THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES – SACMEEKHA

Proponent Theory Key Terms/Ideas

Sigmund Freud Psychoanalytic Theory Sex and Aggression;

Uncosncious; Id, Ego,
Superego; Oedipus Complex

Alfred Adler Individual Psychology Organ Inferiority; Striving

Forces; Creative Power;
Organ Dialect

Carl Jung Analytical Psychology Levels of Psyche;

Archetypes; Introversion and
Extraversion

Melanie Klein Object Relation Psychology Good and Bad Breast

Erik Erikson Post-Freudian Psychology Self-identity; Psychosocial

stage; Basic strength &
Psychological crisis

Erich Fromm Humanistic Psychoanalysis Existential dichotomies;

Transcendence; Frame of
orientation; Burden of
freedom

Karen Horneye Psychoanalytic Social Theory Neurotic Needs; Neurotic

Trends; Basic Anxiety; Basic
Hostility

Harry Sullivan Interpersonal Theory Humans have no personality;

Levels of cognition;
Dynamisms; Personifications

HUMANISTIC EXISTENTIAL THEORIES – CHAR

Proponent Theory Key Terms/Ideas

Carl Rogers Person-Centered Theory

Henry Murray Personology

Abraham Maslow Holistic Dynamic Theory

Rollo May Existential Psychology

DISPOSITIONAL THEORIES – GMCC
Proponent Theory Key Terms/Ideas

Gordon Allport Psychology of the Individual

Robert Mccrae & Paul Costa Five-factor Trait Theory

Raymond Catell 16 Personality Continuum

BIOLOGICAL/EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES – HD
Proponent Theory Key Terms/Ideas

Hans Eysenck Biologically Based Factor

Theory

David Buss Evolutionary Theory of

Personality

LEARNING/SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES – BARMiKe

Proponent Theory Key Terms/Ideas

B.F. Skinner Behavioral Analysis

Albert Bandura Social Cognitive Theories

Julian Rotter & Walter Cognitive Social Learning

Mischel Theories

George Kelly Psychology of Personal

Conduct
 THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

● Proponent: Sigmund Freud

● Assumption:
○ Unconscious forces
○ Biologically based drives of sex and aggression
○ Unavoidable conflicts in early childhood
○ Free Association Therapy
● Concepts:
○ Psychoanalysis = sex and aggression
○ Human personality was based on his experiences with his patients, analysis of his
own dreams, and vast readings in the various sciences and humanities
○ Provinces of the mind
■ Id – pleasure principle; no morality; satisfies basic desires
■ Ego – reality principle; decision-making
■ Superego – moralistic and idealistic principle; conscience and ego-ideal
○ Dynamics of personality
■ Drives
● Trieb (German word)
● Stimulus within the person
● Libido (sex drive)
■ Sex
● Aim for pleasure
● Mouth and anus are erogenous zones
● Narcissism – love for own body
● Sadism – inflicting pain (Christian Grey)
● Masochism – suffering pain (Anna Grey)
■ Aggression
● Aim for return of the organism to an inorganic state/
self-destruction
■ Anxiety
 ● A felt, affective, unpleasant state accompanied by a physical
sensation that warms the person against impending danger
● Neurotic Anxiety – apprehension about unknown danger
● Moral Anxiety – conflict between the ego and superego
● Realistic Anxiety – fear; unpleasant non-specific feeling involving
a possible danger
○ Defense Mechanisms
■ Repression – repressing impulses
■ Reaction Formation – exaggerated character and by obsessive and
compulsive form
■ Displacement – redirect unacceptable urges into people or objects
■ Fixation – permanent attachment to the libido on a early and primitive
stage of development
■ Regression – once the libido has passed a developmental stage during the
times of stress and anxiety it reverts back to that early stage
■ Projection – seeing in others unacceptable or tendencies that actually
reside in one’s own unconscious
■ Introjection – incorporating positive qualities of other person into their
own ego (Oedipus Complex)
■ Sublimation – repression of the genital aim of eros by substituting a
cultural/social aim
○ Stages of Development
■ Oral phase
● Sucking
● Sexual aim: to incorportate or receive into one;s body the
object-choice
● Oral-receptive phase
● Oral-sadistic period
■ Anal phase
● Satisfaction is gained through aggressive behavior and excretory
functions
● Sadistic anal phase
○ Early anal (toilet training) – destroying/losing objects
○ Late anal – friendly interest toward feces
● Anal character – people who continue to receive erotic satisfaction
by kepeing and possessing objects and by arranging them in an
excessively neat and orderly fashion
● Anal eroticism
■ Phallic phase
● Genital area becomes the leading erogenous zone
 ● Male Oedipus Complex – sexual desire for mother; Female
Oedipus Complex – penis envy; sexual desire for father
■ Latency period
● Parent’s attempt to punish or discourage sexual activity in their
young children
■ Genital phase
● Reproduction

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

● Proponent: Alfred Adler

● Assumption:
○ People are born with weak, inferior bodies – a condition that leads to feelings of
inferiority and a consequent dependence on other people
○ One dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the striving for success or
superiority
○ People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior and personality
○ Personality is unified and elf-consistent
○ Value of all human activity must be seen from the viewpoint of social interest
○ Self-consistent personality structure develops into a person’s style of life
○ Style of life is molded by people’s creative power
● Concepts:
○ Final goal – success or superiority; unifies personality and makes all behavior
meaningful
○ Striving force as compensation – personal gain/community benefit
■ Striving for personal superiority
■ Striving for success
○ Fictionalism – people’s expectations of the future
○ Organ inferiorities – believed that all humans are blessed with organ inferiorities
which stimulate subjective feelings of inferiority and move people toward
perfection or completion
○ Unity and self-consistency of personality – all behaviors are directed toward a
single purpose
○ Organ dialect – people often use a physical disorder to express style of life
○ Conscious and unconscious – unified and operate to achieve a single goal
○ Social interest (Gemeinschaftsgefühl) – feeling of oneness with all of humanity
■ Originated from a parent-child relationship that can be so strong that is
negates the effects of heredity
■ The sole criterion of human values
 ○ Style of life – manner of a person’s striving is relatively well set by 4 or 5 years of
age; healthy individuals are marked by flexible behavior and they have limited
ability to their style of life
○ Creative power – shape the style of life of human
○ Abnormal development – unhealthy individuals also create their own personalities
■ General description
● Set their goals too high
● Have a dogmatic style of life
● Live in their own private world
○ External factors in maladjustment
■ Exaggerated physical deficiencies
■ Pampered style of life
■ Neglected style of life
○ Safeguarding tendencies
■ Protect a person from public disgrace
■ Excuses
■ Aggression
■ Withdrawal
○ Masculine protest – both men and women sometimes overemphasize the
desirability of being manly

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY

● Proponent: Carl Gustav Jung

● Assumption:
○ Individual possesses an opposing quality and it both needs to be balanced
○ All of us are motivated by our emotional experience
● Concepts:
○ Levels of the Psyche
■ Conscious – images sensed by the ego
■ Personal unconscious – psychic images not sensed by the ego; contains the
complexes (emotionally toned groups of related ideas)
■ Collective unconscious – ideas beyond our personal experience and that
originate from the repeated experiences of our ancestors
● Archetypes – expressed in certain type of dreams, fantasies,
delusions, hallucinations
○ Persona – we show to others
○ Shadow – dark side of personality
○ Anima – feminine side of men
 ○ Animus – masculine side of women
○ Great mother – archetype of nourishment and destruction
○ Wise old man – archetype or wisdom and meaning
○ Hero – image we have of a conqueror who vanquishes evil
○ Self – image we have of fulfillment, completion or
perfection
○ Dynamic of personality
■ Causality – humans are motivated both by their past experiences
■ Teleology – motivated by their expectations of the future
■ Progression – adaptation to the outside world and the forward flow of
psychic energy
■ Regression - adaptation to the inner world and backward flow of psychic
energy
○ Psychological types
■ Attitudes
● Introversion – adaptation to the inner world
● Extraversion – more influenced by their surroundings
■ Functions
● Thinking – recognizing meaning of stimuli
● Feeling – placing value on something
● Sensation – sensory stimuli
● Intuition – perceiving elementary data
○ Development of personality
■ Jung saw middle and old age as times when people may acquire the
ability to attain self-realization
○ Stages of development
■ Childhood – birth to adolescence
■ Youth – puberty to middle life
■ Middle life – 35 or 40 until old age
■ Old age – time for psychological rebirth, self-realization and preparation
for death
○ Self-realization – individuation; psychological rebirth ad integration of various
parts of the psyche int an unified or whole individual
○ Methods of investigation
■ Word Association Test – to uncover complexes embedded in personal
unconscious
■ Dream Analysis – dreams may have both a cause and purpose and can be
useful in explaining past events and in making decisions about the future
■ Active Imagination – requires patient/s to concentrate on a single image
until that image begins to appear in different form
 ■ Psychotherapy

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | OBJECT RELATION THEORY

● Proponent: Melanie Reizes Klein

● Assumption:
○ Infant’s drives (hunger, sex, etc.) are directed to an object – a breast, penis, vagina
○ Child’s relation to the breast is fundamental and serves as a prototype for later
relations to whole objects
● Concepts:
○ Psychic life of the infant
■ First 4-6 months
■ Phantasies
● Psychic representations of unconscious id instincts
● Possesses unconscious images of good and bad
● Unconscious phantasies are shaped by both reality and by inherited
predispositions
● Oedipus Complex
■ Objects
● From early infancy children relate to these external objects, both in
fantasy and reality
● Infants introject these external objects
○ Positions
■ Ways of dealing with both internal and external object
■ Paranoid-Schizoid Position
● Way of organizing experiences that includes both paranoid feelings
of being persecuted and splitting of internal and external objects
into the good or bad
● 3-4 months of life
■ Depressive Position
● 5th or 6th month
● The feelings of anxiety over losing a loved object coupled with a
sense of guilt for wanting to destroy that objects constitute
○ Psychic defense mechanism
■ Introjection
● Infants fantasize taking into their body those perceptions and
experiences that they have had with the external object
● Infant’s first feeding
 ● Good objects – protection against anxiety; Bad objects – gain
control over them
■ Projection
● Fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses actually reside in
another person and not within one’s body
● Allows people to believe that their own subjective opinions are
true
■ Splitting
● Keeping apart incompatible impulses
■ Projective identification
● Infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them into
another object, and finally introject them back into themselves in a
changed or distorted form
○ Internalizations
■ The person takes in aspects of the external world and then organizes those
introjections into a psychologically meaningful framework
■ Ego – one’s sense of self
■ Supergo – emerges much earlier in life; not an outgrowth of Oedipus
Complex; early superego produces terror
■ Oedipus Complex
● Begins at much earlier age
● Significant part is children’s fear of retaliation from their parent for
their fantasy of emptying the parent’s body
● Female Oedipal Development
○ Penis envy – girl’s wish to internalize her father’s penis
and receive a baby from him
● Male Oedipal Development
○ Oral desires of boy from mother’s breast
○ Psychotherapy
■ Play Therapy/Kleinian Therapy
● To reduce depressive anxieties and persecutory fears and to
mitigate the harshness of internalized objects
● Later views on object relations:
○ Margaret Mahler
■ 1897-1985
■ 3 major developmental stages
● Normal autism
○ Birth to 3-4 weeks
○ Period of absolute primary narcissism (unaware of any
other person)
 ○ Objectless stage
● Normal symbiosis
○ 4th/5th week up to 4th/5th month
○ Infant behaves and functions as though he and his mother
were an omnipotent system
● Separation-Individuation
○ 4th/5th month up to 30th/36th
○ Separated to mother
○ Develop feelings of personal identity
○ Differentiation – 5th month to 7th to 10th month; bodily
breaking away from the mother-infant symbiotic orbit
○ Practicing – 7th to 10th up to 15th/16th month; established
specific bond with their mother and begin to develop an
autonomous ego
○ Rapprochement – 16th up to 25th month; desire to bring
their mother and themselves back together
○ Libidinal-object constancy – 3rd year of life; must develop
a constant inner representation of their mother so that they
can tolerate being physically separate from her
○ Heinz Kohut
■ 1913-1981
■ Replaced ego with the concept of self
■ Believed that human relatedness are at the core of human personality
■ Self – center of individual’s psychological universe
■ Believed that infants are naturally narcissistic
■ 2 narcissistic needs
● Grandiose exhibitionistic self – mirroring self object
● Idealized parent image – someone else if perfect
○ John Bowlby
■ 1907-1990
■ Attachments formed during childhood have an impact on adulthood
■ Separation anxiety on human and primate infants
■ 3 stages of sepanx
● Protest – Despair – Detachment
○ Mary Ainsworth
■ 1919-1999
■ 3 attachment style rating
● Secure – confident in the accessibility and responsiveness of their
caregiver
● Anxious-Resistant – infants give very conflicted message
 ● Anxious-Avoidant – ignore and avoid mother

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL THEORY

● Proponent: Karen Danielsen Horney

● Assumption:
○ Social and cultural conditions, especially childhood experiences, are largely
responsible for shaping personality
● Concepts:
○ Cultural influences as primary bases for both neurotic and normal personality
development
○ Feelings of isolation – competitiveness & basic hostility
○ Feelings of being alone = need for affection = overvalue of love (see love and
affection as a solution to all)
○ Genuine love – healthy, growth-producing experience
○ Desperate love – provides a fertile ground for development of neuroses
○ Neurotics strive in pathological ways to find love
○ Self-defeating attempts = low self-esteem, increased hostility, basic anxiety, more
competitiveness, and continuous excessive need for love and affection
○ Children need to experience both genuine love and healthy discipline = feelings of
safety and satisfaction
○ Basic anxiety
■ Repressed hostility – feelings of insecurity
■ Feeling of being isolated and helpless
■ Hostile impulses = basic anxiety but basic anxiety can also contribute to
feelings of hostility
■ Basic hostility = severe anxiety
■ Anxiety & fear = strong feelings of hostility
■ Basic anxiety is not equal to neurosis
○ 4 general ways people protect themselves against feeling of being alone in a
hostile world
■ Affection
● Strategy that does not always lead to authentic love
● Try to purchase love with self-effacing compliance, material
good/sexual favors
■ Submissiveness
● Submit themselves either to people or institutions
■ Striving for power
 ● Defense against the real or imagines hostility or others and takes
the form of tendency to dominate others
■ Striving for prestige
● Humiliate others
■ Striving for possession
● Deprive others
■ Withdrawal
● Becoming emotionally detached to others/developing
independence to others
○ Compulsion – salient characteristics of all neurotic drives
■ Compulsive drives – neurotics do not enjoy misery and suffering they
cannot change their behavior by free will but must continually and
compulsively protect themselves against basic anxiety
○ Neurotic needs
■ Need for affection & approval – attempt indiscriminately to please others
■ Need for a powerful partner – attach self to powerful partner
■ Need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders – downgrade own
abilities & make demands on others
■ Need for power – control others & avoid feeling of stupidity
■ Need to exploit others – evaluate others on the basis on how they can be
exploited
■ Need for social recognition/prestige
■ Need for personal admiration
■ Need for ambition & personal achievement – strong drive to be best
■ Need for self-sufficiency & independence
■ Need for perfection & unassailability
○ Neurotic trends
■ Basic conflict – very young children are driven in all 3 directions
■ Moving toward people
● Behaves in a compliant manner
● Strives for affection and approval
● Seek a powerful partner
● Codependency
■ Moving against people
● Appears tough and ruthless
● Seldom admits mistakes
● Basic motivation is for power, prestige, and personal admiration
■ Moving away from people
● Detachment
● Attain autonomy & separatedness
 ● Feeling of isolation
○ Intrapsychic conflict
■ Originate from interpersonal experiences
■ Idealized self-image
● Extravagantly positive view of themselves that exists only in their
personal belief system
● 3 aspects
○ Neurotic search for glory – need for perfection & neurotic
ambition; drive toward a vindictive triumph
○ Neurotic claims – fantasy world; when wishes are not met
= bewildered & indignant
○ Neurotic pride – false pride based on a realistic view of true
self but on spurious image of idealized self
■ Self-hatred
● 6 major ways people express self-hatred
○ Relentless demands on self
○ Merciless self-accusation
○ Self-contempt
○ Self-frustration
○ Self-torment
○ Self-destructive actions and impulses
○ Feminine Psychology
■ Psychic difference between men and women are not the result of anatomy
but rather cultural and social expectations
■ Oedipus complex was due to environmental conditions and not to biology
■ Found penis envy concept less tenable
■ Womb envy
■ Masculine protest
○ Psychotherapy
■ Horneyian Theory
● Help patient’s gradually grow in the direction of self-realization
● Have patients give up their idealized self-image, relinquish their
neurotic search for glory, and change self-hatred to acceptance of
real self

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | POST-FREUDIAN THEORY

● Proponent: Erik Erikson

● Assumption:
 ○ Personality is a product of history, culture, and biology (social & historical
influences)
○ Each stage of a specific psychosocial struggle contributed to the formation of
personality
● Concepts:
○ Ego is a positive force that creates a self-identity (“I”)
■ Center of our personality
■ Help us to adapt various conflict and crises of life and keeps us from
losing our individuality to the leveling forces of society
■ At childhood, ego is weak; by adolescence it should begin to take form &
gain strength
■ Unifies personality and guards against indivisibility
■ Partially unconscious organizing agency that synthesizes our present
experiences with past self-identities and also with anticipated images of
self
■ Person’s ability to unify experiences and actions in an adaptive manner
■ Body ego – experiences with our body
■ Ego ideal – image we have of ourselves in comparison with an established
ideal
■ Ego identity – image we have of ourselves in the variety of social roles we
play
○ Society influence
■ Ego emerges and is largely shaped by society
■ Ego exists as potential at birth but it must emerge from within a cultural
environment
■ Pseudospecies – an illusion perpetrated and perpetuated by a particular
society that it is somehow chosen to be the human species
○ Epigenetic Principle
■ Term from embryology
■ Step by step growth of fetal organs
■ Erikson believes that the ego develops through this
■ Epigenesis – one characteristic develops on top of another in space and
time
○ 7 Basics Points of the Stages Psychosocial Development
■ Growth takes place according to epigenetic principle
■ In every stage of life there is an interaction of opposites; syntonic
(harmonious) & dystonic (disruptive)
■ At each stage, the conflict between the dystonic and syntonic elements
produces an ego quality or ego strength (basic strength)
 ■ Too little basic strength at any one stage results in a core pathology for
that stage
■ Erikson never lost sight of the biological aspect of human development
■ Events in earlier stages do not cause later personality development ego
identity is shaped by a multiplicity of conflicts and events – past, present
and anticipated
■ During each stage, but especially from adolescence forward, personality
development is characterized by an identity crisis ( a turning point, a
crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential
○ Psychosocial stage – Psychosexual mode – Psychological crisis – Basic Strength
■ Infancy (1st year of life) - Oral sensory - Basic trust vs Basic mistrust -
Hope
■ Early Childhood (2nd & 3rd year of life) – Muscular Anal – Autonomy vs
Shame & Doubt – Will
■ Play age (3-5 years of age) – Locomotor Genital – Initiative vs Guilt –
Purpose
■ School age (6-12/13 years old) – Latency – Industry vs Inferiority –
Competence
■ Adolescence – Puberty Adolescence – Identity vs Confusion – Fidelity
■ Young Adulthood (19 - 30 years old) – Intimacy vs Isolation – Love
■ Adulthood (age 31-60) – Generativity vs Stagnation – Care
■ Old Age (age 60 to end of life) – Maturity – Ego Integrity vs Despair –
Wisdom
○ Methods of Investigation
■ Personality is a product of history, culture, and biology
■ Anthropological Studies
■ Psychohistory – combines psychoanalytic concepts with historical
methods

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | HUMANISTIC PSYCHOANALYSIS

● Proponent : Erick Fromm

● Assumption:
○ Individual personality can be understood only in the light of human history
○ Humanity’s separation from the natural world has produced feeling of loneliness
and isolation
○ Humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union with nature
○ Humans have no powerful instincts to adapt to a changing world; instead, they
have human dilemma (facility to reason)
 ○ Ability to reason – permits people to survive & forces them to attempt to solve
basic insoluble dichotomies (existential dichotomies)
○ 1st & most fundamental dichotomy – between life & death
○ 2nd existential dichotomy – humans are capable of conceptualization the goal of
complete self-realization, but we are also aware that life is short to reach that goal
○ 3rd existential dichotomy – people are ultimately alone yet we cannot tolerate
isolation
● Concepts:
○ Human needs
■ Humans are motivated by such physiological needs but they can never
resolve their human dilemma by satisfying these animal needs
■ Only the distinctive human needs can move people toward a reunion with
the natural world
■ Healthy individuals are better able to find ways of reuniting to the world
by productively solving the human needs of relatedness, transcendence,
rootedness, a sense of identity, & frame of orientation
○ Relatedness
■ First existential need
■ Drive for union with another person
■ 3 ways to related to the world:
● Submission – search for a relationship with domineering people;
symbiotic relationship
● Power – become submissive partners
● Love – only route by which a person can become united with the
world and achieve individuality & integrity
● 4 basic elements of genuine love → care, responsibility, respect,
knowledge
○ Transcendence
■ Urge to rise above a passive & accidental existence & into the realm of
purposefulness & freedom
○ Rootedness
■ Need to establish roots or to feel at home again in the world
■ Productive strategy – security & re establishes a sense of belonging &
rootedness
■ Nonproductive strategy – tenacious reluctance to move beyond the
protective security provided by one’s mother
○ Sense of identity
■ Capacity to be aware of ourselves as a separate entity
○ Frame of orientation
■ Need of a road map to make their way through the world
 ■ Need a final goal/object of devotion
○ Human need – Negative component – Positives component
■ Relatedness – Submission/Domination – Love
■ Transcendence – Destructiveness – Creativeness
■ Rootedness – Fixation – Wholeness
■ Sense of identity – Adjustment – Individuality
■ Frame of orientation – Irrational goals – Rationality
○ Burden of freedom
■ More freedom to express individuality (if children become more
independent on their mothers) = burden of freedom (free from the security
of being one with the mother)
■ Burden of freedom = basic anxiety (feeling of being alone)
○ Mechanism of escape
■ Flee from freedom; driving forces in normal people (individually &
collectively)
■ Authoritarianism – tendency to give up the independence of one’s own
individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside
the self in order to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking
● Masochism – results from basic feeling of powerlessness,
weakness, & inferiority & is aimed at joining the self to a more
powerless person/institution
● Sadism – more neurotic & more socially harmful
● Destructiveness – rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation, and
powerless
● Conformity – giving up individuality & becoming whatever other
people’s desire
○ Positive freedom
■ Spontaneous & full expression of both their rational & their emotional
potentialities
■ 2 components: love & work
■ Represents a successful solution to the human dilemma of being part of
the natural world & yet separate from it
○ Character orientation
■ Person’s relatively permanent way of relating to people and things
■ Personality – totality of inherited & acquired psychic qualities which are
characteristic of one individual & which make the individual unique
■ Character – relatively permanent system of all non-instinctual striving
through which man relates himself to the human and natural world; people
relate to the world by assimilation & socialization
○ Non-productive orientations
 ■ Strategies that fail to more people closer to positive freedom and
self-realization
■ Receptive
■ Exploitative
■ Hoarding
■ Marketing
○ Productive orientation
■ Value work as means of creative self-expression
■ Productive love
■ Productive thinking
○ Personality disorders
■ Psychologically disturbed people are incapable of love and have failed to
establish union with others
■ Necrophilia – love of death & usually refers to a sexual perversion (sexual
contact with a corpse)
■ Malignant narcissism – narcissism impedes the perception of reality so
that everything belonging to a narcissistic person is highly valued and
everything belonging to another is devalued
■ Incestous symbiosis – extreme dependence on the mother of mother
surrogate
■ Syndrome of decay – possesses incentous symbiosis, necrophilia, &
malignant narcissism
■ Syndrome of growth – made of biophilia, love, positive freedom
○ Psychotherapy
■ Humanistic Psychoanalysis – much more concern with the interpersonal
aspects of therapeutic encounter; aim is for patients to know themselves

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY | INTERPERSONAL THEORY

● Proponent: Harry Sullivan

● Assumption:
○ Humans have no personality
○ “A personality can never be isolated from the complex of interpersonal relations
in which the person lives & has his being”
● Concepts:
○ Tensions
■ Saw personality as an energy system
■ Potential for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness
■ Energy = tension & energy transformation; tension = needs and anxiety
 ■ Needs – tensions brought on by a biological imbalance between a person
and the physiochemical environment both inside and outside the organism
● Tenderness – concerned with the overall well-being of a person
● Zonal needs – oxygen, water, food
● Dynamisms – excess energy transformed into consistent
characteristic modes of behavior
■ Anxiety
● Diffuse & vague & calls forth no consistent actions for its relief
● Empathy – anxiety if transferred from the parent to infant
● Euphoria – complete lack of tension; natural tendency to avoid
tension
○ Dynamisms
■ Behavior patterns
■ Malevolence
● Disjunctive dynamism of evil & hatred
● Originates around age ⅔
● Take the form of timidity, mischievousness, cruelty, or other kinds
of asocial and antisocial behavior
■ Intimacy
● Close interpersonal relationship between two people who are more
or less of equal status
■ Lust
● Requiring no other person for its satisfaction
■ Self-system
● Interpersonal security to protect self from anxiety
● Develop at age 12-18 months
○ Personifications
■ Images of themselves and others
■ Bad mother & good mother
■ Me personifications – bad me, good me, not me
■ Eidetic personifications – unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that may
children invent in order to protect their self-esteem
○ Levels of cognition
■ Ways of perceiving, imagining, and conceiving
■ Prototaxic level
● Earliest & most primitive experiences of an infant
● Difficult to describe or define
■ Paratoxic level
● Prelogic & usually result when a person assumes a cause and effect
relationship between two events that occur coincidentally
 ■ Syntaxic level
● Experiences that are consensually validated and that can be
symbolically communicated
○ Stages of development
■ Infancy
● Birth up to 18-24 months old
● Need a mothering one to provide needs
■ Childhood
● 18-24 months until age 5/6
● Advent of syntaxic language and continues until the appearance of
the need for playmates of an equal status
■ Juvenile era
● Need for peers or playmates or equal status and ends when one
finds a single chum to satisfy the need for intimacy
● 5/6 years old to 8 1/2 years old
● Compete, compromise, cooperate
■ Early adolescence
● Begins with puberty and ends with the need for sexual love with
one person
● Genital interest & advent lustful relationship
● Turning point in personality development
■ Late adolescence
● Lust & intimacy
● Period of self-discovery
■ Adulthood
● Period of establishment of love relationship with at least one
significant other
○ Psychotherapy
■ Therapist serves as a participant observer, becoming an interpersonal, f2f
relationship with the patient & providing the patient an opportunity to
establish syntaxic communication with another human being
■ Sullivanian theory is aimed at uncovering patient’s difficulties in relating
to others