcement within a mostly social environment
- Skinner is optimistic in his view of humanity
2. Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory
- Takes an agentic perspective -- humans have some
limited ability to control their lives
(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
(5) Believes that reinforcement is mediated by cognition
Human Agency
- Essence of humanness
- Humans are defined by their ability to organize,
regulate, and enact behaviors that they believe will
produce desirable consequences
Core features of human agency:
(1) Intentionality-- proactive commitment to actions
that may bring about desired outcomes
(2) Foresight-- ability to set goals
(3) Self-reactiveness-- includes people monitoring their
progress toward fulfilling their choices
(4) Self-reflectiveness-- allows people to think about
and evaluate their motives, values and life goals
Reciprocal Determinism
- Social cognitive theory holds that human functioning
is modeled by the reciprocal interaction of:
(1) Behavior
(2) Person variables, including cognition
(3) Environmental events - a model Bandura
calls reciprocal determinism
Self-System
- Gives some consistency to personality by allowing
people to observe and symbolize their own behavior
and to evaluate it
- Includes self-efficacy and self-regulation
Self-Efficacy
- How people behave in a particular situation depends
in part on their self-efficacy
- Beliefs that they can or cannot exercise those
behaviors necessary to bring about a desired
consequence
- Combines with environmental variables, previous
behaviors, and other personal variables to predict
behavior
- Acquired, enhanced, or decreased by:
(1) Mastery experiences or performance
(2) Social modelling, or observing someone of
equal ability succeed or fail at a task
(3) Social persuasion, or listening to a trusted
person’s encouraging words
(4) Physical and emotional states, such as
anxiety or fear, which usually lowers self-
efficacy
High efficacy and a responsive environment are the best
predictors of successful outcomes.
Outcome expectations -- refer to people’s prediction of the
likely consequences of their behavior
Proxy Agency – people exercise some partial control over
everyday living
Collective Efficacy—is the level of confidence that people
have that their combined efforts will produce social change
Self-regulation
- 2 external factors that contribute to self-regulation:
(1) Standards of evaluation
(2) External reinforcement – affect self-regulation
by providing people with standards for
evaluating their own behavior
- Internal requirements for self-regulation include:
(1) Self-observation of performance
(2) Judging or evaluating performance
(3) Self-reactions (including self-reinforcement or
self-punishment)
Internalized self-sanctions—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;
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
Learning
- People learn through observing others and by
attending to the consequences of their own actions
- People can learn in the absence of reinforcement
and even of a response
Observational Learning
- Modeling is the heart of observational learning,
which involves adding or subtracting from observed
behaviors
Processes that govern observational learning:
(1) Attention—noticing what a model does
(2) Representation—symbolically representing new
response patterns in memory
(3) Behavior production—producing the behavior that
one observes
(4) Motivation—the observer must be motivated to
perform the observed behavior
Enactive Learning
- All behavior is followed by some consequence, but
that consequence reinforces the behavior depends
on the person’s cognitive evaluation of the situation
Dysfunctional behavior
- Learned through the interaction of the person, the
environment and behavioral factors
Depression
- People who develop depressive reactions often:
(1) Underestimate their successes and overestimate
their failures
(2) Set personal standards too high
(3) Treat themselves badly for their faults
Phobias
- Phobias are learned by
(1) Direct contact
(2) Inappropriate generalization
(3) Observational experiences
Therapy
- Goal of social cognitive therapy is self-regulation
- 3 levels of treatment:
(1) Induction of change
(2) Generalization of change to other appropriate
situations
(3) Maintenance of newly acquired functional
behaviors
- Systematic desensitization – technique aimed at
diminishing phobias through relaxation
Concept of Humanity
- Bandura sees humans as being relatively fluid and
flexible
3. Rotter and Mischel: Cognitive Social Learning
Theory
- Julian Rotter and Walter Mischel believe that
cognitive factors determine how people will react to
environmental forces
- Our expectations of future events are major
determinants of performance
Rotter’s Social Learning Theory
- Human behavior is based largely on the interaction
of people with their meaningful environments
- Empirical law of affect assumes that people choose a
course of action that advances them toward an
anticipated goal
Predicting Specific Behaviors
(1) Behavior potential – possibility that a particular
response will occur at a given time and place in
relation to its likely reinforcement
(2) Expectancy – confidence that a particular
reinforcement will follow a specific behavior in a
specific situation/s
(3) Reinforcement value – person’s preference for any
particular reinforcement over other reinforcements
if all are equally likely to occur
(4) Psychological situation – part of the external and
internal world to which a person is responding
*behavior is a function of the interaction of people
with their meaningful environment
Basic Prediction Formula
- 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
- Basic prediction is too specific to give clues about
how a person will generally behave
Generalized Expectancies
- Their expectations based on similar past experiences
that a given behavior will be reinforced
- Include people’s needs
Needs
- Refer to functionally related categories of behaviors
(1) Recognition-status – need to excel, to achieve and to
have others recognize one’s worth
(2) Dominance – need to control the behavior of others,
to be in charge
(3) Independence – need to be free from the
domination of others
(4) Protection-dependency – need to have others take
care of us and to protect us from harm
(5) Love and affection – needs to be warmly accepted
by others and to be held in friendly regard
(6) Physical comfort – includes those behaviors aimed at
securing food, good health, and physical security
3 need components:
(1) Need potential – possible occurrences of a set of
functionally related behaviors directed toward the
satisfaction of similar goals
(2) Freedom of movement – person’s overall
expectation of being reinforced for performing those
behaviors that are directed toward satisfying some
general need
(3) Need value – extent to which people prefer one set
of reinforcements to another
General Prediction Formula
- States that the need potential is a function of
freedom of movement and need value
- Rotter’s 2 most famous scales for measuring
generalized expectancies are
(1) Internal-External Control Scale
- locus of control scale
- attempts to measure the degree to which
people perceive a causal relationship
between their own efforts and
environmental consequences
(2) Interpersonal Trust Scale
- Measures the extent to which a person
expects the word or promise of another
person to be true
Maladaptive Behavior
- Any persistent behavior that fails to move a person
closer to a desired goal
- Usually the result of unrealistically high goals in
combination with low ability to achieve them
Psychotherapy
- To achieve harmony between a client’s freedom of
movement and need value
- Therapist:
(1) Change the importance of the client’s goals
(2) Eliminate their unrealistically low expectancies
for success
Changing goals
- Maladaptive behaviors follow from 3 categories of
inappropriate goals:
(1) Conflict between goals
(2) Destructive goals
(3) Unrealistically lofty goals
Mischel’s Cognitive-Affective Personality System
- Cognitive factors (expectancies, subjective
perceptions, values, goals, and personal standards)
are important in shaping personality
- Behavior is also a function of relatively stable
personal dispositions and cognitive-affective
processes interacting with a particular situation
Consistency Paradox
- Refers to the observation that, although both lay-
people and professionals tend to believe that
behavior is quite consistent, research suggests that it
is not
- Some traits are consistent over time, but he
contends that there is little evidence to suggest that
they are consistent from one another
Persuasion-Situation Interaction
- Behavior is best predicted from an understanding of
the person, situation and the interaction between
person and situation
- Behavior is the result of people’s perceptions of
themselves in a particular situation
Cognitive-Affective Personality System
- Inconsistent behaviors reflect stable patterns of
variation within a person
Behavior Prediction
- If personality is a stable system that processes
information about the situation, then individuals
 encountering different situations should behave
differently as situations vary
- Even though people’s behavior may reflect some
stability over time, it tends to vary as situations vary
Situation Variables
- Include all those stimuli that people attend to in a
given situation
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
(1) Encoding strategies
- People’s individualized manner of
categorizing information they receive from
external stimuli
(2) Competencies and self-regulatory strategies
- Intelligence is one of the most important
competencies, which is responsible for the
apparent consistency of other traits
- Self-regulatory strategies is used to control
own behavior through self-formulated goals
and self-produced consequences
(3) Expectancies and beliefs
- People’s guesses about the consequences
of each of the different behavioral
possibilities
(4) Goals and values
- Tend to render behavior fairly consistent
(5) Affective responses
- Includes emotions, feelings and the affects
that accompany physiological reactions
Concept of Humanity
- Rotter and Mischel see people as goal-directed,
cognitive animals whose perceptions of events are
more crucial than the events themselves
DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES
1. Cattel and Eysenck: Trait and Factor Theories
Factor Analytic Theory
- Both Raymond Cattel and Hans Eysenck have each
used factor analysis to identify traits (relatively
permanent dispositions of people)
- Cattel has identified a large number of personality
traits
- Eysenck has extracted only 3 general factors
Factor Analysis
- Mathematical procedure for reducing a large
number of scores to a few more general variables or
factors
- Factor loadings – correlations of the original, specific
scores with the factors
- Traits are generated through factor analysis may be
either
(1) Unipolar—scaled from zero to some large
amount
(2) Bipolar—have 2 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 orthogonal roation
- Cattell favored on oblique rotation, which
ordinarily results in more traits than the
orthogonal method
Cattell’s Trait Theory
- Cattell used an inductive approach to identify traits;
he began with a large body of data that he collected
with no preconceived hypothesis or theory
P Technique
- Correlational procedure that uses measures
collected from one person on many different
occasions and is his attempt to measure individual
or unique traits
dR (differential R) technique
- Correlates the scores of a large number of people on
many variables obtained at two different occasions
Note: by combining the 2 techniques, Cattell has measured
both states (temporary conditions within an individual) and
traits (relatively permanent dispositions of an individual)
Media of Observation
(1) L data—person’s life record that comes from
observations made by others
(2) Q data—based on questionnaires
(3) T data—information obtained from objective tests
Source Traits
- Underlying factor/s responsible for the
intercorrelation among surface traits
- Can be distinguished from trait indicators, or surface
traits
Personality Traits
 - Include both common traits (shared by many
people) and unique traits (peculiar to one individual)
- Can also be classified into temperament, motivation
(dynamic), and ability
Temperament Traits
- Concerned with how a person behaves
- Of the 35 primary or first-order traits Cattell
has identified: Intelligence is basically a
temperament trait
- Of the 23 normal traits, 15 were obtained
through Q media and compose Cattell’s
16PF
- The additional 7 factors that make up the
23 normal traits were originally identified
only through L data
- Pathological people also have 23 normal
traits but they have an extra 12 abnormal
traits; a person’s pathology may simply be
due to a normal trait that is carried to an
extreme
Second-Order Traits
- 8 second-order traits
- Two strongest of these 8:
extraversion/introversion and anxiety
Dynamic Traits
- Motivational traits, which include
(1) Attitude—refer to a specific course of actions, or
desire to act, in response to a given situation
(2) Ergs—innate drives or motives, such as sex,
hunger, loneliness, pity, fear, curiosity, pride,
sensuousness, anger, and greed that humans
share with other primates
(3) Sems—learned or acquired dynamic traits that
can satisfy several ergs at the same time
- Self –sentiment is the most important sem
in that it integrates the other sems
Dynamic Lattice
- Complex network of attitudes, ergs, and
sems underlying a person’s motivational
structure
Genetic Basis of Traits
Heritability
- 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 (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
Eysenck’s Factor Theory
(1) Eysenck was more likely to theorize before collecting
and factor analyzing data
(2) Extracted fewer factors
(3) Used a wider variety of approaches to gather data
Measuring Personality
- Genetic factors are more important
- Personal traits could be measured by standardized
personality inventories
Criteria for Identifying Factors
Personality factors must:
(1) Be based on strong psychometric evidence
(2) Must possess heritability and fit an acceptable
genetic model
(3) Make sense theoretically
(4) Possess social relevance
Hierarchy of Measures
(1) Specific acts of cognitions
(2) Habitual acts or cognitions
(3) Traits, or personal dispositions
(4) Types or superfactors
Dimensions of Personality
What are the Major Personality Factors?
(1) Extraversion/Introversion
- Extroverts: characterized by sociability,
impulsiveness, etc
- Introverts: quiet, passive, careful, etc
(2) Neuroticism/Stability
- Neurotic traits include anxiety, hysteria and
obsessive compulsive disorders
- Both normal and abnormal individuals may score
high on the neuroticism scale of Eysenck
(3) Psychoticism/Superego
- People who are high on psychoticism scale are
egocentric, cold, nonconforming, aggressive,
impulsive, antisocial, etc
Measuring Superfactors
(1) Eysenck Personality Inventory – which measures
only E and N
(2) Eysenck Personality Questionnaire—which also
measures P
Concept of Humanity
- Cattell and Eysenck believe that human personality
is largely the product of genetics and not the
environment
2. Allport: Psychology of the Individual
- Emphasized the uniqueness of each individual
- Eclectic in the approach and accepted many of the
ideas of other theorists
Allport’s Approach to Personality
- Psychologically healthy humans are motivated by
present, mostly conscious drives
- People are capable of proactive behavior—they can
consciously behave in new and creative ways that
foster their own change and growth
- “Individual morphogenic” study which contrasted
the traditional methods
Personality
- “the dynamic organization within the individual of
those psychophysical systems that determine his
characteristic behavior and thought”
Structure of Personality
- Basic units of personality are:
(1) Personal dispositions
- Peculiar to the individual
- 3 overlapping levels of personal
dispositions:
(i) cardinal dispositions
- most general; so obvious and dominating
that they cannot be hidden from other people
- not everyone has a cardinal disposition
(ii) central dispositions
– all people have 5 to 10 central
dispositions
-characteristics around which their lives
revolve
(iii) secondary dispositions
- everyone has a great number of secondary
dispositions
-less reliable and less conspicuous than
central traits
- Divisions of personal dispositions:
(i) motivational dispositions
- strong enough to initiate action
(ii) stylistic dispositions
- refer to the manner in which an individual
behaves and which guide rather than
initiate action
(2) Prorpium
- Refers to all those behaviors and
characteristics that people regard as warm
and central in their lives
- Proprium suggests the core of one’s
personhood (instead of using the words self
or ego)
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
- People not only react to the environment, but they
also shape their environment and cause it to react to
them
- People often seek additional tension
Functional Autonomy
- Holds that some human motives are functionally
independent from the original motive responsible
for a particular behavior
2 levels of FA:
(1) Perseverative functional autonomy
- Tendency of certain basic
behaviors (such as addictive
behaviors) to continue in the
absence of reinforcement
(2) Propriate functional autonomy
- Refers to self-sustaining motives
(such as interests) that are related
to proprium
The Psychologically Healthy Personality
- People are motivated by both the need to adjust to
their environment and to grow toward psychological
health: people are both reactive and proactive
- 6 criteria for psychological health:
(1) Extension of the sense of self
(2) Warm relationships with others
(3) Emotional security or self-acceptance
(4) Realistic view of the world
(5) Insight and humor
(6) Unifying philosophy of life
The Study of the Individual
Morphogenic Science
 - Traditional psychology relies on nomothetic science
– seeks general laws from a study of groups of
people
- Allport used idiographic or morphogenic procedures
that study the single case/individuals
Religious Orientation Scale
- Assesses both an intrinsic orientation and extrinsic
orientation toward religion
Concept of Humanity
- Allport saw people as thinking, proactive, purposeful
beings who are generally aware of what they are
doing and why
HUMANISTIC/EXISTENTIAL THEORIES
1. Kelly: Psychology of Personal Constructs
- Metatheory – theory about theories
- Holds that people anticipate events by the meanings
or interpretations that they place on those events
(these interpretations are called personal constructs)
- Constructive alternativism – philosophical position;
assumes that alternative interpretations are always
available to people
Kelly’s Philosophical Position
- People construe events according to their personal
constructs rather than reality
Constructive Alternativism
- All our interpretations of the world are subject to
revision or replacement
Personal Constructs
- People look at their world through templates that
they create and then attempt to fit over the realities
of the world
- Templates or transparent patterns, which shapes
behavior
Basic Postulate
- Assumes that human behavior is shaped by the way
people anticipate future
Supporting Corollaries
(1) Construction
- We construe similar events as if they were
the same
(2) Individuality
4 common elements in most human disturbances
- Because people have different experiences,
they can construe the same event in
different ways
(3) Organization
- Assumes that people organize their
personal constructs in a hierarchical
systems, with some constructs in a
superordinate position and subordinate to
them
(4) Dichotomy
- Assumes that people construe events in an
either/or manner (ex good or bad)
(5) Choice
- People tend to choose the alternative in a
dichotomized construct that they see as
extending the range of their future choices
(6) Range
- Constructs are limited to a particular range
of convenience; they are not relevant to all
situations
(7) Experience
- People continually revise their personal
constructs as the results of their
experiences
(8) Modulation
- Only permeable constructs lead to change;
concrete constructs resist modification
through experience
(9) Fragmentation
- People’s behavior can be inconsistent
because their construct systems can readily
admit incompatible elements
(10) Commonality
- Personal constructs tend to be similar to
the construction systems of other people to
the extent that we share experiences with
them
(11) Sociality
- People are able to communicate with other
people because they can construe those
people’s constructions
- ROLE – refers to a pattern of behavior that
stems from people’s understanding of the
construct of others
- Core role gives us a sense of
identity
- Peripheral roles are less central to
our self-concept
 (1) Threat – 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 – recognition that one cannot adequately
deal with a new situation
(4) Guilt – defined as “the sense of having lost one’s
core role structure”
Psychotherapy
- Clients should set their own goals for therapy
- Fixed-role therapy – clients act out a predetermined
role for several weeks
Rep Test (Role Construct Repertory Test)
- Discover in which clients construe significant people
in their lives
(1) Predicting adherence to a physical activity
program
(2) Detecting differences between the real self and
the ideal self
(3) Measuring neuroticism
Concept of Humanity
- People as anticipating the future and living their lives
in accordance with those anticipations
- ELABORATIVE CHOICE—suggests that people
increase their range of future choices by the present
choices they freely make
2. Rogers: Person Centered Theory
- Carl Rogers is best known as the founder or client-
centered therapy
Basic Assumptions of Person-Centered Theory:
(1) Formative tendency
- States that all matter, both organic and
inorganic, tends to evolve from simpler to
more complex forms
(2) Actualizing tendency
- Suggests that all living things, including
humans, tend to move toward completion,
or fulfillment of potentials
Self-actualization
- Subsystem of the actualization tendency
- Refers to the tendency to actualize the self as
perceived in awareness
2 subsystems of the self:
(1) Self-concept
- Includes all those aspects of one’s identity
that are perceived in awareness
- Tends to resist change
(2) Ideal self
- View of our self as we would like to be or
aspire to be
3 levels of awareness
(1) Symbolized below the threshold of awareness and
are either ignored or denied
(2) Distorted or reshaped to fit it into an existing self-
concept
(3) Consistent with the self-concept and thus are
accurately symbolized and freely admitted to the
self-structure
2 basic human needs
(1) Maintenance
- 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
(2) Enhancement
- Needs to grow and to realize one’s full
human potential
Positive regard—to be loved or accepted
Need for self-regard – they acquire only after they perceive
that someone else cares for them and values them
Conditions of Worth – 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 self-concept are at
variance with one another, a person may experience
incongruence—includes vulnerability, threat, defensiveness,
disorganization
* To prevent incongruence, people react with defensiveness,
typically in the forms of distortion and denial
Distortion -- people misinterpret an experience that it
fits into their self-concept
Denial – people refuse to allow the experience into
awareness
Psychotherapy
- A vulnerable client must have contact of some
duration with a counselor who is congruent, and
 demonstrates unconditional positive regard and
listens with empathy to a client and vice versa
Conditions – necessary and sufficient conditions for
therapeutic growth
(1) Counselor congruence
- Therapist whose organismic experiences are
matched by an awareness and by the ability
and willingness to openly express these
feelings
- More basic because this is a relatively stable
characteristic
(2) Unconditional positive regard
- Exists when the therapist accept the client
without conditions or qualifications
(3) Empathic listening
- 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/her
world of feelings without prejudice,
projection or evaluation
Process of therapeutic change:
(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 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/distorted
(7) They experience irreversible change and growth
Fully functioning person
- Psychologically healthy person
- “person of tomorrow”
- Characteristics:
(1) Able to adjust to change
(2) Open to experience
(3) Able to live fully in the moment
(4) Able to have harmonious relations with others
(5) More integrated with no artificial boundaries
between conscious and unconscious processes
(6) Has a basic trust of human nature
(7) Enjoys greater richness in life
Barnett-Lennard Relationship Inventory
(1) Level of regard
(2) Unconditionality of regard
(3) Congruence
(4) Empathy
Concept of Humanity
- Humans have the capacity to change and grow-
provided that certain necessary and sufficient
conditions are present
3. Maslow: Holistic-Dynamic Theory
- Holds that people are continually motivated by one
or more needs
- People can reach a level of psychological health
called self-actualization
Maslow’s View of Motivation
(1) 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
(5) Needs can be arranged on a hierarchy
Hierarchy of Needs
- Lower level needs have prepotency over higher level
needs – they must be satisfied before higher needs
become motivators
(1) Physiological needs
- Oxygen, water, food
(2) Safety needs
- Physical security, stability, dependency,
protection
(3) Love and belongingness
- Desire for friendship, wish for a mate, need
to belong
(4) Esteem needs
- Satisfaction of love needs and which include
self-confidence and the recognition that
one has a positive reputation
(5) Self-actualization
- Satisfied only by the psychologically
healthiest people
NOTE: Unlike other needs that automatically are activated
when lower needs are met, self-actualization needs do not
inevitably follow the satisfaction of esteem needs
NOTE: only by embracing such B-values such as truth, beauty,
oneness and justice can people achieve self-actualization
NOTE: the five needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are CONATIVE
NEEDS
Other needs are:
(1) Aesthetic needs
- Include a desire for beauty and order
(2) Cognitive needs
- Include the desire to know, to understand,
and to be curious
- Knowledge is a prerequisite for each of the
5 conative needs
(3) Neurotic needs
- Lead to pathology regardless of whether
they are satisfied or not
- Include such motives as a desire to
dominate, inflict pain, or to subject oneself
to the will of another person
- These are non-productive and do not foster
health
NOTES:
- In certain rare cases, the order of needs might be
reversed
- Much of our surface behavior is actually motivated
by more basic and often unconscious needs
- Expressive behavior has no aim or goal but is merely
a person’s mode of expression
- Coping behaviors deal with a person’s attempt to
cope with the environment
- Instinctoid needs are innately determined even
though they can be modified by learning
- Higher 3 level needs are later on the evolutionary
scale than lower level needs and that they produce
more genuine happiness and more peak experiences
Self-Actualization
- They are metamotivated by B-values such as truth,
beauty, goodness, justice and simplicity
- Criteria to be met before a person achieves self-
actualization:
(1) Absence of psychopathology
(2) Satisfaction of each of the 4 lower level needs
(3) Acceptance of the B-values
(4) Full realization of one’s potentials for growth
Characteristics of Self-Actualizing People
(1) More efficient perception of reality
- Often have an ability to detect phoniness in other
and they are not fooled by sham
(2) Acceptance of self, others and nature
(3) Spontaneity, simplicity and naturalness
- No need to appear complex or sophisticated
(4) Problem-centered
- Ability to view age-old problems from a solid
philosophical position
(5) Need for privacy
- Detachment that allows SA-ing people to be alone
without being lonely
(6) Autonomy
- 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
- Mystical experiences that give a person a sense of
transcendence and feelings of aw, wander, etc
(9) Gemeinschaftsgefuhl
- 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) Democratic character structure
- Ability to disregard superficial differences between
people
(12) Discrimination between means and ends
- Meaning that SA-ing people have a clear sense of
right and wrong, and they experience little conflict
about basic values
(13) 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
- Ability to set personal standards and to resis the
mold set by culture
Metapathology
- People’s inability to reach self-actualization is called
metapathology
- Defined as an absence of values, a lack of fulfillment
and a loss of meaning in life
D-love – deficiency love
B-love—love for being or essence of another person;
mutually felt and shared and not based on deficiencies within
the lovers
Note: SA-ing people are capable of B-love because they can
love without expecting something in return
Everret Shostrom’s Personal Orientation Inventory
- Most widely used scale in measuring self-
actualization
 - 150-item forced-choice inventory that assesses a
variety of self-actualization facets
The Jonah Complex
- Fear of being or doing one’s best, a condition that all
of us have to some extent
Psychotherapy
- 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
Concept of Humanity
- People are structure in such a way that their
activated needs are exactly what they want most
- People are capable of great evil and destruction
- Humans are becoming more and more fully human
and motivated by higher level needs
4. May: Existential Psychology
- Modern people frequently run away both from
making choices and from assuming responsibility
Background of Existentialism
- Soren Kierkegaard
- founder of modern existentialism
- emphasized balance between freedom and
responsibility
- people acquire freedom of action by
expanding their self-awareness and by
assuming responsibility of their actions
Existentialism
- 1st tenet of existentialism: existence take precedence
over essence, meaning that process and growth are
more important than product and stagnation
- 2nd tenet: existentialists oppose the artificial split
between subject and object
- 3rd: They stress people’s search for meaning in their
lives
- 4th: they insist that each of us is responsible for who
we are and what we will become
- 5th:believeing that theories tend to objectify people
Basic concepts:
Dasein
- Basic unity between people and their environments
- Being-in-the-world
- UMWELT: environment around us (natural world)
- MITWELT: our world with other people (from others)
- EIGENWELT: relationship with our self
- People are aware that they are living beings and also
nonbeing (or nothingness)
- Death—most obvious form of nonbeing, which can
also be experienced as retreat from life’s
experiences
People experience anxiety when they become aware that
their existence or something identified with it might be
destroyed.
Normal anxiety – proportionate to the threat, does not
involve repression and can be handled on a conscious level
Neurotic anxiety
- reaction that is disproportionate to the threat and
that leads to repression and defensive behaviors
- felt whenever one’s values are transformed into
dogma
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 – refer to the
nature of being and not to feelings arising from specific
situations
Intentionality
- structure that gives meaning to experience and
allows people to make decisions about the future
- permits people to overcome dichotomy between
subject and object
Care
- 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
Will
- care is important in will
- conscious commitment to action
4 kinds of love:
(1) sex
- natural biological function
(2) Eros
 - Psychological desire that seeks an enduring Existential anxiety
union with a loved one - An apprehension of threats to one’s existence
- May include sex, but it is built on care and
tenderness Concept of Humanity
(3) Philia - People as complex beings, capable of both
- Intimate nonsexual friendship between two tremendous good and immense evil
people - People have become alienated from the world, from
- takes time to develop and does not depend other people, and most of all, from themselves
on the actions of the other person
(4) Agape
- Altruistic or spiritual love that carries with it Sikolohiyang Pilipino
the risk of playing God
- Undeserved and unconditional - Refers to the psychology born out of the experience,
thought, and orientation of the Filipinos, based on
Freedom the full use of Filipino culture and language
- Comes from an understanding of our destiny - Based on assessing historical and socio-cultural
- We’re free when we recognize that death is a realities, understanding the local language,
possibility of any moment and when we are willing unraveling Filipino characteristics, and explaining
to experience changes, even in the face of not them through the eyes of the native Filipino
knowing what those changes will bring
Forms: Indigenization from within
(1) Freedom of doing - Theoretical framework and methodology emerge
- Freedom of action from the experiences of the people from the
- Existential freedom indigenous culture
(2) Freedom of being
- Inner freedom The beginnings of Sikolohiyang Pilipino
- Essential freedom - Jose Rizal and Apolinario Mabini expressed
dissatisfaction at the pejorative interpretations of
Destiny Filipino behavior by Western observers
- The design of the universe speaking through the - Early 1970s when Virgilio Gaspar Enriquez
design of each one of us introduced SikoPil
- Includes the limitations of our environment and our - Together with Dr. Alfredo Lagmay, they embarked
personal qualities on a research into the historical and cultural roots of
Philippine Psychology
Oedipus Myth - Identified indigenous concepts and approaches in
- Deals with such common existential crises as birth, Philippine psychology
separation from parents, sexual union with one - Panunukat ng Ugali ng Pagkatao (Measure of
parent and hostility toward the other, etc. Character and Personality) was produced in 1975

Psychopathology What is Sikolohiyang Pilipino?

- Apathy and emptiness are the chief existential
disorders of our time
Psychotherapy
- Make the patients more fully human
- Set people free, to allow them to make choices, and
to assume responsibility for those choices
Terror Management
- Based on the notion of existential anxiety
- Anchored on Filipino thought and experience as
understood from a Filipino perspective
- Filipino orientation – most important aspect of this
definition^
- SikoPil as “the study of diwa” aka psyche – which
refers to the wealth of ideas referred to by the
philosophical concept of ‘essence’ and an entire
range of psychological concepts from awareness to
motives to behaviors
- Ultimate aim of SikoPil is to contribute to universal
psychology, which can be realized only if each group
 of people is adequately understood by themselves
and from their own perspective

Indigenization from within

- Looking for the indigenous psychology from within
the culture itself not just clothing a foreign body
with a local dress
- Cultural revalidation is a better term

The principal emphasis of SikoPil is to foster national identity

and consciousness, social involvement, and psychology of
language and culture

Virgilio Enriquez: Pioneer of SikoPil

- Trained by his father to speak fluently in Filipino
- Born in Bulacan
- Taught at UP
- Earned his PhD from Northwestern University at
Evanston, Illinois
- Established the Philippine Psychology Research
House (PRRH) which later became the Philippine
Psychology Research and Training House (PRRTH)