UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

INTRODUCTION TO
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY
 Personality – refers to consistent patterns of affect,
behavior, and cognition [A,B,C]
 A State of being. Emphasis on the individual rather than the
collective viewpoint
 Originated from the Latin “persona” which refers to a
theatrical mask worn by roman actors in Greek dramas.
 Consist of the most outstanding or salient impression an
individual creates in others.
 Traits – contribute to individual differences in behavior,
consistency of behavior over time and stability of behavior
across situations
 Characteristics – are unique qualities of an individual that
include such attributes as
temperaments, physique, and intelligence
THEORY
 A Theory is a set of related assumptions that allows
scientists to use logical deductive reasoning to
formulate testable hypothesis
 A single assumption can never fill all the requirements
of an adequate theory
 Not proven facts that in the sense that their validity has
been absolutely established.
 Testable. Worthless if not. Need not be tested
immediately but it must suggest the possibility that
scientists in the future might develop.
What makes a theory useful?
 Generates research – descriptive; Hypothesis testing.
 Is falsifiable – verifiable
 Organizes data – organizes and integrates. Shapes bits
of information into meaningful arrangement
 Guides action – practical and provides structure for
finding answers
 Internally consistent – components are compatible
and is operationally defined
 Parsimonious – simple and straightforward
HYPOTHESIS
 A Hypothesis is an educated guess or prediction,
specific enough for its validity to be tested through the
use of the scientific method.
 Springs forth from a theory
 Deductive reasoning – general to specific
 Inductive reasoning – specific to general
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 The field of personality is concerned with individual
differences
 It always suggests direction for research
 Helps pull together what we know and suggest how we may
discover of what is yet unknown
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Explains why people behave as they do from an empirical
scientific perspective
 Unravel the complexity of human behavior to gain insight
into the causes of our behavior and development.
 To explain and to predict behavior
 Answers what, how, and why of personality to help us
explain and understand the individual person and people as
such.
 What they are like – characteristics
 How they became that way – determinants
 Why they behave as they do – reasons
RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY THEORY
 The primary criterion for a useful theory is its ability to
generate research
 The reliability of a measuring instrument is the extent
to which it yields consistent results
 Validity – is a degree to which an instrument measures
what is supposed to measure
 Construct validity – is the extent to which an
instrument measures some hypothetical construct
such as extraversion, aggressiveness, intelligence,
and emotional stability.
 Convergent construct validity – a measuring
instrument has this to the extent that scores on that
instrument correlate highly with scores on a variety
of valid measures
 Divergent construct – if it has low or insignificant
correlations with other inventories that do not
reassure construct
 Discriminant construct – if it discriminates
between two groups of people known to be
different.
 Predictive validity – is the extent that a test
predicts some future behavior
FREUD: PSYCHOANALYSIS
UNCONSCIOUS
 Drives, urges, and instincts that are beyond awareness
 Motivates most of our words, feelings, and actions
 Explanation for the meaning behind dreams
 Often enter the consciousness only after being disguised or
distorted
 Primary censor - unconscious images must be
disguised to get past through this
 Final censor. – watches the passageway that
connects the preconscious and the conscious
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Punishment and suppression – create feelings of anxiety
and then stimulates repression
 Repression – forcing of unwanted anxiety-ridden
experiences into the unconscious as a defense against the
pain of that anxiety
 Phylogenetic endowment – experiences of our early
ancestors that have been passed on to us through hundreds
of generations of repetition.
PRECONSCIOUS
 Not in the conscious but can become conscious either quite
readily or with difficulty
 Can be from:
 Conscious perception – perception is just
conscious for a transitory period. It shifts to
preconscious when the focus of attention shifts to
another idea. It is free from anxiety and is much
more similar to conscious images.
 Unconscious – can slip through the sensor and
enter the preconscious in a disguised form.
CONSCIOUS
 Plays a relatively minor role in psychoanalytic theory
 Mental elements in awareness at any given point in time
 The only level of mental life directly available to us.
 Can be from:
 Perceptual conscious – turned toward the outer
world and acts as a medium for the perception of
external stimuli. What we perceive enters
consciousness if it is not too threatening.
 Mental structure – includes non-threatening ideas
from the preconscious as well as menacing but
well disguised images from the unconscious.
PROVINCES OF THE MIND
 Das Es (Id)
 Das Ich (Ego)
 Uber Ich (Superego)
ID
 Is at the core of personality and is completely
unconscious
 It has no contact with reality, yet it strives constantly to
reduce tension by satisfying basic desires
 Is also known as the “Pleasure Principle” o Aside
from being unrealistic and pleasure seeking, the id is
illogical and can simultaneously entertain incompatible
ideas
EGO
 The only region of the mind in contact with reality o It
grows out of the id during infancy and becomes a
person’s sole source of communication with the
external world
 Is also known as the “Reality Principle”
 Decision making; executive branch of personality
 The ego becomes anxious as it binds the claims of the
id and superego to the real world. It uses repression and
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other defense mechanisms to defend itself against
anxiety.
SUPEREGO
 Represents the moral and ideal aspects of personality
and is guided by the moralistic and idealistic principles
 It has no energy of its own and grows out of the ego.
 It has no contact to the outside world, thus an
unrealistic demand for perfection
 Is also known as the “morality principle”
 Conscience – tells us what we should not do based
from experiences with punishment for improper
behavior
 Ego-ideal – develops from experiences with rewards
for proper behavior
DYNAMICS OF PERSONALITY
 People are motivated to seek pleasure and reduce tension
and anxiety. This motivation is derived from physical and
psychical energy that springs from their basic drives.
INSTINCTS
 Internal drives or impulse that operates a constant
motivational force
 Originates in the id but is later controlled by the ego
DRIVES
 Operate as a constant motivational force. As an internal
stimulus, drives differ from external stimuli in that they
cannot be avoided through flight.
 Every basic drive is characterized by an impetus, a
source and aim of an object.
 Impetus – is referred to as the force that a drive exerts.
 Source – region of the body in a state of excitation or
reducing the tension
 Aim – is to seek pleasure by reducing tension and
removing the excitation
 Object – is the person or thing that serves as the means
through which the aim is satisfied.
LIFE INSTINCT (SEXUAL INSTINCT - EROS)
 Perpetuates life of the individual and life of the species.
 Brings pleasure within a person by removing the state
of sexual excitation
 All pleasurable activity is traceable to the sexual drive
 Aim of sexual drive is pleasure but this pleasure is not
limited to genital satisfaction
 Ultimate aim of sexual drive is the reduction of sexual
tension
 Much behavior is originally motivated by Eros is
difficult to recognize as sexual behavior
 Erotic object can easily be transformed or displaced
 Erogenous zones – are zones where we experience
pleasure/Eros/life
o Genitals
o Mouth
o Anus
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Libido – “I desire”. It is the force by which the sexual
instinct works
o Narcissism
o Sadism
o Masochism
o Love
Narcissism
 Primary narcissism – universal self-centeredness of
infants
 Secondary narcissism - a moderate degree of self-
love that occurs during puberty.
Sadism
 Sadism – is the need for sexual pleasure by inflicting
pain or humiliation on another person.
Masochism
 Masochism – experiencing sexual pleasure from
suffering pain and humiliation inflicted either by
themselves or others
Love
 Love - Investing libido into an external object
 Love is a reciprocal state of attraction o Overt sexual
love for members of the family is ordinarily repressed
DEATH INSTINCT (DEATH DRIVE – THANATOS)
 Death drive
 Named “mortido” by Paul Federn
 Eduardo Weiss preferred “Destrudo”
 Destruction and aggression
 Aims to bring the organism into a state of calm
 Is flexible and can take many forms
Aggression
 The aim of the destructive drive is to return the
organism into an inorganic state
 The final aim of the aggressive sexual drive is self-
destruction
 Gossip
 Sarcasm
 Teasing
 Humiliation
 Humor
Anxiety
 It is a felt affective unpleasant state accompanied by a
physical sensation that warns the person about the
impending danger
 Neurotic anxiety (Id) – is an apprehension about an
unknown danger
 Moral anxiety (Superego) – is an outgrowth of the
conflict between ego and superego
 Realistic anxiety (Ego) – is defined as an unpleasant
non-specific feeling involving a possible danger
 Birth trauma – anxiety experienced we are separated
from our mother. This signifies a change from one
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environment of complete security and satisfaction to
one which the satisfaction is less predictable.
DEFENSE MECHANISM
 Defense mechanisms are universally used. However, it
can lead to compulsive repetitive and neurotic
behavior.
 Lessens psychic energy that is supposed to satisfy the
id.
 Avoids dealing directly with sexual and aggressive
implosives and to defend itself against the anxiety that
accompanies them.
1. Repression
 The most basic mechanism because it is involved
in each of the others.
 It forces id impulses into the unconscious
2. Denial
 Refusal to accept reality
 Blocking external events from awareness
3. Undoing
 cancel out or remove an unhealthy, destructive or
otherwise threatening thought or action by
engaging in contrary behavior
4. Reaction formation
 Defense mechanism in which a repressed impulse
may become conscious through adopting a
disguise that is directly opposite its original form
5. Displacement
 People can redirect their unacceptable urges onto a
variety of people or subjects so that the original
impulse is concealed.
6. Fixation
 Is the permanent attachment of the libido onto an
earlier or more primitive stage of development.
7. Regression
 Once the libido has passed a developmental stage,
it may revert back to that earlier stage during times
of stress and anxiety
8. Projection
 Defined as seeing in others unacceptable feelings
on tendencies that usually reside in one’s own
unconscious.
9. Introjection
 Is a defense mechanism whereby people
incorporate positive qualities of another person
into their own ego
10. Sublimation
 Is the repression of the genital aim of eros by
substituting a cultural or social aim
11. Intellectualization
 Removing the emotional content from the thought
before allowing it into awareness
 Considering things in a strictly intellectual and
unemotional manner
12. Rationalization
 Cognitive distortion of the facts to make an event
or an impulse less threatening
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Present an explanation which is logically
consistent or acceptable
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
 A developmental theory is proposed by Freud and it is
almost exclusively a discussion of early childhood.
 Infantile period
 Oral Phase
 Anal Phase
 Phallic phase
 Latency period
 Genital Period
 Maturity
Infantile Period
 Infants possess a sexual life and go through a period of
pregenital sexual development during the first 4-5 years
after birth.
 Childhood sexuality is not capable of reproduction and
is exclusively autoerotic. o The sexual impulses can be
satisfied through organs other than the genitals.
Oral Phase
 the mouth is the first organ to provide an infant with
pleasure.
 The sexual aim of early oral activity is to incorporate or
receive into one’s body the object-choice, the nipple.
 Infants feel no ambivalence toward the pleasurable
object and their needs are usually satisfied with a
minimum of frustration and anxiety.
 As they grow older, they are more likely to experience
feelings of frustration and anxiety as a result of
scheduled feedings, increased lapses between feedings,
and eventual weaning.
 The anxieties are generally accompanied by feelings of
ambivalence toward their love object, the mother; and
by the increased ability of budding ego to defend itself
against the environment and anxiety.
Anal Phase
 The aggressive drive in the first year of life that takes
form of oral sadism, reaches fuller development during
the following year as the anus emerges as a sexually
pleasurable zone
 It is characterized by satisfaction gained through
aggressive behavior and excretory function.
 Also known as the “sadistic-anal phase”.
 Early anal period – children receive satisfaction by
losing or destroying objects. The destructive nature of
the sadistic drive is stronger than the erotic one.
Children often behave aggressively towards parents for
frustrating them with toilet training.
 Late anal period – they sometimes take a friendly
interest towards their feces, an interest that stems from
the erotic pleasure of defecating.
 Children will usually present their feces to parents
as a valued prize.
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(1) If the behavior is accepted, then the child will
likely grow into generous and magnanimous
adults.
(2) If otherwise, children may adopt another
method of obtaining anal pleasure, which is
holding in the feces until the pressure becomes
both painful and erotically stimulating.
 These modes of narcissistic and masochistic pleasure
lays foundation for the anal character
 Anal character – people who continue to receive
erotic satisfaction by keeping and possessing
objects in an excessively neat and orderly fashion.
 Anal Triad
 Orderliness
 Stinginess
 Obstinacy.
Phallic Phase
 The third stage of infantile development which occurs
approximately at 3 or 4 years of age.
 A time when the genital area becomes the leading
erogenous zone.
 Freud believes that physical differences between males
and females account for many important psychological
differences.
 Male Oedipus complex – preceding the phallic stage
an infant boy forms an identification with his father; he
wants to be his father. Later he develops a sexual desire
for his mother; he wants to have his mother. He then
later on gives up the identification with his father and
retains the stronger feeling which is the desire to have
his mother. The boy now sees his father as his rival.
CONCEPT CAGE
Oedipus complex – the condition of rivalry toward the father
and incestuous feelings towards the mother.
Complete Oedipus complex – is an ambivalent condition
wherein hostility and affection coexist because one or both
feelings may be unconscious.
 These feelings of ambivalence in a boy play a role
in the evolution of the castration complex, which
for boys takes the form of castration anxiety or
the fear of losing the penis.
 Castration complex – begins after a boy becomes
aware of the absence of penis in girls. After a
period of mental struggle, the boy is forced to
conclude that the girl has had her penis cut off.
Female Oedipus complex – pre-oedipal girls assume that all
children have genitals similar to their own. As they discover that
boys do not have the same genital equipment as theirs, they
become envious of the appendage, feel cheated and desire to
have a penis. This penis envy is a powerful force in the
development of girl’s personality.
 Freud believed that penis envy is often expressed
as a wish to be a boy or a desire to have a man.
 A girl initially establishes an identification with
her mother to that of a boy’s. The incestuous
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
feelings are later turned into hostility when the girl
holds her mother responsible for bringing her into
the world without a penis.
 The libido is then turned toward her father.
Simple female Oedipus complex – the desire for sexual
intercourse with the father and
accompanying feelings of hostility for the mother.
Latency Period
 From the 4th or 5th year until puberty, both boys and
girls, but not always, go through a period of dormant
psychosexual development.
 Is brought about by parent’s attempts to punish or
discourage sexual activity in their young children.
 If parental suppression is successful, children will
repress their sexual drive and direct their psychic
energy toward school friendships, hobbies, and other
non-sexual activities.
 The prohibition of sexual activity is part of our
phylogenetic endowment and needs no
personal experiences of punishment for sexual
activities to repress the sexual drive.
Genital Period
 the reawakening of the sexual aim is signaled by
puberty.
 Adolescents give up autoeroticism and direct their
sexual energy toward another person instead toward
themselves.
 Reproduction is now possible.
 Although the penis envy may still linger in girls, the
vagina finally obtains the same status for them that the
penis had for them in infancy.
 Boys now see the female organ as a sought-after object
rather than a source of trauma.
 Entire sexual drive takes on a more complete
organization, and the component drives that had
operated somewhat independently during the early
infantile period gain a kind of synthesis during
adolescence
Maturity
 A stage attained by everyone who reaches physical
maturity.
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 Psychological maturity is a stage attained after a
person has passed through the earlier developmental
periods in an ideal manner.
 Psychoanalytically mature individuals would have a
balance among the structures of the mind, with their
ego controlling their id and superego but at the same
time allowing for reasonable desires and demands.
 Their id impulses would be expressed honestly and
consciously with no traces of shame or guilt, and
their superego would move beyond parental
identification and control with no remnants of
antagonism or incest.
 Their ego-ideal would be realistic and congruent
with their ego, and the boundary between their
superego and ego would become nearly
imperceptible.
FREUD’S LATER THERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUE
 The primary goal of his later psychoanalytic therapy
was to uncover repressed memories through free
association and dream analysis.
 His therapy works by transforming the unconscious to
what is conscious, and it works only in so far as it is in
a position to effect that transformation.
CONCEPT CAGE
Free association – patients are required to verbalize every
thought that comes to their mind, no matter how irrelevant or
repugnant it may appear.
 Its purpose is to arrive at the unconscious by
starting with a present conscious idea and
following it to a train of associations to wherever it
leads.
Transference – is the strong sexual or aggressive feelings,
positive or negative, that patients develop toward their analyst
during the course of treatment.
 Positive transference permits patients to more or
less relive childhood experiences within the
nonthreatening climate of the analytic treatment
 Negative transference in the form of hostility
must be recognized by the therapist and explained
to patients so that they can overcome any
resistance to the treatment.
 Resistance refers to a variety of unconscious
responses used by patients to block their own
progress in therapy.
LIMITATIONS OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT
 Not all memories can or should be brought into
consciousness
 Treatment is not as effective with psychoses or with
constitutional illness as it is with phobias, hysterias,
and obsessions.
 A patient, once cured, may later develop another
psychic problem.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 When analytic treatment is successful, patients no  Freud used the German term “Fehlleistung” meaning
longer suffer from debilitating symptoms, they use their “faulty function” but James Strachey, one of Freud’s
psychic energy to perform ego functions, and they have translators, invented the term parapraxes to refer to
an expanded ego that includes previously repressed what many people call now as Freudian slips.
experiences.  Freud insisted that these actually have meaning, and
they reveal the unconscious intention of a person.
Dream analysis  The intentions of the unconscious supplant the weaker
 Was used by Freud to manifest content of dreams to intentions of the preconscious, thereby revealing a
the more important latent content. person’s true purpose.
 Manifest content – is the surface meaning or the
conscious description given by the dreamer.
 Latent content – refers to the unconscious material of
a dream.
 Nearly all dreams are wish fulfillments which are
mostly expressed in the latent content and only the
dream interpretation can uncover it. o An exception to
the rule that dreams are wish fulfillments is found in
patients suffering from a traumatic experience.
 Repetition compulsion is the principle that dreams of
people, usually with posttraumatic stress disorder,
follow.
 Dreams are formed in the unconscious but try to make
their way into the conscious. To slip past both primary
and final censors, the psychic material is forced to
adopt a disguised form.
 Condensation – the fact that the manifest dream
content is not as extensive as latent level, indicating
that the unconscious material has been abbreviated or
condensed before appearing to manifest level.
 Displacement – means that the dream image is
replaced by some other idea only remotely related to it.
 Dreams can deceive dreamer by inhibiting or reversing
the dreamer’s affect.

 Methods of interpreting dreams

 Asking patients to relate their dreams and all their
associations to it, no matter how illogical or
unrelated these associations seemed.
 Discovering the unconscious wish behind the
dream using dream symbols.

 Three typical anxiety dreams

 Dream of nakedness – the dreamer feels
embarrassed of being naked or improperly dressed
in the presence of strangers.
 Dream of a death of a beloved person –
originates in childhood and are wish fulfillments of
a death of a younger or older member of the
family.
 Dreams of failing an examination – the dreamer
always dreams of an exam that has been
successfully passed and never failed ones.

Freudian slips
 Slips of the tongue or pen, misreading, incorrect
hearing, misplacing objects, and temporarily forgetting
names or intentions are not chance accidents but reveal
a person’s unconscious intentions.

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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
ADLER: INDIVIDUAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 Adler saw people as being motivated mostly by social
influences and by their striving for superiority or success.
 Adler believed that people are largely responsible for who
they are
 Adler believed that present behavior is shaped by people’s
view of the future.
 He believed that psychologically healthy people are usually
aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it
ADLERIAN THEORY
 Adler believed that people are born with weak inferior
bodies. This condition leads to feelings of inferiority and a
consequent dependence on other people.
 Social interest – refers to the feeling of unity with others
that is inherent in people and the ultimate standard for
psychological health.
THREE REASONS FOR BEING LESS WELL KNOWN
 Adler did not establish a tightly run organization to
perpetuate his theories.
 He was not particularly gifted writer
 His views were incorporated in works of other
theorists, thus are no longer associated with Adler’s
name.
IMPORTANT NOTIONS OF INDIVIDUAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is the
striving for success or superiority
 People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior
and personality
 Person is unified and self-consistent
 The value of all human activity must be seen from the
viewpoint of social interest
 The self-consistent personality structure develops into a
person’s style of life
 The style of life is molded by people’s creative power.
STRIVING FOR SUCCESS AND SUPERIORITY
 “The one dynamic force behind people’s behavior is
the striving for success or superiority”
 Everyone begins life with physical deficiencies that
activate feelings of inferiority. These feelings motivate
a person to strive for either superiority or success.
 Psychologically unhealthy individuals strive for
personal superiority, whereas psychologically healthy
people seek success for all humanity
CONCEPT CAGE
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Masculine protest – implies will to power or a domination of
others.
Striving for superiority – was limited to those people who
strive for personal superiority over others.
Striving for success – used to describe the actions of people
who are motivated by highly developed social interest.
FINAL GOAL
 People strive toward a final goal of either personal
superiority or the goal of success for all humankind.
 The final goal is fictional and has no objective
existence.
 It unifies personality and renders all behavior
comprehensible.
 It is not genetically or environmentally determined. It is
the product of creative power.
 Creative power – is an individual’s ability to freely
shape their behavior and create their own personality. It
is developed around 4 or 5 years of age for the child to
be able to set their final goal.
 Adler hypothesized that children will compensate for
feelings of inferiority in devious wats that have no
apparent relationship to their fictional goal.
 People create and pursue many preliminary goals
which are often conscious, but the connection between
them and the final goal usually remains unknown.
STRIVING FORCE AS COMPENSATION
 People strive for superiority or success as a means of
compensation for feelings of inferiority or wanes.
 Adler believed that physical deficiencies ignite feelings
of inferiority because people possess and innate
tendency toward completion or wholeness.
 Striving force is innate, but its nature and direction are
due both to feelings of inferiority and to the goal of
superiority.
 Striving for success is innate, but it must be developed.
 About the age of 4 or 5, children begin the process of
actualizing their potential in their own manner by
setting a direction to the striving force and by
establishing a goal either of personal superiority or of
social success.
 The goal may take any form for it is not necessarily a
mirror image of the deficiency.
CONCEPT CAGE
Creative power is ultimately responsible for people’s
personality. Heredity establishes the potentiality .
Environment contributes to the development of social interest
and courage.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Teleology – is an explanation of behavior in terms of its final
purpose or aim
Causality – considers behavior as springing from a specific
cause.
STRIVING FOR PERSONAL SUPERIORITY
 Some people strive for superiority with little or no
concerns for others. Their goals are personal ones, and
their strivings are motivated largely by exaggerated
feelings of personal inferiority
 Inferiority complex – exaggerated feelings of personal
inferiority
 Some people create clever disguises of their personal
striving and may consciously or unconsciously hide
their self-centeredness behind the cloak of social
concern.
STRIVING FOR SUCCESS
 Psychologically healthy people are motivated by social
interest and the success of all humankind.
 These individuals are concerned with goals beyond
themselves, help others without expecting a
personal payoff, and are capable to see others as
people who they can cooperate with.
 Their sense of personal worth is tied closely to their
contributions to human society.
SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTIONS
 “People’s subjective perceptions shape their behavior
and personality”
 Fictions – subjective perceptions of reality or one’s
own expectations of the future.
FICTIONALISM
 The most important fictions are the goal of superiority
or success that we created early in life but may not
clearly understand. Vahinger believed that these ideas
continue to affect and influence people as if they really
existed.
 People are motivated not by what is true but by their
subjective perceptions of what is true.
 People are motivated by present perceptions of the
future.
PHYSICAL INFERIORITIES
 Because people begin life inferior, they develop a
fiction about how to overcome their physical
deficiencies and become big, strong, and superior.
 The human race is blessed with organ inferiorities
which becomes meaningful when they stimulate
subjective feelings of inferiority which serves as an
impetus toward perfection or completion.
 These do not cause a particular style of life. Instead,
they provide present motivation for reaching future
goals.
UNITY AND SELF-CONSISTENCY OF PERSONALITY
 “Personality is unified and self-consistent”
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 Individual psychology insists on the fundamental unity
of personality and the notion that inconsistent behavior
does not exist since all actions and behavior are
directed toward a single goal and serve a single
purpose.
 Inconsistent behavior appears as clever but unconscious
attempts to confuse and subordinate people, when
viewed from a perspective of a final goal.
ORGAN DIALECT
 Disturbance of one part of the body that speaks a
language which is usually more expressive than words
are able to do.
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSIOUS
 Unconscious – is neither clearly formulated nor
completely understood by the individual.
 Conscious – thought that are understood and regarded
by the individual.
SOCIAL INTEREST
 “The value of all human activity must be seen from the
viewpoint of social interest”
 Gemeinschaftsgefühl – a feeling of oneness with all
humanity and it implies membership in the social
community of all people.
 Social interest – is the natural condition of the human
species and the adhesive that binds society together. It is a
necessity for perpetuating the human species.
ORIGINS OF SOCIAL INTEREST
 The two parents influence a child’s social interest in
somewhat different ways.
Mother
 Develops a bond that encourages the child’s mature
social interest and fosters a sense of cooperation.
 Healthy love relationship develops a true caring of a
mother for her child, her husband and other people.
 A mother can broaden her child’s social interest if she
learned to give and receive love from others.
 If she favors the child over the father, the child may
become pampered and spoiled
 If she favors the father over the child, the child may
become neglected and unloved.
Father
 Must develop a caring attitude toward his wife and
other people
 The ideal father cooperates in equal footing with the
child’s mother in caring for the child as a human being.
 A successful father avoids the dual errors of emotional
detachment and paternal authoritarianism
 A father’s emotional detachment may influence the
child to develop a warped sense of social interest.
 The relationship that a child has with the mother and
father is so powerful that it smothers the effects of
heredity.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL INTEREST
 It is the only gauge to be used in determining the
usefulness of a life.
 Immature people lack Gemeinschaftsgefühl, are self-
centered, and strive for personal power and superiority
over others.
STYLE OF LIFE
 “The self-consistent personality structure develops into
a person’s style of life.
 Style of life – refers to the flavor of a person’s life. It
includes a personal goal, a self-concept, feelings for
others, and attitude toward the world. It is the product
of the interaction of heredity, environment and a
person’s creative power.
 It is established around the age of 4 or 5.
 All our actions revolve around our unified style of life.
 Psychologically unhealthy individuals often lead rather
inflexible lives that are marked by an inability to
choose new wats of reacting to the environment.
 Psychologically healthy individuals behave in a diverse
and flexible styles of life that are complex, enriched,
and changing. § Major problems of life
- Neighborly love
- Sexual love
- Occupation
SAFEGUARDING TENDENCIES
CREATIVE POWER
 “Style of life is molded by people’s creative power”
 Creative power – places people in control of their own
lives. It is responsible for their final goal and it
determines their method of striving for that goal and
contributes to the development of social interest
 Makes a person a free individual
 People are creative beings who not only react to their
environment but also act in it and cause it to react to
them
 We are who we are because of the use we have made of
our bricks and mortar
ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENT
 One factor underlying all types of maladjustments is
underdeveloped social interest.
 Neurotics tend to:
 Set goals too high
 Live in their own private world
 Have a rigid and dogmatic style of life
 People become failures in life because they are
overconcerned with themselves and care little about
others.
EXTERNAL FACTORS IN MALADJUSTMENT
1. Exaggerated physical deficiencies
2. Pampered style of life
3. Neglected life
Exaggerated physical deficiencies
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 Physical deficiencies must be accompanied by
accentuated feelings of inferiority. These subjective
feelings may be greatly encouraged by a defective body
 They tend to be concerned with themselves and lack
consideration for others.
Pampered style of life
 Pampered people have weak social interest but a strong
desire to perpetuate the pampered, parasitic relationship
they had with one of their parents.
 They expect others to look after them, overprotect
them, and satisfy their needs.
 Pampered children have not received too much love.
They rather feel unloved as they parents have
demonstrated a lack of love by doing too much for
them and by treating them as if they were incapable of
solving their own problems.
Neglected style of life
 Children who feel unloved and unwanted are likely to
borrow heavily from these feelings in creating a
neglected style of life.
 Abused and mistreated children develop little social
interest and tend to create a neglected style of life.
 They are distrustful of other people and are unable to
cooperate for the common welfare.
 Enables people to hide their inflated self-image and to
maintain their current style of life
 These are largely conscious and shield a person’s
fragile self-esteem from public disgrace.
Excuses
 Most common safeguarding tendency expressed in the
“yes, but” and “if only” format.
 These protects a weal but artificially inflated sense of
self-worth and deceive people into believing that they
are more superior that they really are.
Aggression
 Some people use aggression to safeguard their
exaggerated superiority complex to protect their fragile
self-esteem.
 Depreciation – is the tendency to undervalue other
people’s achievements and to overvalue one’s own
failures
 Accusation – the tendency to blame others for
one’s failures and to seek revenge
 Self-accusation – marked by self-torture and guilt.
Withdrawal
 The tendency of people to run away from difficulties.
Some people unconsciously escape life’s problems by
setting up a distance between themselves and those
problems.
 Moving backward – is the tendency to safeguard one’s
fictional goal of superiority by psychologically
reverting to a more secure period of life.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Standing still – people simply do not move in any  Is used to enhance courage, lessen feelings of
direction. They avoid all responsibility by ensuring inferiority, and encourage social interest.
themselves against any threat of failure  Therapy in public – is believed to be a procedure that
 Hesitating – procrastinations eventually give the enhances children’s social interest by allowing them to
excuse of things being too late. feel that they belong to a community of concerned
 Constructing obstacles – by overcoming an obstacle, adults.
they protect their self-esteem and their prestige.  The therapeutic relationship awakens their social
interest in the same manner that children gain social
MASCULINE PROTEST interest from their parents
 A condition wherein cultural and social practices influence
many men and women to overemphasize the importance of
being manly
 In many societies, both men and women place an inferior
value on being a woman
 Adler assumed that want more or less the same things that
men want.

APPLICATIONS OF INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

FAMILY CONSTELLATION
 Refers to the birth order, the gender of siblings, the age
spread between siblings of an individual
 Firstborn
 Are likely to have intensified feelings of power
and superiority, high anxiety, and overprotective
tendencies
 Second born
 Begin life in a better situation for developing
cooperation and social interest
 Personality is shaped by their perception of the
older child’s attitude towards them
 Youngest
 Are the most pampered and run a high risk of
being problem children.
 Likely to have feelings of inferiority and to lack a
sense of independence.
 Only
 Often develop an exaggerated sense of superiority
and an inflated self-concept
 Lack well-developed feelings of cooperation and
social interest

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS
 People construct the events to make them consistent
with a theme or pattern that runs throughout their lives.
 These are always consistent with people’s present style
of life and their subjective account of these experiences
yields clues to understanding both their final goal and
their present style of life.

DREAMS
 Provides clues for solving future problems
 Most dreams are self-deceptions and not easily
understood by the dreamer
 The more that an individual’s dream is inconsistent
with reality, the more likely that person’s dream can be
used for self-deception

PSYCHOTHERAPY
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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Embraces all repressed and
subliminally perceived experiences of an
individual.
 It is formed by our individual experiences and is then
unique to each of us.

Complex – is an emotionally toned conglomeration of

associated ideas. These are largely personal but they may also be
partly derived from humanity’s collective experience.

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
 is rooted in the ancestral past of the entire species.
 Its contents are inherited and pass from one generation
to the next as a psychic potential.
 Contents are more or less same for people in all
cultures
 Responsible for people’s myths, legends, and religious
beliefs.
 Refers to human’s innate tendency to react in a
particular way whenever their experiences stimulate a
biologically inherited response tendency
 These are initially forms without content, representing
merely a possibility of a certain type of perception or
action. Upon repetition, the forms begin to develop
content and later on emerge as archetypes.

ARCHETYPES
 Ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective
unconscious.
JUNG: ANALYTICAL  Emotionally toned collections of associated images that are
PSYCHOLOGY generalized and derive from the contents of the collective
unconscious.

Instinct – unconscious physical impulse toward action. Its

 Rests on the assumption that occult phenomena can and do
influence the lives of everyone
 Each of us is motivated by repressed experiences and by
emotionally toned experiences inherited from our ancestors
 Compendium of opposites
 Collective unconscious – elements that we have never
experienced individually but which have come down to us
from our ancestors
 Archetypes – highly developed elements of the collective
unconscious
LEVELS OF PSYCHE
CONSCIOUS
 Images sensed by the ego
 Plays a relatively minor role
 Overemphasis on expanding the conscious can lead to
psychological imbalance
Ego – is more restrictive than Freud’s notion of it. It is the
center of consciousness but not the core of personality. It must
be completed by the more comprehensive self.
PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS
counterpart are the archetypes.
 Both archetypes and instincts are unconsciously determined
and both can help shape personality.
 Has a biological basis but originate through the repeated
experiences of the early ancestors.
 Cannot be directly represented, but expresses itself through
several modes when activated.
 Archetypal material’s source are dreams.
Persona
 The side of personality that people show to the world
 Jung believed that each of us should project a particular
role that society dictates to each of us.
 Identifying to much with the persona will result to us
losing touch with our inner self and remain dependent
on society’s expectations of us.
Shadow
 Is the archetype of darkness and repression o It
represents those qualities we do not wish to
acknowledge but attempt to hide from ourselves and
others

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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Consists of morally objectionable tendencies as well as
a number of constructive and creative qualities that we
are reluctant to face.
 Continually striving to know our shadow is the first test
of our courage
Anima
 The archetype that represents the femininity of an
individual that remains extremely resistant to
consciousness.
 A man getting acquainted with his anime is referred to
as the second test of courage by Jung.
 Originated from men’s early experiences with women
that combined to form a generalized picture of a
woman
 It influences the feeling inside a man and is the
explanation for certain irrational moods and feelings.
Animus
 The masculine archetype in women that is symbolic of
thinking and reasoning.
 Originates from the encounters of prehistoric women
with men.
 Is responsible for thinking and opinion in women as it
also is the explanation for the irrational thinking and
illogical opinions often attributed to women.
Great mother
 Is a derivative of the anima and is present in everyone.
 Represents two opposing forces of fertility and
destruction. o Fertility and power combine to form the
concept of rebirth.
Wise old man
 Symbolizes humans’ pre-existing knowledge of the
mysteries of life.
 It is unconscious and cannot be directly experienced by
a single individual
 It is personified I dreams as father, grandfather,
teacher, philosopher, guru, doctor, or priest.
Hero
 Is the archetype represented in mythology and legends
as a powerful person who fights against great odds to
conquer or vanquish evil.
 It is demonstrated by our fascination with the heroes of
movies, novels, plays, and television programs
 The image of the archetypal conquering hero represents
victory over forces of darkness.
Self
 The inherited tendency to move toward growth,
perfection, and completion.
 Archetype of archetypes because it pulls together the
other archetypes and unites them in a process of self-
realization.
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 It possesses conscious and personal unconscious
components, but is mostly formed by collective
unconscious images
 Includes both personal and collective unconscious
images.
 It unites opposing elements of the psyche.
Mandala – ultimate symbol of the self which is depicted as a
circle within a square, within a circle. It represents the strivings
of the collective unconscious for unity, balance and wholeness
DYNAMICS OF PERSONALITY
 Causality - Holds that present events have their origin in
previous experiences
 Teleology – holds that present events are motivated by
goals and aspirations for the future that direct a person’s
destiny.
 Progression – adaptation to the outside world that involves
forward flow of psychic energy
 Regression – adaptation to the inner world that involves
backward flow of psychic energy
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
 Attitude – is defined as a predisposition to act or react in a
characteristic direction. Jung insisted that each person has
both an introverted and extraverted attitude, but one may be
conscious while the other is unconscious.
INTROVERSION
 Is the inward turning of psychic energy with an
orientation toward the subjective.
 These people perceive the external world selectively
and with their own subjective view.
EXTRAVERSION
 Is the attitude distinguished by the turning outward of
psychic energy so that a person is oriented toward the
objective and away from the subjective.
 These people are more influenced by their surroundings
than by the inner world
FUNCTIONS
Thinking
 Refers to logical intellectual activity that produces a
chain of ideas. It can be introverted or extraverted
depending on a person’s basic attitude.
 Extraverted thinking – people rely on concrete
thoughts but can also use abstract ideas if the ideas
have been transmitted to them from without, for
example, from parents or teachers
 Introverted thinking – people react to external
stimuli, but their interpretation of an event is colored
more by the internal meaning they bring with them than
by the objective facts of themselves
Feeling
 Refers to the process of evaluating an idea or event
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 It is the evaluation of every conscious activity, even
those valued as indifferent.
 Most of these evaluations have no emotional content
but are capable of becoming emotions once their
intensity increases to the point of stimulating
physiological changes within the person
 Extroverted feeling – people use objective data to
make evaluations. They are guided by the external
values and widely accepted standards of judgement
 Introverted feeling – people base their value
judgements primarily on subjective perceptions rather
than objective facts. These people have an
individualized conscience and they ignore traditional
opinions and beliefs.
Sensing
 is the function that receives physical stimuli and
transmits them to perceptual consciousness called
sensation.
 It is referred to as a concept similar to the perception of
sensory impulses.
 Extraverted sensing – people perceive external stimuli
objectively, in much the same way that these stimuli
exist in reality.
 Introverted sensing – people are largely influenced by
their subjective sensations of sight, sound, taste, and
touch.
Intuiting
 Intuition involves perception beyond the workings of
the consciousness.
 It is based on the perception of absolute elementary
facts but it is more creative and often adds or subtracts
elements from conscious sensation.
 Extraverted intuitive – people are oriented toward
facts in the external world and rather than fully sensing
them, they merely perceive them subliminally.
 Introverted intuitive – people are guided by
unconscious perception of facts that are basically
subjective and have little or no resemblance to external
reality.
DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY
 Jung believed that personality develops through a series of
stages that culminate in individuation or self-actualization.
 He compared the trip through life to the journey of the sun
through the sky, with the brightness of the sun representing
consciousness.
CHILDHOOD
 Anarchic stage
 Is characterized by the chaotic and sporadic
consciousness.
 Experiences of the anarchic phase sometimes enter
consciousness as primitive images, incapable of
being accurately verbalized
 Monarchic stage
 is characterized by the development of the ego and
by the beginning of logical and verbal thinking
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 Children see themselves objectively and often refer
themselves in the third person.
 Dualistic stage
 ego as perceiver arises when the ego is divided into
the objective and subjective.
 Children now refer to themselves in the first
person and are aware of their existence as separate
individuals
YOUTH
 Refers to the period from puberty until middle life.
 It should be a period of increased activity, maturing
sexuality, growing consciousness, and recognition that
the problem-free era of childhood is gone forever.
 The major difficulty is to overcome the natural
tendency to cling to the narrow consciousness of
childhood.
MIDDLE LIFE
 Begins at around ages 35 or 40, by which time the sun
has passed its zenith and begins its downward descent.
 Although the decline can present middle-aged people
with increasing anxieties, it is also a period of
tremendous potential.
 People must look to the future with hope and
anticipation, surrender the lifestyle of youth, and
discover a new meaning.
OLD AGE
 Referred to as the evening of life.
 People experience a diminution of consciousness .
 Death is the goal of life and life can be fulfilling only
when death is seen in this light.
CONCEPT CAGE
SELF-REALIZATION
 Psychological rebirth that is also referred to as
individuation
 It is the process of becoming an individual or while
person. It is the process of integrating the opposite
poles into a single homogenous individual.
 Once achieved, it means that a person has all
psychological components functioning in unity.
 It is extremely rare as it is achieved only by people who
are able to assimilate their
 unconscious into their personality
 Self-realized people are dominated neither by the
unconscious processes nor by the conscious ego but
achieves a balance between all aspects of personality.
JUNG’S METHODS OF INVESTIGATION
WORD ASSOCIATION TEST
 Its basic purpose in Jungian Psychology today is to
uncover feeling-toned complexes
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 It is based on the principle that complexes create
measurable emotional responses
 Jung typically used a list of about 100 words chosen
and arranged to elicit an emotional reaction.
 He instructed the person to respond to each stimulus
word with the first word that came to mind.
 Each verbal response is recorded, as well as the time
taken to make a response, rate of breathing, and
galvanic skin response.
 Any one or combination of certain responses might
indicate that a complex has been reached.
DREAM ANALYSIS
 Jung believed that people used symbols to represent a
variety of concepts to try to comprehend the
innumerable things beyond the range of human
understanding.
 Dreams are treated as our unconscious and spontaneous
attempt to know the unknowable, to comprehend a
reality that can only be expressed symbolically
 The purpose of this is to uncover elements from the
personal and collective unconscious and to integrate
them into consciousness in order to facilitate the
process of self-realization.
CONCEPT CAGE
Big dreams – have a special meaning for all people
Typical dreams – are common to most people. These dreams
include archetypal figures, may also touch on archetypal events,
and may also include archetypal objects.
Earliest dreams remembered – are dreams that can be traced
back to about age 3-4 and contain mythological and symbolic
images and motifs that could not have reasonably been
experienced by the individual child
ACTIVE IMAGINATION
 Is a technique that Jung used during his own self-
analysis as well as with many of his patients.
 The method requires a person to begin with any
impression and to concentrate until the impression
begins to move.
 The person must follow these images to wherever they
lead and then courageously face these autonomous
images and freely communicate with them.
 Its purpose is to reveal archetypal images emerging
from the unconscious
PSYCHOTHERAPY
 Jung identified four basic approaches to therapy
1. Confession of a pathogenic secret - this is the
cathartic method that is effective for patients who
merely have a need to share their secrets
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2. Interpretation, explanation, elucidation – this
method gives patients insight into the causes of their
neuroses, but may still leave them incapable of solving
social problems.
3. Education of patients as social beings - a method that
was similarly used by Adler
4. Transformation – is the fourth stage that Jung
suggested. The therapist must first be transformed into
a healthy human being. Only after transformation and
an established philosophy of life is the therapist able to
help patients move toward individuation or wholeness.
This stage is especially employed with patients who are
in their second half of life who are concerned with
realization of the inner self.
 The ultimate purpose of Jungian therapy is to help
neurotic patients become healthy and to encourage
healthy people to work independently toward self-
realization.
 Countertransference - is a term used to describe a
therapist’s feelings toward the patient. This may or may
not contribute to the progress of the treatment.
KLEIN: OBJECT RELATIONS
THEORY
 Is an offspring of Freud’s instinct theory
 Places less emphasis on biologically placed drives and more
importance on consistent patterns of interpersonal
relationships
 Tends to be more maternal as it stresses the intimacy and
nurturing of the mother
 Object relations theorists generally sees human contact and
relatedness as the prime motive of human behavior
 Object relations theorists
1. Margaret S. Mahler – infant’s struggle to gain
autonomy and a sense of self
2. Heinz Kohut – formation of the self
3. John Bowlby – stages of separation anxiety
4. Mary Ainsworth – styles of attachment
 Klein and other object relations theorists begin with the
basic assumption of Freud about the object and speculate
on how the infant’s real or fantasized early relations with
the mother or the breast, become the model for all later
interpersonal relationships.
 An important portion of any relationship is the internal
psychic representations of early significant objects that have
been introjected or taken into the infant’s psychic nature
and is then projected to one’s partner.
PSYCHIC LIFE OF THE INFANT
 The first 4 to 6 months of an infant’s life is crucial.
 Infants do not begin life with a blank slate but with an
inherited predisposition to reduce the anxiety they
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
experience as a result of the conflict produced by the forces
of the life instinct and the power of the death instinct.
 Infant’s innate readiness to act or react presupposes the
existence of phylogenetic endowment.
PHANTASIES
 An infant possesses and active phantasy life.
 Are psychic representations of unconscious id instincts;
and should not be confused with the conscious fantasies
of older children and adults.
 Neonates have unconscious images of “good” and
“bad”.
 As infants mature, unconscious phantasies connected
with the breast continue to exert and impact on psychic
life.
 The newer ones that emerged and the later unconscious
phantasies are shaped by both reality and
predispositions.
 These phantasies can be contradictory because they are
unconscious.
OBJECTS
 Klein believed that from early infancy children relate to
these external objects, both in fantasy and in reality.
 Earliest object relations are with the mother’s breast.
 Interest develops later on to the face and the hands
what attend to his needs and gratify them.
 While in their active fantasy, infants introject the
external objects such as the father’s penis, and the
mother’s hand face.
 Introjected objects are fantasies of internalizing the
object in concrete and physical terms.
POSITIONS
 Infants organize their experiences into positions as they
attempt to deal with the dichotomy of good and bad
feelings.
 The term “position” is used to indicate that positions
alternate back and forth
 They are not periods or time or phases of development
through which a person passes. Intended to represent
normal social growth and development.
PARANOID-SCHIZOID POSITION
 Is adopted by the infant to control the good breast and
fight off its persecutors
 It is a way of organizing experiences that includes both
paranoid feelings of being persecuted and splitting of
internal and external objects into the good and bad.
 The alternating experiences of gratification and
frustration, brought by the contact of the infant with the
good and bad breast, threaten the very existence of the
infant’s vulnerable ego.
 In order to tolerate both the feelings of destructive
urges and the desire of the infant to control the breast,
the ego splits itself, retaining parts of its life and death
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instincts while deflecting parts of both the instincts
onto the breast.
CONCEPT CAGE
Persecutory breast – is feared by the infant rather than its own
death instinct.
Ideal breast – provides love, comfort and gratification.
 The infant desires to keep the ideal breast inside
itself as a protection against humiliation by
persecutors.
 The paranoid-schizoid position is developed during
the first 3 or 4 months of life, during which the
ego’s perception of the external world is subjective
and fantastic rather than objective and real.
 Infants use a biological predisposition to attach a
positive value to nourishment and the life instinct
and to assign negative value to hunger and the
death instinct.
DEPRESSIVE POSITION
 The infant begins to view external objects as a whole
and to see that good and bad can exist in the same
person, as of the infant’s 5th or 6th month.
 The infant develops a more realistic picture of the
mother and recognizes that she is an independent
person who can be both good and bad.
 The ego begins to mature to the point where it can
tolerate its some of its own destructive feelings rather
than projecting them outward.
 The infant then realizes that the mother might go away
and fears this thought. The infant shall then protect the
mother from its own destructive forces.
 The infant realizes its incapability to protect the mother
and feels guilty of the previous destructive urges
towards her. Thus, resulting to feelings of anxiety over
losing a loved object coupled with a sense of guilt for
wanting to destroy that object.
 Since the infants are now capable of recognizing the
desired and hated object as one, they reproach
themselves for the previous destructive urges and
desire to make reparation for the attacks and later on
feels empathy for the mother.
 Resolved when children fantasize that they have made
reparation for their previous transgressions, and when
they recognize that their mother shall come back after
each departure.
 When resolved, the children close the split between the
good and bad mother.
 Incomplete resolution shall result in lack of trust,
morbid mourning at the loss of a loved one, and a
variety of other psychic disorders
PSYCHIC DEFENSE MECHANISMS
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 Children adopt several psychic defense mechanisms to
protect their ego against the anxiety aroused by their own
destructive fantasies.
Introjection
 Infants fantasize taking into their body those
perceptions and experiences they have had with the
external object, originally the mother’s breast.
 Begins at an infant’s first feeding, when there is an
attempt to incorporate the breast into the infant’s body.
 The infant ordinarily tries to introject good objects as a
protection against anxiety, but the infant sometimes
introjects bad objects in order to gain control over
them.
 Introjected objects are not accurate representations of
the real objects but are colored by children’s fantasies.
Projection
 Infants use projection to get rid of good and bad
objects.
 It is the fantasy that one’s own feelings and impulses
actually reside in a person not within one’s body
 Infants alleviate the unbearable anxiety if being
destroyed by dangerous external forces by projecting
unmanageable destructive impulses to objects.
 Projection allows people to believe that their own
subjective opinions are true.
Splitting
 Keeping apart incompatible impulses o The infant
develops both a picture of a “good me” and a “bad me”
in order to separate good and bad objects.
 It enables people to see both positive and negative
aspects of themselves, to evaluate their behavior as
good or bad, and to differentiate between likeable and
unlikeable acquaintances.
 When splitting is inflexible, bad experiences are not
introjected into the good ego, and is later on repressed.
CONCEPT CAGE
Projective identification
 Is a psychic defense mechanism in which infants
split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project
them into another object, and introject them back
into themselves in a changed or distorted form.
 Exerts a powerful influence on adult interpersonal
relations as it only exists in the world of real
interpersonal relationships.
INTERNALIZATIONS
 Means that the person takes in aspects of the external world
and then organizes these introjections into a psychologically
meaningful framework.
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EGO
 Reaches maturity at a much earlier stage than Freud
assumed. Klein largely ignored the id and based her
theory on the ego’s early ability to sense both
destructive and loving forces to manage them through
splitting, projection, and introjection.
 Is mostly organized at birth, it is strong enough to feel
anxiety, to use defense mechanisms, and to form early
object relations in both phantasy and reality.
 Begins to evolve with the infant’s first experience with
feeding, when the good breast fills the infant not only
with milk, but with love and security as well.
 The ego is expanded as the infant introjects the good
breast and the bad breast.
 All experiences are evaluated by the ego in terms of
how they relate to the good and bad breast.
 The ego must split before it emerges. Klein assumed
that infants innately strive for integration while they are
forced to deal with opposing forces of life and death.
To avoid disintegration, the ego must split into a good
me and a bad me. The dual image of self allows them
to manage the good and bad aspects of external objects.
 The perceptions become more realistic as the infant
matures and the ego becomes integrated.
SUPEREGO
 Different from what Freud pictured in three ways:
(1) It emerges much earlier in life;
(2) It is not an outgrowth of the Oedipus complex;
(3) It is much more harsh and cruel.
 The more mature ego produces feelings of inferiority
and guilt. But the early superego produces terror.
 Children fear of being devoured, cut up, and torn into
pieces.
 The children’s superegos are drastically removed by
the parents. When the infant’s own destructive instinct
is experienced as anxiety, the anxiety is managed as the
child’s ego mobilizes against the death instinct. Since
the life and death instincts are cannot be completely
separated, the ego is forced to defend against its own
actions. This early ego defense serves as the foundation
for the development of the superego whose extreme
violence is reaction to the ego’s aggressive self-defense
against its own destructive tendencies.
 The harsh and cruel superego is responsible for many
antisocial and criminal tendencies in adults.
 Klein would describe a 5-year old’s superego in much
the same way Freud did. The superego arouses little
anxiety but a great measure of guilt.
OEDIPUS COMPLEX
 Klein held that the Oedipus complex begins at a much
earlier age than Freud suggested. It begins at the
earliest months of life, overlaps with the oral and anal
stages, and reaches its climax at the genital stage at
around 3 or 4 years of age.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Significant part of the children’s Oedipus complex is
the fear of retaliation from their parent for their fantasy
of emptying the parent’s body.
 Klein stressed the importance of children retaining
positive feelings toward both parents during the oedipal
years.
 She hypothesized that during its early stages, the
Oedipus complex serves the same need for both
genders, that is, to establish a positive attitude with the
good or gratifying object and to avoid the terrifying or
bad object.
 Children are capable of heterosexual and homosexual
relationships with parents since children of either
gender can direct their love alternately or
simultaneously toward each parent
Female oedipal development
 During the first months of life, a little girl sees her
mother’s breast as good and bad.
 At 6 months of age, she begins to view the breast as
more positive than negative. o Later on, she sees her
mother as full of good things and this attitude leads her
to imagine how babies are made.
 She fantasizes that her father’s penis feeds her mother
with riches, including babies.
 Since the little girl sees her father as the giver of
children, she develops a positive relationship to it and
fantasizes that her father will fill her body with babies.
o If this stage proceeds smoothly, the little girl adopts a
feminine position and has a positive relationship with
both parents.
 Under less ideal circumstances, the girl will see her
mother as a rival and will fantasize robbing her mother
of her father’s penis and stealing the mother’s babies.
 The girl’s wish produces a paranoid fear of her mother
retaliating against her by injuring her or taking away
her babies.
Male oedipal development
 The little boy sees her mother’s breast as both good and
bad.
 At the early stage of oedipal development, a boy shifts
some of his oral desires from his mother’s breast to his
father’s penis. A feminine position is adopted (passive
homosexual position). o He then later on adopts a
heterosexual relationship with his mother. Due to the
previous homosexual feelings to the father, the child
will not fear of being castrated by the father.
 A boy must have a good feeling about his father’s penis
before he can value his own.
 As the boy matures, he develops oral sadistic impulses
towards his father and wants to bite of his penis and to
murder him.
 These feelings arouse castration anxiety and fear that
his father will retaliate by biting off his penis. This
convinces the child that having sexual intercourse with
his mother would be extremely dangerous to him.
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 The boy’s Oedipus complex is resolved only partially
by his castration anxiety. A more important factor is his
ability to establish a positive relationship with both
parents at the same time. The boy then sees his parents
as whole objects, a condition that enables him to work
through this depressive position.
 A healthy resolution of the Oedipus complex depends
on the ability to allow their mother and father to come
together and have sexual intercourse with each other.
LATER VIEWS ON OBJECT RELATIONS
 Klein’s insightful descriptions led a number of other
theorists to expand and modify her theory
MARGHARET MAHLER
 Was primarily concerned with the psychological birth
of the individual that takes place during the first three
years of life, a period when a child gradually surrenders
security for autonomy
 Her ideas came from her observations of the behavior
of disturbed children interacting with their mothers.
 Psychological birth – begins during the first weeks of
postnatal life and continues for the next 3 years or so.
This means that the child becomes and individual
separate from his or her primary caregiver, that leads to
a sense of identity.
 A child proceeds through a series of three major
developmental stages
Normal autism
 Spans from birth until 3 or 4 weeks of age.
 Compared psychological birth with an unhatched bird
egg. That is, the bird being able to satisfy its nutritional
needs autistically (no regard to external reality) because
its food supply is enclosed in a shell.
An infant similarly satisfies various needs within the
protective orbit of mother’s care.
 Mahler pointed to the relatively long periods of
sleep and lack of tension in a neonate.
 This stage is a period of absolute primary
narcissism in which an infant is unaware of any
other person
 She referred normal autism as an “objectless
stage”. A time when an infant naturally searches
for the mother’s breast.
Normal symbiosis
 Begins at around the 4th or 5th week of age as infants
realize that they cannot satisfy that they cannot satisfy
their own needs and reaches its zenith during the 4th or
5th month.
 The infant behaves and functions as if that he and
his mother were an omnipotent system.
 In the analogy, the shell is now beginning to crack
but as psychological membrane in the form of a
symbiotic relationship still protects the newborn
 Symbiosis – is characterized by a mutual cuing of
infant and other.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 By this age, the infant can recognize her mother’s
face and can perceive her pleasure or distress.
However, mother and others are still pre-objects
since object relations have not yet begun. o Adults
sometimes regress to this stage as they seek the
strength and safety of their mother’s care.
Separation-individuation
 Spans the period from about 4th or 5th month until
about the 30th to 36th month
 Children become psychologically separated from their
mother and achieve a sense of individuation.
 They must surrender their delusion of omnipotence and
face their vulnerability to external threats . It is divided
into four overlapping substages
CONCEPT CAGE
Differentiation
 Last from about 5th month until the 7th month to 10th
month of age.
 Marked by a bodily breaking away from the mother
infant symbiotic orbit.
 Analogous to the hatching of an egg
 Psychologically healthy infants will curious of
strangers and inspect them, and unhealthy infants will
fear strangers.
Practicing
 7th to 10th month up to about 15th or 16th month.
 Children easily distinguish their body from their
mothers, establish a bond, and begin to develop an
autonomous ego
Rapprochement
 16 to 25 months of age
 They desire to bring their mother and themselves back
together both physically and psychologically
 Increased cognitive skills make them more aware of
separation, causing them to try various ploys to regain
dual unity they once had with their mother
 Rapprochement crisis – a condition wherein children
often fight dramatically with their mother due to the
unsuccessful attempts to regain dual unity.
Libidinal object
 3rd year of life.
 Children mist develop a constant inner representation
of their mother so that they can tolerate being
physically separate from her.
 If not developed, children will continue to depend on
their mother’s physical presence for their own security.
HEINZ KOHUT
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 Kohut emphasized the process by which the self
evolves from a vague and undifferentiated image to a
clear and precise sense of individual identity
 He focused on the early mother-child relationship as
the key to understanding later development.
 Believed that human relatedness is the core of human
personality.
 Infant require adult caregivers not only to gratify
physical needs but also to satisfy basic psychological
needs.
 Self-objects – adults, treat infants as if they had a sense
of self. Through the process of emphatic interaction,
the infant takes in the self-object’s responses as pride,
guilt, shame, or envy
 Self – is the center of an individual’s psychological
universe. It gives unity and consistency to one’s
experiences, remains relatively stable over time, and is
the center of initiative and recipient of impressions. It is
also the child’s focus of interpersonal relations, shaping
how he or she will relate to parents and other self-
objects.
 He believed that infants are naturally narcissistic.
 The early self becomes crystallized around two basic
narcissistic needs.
1. The need to exhibit the grandiose self
2. The need to acquire an idealized image of one or
both parents
CONCEPT CAGE
Grandiose exhibitionistic self – is established when the infants
relates to a “mirroring” self-object who reflects the approval of
its behavior.
Idealized parent image – implies that someone else is perfect.
It to satisfies a narcissistic need because the infant adopts the
attitude “you are perfect, but
I am a part of you”
JOHN BOWLBY
 Ethology – branch of knowledge dealing with human
character and with its formation and evolution.
 His Attachment theory also departed from
psychoanalytic thinking by taking childhood as its
starting point and then extrapolating forward to
adulthood.
 He believed that the attachments formed during
childhood have an important role and impact on
adulthood.
 He argued that investigators should study childhood
directly and not rely on distorted retrospective accounts
from adults.
Separation anxiety
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Protest stage – when the caregiver is first out of sight,
infants will cry, resist soothing by other people and
search for their caregiver
 Despair – infant becomes quiet, sad, passive, listless
and apathetic
 Detachment – infants become emotionally detached
from other people including the caregiver.
 Children who become detached are no longer upset
when their mother leaves them. As they become older,
they play and interact with others with little emotion
but appear to be sociable. Their interpersonal relations
are superficial and lack warmth.
 His theory rests on two fundamental functions:
 A responsive and accessible caregiver must create
a secure base for the child
 A bonding relationship becomes internalized and
serves as a mental working model on which future
friendships and love relationships are built.
MARY AINSWORTH
 Developed a technique for measuring the type of
attachment style that exists between caregiver and
infant, known as the Strange situation.
 Strange situation – consists of a 20-minute laboratory
session in which a mother and infant are initially alone
in a playroom.
 A stranger then comes into the room and after a
few minutes the stranger begins a brief interaction
with the infant.
 The mother then goes away for two separate 2-
minute periods.
o The first one, leaving the infant with
the stranger
o The second one, leaving the infant
completely alone
 The critical behavior is how the infant reacts when
the mother returns. This behavior is the basis of the
attachment style rating.
CONCEPT CAGE
Secure attachment - When the mother returns, infants are
happy and enthusiastic and initiate contact. All securely attached
infants are confident in the accessibility and responsiveness of
their caregiver, and this security and dependability provides the
foundation for play and exploration
Anxious-resistant attachment - Infants are ambivalent. They
unusually become upset as their mother leaves the room. When
the mother returns, they seek contact but rejects attempts at
being soothed.
Anxious-avoidant - Infants stay calm when their mother leaves.
They accept the stranger and avoid and ignore the mother when
she returns.
PSYCHOTHERAPY (Klein)
 She objected to Freud’s ideas on feminine psychology.
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 Each of the aforementioned people modified
psychoanalytic treatment to fit their own theoretical
orientation.
 Her use of psychoanalysis with children was not well
accepted by other analysts during the 1920s and 1930s
 She believed that both disturbed and healthy children
should be psychoanalyzed.
 Disturbed children would receive the benefits of the
treatment, whereas healthy children would profit from a
prophylactic analysis.
 She also insisted that negative transference was an
essential step toward successful treatment.
 She substituted Play therapy for Freudian dream
analysis and free association, believing that young
children express their conscious and unconscious
wishes through play therapy.
 The aim of Kleinian therapy is to reduce depressive
anxieties and persecutory fears and to mitigate the
harshness of internalized objects
HORNEY:
PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIAL
THEORY
Is built on the assumption that social and cultural conditions,
especially childhood experiences, are largely responsible for
shaping personality
 Basic hostility – is developed if people do not have their
needs for love and affection satisfied during childhood. This
leads individuals to suffer Basic anxiety.
 Fundamental styles of relating to others: - Moving
toward people
 Moving against people
 Moving away from people
 Intrapsychic conflict – is generated by compulsive
behavior and it may take the form of either an idealized
self-image or self-hated.
 The idealized self-image is expressed as:
 Neurotic search for glory
 Neurotic claims
 Neurotic pride
 Self-hated is expressed as:
 Self-contempt
 Alienation from self
HORNEY VS. FREUD
 Horney insisted that strict adherence to orthodox
psychoanalysis would lead to stagnation in both theoretical
thought and therapeutic practice.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Psychoanalysis should move beyond instinct theory and
emphasize on the importance of cultural influences in
shaping personality.
 Man is ruled not by the pleasure principle alone but by two
guiding principles which is safety and satisfaction.
 Neuroses are not the result of instincts but rather of the
person’s attempt to find paths through a wilderness full of
dangers.
 Her view of humanity is an optimistic one and is centered
on cultural forces that are amenable to change.
IMPACT OF CULTURE
 Modern culture is based on competition among
individuals.
 Competitiveness and the basic hostility it spawns result
in feelings of isolation. The feelings of being alone in a
potentially hostile world lead to the intensified needs
for affection, which in turn causes people to overvalue
love.
 Neurotics strive in pathological ways to find love.
Their self-defeating attempts result in low self-esteem,
increased hostility, basic anxiety, more
competitiveness, and a continuous excessive need for
love and affection.
IMPORTANCE OF CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
 Childhood is the age from which the vast majority of
problems arise.
 Debilitating experiences can almost invariably be
traced to lack of genuine warmth and affection.
 A difficult childhood is primarily responsible for
neurotic needs. These needs become powerful because
they are the child’s only means of gaining feelings of
safety.
 The totality of early relationships molds personality
development.
CONCEPT CAGE
BASIC HOSTILITY AND BASIC ANXIETY
 Children need to experience both genuine love and
healthy discipline which provides them with feelings of
safety and satisfaction. However, a multitude of
adverse influences may interfere with these favorable
conditions.
BASIC HOSTILITY
 Is developed by the child towards the parents if they do
not satisfy the child’s need for safety and satisfaction.
 The rage is seldomly expressed overtly and is usually
repressed. Repressed hostility then leads to profound
feelings of insecurity and a vague sense of
apprehension.
BASIC ANXIETY
 A feeling of being isolated and helpless in a world
conceived as potentially hostile.
 Is believed to be inextricably interwoven with basic
hostility.
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 It is the nutritive soil out of which a definite neurosis
may develop at any time.
 Hostile impulses are the principal source of basic
anxiety, but basic anxiety can also contribute to
feelings of hostility.
 Children who feel threatened by their parents develop a
reactive hostility in defense of that threat.
COMPULSIVE DRIVES
 Neurotic individuals have the same problems that affect
normal people, except that they experience them at a
greater degree.
GENERAL WAYS TO PROTECT ONE’S SELF AGAINST
ISOLATION
 Affection – a strategy that does not always lead to
authentic love. In search for love, some people may try
to purchase love with self-effacing compliance,
material goods, or sexual favors.
 Submissiveness – neurotics may submit themselves
either to people or institutions such as an organization
or a religion. Neurotics who submit to another person
often do so in order to gain affection.
 Power – is a defense against the real or imagined
hostility of others and takes the form of a tendency to
dominate others
 Prestige - is a protection against humiliation and is
expressed as a tendency to humiliate others
 Possession – acts as a buffer against destitution and
poverty and manifests itself as a tendency to deprive
others.
 Withdrawal – by psychologically withdrawing,
neurotics feel that they cannot be hurt by other people.
NEUROTIC NEEDS
 Horney identified 10 categories of neurotic needs that
characterize neurotics in their attempts to combat basic
anxiety.
 The categories overlapped one another, and a single
person might employ more than one.
1. Neurotic need for affection and approval – neurotics
attempt to indiscriminately please others.
2. Neurotic need for a powerful partner – lacking self-
confidence, neurotics try to attach themselves to a
powerful partner
3. Neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow
borders – neurotics frequently strive to remain
inconspicuous and to be content with very little. They
downgrade their own abilities and dread making
demands on others.
4. Neurotic need for power – is usually combined with
the needs for prestige and possession and manifests
itself as the need to control others and to avoid feelings
of weakness or stupidity.
5. Neurotic need to exploit others – they frequently
evaluate others on the basis of how they can be used or
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
exploited while the neurotic itself fears to be exploited
by others.
6. Neurotic need for social recognition and prestige –
some people try to combat basic anxiety by trying to be
important or to attract attention to themselves.
7. Neurotic need for personal admiration – they need to
be admired for what they are rather than what they
possess.
8. Neurotic need for ambition and personal
achievement – they often have a strong drive to be the
best. They must defeat other people to confirm their
superiority.
9. Neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence
– many neurotics have a strong need to move away
from people to prove that they can get along without
others.
10. Neurotic need for perfection and unassailability –.
They dread making mistakes and having personal flaws
and they desperately attempt to hide their weaknesses
from others.
NEUROTIC TRENDS
 Moving toward people
 Moving against people
 Moving away from people
 Neurotics are unaware of their basic attitude and they
tend to be limited to a single trend.
Moving toward people
 It refers to a neurotic need to protect oneself against
feelings of helplessness.
 In attempts to protect themselves against feelings of
helplessness, compliant people employ either or both of
the first two neurotic needs.
 They desperately strive for affection and approval of
others or they seek a powerful partner who will take
responsibility for their lives.
 Neurotics who adopt this philosophy are likely to see
themselves as loving, generous, unselfish, humble, and
sensitive to other’s feelings.
Moving against people
 Neurotically aggressive people are just as compulsive
as compliant people are, and their behavior is just as
much prompted by basic anxiety.
 These people move against others by appearing tough
or ruthless. They are motivated by a strong need to
exploit others and use them to their own benefit.
 They seldom admit their mistakes and are compulsively
driven to appear perfect.
 Aggressive people play to win rather than to enjoy the
contest as the person sees everyone as a potential
enemy.
Moving away from people
 This strategy is an expression of needs for privacy,
independence, and self-sufficiency.
 The needs can lead to positive behaviors but become
neurotic when people try to satisfy them by
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compulsively putting emotional distance between
themselves and other people.
 Since many neurotics find associating with others an
intolerable strain, they are compulsively driven to move
away from people to attain autonomy and separateness.
 Detached persons have an intensified need to be strong
and powerful since their basic feelings of isolation can
be tolerated only by the self-deceptive belief that they
are perfect and therefore beyond criticism.
INTRYPSYCHIC CONFLICTS
 It originates from interpersonal experiences. But as
these become part of a person’s belief system
IDEALIZED SELF-IMAGE
 Human beings will develop feelings of security and
self-confidence and a tendency to move toward self-
realization if given an environment of discipline and
warmth.
 As people feel alienated from themselves, they need to
desperately acquire a sense of identity. A dilemma that
can be resolved only by creating an idealized self-
image.
 Compliant people see themselves as good and saintly
 Aggressive people build an idealized image of
themselves as strong, omnipotent, and heroic.
 As an idealized self-image is solidified, neurotics begin
to believe in the reality of that image. They lose touch
with their real self and use the idealized self as the
standard for self-evaluation.
Neurotic search for glory
 Is referred to as the comprehensive drive toward
actualizing the ideal self
 It includes the following
 The need for perfection
 Neurotic ambition
 The drive toward a vindictive triumph.
 Need for perfection – refers to the drive to mold the
whole personality into the idealized self. They try to
achieve perfection by erecting a complex set of
“should” and “should nots” . It is referred to as the
tyranny of the should.
 Neurotic ambition – the compulsive drive toward
superiority. They ordinarily channel their energies into
those activities that are most likely to bring success.
This drive may take several different forms during a
person’s lifetime.
 Drive toward a vindictive triumph – the most
destructive element. It may be disguised as a drive for
achievement or success. Its chief aim is to put others to
shame or defeat them through one’s very success or the
power to inflict suffering upon them
Neurotic claims
 In search for glory, neurotics build a fantasy world that
is out of sync with the real world. Believing that
something is wrong with the outside world, they
proclaim that they are special and therefore entitled to
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
be treated in accordance with their idealized view of
themselves.
 Because the demands are very much in accord with
their idealized self-image, they fail to see that their
claims of special privilege are unreasonable.
 These grow out of normal needs and wishes, but when
neurotics claims are not met, they become indignant,
bewildered and are not able to comprehend why others
have not granted their claims.
Neurotic pride
 A false pride based in a spurious image of idealized
self.
 It is based on an idealized image of self and is usually
loudly proclaimed in order to protect and support a
glorified view of one’s self.
 The aim is to have patients give up their idealized self-
image, relinquish their neurotic search for glory, and change
self-hatred to an acceptance of the real self.
 The task of the therapist is to convince patients that their
present solutions are perpetuating rather than alleviating the
core neurosis.
 Ultimate successful therapy is built on self-analysis.
 Horneyian therapists use many of the same ones employed
by Freudian therapists, especially dream interpretation and
free association.
 Upon successful therapy, patients gradually develop
confidence in their ability to assume responsibility for their
psychological development. They move toward self-
realization and all the processes that accompany it.

SELF-HATRED
 People can express self-hatred in different ways
 Relentless demands on the self – exemplified by the
tyranny of the should.
 Merciless self-accusation – may take form as from
obviously grandiose expressions such as taking
responsibility for natural disasters, to scrupulously
questioning the virtue of their own motivations.
 Self-contempt – prevents people from striving for
improvement or achievement. It might be expressed by
belittling, discrediting, and ridiculing oneself.
 Self-frustration – stems from self-hatred and is
designed to actualize and inflated self-image. Self-
torment – main intention is inflict harm or suffering on
themselves.
 Self-destructive actions and impulses - may be either
physical or psychological, conscious or unconscious,
acute or chronic, carried out in action or enacted only
in imagination.

FEMININE PSYCHOLOGY
 Psychic differences are the result of cultural and social
expectations. Basic anxiety is at the core of men’s need to
subjugate women and women’s wish to humiliate men.
 Horney insisted that the existence of the Oedipus complex
was due to certain environmental conditions and not to
biology. She held that Oedipus complex is found only in
some people and is an expression of the neurotic need for
love.
 She contended that there is no more anatomical reason why
girls should be envious of the penis than boys should desire
a breast or womb.
 Horney agreed with Adler that many women possess a
masculine protest. The desire, however, is not an expression
of penis envy but rather a wish for all qualities or privileges
which in our culture are regarded as masculine.

PSYCHOTHERAPY
 The general goal of Horneyian therapy is to help patients
gradually grow in the direction of self-realization.

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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
FROMM: HUMANISTIC
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Erich Fromm developed a theory of personality that
emphasizes the influence of sociobiological factors, history,
economics and class culture, Humanistic psychoanalysis. The
theory assumes that humanity’s separation from the natural
world has produced feelings of loneliness and isolation, a
condition called basic anxiety. Humanistic psychoanalysis
looks at people from a historical and cultural perspective rather
than a strictly psychological one.
FROMM’S BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
 Individual personality can be understood only in the light of
human history.
 The discussion of the human situation must precede that of
personality, and psychology must be based on an
anthropologic philosophical concept of human existence.
 Humans have been torn away from their prehistoric union
with nature. They have no powerful instincts to adapt to a
changing world. Instead they have acquired a facility to
reason— a condition called human dilemma.
 Human dilemma – is experienced by people because they
have become separate from nature and yet have the capacity
to be aware of themselves as isolated beings.
 Existential dichotomies – dichotomies that are rooted in
people’s very existence.
1. The first and most fundamental dichotomy is
that between life and death.
2. Humans are capable of conceptualizing the
goal of complete self-realization, but we are also aware
that life is too short to achieve that goal.
3. People are ultimately alone, yet we cannot
tolerate isolation
HUMAN NEEDS
 Human dilemma cannot be resolved by satisfying animal
needs. Only human needs can move people toward a
reunion with the natural world.
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 Existential needs – are needs that have emerged during the
evolution of human culture, growing out of the attempts to
find an answer to their existence and to avoid being insane.
 A difference between mentally healthy and neurotic
individuals is that healthy people find answers to their
existence.
 RELATEDNESS
 It is the drive for union with another person or other
persons.
 A person may relate to the world in three basic ways
namely:
 Submission
 Power
 Love
 Submissive people search for a relationship with
domineering people, and power seekers welcome
submissive partners for them to form a symbiotic
relationship that satisfies both partners.
 Love – is the only route by which a person can become
united with the world and achieve individuality and
integrity at the same time. Fromm defined love as a
union with somebody, under the condition of retaining
the separateness and integrity of one’s own self.
TRANSCENDENCE
 It is defined as the urge to rise above a passive and
accidental existence and into the realm of
purposefulness and freedom.
 People can transcend their passive nature by creating
life or destroying it, thus rising above our slain victims.
 Malignant aggression – to kill for reasons other than
survival. It is a dominant and powerful passion in some
individuals and cultures, but it is not common to all
humans.
ROOTEDNESS
 It is defined as the need to establish roots or to feel at
home again in the world.
 With the productive strategy, people can actively and
creatively relate to the world and become whole or
integrated. This new tie to the world confers security
and reestablishes a sense of belongingness and
rootedness.
 Fixation – is the nonproductive strategy which is
defined as a tenacious reluctance to move beyond the
protective security provided by one’s mother.
 Incestuous feelings are based in the deep-seated
craving to remain in, or return to, the all-enveloping
womb, or to the all-nourishing breasts.
SENSE OF IDENTITY
 Defined as the capacity to be aware of ourselves as a
separate entity.
 We need to form a concept of our self since we have
been torn away from nature.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 The rise of capitalism has given only a minority of
people with a sense of “I” with the economic and
political freedom that capitalism implies.
 The threat of losing one’s sanity without a sense of
identity provides a powerful motivation to do almost
anything to acquire one.
 Neurotics attach themselves to powerful people or to
social or political institutions.
 Healthy people have less need to conform to the herd
and less need to give up their sense of self.
FRAME OF ORIENTATION
 Humans need a road map to make their way through
the world. Without such, humans would be confused
and unable to act purposefully and consistently.
 It enables people to organize various stimuli than
impinge them.
 People who possess a solid frame of orientation can
make sense of these events and phenomena, but those
who lack of it will strive to put the events into some
sort of framework in order to make sense of them.
 People will do nearly anything to acquire and retain a
frame of orientation.
BURDEN OF FREEDOM
 As people gained more and more economic and
political freedom, they came to feel increasingly more
isolated.
 The burden of freedom is being free from security that
one previously holds. On both a social and an
individual level, this burden results in basic anxiety,
the feeling of being alone in the world.
MECHANISMS OF ESCAPE
 People attempt to flee from freedom through a variety
of escape mechanisms.
 These are driving forces in normal people, both
individually and collectively.
Authoritarianism
 Is the tendency to give up independence of one’s own
individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or
something outside oneself in order to acquire the
strength which the individual is lacking.
 Masochism – a form of authoritarianism that results
from basic feelings of powerlessness, weakness, and
inferiority and is aimed at joining the self to a more
powerful person or institution. It is often disguised as
love or loyalty, but they can never contribute positively
to independence and authenticity.
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 Sadism – is more neurotic and more socially harmful.
It is also aimed at reducing basic feelings of
powerlessness, weakness, and inferiority and is aimed
at joining the self to a more powerful person. There are
three kinds of sadistic tendencies:
1. The need to make others dependent on oneself
and to gain power over those who are weak.
2. Compulsion to take advantage of others and
use them for one’s benefit or pleasure
3. Desire to see others suffer, either physically or
psychologically
Destructiveness
 Is rooted in the feelings of aloneness, isolation and
powerlessness.
 It does not depend on a continuous relationship with
another person. It seeks to do away with other people.
Conformity
 People try to escape from a sense of aloneness and
isolation by giving up their individuality and becoming
whatever other people desire them to be.
 They seldom express their own opinion, cling to
expected standards of behavior, and often appear stiff
and automated.
POSITIVE FREEDOM
 A person can be free and not alone, critical and yet not
filled with doubts, independent yet an integral part of
human kind.
 People can attain this by a spontaneous and full
expression of both their rational and their emotional
potentialities.
 It represents a successful solution to the human
dilemma of being a part of a natural world yet separate
from it.
 Through positive freedom and spontaneous activity,
people overcome the terror of aloneness, achieve union
with the world, and maintain individuality. They affirm
their uniqueness as individuals and achieve full
realization of their potentialities.
CHARACTER ORIENTATIONS
 Refers to a person’s relatively permanent way of
relating to people and things
 Character – is the most important acquired qualities of
personality. It is defined as the relatively permanent
system of all noninstinctual strivings through which
man relates himself to the human and natural world.
 People can relate to the world by acquiring and using
things or assimilation, and by relating to self and
others or socialization.
NONPRODUCTIVE ORIENTATIONS
 People acquire things through any of the four
nonproductive orientations:
1. Receiving things passively
2. Exploiting, or taking things by force
3. Hoarding objects
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
4. Marketing or exchanging things
Receptive
 Receptive characters feel that the source of all good lies
outside themselves and that the only way to relate to
the world is to receive things.
 They are more concerned with receiving than with
giving, and they want others to shower them with love,
ideas, and gifts.
 Their negative qualities include passivity,
submissiveness, and lack of self-confidence.
 Positive traits include loyalty, acceptance, and trust.
Exploitative
 Exploitative characters believe that the source of all
good is outside themselves.
 They aggressively take what they desire rather than
passively receive it.
 They are likely to use cunning or force to take someone
else’s spouse, ideas, or property.
 On the negative side, they are egocentric, conceited,
arrogant, and seducing.
 On the positive side, they are impulsive, proud,
charming, and self-confident.
Hoarding
 Hoarding characters seek to save that which they have
already obtained.
 They tend to live in the past and are repelled by
anything new.
 Negative traits include rigidity, sterility, obstinacy,
compulsivity, and lack of creativity.
 Positive characteristics include orderliness, cleanliness,
and punctuality.
Marketing
 It is an outgrowth of modern commerce in which trade
is no longer personal but carried out by large, faceless
corporations.
 Their personal security rests on shaky ground because
they must adjust their personality to that of which is
currently in fashion.
 They are without a past or a future and have no
permanent principles or values.
 Being aimless, opportunistic, inconsistent, and wasteful
are some of their negative traits.
 Positive qualities include changeability, open-
mindedness, adaptability, and generosity.
PRODUCTIVE ORIENTATION
 Because productive people work toward positive
freedom and continuing realization of their potential,
they are the most healthy of all character types.
Work
 Healthy people value work as a means of creative self-
expression.
INCESTUOUS SYMBIOSIS
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 They are neither lazy nor compulsively active, but use
work as a means of producing life’s necessities.
Love
 Healthy love is characterized by care, responsibility,
respect, and knowledge.
 Biophilia – a passionate love of life and all that is
alive, possessed by healthy people. They are concerned
with the growth and development of themselves as well
as others.
 All people have the capacity for productive love, but
most do not achieve it because they cannot first love
themselves.
Thinking
 Cannot be separated from love, it is motivated by a
concerned interest in another person or object Healthy
people see others as they are and not as they would
wish them to be.
 They know themselves for who they are and have no
need for self-delusion.
PERSONALITY DISORDERS
 Unhealthy people are sometimes marked by problems
in the areas of productive work, love, and thinking.
 Psychologically disturbed people are incapable of love
and have failed to establish union with others.
NECROPHILIA
 The term means love of death and usually refers to a
sexual perversion in which a person desires sexual
contact with a corpse.
 Fromm used the term in a more generalized sense to
denote any attraction to death.
 It is an alternative character orientation to biophilia.
 Necrophilic personalities hate humanity. They are
racists, warmongers and bullies.
 Necrophilous people’s destructive behavior is a
reflection of their basic character. Their entire lifestyle
revolves around death, destruction, disease, and decay.
MALIGNANT NARCISSISM
 Healthy people manifest a benign form of narcissism,
that is, an interest in their own body.
 In malignant form, it impedes the perception of reality
so that everything belonging to a narcissistic person is
highly valued and everything belonging to others is
devaluated.
 Hypochondriasis – is an obsessive attention to one’s
health.
 Moral hypochondriasis – is referred to as
preoccupation with guilt about previous transgressions
 Their sense of worth depends on their narcissistic self-
image and not on their achievements
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Is defined as extreme dependence on the mother or
mother surrogate.
 It is an exaggerated form of the more common and
more benign mother fixation.
 With this, people are inseparable from the host
personalities that their personalities blended with the
other person and their individual identities are lost.
 It originates in infancy as a natural attachment to the
mothering one
 People living in incestuous symbiotic relationships feel
extremely anxious and frightened if that relationships
threatened.
CONCEPT CAGE
Some individuals possess all three personality disorders.
Syndrome of decay – a condition wherein an individual do
possess all the opposite qualities of biophilia, love, and positive
freedom.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
 Fromm was bored with standard analytic techniques.
He then evolved Humanistic psychoanalysis.
 Fromm was more concerned with the interpersonal
aspects of therapeutic encounter.
 The aim of the therapy is for patients to know
themselves.
 He believed that patients come to therapy seeking
satisfaction of their basic human needs.
 Therapy should be built on a personal relationship
between therapist and patient.
 Fromm believed that therapists should not try to be too
scientific in understanding a patient. Only with the
attitude of relatedness can another person be truly
understood.
 The therapist should view the patient as a person with
the same human needs that all people possess.
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ERIKSON: POST-FREUDIAN
THEORY
This theory extended Freud’s infantile development stages into
adolescence, adulthood, and old age. Erickson suggested that at
each stage a psychosocial struggle contributes to the formation
of personality. Erickson regarded this theory as an extension of
psychoanalysis. Although the Freudian is used as foundation for
the life-cycle approach, Erickson differed in several aspects.
CONCEPT CAGE
Identity crisis – a turning point in one’s life that may either
strengthen or weaken personality.
EGO IN POST-FREUDIAN THEORY
 Ego is a positive force that creates a self-identity.
 It helps us adapt to the various conflicts and cries of life and
keeps is from losing individuality to the leveling forces of
society.
 The ego is weak, pliable, and fragile during childhood; but
it should begin to take form and gain strength in
adolescence.
 Partially unconscious organizing agency that synthesizes
our present experiences with past self-identities and also
with anticipated images of the self.
 It is defined as a person’s ability to unify experiences and
actions in an adaptive manner.
CONCEPT CAGE
Three interrelated aspects of the ego:
Body ego – refers to experiences with our body. It is a way of
seeing our physical self as different for other people
Ego ideal – represents the image we have of ourselves in
comparison with an established ideal. It is responsible for our
being satisfied or dissatisfied with our entire personal identity.
Ego identity – is the image we have of ourselves in the variety
of social roles we play.
SOCIETY’S INFLUENCE
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 The ego emerges from and is largely shaped by society.
 Erickson gave emphasis on social and historical factors.
 The ego exists as potential at birth, but it must emerge
from within a cultural environment.
 Pseudospecies – is an illusion perpetrated by a
particular society that it is somehow chosen the be the
human species
EPIGENETIC PRINCIPLE
 A term borrowed from embryology that implies a step-
by-step growth of fetal organs.
 Erickson believed that the ego develops throughout
various stages of life according to this principle.
 One stage emerges from and is built upon a previous
stage, but does not replace the stage.
 According to Erickson, anything that grows has a
ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts
arise, each part having its time of special ascendancy,
until all parts have risen to form a functioning whole.
STAGES OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
 Growth takes place according to the epigenetic principle.
 In every stage of life there is an interaction of opposites –
that is, a conflict between syntonic (harmonious) element
and a dystonic
 (disruptive) element.
 At each stage, the conflict between dystonic and syntonic
elements produces an ego quality or ego strength, which
Erikson referred to as basic strength.
 Too little basic strength at any one stage results in a core
pathology for that stage.
 The biological aspect of human development is not
disregarded.
 Events in earlier stages do not cause later personality
developments. The ego identity is shaped by a multiplicity
of conflicts and events.
 During each stage, personality development is characterized
by an identity crisis.
INFANCY (1)
 The first psychosocial stage that encompasses
approximately the first year of life, paralleling Freud’s
oral phase of development.
 It is a time of incorporation with infants taking in with
various sense organs including the mouth.
Oral-sensory mode
 The oral-sensory stage is characterized by two modes
of incorporation – receiving and accepting what is
given.
 Receiving occurs when an infant takes in information
without having to manipulate others.
 Accepting – implies a social context. There is someone
else to give. When people give, infants must learn to
trust or mistrust other people.
Basic trust
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 Is developed when infants consistently hear the
pleasant, rhythmic voice of their mother.
 If their pattern of accepting corresponds with the
culture’s way of giving things, the infants learn basic
trust.
Basic mistrust
 Is learned when infants find no correspondence
between their oral-sensory needs and their environment
Hope
 Emerges from the conflict between basic trust and basic
mistrust.
 If infants do not develop sufficient hope during
infancy, they will demonstrate the antithesis of hope
called withdrawal.
EARLY CHILDHOOD (2)
 The second psychosocial stage paralleling Freud’s anal
stage.
 It encompasses approximately the 2nd and 3rd years of
life.
 Children receive pleasure from mastering the sphincter
muscle and other body functions such as urinating,
walking, throwing, holding, and so on.
 Children develop a sense of control over their
interpersonal environment, as well as a measure of self-
control.
 It is a time of experiencing doubt and shame as children
learn many of their attempts at autonomy are
unsuccessful.
Anal-urethral-muscular mode
 Children’s primary psychosexual adjustment.
 Children learn to control their body, especially in
relation to cleanliness and mobility.
 It is more than a time of toilet training. It is also a time
of learning to walk, run, hug parents, and hold on to
toys and other objects.
 It is a time of contradiction, a time of stubborn
rebellion and meek compliance, a time of impulsive
self-expression and compulsive deviance, a time of
loving cooperation and hateful resistance.
Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
 Childhood is a time for self-expression, autonomy,
shame and doubt.
 As children stubbornly express their anal-urethral-
muscular mode, they are likely to find a culture that
attempts to inhibit some of their self-expression.
 Ideally, children should develop a proper ratio between
autonomy and shame and doubt, and the ratio should be
in favor of autonomy.
 Children who develop too little autonomy will have
difficulties in subsequent stages, lacking the basic
strengths of later stages.
 Shame – is a feeling of self-consciousness of being
looked at or exposed.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Doubt – is the feeling of not being certain, the feeling
that something remains hidden and cannot be seen.
Will
 The basic strength of will or willfulness evolves from
the resolution of the crisis of autonomy versus shame
and doubt.
 Children develop will only when their environment
allows them some self-expression in their control of
sphincters and other muscles. When their experiences
result in too much shame and doubt, children do not
adequately develop this second important basic
strength.
 Mature willpower originates from the rudimentary will
that emerges during early childhood.
PLAY AGE (3)
 the third stage of development that covers the same
time as Freud’s phallic phase which is roughly 3 to 5
years.
 Erikson believed that the Oedipus complex is but one
of several important developments during the play age.
Genital-locomotor mode
 The primary psychosexual mode during the play age
 Unless sexual interest is provoked by cultural sex play
or by adult sexual abuse, the Oedipus complex
produces no harmful effects on later personality
development.
 The interest that play-age children have in genital
activity is accompanied by their increasing facility at
locomotion.
 Children’s cognitive abilities enable them to
manufacture elaborate fantasies that include Oedipal
fantasies that also include imagining what it is like to
be grown up, to be omnipotent, or to be a ferocious
animal.
Initiative versus guilt
 As children begin to move around more easily and
vigorously and as their genital interest awakens, they
adopt an intrusive head-on mode of approaching the
world.
 The conflict between initiative and guilt becomes the
dominant psychosocial crisis of the play age.
 The ratio between the two should favor the syntonic
quality.
 Inhibition – is the antipathy of purpose. It constitutes
the core pathology of the play age.
Purpose
 Is the basic strength produced with the conflict of
initiative and guilt.
 Play age is also the stage in which children are
developing a conscience and beginning to attach labels
such as right and wring behavior. This youthful
conscience becomes the cornerstone of morality.
SCHOOL AGE (4)
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 This covers development from about age 6 to
approximately age 12 or 13 and matches the latency
years of Freud’s theory.
 School-age children’s wish to know becomes strong
and is tied to their basic striving for competence.
Latency
 It allows children to divert their energies to learning the
technology of their culture and the strategies of their
social interaction.
 As children work and play to acquire these essentials,
they begin to form a picture of themselves as
competent or incompetent.
 These self-images are the origin of ego identity.
Industry versus inferiority
 School age is a time of tremendous social growth.
 Industry – a syntonic quality pertaining to
industriousness, a willing to remain busy with
something and to finish a job.
 Inferiority – is the dystonic quality of the school age
that is acquired if the work done by children is
insufficient to achieve their goals.
 Inferiority should not be entirely avoided as it can serve
as an impetus to do one’s best.
Competence
 The basic strength develop during the school-age.
 It refers to the confidence to use one’s physical and
cognitive abilities to solve the problems that
accompany school age.
 It lays foundation for cooperative participation in
productive adult life.
 if the conflict favors inferiority or an overabundance of
industry, children are likely to give up and regress to an
earlier stage of development. This regression is called
inertia, the antithesis of competence and the core of
pathology of the school age.
ADOLESCENCE (5)
 is the period from puberty to young adulthood.
 At the end of this period, a person must gain a firm
sense of ego identity.
 The crisis between identity and identity confusion
reaches its ascendance during this stage.
 Erikson saw this stage as a period of social latency.
 It is and adaptive phase of personality development, a
period of trial and error.
Puberty
 Is defined as genital maturation which plays a relatively
minor role in Erikson’s concept of adolescence.
 It is important psychologically because it triggers
expectations of adult roles yet ahead, roles that are
essentially social and can be filled only though a
struggle to attain ego identity.
Identity versus identity confusion
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 the search for identity reaches a climax during
adolescence as young people strive to find out who
they are and who they are not.
 During adolescence, identity strengthens into a crisis as
young people learn to cope with the psychosocial
conflict of identity versus identity confusion.
 Identity emerges from adolescents’ affirmation or
repudiation of childhood identification, and their
historical and social contexts, which encourage
conformity to certain standards.
 Identity – is defined both positively and negatively, as
adolescents are deciding what they want to become and
what they believe while also discovering what its polar
opposites are.
 Identity confusion – is a syndrome of problems that
includes a divided self-image, an inability to establish
intimacy, a sense of urgency, a lack of concentration on
required tasks, and a rejection of family or community
standards.
 If the proper ratio of identity to identity confusion is
developed, we will have - Faith in some sort of
ideological principle
 Ability to freely decide how we should behave
 Trust in our peers and adults who give us advice
regarding goals and aspirations
 Confidence in our choice of an eventual
occupation
Fidelity
 Is the basic strength that emerges from adolescent
identity crises
 It is also referred to as one’s faith in his or her own
ideology.
 The trust learned in infancy is basic for fidelity in
adolescence. Young people must learn to trust others
before they can have faith in their own view of the
future.
 Role repudiation – is the pathological counterpart of
fidelity and is the core pathology of adolescence that
blocks one’s ability to synthesize various self-images
and values into a workable identity.
 Diffidence – is an extreme lack of self-trust or self-
confidence and is expressed as shyness or hesitancy to
express oneself.
 Defiance – is the act of rebelling against authority.
They stubbornly hold to socially unacceptable beliefs
and practices simply because these beliefs and practices
are unacceptable.
YOUNG ADULTHOOD (6)
 A time from about age 19 t 30
 Is circumscribed not so much by time as by the
acquisition of intimacy at the beginning of the stage
and the development of generativity at the end
 Young adults should develop mature genitality,
experience the conflict between intimacy and isolation,
and acquire the basic strength of love.
Genitality
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 True genitality can develop only during young
adulthood when it is distinguished by mutual trust and
a stable sharing of sexual satisfaction with a loved
person.
 It is the chief psychosexual accomplishment of young
adulthood and exists only in an intimate relationship.
Intimacy versus isolation
 Intimacy – is the ability to fuse one’s identity with that
of another person without fear of losing it. Mature
intimacy means an ability and willingness to share a
mutual trust.
 Isolation – is defined as the incapacity to take chances
with one’s identity by sharing true intimacy.
Love
 Is the basic strength of young adulthood
 It emerges from the crisis of intimacy versus isolation.
 It is a mature devotion that overcomes basic differences
between men and women
 Mature love means commitment, sexual passion,
cooperation, competition, and friendship.
 Exclusivity – is the antipathy of love and the core
pathology of young adulthood. Some exclusivity is
necessary for intimacy. A person must be able to
exclude certain people, activities, and ideas in order to
develop a strong sense of identity. It becomes
pathological when it blocks one’s ability to cooperate,
compete, or compromise.
ADULTHOOD (7)
 Is the seventh stage of development
 It is a time when people begin to take their place in
society and assume responsibility for whatever society
produces.
 It seems to be the longest stage of development for
most people as it spans the age of 31 to 60
 It is characterized by the psychosexual mode of
procreativity, psychosocial crisis of generativity versus
stagnation, and the basic strength of care.
Procreativity
 Refers to more than genital contact with a partner.
 It includes assuming responsibility for the care of
offspring that result from sexual contact.
Generativity versus stagnation
 Generativity – is the syntonic quality of adulthood
that is defined as the
generation of new beings as well as new products and
ideas. It is concerned with establishing and
guiding the next generation. It also
includes the procreation of children, production of
work, and the creation of new things and ideas that
contribute to the building of a better world. It grows out
of earlier syntonic qualities such as intimacy and
identity.
 Self-absorption and stagnation – is the antithesis of
generativity. Such an attitude fosters a pervading sense
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
of stagnation. Some of its elements are necessary. The
interaction of generativity and stagnation produces
care.
Care
 A widening commitment to take care of persons, the
products and ideas one has learned to take care for.
 It is the basic strength of adulthood
 It arises from each earlier basic ego strength.
 It is a natural desire emerging from the conflict
between generativity and stagnation or self-absorption.
 Rejectivity – is the antipathy of care and also the core
pathology of adulthood. It is referred to as the
unwillingness to take care of certain persons or groups.
It is manifested as self-centeredness, provincialism, or
pseudospeciation which is defined as the belief that
other groups of people are inferior to one’s own.
OLD AGE (8)
 It is the eighth and the final stage of development.
 Defined as the period from about age 60 to the end of
life.
 Old people can be caring to their own grandchildren as
well as to other members of society.
 It can be a time of joy, playfulness, and wonder but it is
also a time of senility, depression, and despair.
 The psychosexual mode of old age is generalized
sensuality, the psychosocial crisis is integrity versus
despair, and the basic strength is wisdom.
Generalized sensuality
 One may infer that this mode means to take pleasure in
a variety of different psychical sensations.
 It may also include a greater appreciation for the
traditional lifestyle of the opposite sex
 A generalized sensual attitude is dependent on one’s
ability to hold things together, that is to maintain
integrity in the face of despair.
Integrity versus despair
 Is a person’s final identity crisis
 The dystonic quality of despair may prevail, but for
people with a string ego identity who have learned
intimacy and who have taken care of both people and
things, the syntonic quality of integrity will
predominate.
 Integrity – means a feeling of wholeness and
coherence, an ability to hold together one’s sense of I
despite diminishing physical and intellectual powers.
 Despair – literally means to be without hope. It is in
the opposite corner from hope. Once hope is lost,
despair follows and life ceases to have meaning
Wisdom
 Is the basic strength of old age that is produced by the
conflict between integrity and despair.
 It is defined as an informed and detached concern with
life itself in the face of death itself.
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 With mature wisdom, they maintain their integrity in
spite of declining physical and mental ability.
 It draws from and contributes to the traditional
knowledge passed from generation to generation.
 Disdain – the core pathology of old age and the
antithesis of wisdom. It is a continuation of rejectivity.
PSYCHOHISTORY
 Is a controversial field that combines psychoanalytic
concepts with historical methods.
 It was originated by Freud with an investigation of
Leonardo da Vinci and later collaborated with American
ambassador William Bullitt to write a book-length
psychological study of American president Woodrow
Wilson.
 Erickson defined psychohistory as the study of individual
and collective life with the combined methods of
psychoanalysis and history.
 He used this to demonstrate his fundamental beliefs that
each person is a product of his or her historical time and
that those historical times are influenced by exceptional
leaders experiencing a personal identity conflict.
 Satyagraha – a technique of passive resistance developed
and used by Gandhi to solve conflicts with authorities. It is
a Sanskrit term meaning a tenacious, stubborn method of
gathering the truth.
ROGERS: PERSON-
CENTERED THEORY
Carl Rogers built his theory on the scaffold provided by
experiences as a therapist. He continually called for empirical
research to support both his personality theory . He advocated a
balance between tender-minded and hardheaded studies that
would expand knowledge of how humans feel and think. This
theory underwent several name changes . It is closest to the
standard of theories being stated in if-then framework
BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
 Formative tendency
 Actualizing tendency
FORMATIVE TENDENCY
 There is a tendency for all matter, both organic and
inorganic, to evolve from simpler to more complex
forms.
 A creative process is in operation for the entire
universe.
ACTUALIZING TENDENCY
 It is the tendency within all humans to move towards
completion or fulfillment of potentials
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 It is the only motive that people possess. Because each
person operates as one complete organism,
actualization involves the whole person.
 Tendencies to maintain and to enhance the organism
are subsumed within the actualizing tendency.
 Maintenance – includes such basic needs as food, air,
and safety. It also includes the tendency to resist
change and to seek the status quo. Its conservative
nature is expressed in people’s desire to protect their
current, comfortable self-concept.
 Enhancement – is the need to become more, to
develop, and to achieve growth. It can be seen in
people’s willingness to learn things that are not
immediately rewarding. People are willing to face
threat and pain because of a biologically based
tendency for the organism to fulfill its basic nature. It is
expressed in a variety of forms including curiosity,
playfulness, self-exploration, friendship, and
confidence that one can achieve psychological growth.
 this tendency is not limited to humans as other animals
and plants have an inherent tendency to grow toward
reaching their genetic potential.
 People must be involved in a relationship with a partner
who is congruent or authentic, and who demonstrates
empathy and unconditional positive regard.
 Whenever congruence, unconditional positive regard,
and empathy are present in a relationship,
psychological growth will invariably occur.
THE SELF AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION
 Infants begin to develop a vague concept of self when a
portion of their experience becomes personalized and
differentiated in awareness as one’s own experiences.
 Infants begin to evaluate experiences as positive or
negative, using the actualizing tendency as criterion.
 Self-actualization – is a subset of the actualization
tendency that starts once infants establish a
rudimentary self-structure. It is the tendency to
actualize the self as perceived in awareness. When the
organism and the perceived self are in harmony, the
two actualization tendencies are nearly identical.
Self-concept
 Includes all those aspects of one’s being and one’s
experiences that are perceived in awareness.
 This is not identical with the organismic self whose
portions may be beyond a person’s awareness or simply
not owned by that person.
 Once people form their self-concept, they find change
and significant learning quite difficult. Experiences that
are inconsistent with their self-concept usually are
either denied or accepted only in distorted forms.
Ideal self
 Is defined as one’s view of self as one wishes to be. It
contains all those attributes, usually positive, that
people aspire to possess.
 A wide gap between ideal self and self-concept
indicates incongruence.
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 Psychologically healthy individuals perceive little
discrepancy between their self-concept and what they
ideally would like to be.
AWARENESS
 Without it the self-concept and ideal self would not
exist.
 It is referred to as the symbolic representation of some
portion of our experience.
Levels of awareness
 First, some events are experienced below the threshold
of awareness and are either ignored or denied.
 Second, some experiences are accurately symbolized
and freely admitted to the self-structure. Such
experiences are both nonthreatening and consistent
with the existing self-concept.
 The third level involves experiences that are perceived
in a distorted form. When our experience is not
consistent with our view of self, we reshape or distort
the experience so
 that it can be assimilated into our existing self-concept
Denial of positive experiences
 It is not only the negative experiences that are distorted
or denied to awareness.
 Many people have difficulty accepting genuine
compliments and positive feedback.
 Compliments, even those genuinely dispensed, seldom
have a positive influence on the self-concept of the
recipient. They may be distorted because the person
distrusts the giver, or they may be denied because the
recipient does not feel deserving of them.
BECOMING A PERSON
 An individual must first make contact with another
person. This contact is the minimum experience
necessary for becoming a person. An infant must
experience some contact from a parent or other
caregivers in order to survive.
 Positive regard – is the need of an individual to be
loved, liked, or accepted by another person. If we
perceive that others value us, then our need to receive
positive regard is at least partially satisfied.
 Positive self-regard – is defined as the experience of
prizing or valuing one’s self. Receiving positive regard
from others is necessary for positive self-regard, but
once self-regard is established, it becomes independent
of the continual need to be loved.
BARRIERS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH
Conditions of worth
 This arises when the positive regard is of a significant
other is conditional, when the individual feels that in
some respects he is prized and in others not.
 They perceive that their people around them love and
accept them only if they meet those people’s
expectations and approval.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 These conditions become the criterion by which we
accept or reject our experiences.
 External evaluations – are perceptions of other
people’s view of us. These evaluations prevent us from
being completely open to our own experiences.
Incongruence
 Psychological disequilibrium begins when we fail to
recognize our organismic experiences as self-
experiences.
 The incongruence between out self-concept and our
organismic experience is the source of psychological
disorders.
 The self-concept that emerges includes vague
perceptions that are not in harmony with our
organismic experiences, and this incongruence between
self and experience leads to discrepant and seemingly
inconsistent behaviors.
CONCEPT CAGE
Vulnerability – the greater the incongruence between our
perceived self and our organismic experience, the more
vulnerable we are. People are vulnerable when they are unaware
of the discrepancy between their organismic self and their
significant experience.
Anxiety and threat – these are experienced as we gain
awareness incongruence. When we become dimly aware that the
discrepancy between our organismic experience and our self-
concept may become conscious, we feel anxious.
Anxiety – is a state of uneasiness or tension whose cause is
unknown.
Threat – it can represent steps toward psychological health
because it signals to us that our organismic experience is
inconsistent with our self-concept. This goes for anxiety as well.
Defensiveness
 Is the protection of the self-concept against anxiety and
threat by denial or distortion of experiences
inconsistent with it.
 Distortion – one of the two chief defenses wherein we
misinterpret and experience in order to fit it into some
aspect of our self-concept. We perceive the experience
in awareness, but we fail to understand its true
meaning.
 Denial – another chief defense wherein one refuses to
perceive an experience in awareness, or at least we
keep some aspect of it from reaching symbolization.
Disorganization
 Occurs when the defenses fail and behavior becomes
disorganized or psychotic.
 Disorganized behavior is originated from a discrepancy
between one’s organismic experience and their view of
self.
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 Disorganization can occur suddenly, or it can take
place gradually over a long period of time.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
 The client-centered holds that in order for vulnerable or
anxious people to grow psychologically, they must come
into contact with a therapist who is congruent and whom
they perceive as providing an atmosphere of unconditional
acceptance and accurate empathy.
 If the conditions of therapist congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and emphatic listening are present in a
client-counselor relationship, then the process of therapy
will transpire.
 If the process of therapy takes place, then certain outcomes
can be predicted.
CONDITIONS
 An anxious or vulnerable client must come into contact
with a congruent therapist who also possesses empathy
and unconditional positive regard for the client.
 The client must perceive the aforementioned
characteristics in the therapist
 The contact between therapist and client must be of
some duration
Counselor congruence
 Congruence – exists when a person’s organismic
experiences are matched by an awareness of them and
by an ability and willingness to openly express these
feelings.
 A congruent counselor is not simply a kind and friendly
person but rather a complete human being with feelings
of joy, anger, frustration, confusion and so on.
 A congruent therapist is not passive, not aloof, and
definitely not nondirective.
 Congruent therapists are not static. They are constantly
exposed to new organismic experiences, but unlike
most people, they accept these experiences into
awareness, which contributes to their psychological
growth.
 Congruence involves (1) Feelings, (2) Awareness, (3)
expression. Incongruence can arise from either of the
two points dividing the three experiences:
 There can be a breakdown between feelings and
awareness.
 The second source of incongruence is a
discrepancy between awareness of an experience
and the ability or willingness to express it to
another.
Unconditional positive regard
 Occurs when the need to be liked, prized, or accepted
by another person exists without any conditions or
qualifications. The attitude is without possessiveness,
without evaluations, and without reservations.
 Therapists accept and prize their clients without any
restrictions or reservations and without regard to the
client’s behavior.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Empathic listening
 Empathy exists when therapists accurately sense the
feelings of their clients and are able to communicate
these perceptions so that clients know that another
person has entered their world of feelings without
prejudice, projection, or evaluation.
 Empathy suggests that a therapist sees things from the
client’s point of view and that the client and that the
client feels safe and unthreatened.
 It is a powerful tool, which along with genuineness and
caring, facilitates personal growth within the client.
 It is effective because it enables clients to listen to
themselves and, in effect, become their own therapists.
PROCESS
 The process of therapeutic change will be in motion if
the conditions of therapist congruence, unconditional
positive regard, and empathy are present.
Stages of therapeutic change
1. Is characterized by an unwillingness to communicate
anything about oneself. People are extremely rigid and
resistant to change.
2. Clients become slightly less rigid, they discuss external
events and other people, while remaining to disown
their feelings.
3. Clients freely talk about self, although still as an object.
They talk about feelings and emotions in the past or
future tense and avoid present feelings.
4. They begin to talk of deep feeling but not ones
presently felt. They deny or distort experiences,
although they may have some dim recognition that they
are capable of feeling emotions in the present. They
begin to question some values that have been
introjected from others, and they start to see the
incongruence between their perceived self and their
organismic experience.
5. They have begun to undergo significant change and
growth. They can express feelings in the present,
although they have not yet accurately symbolized those
feelings. They are beginning to rely in an internal locus
of evaluation for their feelings and to make fresh and
new discoveries about themselves.
6. People experience dramatic growth and an irreversible
movement toward becoming fully functioning or self-
actualizing. They freely allow into awareness those
experiences that they had previously denied or
distorted. They become more congruent and are able to
match their present experiences with awareness and
with open expression. They rely on their organismic
self as the criterion for evaluating experiences.
7. The last stage can occur outside the therapeutic
encounter, because growth at the sixth stage seems to
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be irreversible. Clients who reach the seventh stage
become fully functioning. The organismic self is now
unified with the self-concept and becomes the locus for
evaluating experiences.
Theoretical explanation for therapeutic change
 When persons come to experience themselves as a
prized and unconditionally accepted, they realize,
perhaps for the first time that they are lovable.
 As clients perceive that they are emphatically
understood, they are freed to listen to themselves, thus
having empathy for their own feelings.
OUTCOMES
 The most basic outcome of successful client centered
therapy is a congruent patient who is less defensive and
more open to experience.
 Clients have a clearer picture of themselves and a more
realistic view of the world. They are better able to
assimilate experiences into the self on the symbolic
level.
 Being realistic, they have a more accurate view of their
potentials, which permits them to narrow the gap
between self-ideal and real self. They lower their
expectations of what they should be or would like to be
since they are now more realistic
 The congruence of the real and ideal self leads to the
clients experiencing less physiological and
psychological tension, are less vulnerable to threat, and
have less anxiety.
 They become more accepting of others, make fewer
demands, and simply allow others to be themselves.
PERSON OF TOMORROW
 Psychologically healthy people would be more adaptable.
They would be more likely to survive. They would not
merely adjust to a static environment but would realize that
conformity and adjustment to a fixed condition have a long-
term survival value.
 Persons of tomorrow would be open to their experiences,
accurately symbolizing them in awareness rather than
denying or distorting them. Persons of tomorrow would
listen to themselves and hear their joy, anger,
discouragement, fear, and tenderness.
 These fully functioning people would not depend on other
for guidance because they would realize that their own
experiences are the best criteria for making choices.
 These people is characterized by a tendency to live fully in
the moment, Because these people would be open to their
experiences, they would experience a constant state of
fluidity and change.
 Existential living – is referred to as the tendency to live in
the moment.
 Persons of tomorrow would remain confident of their own
ability to experience harmonious relations with others.
 These individuals would be more integrated, more whole,
with no artificial boundary between conscious processes
and unconscious ones.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 Persons of tomorrow would have basic trust of human
nature. They would not harm others merely for personal
gain. They would care about others and be ready to help
when needed.
 Because persons of tomorrow are open to all their
experiences, they would enjoy a greater richness in life than
do other people. They would neither distort internal stimuli
nor buffer their emotions.

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
 Science begins and ends with the subjective experience,
although everything in between must be objective and
empirical.
 Scientists must have many of the characteristics of the
person of tomorrow. They must be inclined to look
within, to be in tune with internal feelings and values,
to be intuitive and creative, to be open to experiences,
to welcome change, to have a fresh outlook and to
possess a solid trust in themselves.
 Science begins when an intuitive scientist starts to
perceive patterns among phenomena. Hypotheses are
the consequence of an openminded scientist and not the
result of preexisting stereotypical thought.

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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
ALLPORT: PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE INDIVIDUAL
Gordon Allport emphasized the uniqueness of an individual.
He believed that attempts to describe people in terms of general
traits rob them of their unique individuality
Morphogenic science – was referred to by Allport as the study
of the individual. Morphogenic methods are those that gather
data on a single individual.
Nomothetic science – a method used by other psychologists
which methods gather information on a group of people
ALLPORT’S APPROACH TO PERSONALITY THEORY
PERSONALITY
 Allport spelled out 49 definitions for the word
“personality”.
 He offered the 50th definition stating that personality is
a dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his unique
adjustments to his environment.
 The last phrase was replaced with “ that determine his
behavior and thought” to convey that behavior is
expressive as well as adaptive.
 Dynamic organization. Implies and integration or
interrelatedness of various aspects of personality.
 Psychophysical. Emphasizes the importance of
both the psychological and physical aspects of
personality.
 Determine. Suggests that personality is something
that does something. Personality refers to the
individual behind the façade, the person behind the
action.
 Characteristic. Was used to imply “individual” or
“unique”. It is originally meant as a mark or
engraving just as all people stamp their unique
mark on their personality, and their characteristic
behavior and thought set them apart from other
people.
 Behavior and thought. A term that simply refers
to anything that the person does.
 The comprehensive definition brought by Allport
suggests that human beings are both a product and a
process.
 Personality is both physical and psychological, it is
both substance and change, both product and process,
both structure and growth.
ROLE OF CONSCIOUS MOTIVATION
 Allport emphasized the importance of conscious
motivation.
 Allport did not ignore the existence or even the
importance of unconscious processes. He recognized
the fact that some motivation is driven by hidden
impulses and sublimated drives.
 He believed that most compulsive behaviors are
automatic repetitions, usually self-defeating, and
motivated by unconscious tendencies.
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CHARACTERISTICS OF A HEALTHY PERSON
 Psychologically mature people are characterized by
proactive behavior.
 Proactive behavior – people not only react to external
stimuli, but they are capable of consciously acting on
their environment in new and innovative ways and
causing their environment to react to them.
 Mature personalities are more likely to be motivated by
conscious processes, which allow them to be more
flexible and autonomous than unhealthy people, who
remain dominated by unconscious motives that spring
from childhood experiences.
 Psychologically healthy individuals are not without
foibles and idiosyncrasies that make them unique.
 Age is not a requisite for maturity, although healthy
persons seem to become more mature as they become
older.
Requirements for psychological health
 Extension of the sense of self – mature people
continually seek to identify with and participate in
events outside themselves. Self-extension is the
earmark of maturity.
 Warm relating of self to others – they have the
capacity to love others in an intimate and
compassionate manner. Psychologically healthy
individuals treat other people with respect, and they
realize that the needs desires, and hopes of others are
not completely foreign of their own.
 Emotional security or self-acceptance – mature
individuals accept themselves for what they are, and
they possess emotional poise.
 Realistic perception – they do not live in fantasy
world or bend reality to fir their own wishes.
 Insight and humor – mature people know themselves
and have no need to attribute their own mistakes and
weaknesses to others. Healthy individuals see
themselves objectively and they are able to perceive the
incongruities and absurdities in life.
 Unifying philosophy of life – healthy people have a
clear view of the purpose of life. The person with a
mature religious attitude and a unifying philosophy in
life has a well-developed conscience and a strong
desire to serve others.
STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
PERSONAL DISPOSITIONS
 Common traits – are general characteristics held in
common by many people. They provides means by
which people within a given culture can be compared
to one another.
 Personal dispositions – a generalized neuropsychic
structure with the capacity to render many stimuli
functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide
consistent forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior.
 Traits – describe relatively stable characteristics.
 States – describe temporary characteristics
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
CONCEPT CAGE
Levels of personal dispositions
Cardinal dispositions – an eminent characteristic or ruling
passion so outstanding that it dominates their lives. They are so
obvious that they cannot be hidden.
Central dispositions – a disposition that everyone has. These
are dispositions as those that would be listed in an accurate letter
of recommendation written by someone wo knew the person
quite well. These guide much of a person’s adaptive and stylistic
behavior.
Secondary dispositions – everyone has many secondary
dispositions that are not central to the personality yet occur with
some regularity and are responsible for much of one’s specific
behaviors
Motivational and stylistic dispositions
Motivational dispositions – these are strongly felt dispositions
that receive their motivation from basic needs and drives.
Stylistic dispositions – personal dispositions that are less
intensely experienced. They guide action, whereas motivational
dispositions initiate actions.
PROPRIUM
 Refers to those behaviors and characteristics that
people regard as warm, central, and important in their
lives
 It is not the whole personality, because many
characteristics and behaviors of a person are not warm
and central; rather they exist on the periphery of
personality. The non-propriate behaviors include:
 Basic drives and needs that are ordinarily met and
satisfied without much difficulty
 Tribal customs such as wearing clothes, saying
“hello” to people, and driving on the right side of
the road
 Habitual behaviors such as smoking or brushing
one’s teeth, that are performed automatically and
that are not crucial to the person’s sense of self.
MOTIVATION
 Most people are motivated by present drives rather than
by past events and are aware of what they are doing
and have some understanding of why they are doing it.
 Peripheral motives – are those that reduce a need
 Propriate strivings – seek to maintain tension and
disequilibrium.
A Theory Of Motivation
 Allport believed that a useful theory of personality rests
on the assumption that people not only react to their
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environment but also shape their environment and
cause it to react to them.
 Reactive theories – see people as being motivated
primarily by needs to reduce tension and to return to a
state of equilibrium.
 Proactive theories – view people as consciously acting
on their environment in a manner that permits growth
toward psychological health.
FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY
 It is Allport’s explanation for the myriad human
motives that seemingly are not accounted for by
hedonistic or drive-reduction principles.
 It represents a theory of changing rather than
unchanging motives and s the capstone of
 Allport’s ideas on motivation.
 Some, but not all, human motives are functionally
independent from the original motive responsible for
the behavior.
 If a motive is functionally autonomous, it is the
explanation for behavior, and one need not look beyond
it for hidden or primary causes.
 This notion that much human behavior is based on
present interests and on conscious preferences is in
harmony with the commonsense belief of many people
who hold that they do things simply because they like
them
 A functionally autonomous motive is contemporary and
self-sustaining; it grows out of an earlier motive but is
functionally independent of it.
 Allport defined it as any acquired system of motivation
in which the tensions are not of the same kind as the
antecedent tensions from which the acquires system is
developed.
Perseverative functional autonomy
 Is found in animals as well as humans and is based on
simple neurological principles.
 An example of it is a rat that has learn to run a maze in
order to be fed but then continues to run the maze even
after it has become satiated.
Propriate functional autonomy
 The master system of motivation that confers unity on
personality
 It refers to those self-sustaining motives that are related
to the Proprium
 A woman may originally take a job because she needs
money. The work may be uninteresting and untasteful,
she then later develops a consuming passion for the job
itself.
Criterion for functional autonomy
 A present motive is functionally autonomous to the
extent that it seeks new goals, meaning that the
behavior will continue even as the motivation for it
changes.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
 A child first learning to walk is motivated by some
maturational drive, but later he may walk to increase
mobility and self-confidence.
Processes that are not functionally autonomous
 Biological drives such as eating, breathing, and
sleeping.
 Motives directly linked to the reduction of basic drives
 Reflex actions such as an eye blink
 Constitutional equipment, namely physique,
intelligence and temperament.
 Habits in the process of being formed
 Patterns of behavior that require primary reinforcement
 Sublimations that can be tied to childhood sexual
desires
 Some neurotic or pathological symptoms
STUDY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
 Allport repeatedly advocated the development and use
of research methods that study the individual
MORPHOGENIC SCIENCE
 Idiographic – refers to that which is peculiar to a
single case. Allport abandoned this term in his later
writings and spoke of morphogenic procedures
 Morphogenic – refers to patterned properties of the
whole organism and allows for intrapersonal
 comparison
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MAY: EXISTENTIAL
PSYCHOLOGY
It is rooted in the philosophy of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Sartre, and other European philosophers. Rollo May
was the foremost spokesperson of existential psychology un the
united states for nearly 50 years. His approach was based on
clinical experience. He saw people as living in the world of
present experiences and ultimately being responsible for who
they become. Many people lack the courage to face their destiny
and end up giving much of their freedom, which results on them
running from their responsibility. They lose sight of who they
are and develop a sense of insignificance and alienation.
BACKGROUND OF EXISTENTIALISM
 Soren Kierkegaard – a Danish philosopher and
theologian that was concerned with the increasing trend
in postindustrial studies toward the dehumanization of
people. He opposed an attempt to see people as objects
and the view that subjective perceptions are one’s only
reality.
 Kierkegaard also emphasized a balance between
freedom and responsibility. People acquire freedom by
expanding their self-awareness and then by assuming
responsibility of their actions.
 The acquisition of freedom and responsibility is
achieved at the expense of anxiety. As people realize
this, they are in charge of their own destiny and they
experience the burden of freedom and pain of
responsibility.
 Martin Heidegger - a German philosopher who
helped popularize existential philosophy in the 20th
century. He exerted considerable influence on Swiss
psychiatrists Ludwig Binswanger and Medard Boss.
These individuals adapted the philosophy of
existentialism to the practice of psychotherapy.
EXISTENTIALISM
 Existence precedes essence.
 Existence. – means to emerge or to become. It suggests
process; it is associated with growth and change.
 Essence – implies a static immutable substance. It refers to
a product; it signifies stagnation and finality.
 Existentialists affirm that people’s essence is their power to
continually redefine themselves through the choices they
make.
 Existentialism opposes the split between object and subject.
People are both subjective and objective and must search
for truth by living and active authentic lives.
 People search for some meaning to their lives. They ask the
important questions concerning their being.
 Existentialists hold that ultimately each of us is responsible
for who we are and what we become. Although we may
associate with others in productive healthy relationships, in
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
the end, we are each alone. We can choose to become what
we can be or we can choose to avoid commitment and
choice, but ultimately, it is our choice.
 Existentialists are basically anti-theoretical. To them
theories further dehumanize people and render them as
objects.
BASIC CONCEPTS
Being-in-the-world
 Dasein – is an expression of the basic unity of person
and environment. It literally means to exist in the world
and is generally written as being-in-the-world.
 Many people suffer from anxiety and despair brought
on by their alienation from themselves or from the
world. As people strive to gain power over nature, they
lose touch with their relationship to the natural world.
 Alienation from the world includes being out of touch
with one’s body as well.
 The feeling of isolation and alienation of self is
suffered not only by pathologically disturbed in
individuals but also by most individuals in modern
societies. Alienation is the illness of our time, and it
manifests itself in three areas:
1. Separation from nature
2. Lack of meaningful
interpersonal relations
3. Alienation from one’s authentic self
 People experience three simultaneous modes in their
dasein
CONCEPT CAGE
Umwelt – the environment around us. It is the world of nature
and natural law and includes biological drives. It exists even
people had no awareness.
Mitwelt – our relations with other people. It is the world of the
people around us where we exist as well. The essential criterion
for a Mitwelt relationship is that the dasein of the other person is
respected.
Eigenwelt – our relationship with our self. To live in Eigenwelt
means to be aware of oneself as a human being and to grasp who
we are as we relate to the world of things and to the world of
people.
Nonbeing
 Awareness of self as a living, emerging being is a
necessity for being-in-the-world, but it also leads to the
dread of not being which is nonbeing or nothingness.
 Death is the most obvious avenue of nonbeing.
 The fear of death or nonbeing often provokes us to live
defensively and to receive less from life than if we
would confront the issue of our nonexistence
 We may try to avoid the dread of nonbeing by our self-
awareness and denying our individuality, but such
choices leave feelings of despair and emptiness.
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 A healthier alternative is to face the inevitability of
death and to realize that nonbeing is an inseparable part
of our being.
ANXIETY
 Much of human behavior is motivated by an underlying
sense of dread and anxiety
 People experience anxiety when they become aware that
their or some value identified with it might be destroyed.
 It is the subjective state of the individual’s becoming aware
that his existence can be destroyed, that he can become
nothing.
 It can spring either from an awareness of one’s nonbeing or
from a threat to some value essential to one’s existence.
 It exists when one confronts the issue of fulfilling one’s
potentialities. This confrontation can lead to stagnation and
decay, but it can also result in growth and change.
NORMAL ANXIETY
 To grow and to change one’s value means to
experience constructive or normal anxiety.
 It is defined as that which is proportionate to the threat,
does not involve repression, and can be confronted
constructively on the conscious level.
 All growth consists of the anxiety-creating surrender of
past values.
NEUROTIC ANXIETY
 Is a reaction which is disproportionate to the threat,
involves repression and other forms of intrapsychic
conflict, and is managed by various kinds of blocking-
off of activity and awareness.
 It is experienced whenever values become transformed
into dogma. To be absolutely right in one’s beliefs
provides temporary security, but it is bought at the
price of surrendering opportunity for fresh learning and
new growth.
GUILT
 Arises when people deny their potentialities, fail to
accurately perceive the needs of fellow humans, or
remain oblivious to their dependence on the natural
world.
 Both guilt and anxiety are ontological; they refer to
nature of being and not to feelings arising from specific
situations or transgressions.
 Three forms of ontological guilt, each corresponding to
the modes of being-in-the world:
CONCEPT CAGE
Umwelt
As civilization advances technologically, people become more
and more removed from nature, that is, from umwelt. This
alienation leads to a form of ontological guilt that is especially
prevalent in advanced societies where people live in heated or
cooled dwellings and other advanced mechanisms. It is also
referred to as separation guilt.
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Mitwelt
The second form of guilt stems from our inability to perceive
accurately the world of others. People can see other people only
through their own eyes and can never perfectly judge the needs
of others. Thus, violating their true identity. This leads to a
pervasive condition of guilt, which is experienced by all to some
extent.
Eigenwelt
The third form of ontological guilt is associated with our denial
of our own potentialities or with our failure to fulfill them. This
guilt is grounded in our relationship with our self. It is universal
because none of us can completely fulfill all our potentials.
INTENTIONALITY
 It is the structure that gives meaning to experience and
allows people to make decisions about the future.
 Without it, people could neither choose nor act on their
choice.
 The term is used to bridge the gap between subject and
object.
 Intentionality is sometimes unconscious.
CARE, LOVE, AND WILL
 To care for someone means to recognize that person as
a fellow human being, to identify with that person’s
pain or joy.
 Care – Is not the same as love, but the source of love.
 Love – is defined as a delight in the presence of the
other person and an affirming of that person’s value
and development as much as one’s own.
 Will – is the capacity to organize one’s self so that
movement in a certain direction or toward a certain
goal may take place.
UNION OF LOVE AND WILL
 Modern society is suffering from an unhealthy division
of love and will as love has become associated with
sensual pleasure, whereas will has come to mean a
dogged determination or will power.
 When children first come into the world, they are at
one with the universe, their mother, and themselves.
This is the first freedom.
 As will begins to develop, it manifests itself as
opposition, the first no.
 The “no” should be seen as a positive assertion of self.
But the parents interpret the ”no” negatively and
therefore stifle the child’s self-assertion.
 Our task is to unite love and will. It is not easy but
possible. Neither blissful love nor self-serving will
have a role in the uniting of love and will.
 For the mature person, both love and will mean a
reaching out toward another person. Both involve care,
both necessitate choice, imply action and require
responsibility
FORMS OF LOVE
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Sex
 It is a biological function that can be satisfied through
sexual intercourse or some other release of sexual
tension.
 May believed that it was taken for granted in ancient
times, and has become a problem in modern times.
Eros
 Is a psychological desire that seek procreation or
creation through an enduring union with a loved one.
 Eros is making love whereas sex is manipulating
organs.
 It is built on care and tenderness. It longs to establish
and enduring union with the other person, such that
both partners experience delight and passion and both
are broadened and deepened by the experience.
 It can also be regarded as the salvation of sex
Philia
 It is an intimate nonsexual friendship between two
people.
 It cannot be crushed. It takes time to grow, to develop,
to sink its roots.
 Philia does not require that we do anything for the
beloved except accept him, be with him, and enjoy him.
It is friendship in the simplest, most direct terms.
Agape
 Is defined as esteem for the other, the concern for the
other’s welfare beyond any gain that one can get out of
it; disinterested love, typically, the love of God for
man.
 It is an altruistic love. It is a kind of spiritual love that
carries with it the risk of playing God.
FREEDOM AND DESTINY
 Love also requires and assertion of one’s freedom and a
confrontation with one’s destiny.
 Healthy individuals are able both to assume their
freedom and to face their destiny
FREEDOM
 Freedom is the individual’s capacity to know that he is
the determined one.
 Freedom comes from an understanding of our destiny.
An understanding that death is a possibility at any
moment, that we have weaknesses, that early childhood
experience dispose us toward certain patterns of
behavior.
 It entails being able to harbor different possibilities in
one’s mind even though it is not clear at the moment
which way one must act.
CONCEPT CAGE
Existential freedom
It is referred to as the freedom of action, the freedom of doing.
It is the freedom to act on the choices that one makes
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
Essential freedom
It is the freedom of being. Destiny itself is our prison that allows
us to be less concerned with freedom of doing and more
concerned with essential freedom.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
DESTINY
 It is the design of the universe speaking through the
design of each one of us.
 Our ultimate destiny is death, but on a lesser scale, our
destiny includes other biological properties such as
intelligence, gender, size and strength, and genetic
predisposition toward certain illnesses.
 It is our destination, our terminus, our goal. We cannot
erase our destiny but we can choose how we shall
respond and how we shall live out our talents which
confront us.
POWER OF MYTH
 May was concerned with the powerful effect of myths
on individuals and cultures.
 Myths are not falsehoods. They are conscious and
unconscious belief systems that provide explanations
for personal and social problems.
 Myths are stories that unify a society, they are essential
to the process of keeping our souls alive and bringing
us new meaning in a difficult and often meaningless
world.
 Rationalistic language – the first of the two levels
where people communicate with one another. Here,
truth takes precedence over the people who are
communicating.
 Myths – the second level where the total human
experience is more important than the accuracy of the
communication. People use it along with symbols to
transcend the immediate concrete situation.
 The symptoms do not represent a failure in adjustment,
but rather a proper and necessary adjustment by which
one’s dasein can be preserved
 May suggested that psychotherapy should make people
more human; that is, help them expand their
consciousness so that they will be in a better position to
make choice
 May believed that the purpose of psychotherapy is to
set people free. Therapists who concentrate on a
patient’s symptoms are missing the more important
picture because neurotic symptoms are simply ways of
running away from freedom and an indication that the
patient’s inner possibilities are not being used.
 When patients become more free and more human,
their neurotic symptoms usually disappear and gives
way to normal anxiety, and neurotic guilt is replaced by
normal guilt.
 Therapists can only offer their humanity and
themselves to their patient. They must establish a one-
to-one relationship that enables patient to become more
aware of themselves and to live more fully in their own
world.
 This approach may mean challenging patients to
confront their destiny, to experience despair, anxiety,
and guilt.

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
 Apathy and emptiness are the malaise of modern times.
When people deny their myths, they lose their purpose
for being and they become directionless.
 Many people in modern western societies feel alienated
from the world, from others, and especially from
themselves. They feel helpless to prevent natural
disasters, to reverse industrialization, or to make
contact with another human being. The sense of
insignificance leads to apathy and to a state of
diminished consciousness.
 May saw psychopathology as lack of communication. It
is the inability to know others and to share oneself with
them EYESENCK: BIOLOGICALLY
 Psychologically disturbed individuals deny their
destiny and thus lose their freedom. They erect a BASED FACTOR THEORY
variety of neurotic symptoms to renounce their freedom He developed a factor theory much like McCrae and Costa, but
as the symptoms narrow the person’s because he fundamentally based his taxonomy in both factor
phenomenological world to the size that makes coping analysis and biology, he derived only three dimensions of
easier. The compulsive person adopts a rigid routine, personality. The key for Eysenck was that the individual
thereby making new choices unnecessary. differences in people’s personalities were biological, and not
merely psychological aspects of personality

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 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
EVIDENCE FOR THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF
PERSONALITY
 Temperament – is the biologically based tendency to
behave in particular ways from very early in life
 In one study, it has been shown that fetal activity and fetal
heart rate predict temperament differences over the first
year of life
 The prenatal environment may play an important role in
shaping personality. The amount of stress the mother
experiences during pregnancy may alter the infant’s own
stress response. These infants tend to have impaired stress
function, higher baseline levels of stress hormones, and a
faster, stronger, more pronounced physiological response to
stress.
CONCEPT CAGE
Behavioral genetics – the scientific study of the role of heredity
in behavior. The extent to which a characteristic is influenced by
genetics is known as heritability.
Twin-adoption studies – research into hereditary influence on
twins, who were raised apart and those who were raised
together.
Gene-by-environment interaction research – allows
researchers to assess how genetic differences interact with
environment to produce certain behavior in some people but not
in others.
Brain measure research – biological aspects of personality are
assessed using brain imaging techniques
Electroencephalography – is used to record electrical activity
of the brain by placing electrodes in a person’s scalp. It is
superior to other brain imaging techniques in showing when
brain activity occurs.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging – Images from fMRI
tells us where activity in the brain is occurring during particular
tasks by tracking blood oxygen use in brain tissue
EYSECNK’S FACTOR THEORY
 Eysenck contended that psychometric sophistication alone
is not sufficient to measure the structure of human
personality and that personality dimensions arrived at
through factor analytic methods are sterile and meaningless
unless they have been shown to possess a biological
existence
CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING FACTORS
1. Psychometric evidence – for the factors must be
established. The factor must be reliable and replicable.
Other investigators from separate laboratories must also be
able to find the factor, and these investigators consistently
identify Eysenck’s extraversion, neuroticism, and
psychoticism.
2. Heritability – the factor must fit an established genetic
model. This criterion eliminates learned characteristics such
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as ability to mimic voices of other personalities or personal
beliefs.
3. Make sense in a theoretical view - Eysenck
employed the deductive method of investigation, beginning
with a theory and then gathering data that are logically
consistent with that theory.
4. Social relevance – it must be demonstrated that
mathematically derived factors have a relationship with
socially relevant variables as drug addiction, proneness to
unintentional injuries, outstanding performance in sports,
psychotic behavior, criminality, and so on.
HEIRARCHY OF BEHAVIOR ORGANIZATION
 A four level hierarchy of behavior organization was
recognized by Eysenck.
1. Specific acts or cognitions – individual behaviors or
thoughts that may or may not be characteristic of a
person
2. Habitual acts or cognitions – responses that recur
under similar conditions. These responses must be
reasonably reliant or consistent.
3. Traits – is formed by several related habitual
responses. These are semi-permanent personality
dispositions. They are defined in terms of significant
intercorrelations between different habitual behaviors.
4. Types – it is made up of several interrelated traits
DIMENSIONS OF PERSONALITY
 Many current factor theorists insist that ample evidence
exists that five general factors will emerge from nearly
all factor analyses of personality traits.
 Eysenck only extracted three general superfactors
 Extraversion
 Neuroticism
 Psychoticism.
 However, he did not rule out the possibility that
further dimensions may be added later.
 Neuroticism and Psychoticism are not limited to
pathological individuals, although disturbed people
tend to score higher than normal people on scales
measuring these two factors.
 Eysenck regarded all three factors as part of normal
personality structure.
 All three are bipolar, with extraversion and one end of
factor E and introversion occupying the opposite pole.
 Factor N includes neuroticism at one pile and stability
at the other.
 Factor P has psychoticism at one pole and the
superego function at the other.
 The bipolarity of the factors does not imply that most
people are at one end or the other of the three main
poles. Each factor is unimodally
 distributed
HOW THE FACTORS MEETS HIS CRITERIA
 Strong psychometric evidence exists for each,
especially for each, especially factors E and N. Factor P
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
was not taken seriously by other researchers until the
mid 1990s. Extraversion and neuroticism are the basic
factors in nearly all factor analytic studies of human
personality including various versions of the five-factor
theory.
 A strong biological base exists for each of his three
superfactors. He claimed that traits such as
agreeableness and conscientiousness do not have an
underlying biological function
 The three personality dimensions that he proposed
make sense theoretically.
 Eysenck repeatedly demonstrated that his three factors
relate to such social issues such as drug use, sexual
behaviors, criminality, preventing cancer and heart
disease, and creativity
EXTRAVERSION
 Jung saw extraverted people as having an objective or non-
personalized view of the world, whereas introverts have
essentially a subjective or individualized way of looking at
things.
 Eysenck on the other hand, saw his concepts of extraversion
and introversion closer to the popular usage.
CONCEPT CAGE
Extraverts – are characterized primarily by sociability and
impulsiveness, but also by jocularity, liveliness, quick-
wittedness, optimism, and other traits indicative of people who
are rewarded for their association with others.
Introverts – are characterized by traits opposite those of
extraverts. They are described as passive, unsociable, reserved,
thoughtful, pessimistic, peaceful, sober, and controlled
The primary cause of differences between extraverts and
introverts is one of cortical arousal level.
Cortical arousal level – is a psychological condition that is
largely inherited rather than learned.
Extraverts have a lower level of cortical arousal than introverts.
They have higher sensory thresholds and thus lesser reactions to
sensory stimulation. They need a high level of sensory
stimulation to maintain optimal level of stimulation.
Introverts are characterized by a higher level of arousal resulting
to a lower sensory threshold. To maintain optimal level of
stimulation, they will avoid situations that will cause too much
excitement.
NEUROTICISM
 The factor N has a strong hereditary component. Eysenck
reported several studies that have found evidence of a
genetic basis for such neurotic traits such as anxiety,
hysteria, and obsessive-compulsive disorders.
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 People who score high on this factor often have a tendency
to overreact emotionally and to have difficulty returning to
a normal state after emotional arousal.
 Eysenck proposed this emotional reactivity in neuroticism is
due to having a highly reactive limbic system, including the
amygdala and the hypothalamus.
 Neuroticism does not necessarily suggest a neurosis in a
traditional meaning of that term. People can score high on
neuroticism and be free of any debilitating psychological
symptoms.
 Diathesis-stress model – suggests that some people are
vulnerable to illness because they have either a genetic or
an acquired weakness that predisposes them to an illness.
The predisposition may interact with stress to produce a
neurotic disorder. The higher the neuroticism score, the
lower the level of stress necessary to precipitate a neurotic
disorder.
 Eysenck’s factor analytic technique assumes independence
of factors, which means that the neuroticism scale is at right
angles to the extraversion scale
PSYCHOTICISM
 It is a bipolar factor just like factors E and N, with
psychoticism on one pole and superego on the other.
 High P scores are often egocentric, cold, nonconforming,
impulsive, hostile, aggressive, suspicious, psychopathic and
antisocial.
 People with low P scores tend to be altruistic, highly
socialized, empathic, caring, cooperative, conforming, and
conventional
 The diathesis-stress model also suggests that people who
have high P scores and who are also experiencing levels of
stress have an increased chance of developing a psychotic
illness.
 The factor P is independent of both E and N
 Eysenck’s view of personality allows each person to be
measured on three independent factors and resultant scores
to be plotted in space having three coordinates.
MEASURING PERSONALITY
 Eysenck evolved four personality inventories that
measure his superfactors.
 Maudsley Personality Inventory – assessed only E
and N and yield some correlation between these two
factors.
 Eysenck personality inventory – contains a lie scale
to detect faking. More importantly, it measures
extraversion and neuroticism independently, with a
near zero correlation between E and N. It was extended
to children 7 to 16 years of age by Sybil B.G. Eysenck.
It is still a two-factor inventory.
 Eysenck personality questionnaire – included a
psychoticism scale. It has both a junior and adult
version. It is a revision of the still-published EPI. It is
revised once more due to the criticisms of the P scale.
BIOLOGICAL BASES OF PERSONALITY
 Personality factors P, E, and N all have powerful biological
determinants. About three fourths of the variance of all
 UNIT I: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
three personality dimensions can be accounted for by cause cancer and heart disease because these diseases
heredity and about one fourth by environmental factors. are caused by an interaction of many factors.
 Psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism have both
antecedents and consequences. The antecedents are genetic
and biological, whereas the consequences include
experimental variables as conditioning experiences,
sensitivity, and memory as well as social behaviors such as
criminality, creativity, psychopathology, and sexual
behavior.
 Personality has genetic determinants that indirectly shape
biological intermediaries, and these intermediaries help
mold P, E, and N. I
 In turn, P, E, and N contribute to a wide variety of
laboratory learning as well as social behaviors.

EVIDENCE OF BIOLOGICAL COMPONENT IN

PERSONALITY
 Researchers have found nearly identical factors among
people in various parts of the world.
 Evidence suggests that individuals tend to maintain
their position over time on the different dimensions of
personality
 Studies of twins show a higher concordance between
identical twins than between same gender fraternal
twins reared together, suggesting that genetic factors
play a dominant part in determining individual
differences in personality

PERSONALITY AS PREDICTOR
 Eysenck’s complex model of personality suggests that
the psychiatric traits of P, E, and N can combine with
one another and with genetic determinants, biological
intermediaries, and experimental studies to predict a
variety of social behaviors, including those that
contribute to disease.

PERSONALITY AND BEHAVIOR

 Psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism should
predict results of experimental studies as well as social
behaviors
 Eysenck argued that an effective theory of personality
should predict both proximal and distal consequences.
 He further argued that many psychology studies have
reached erroneous conclusions because they have
ignored personality factors
 An interaction exists between personality dimensions
and learning styles.
 He believed that psychologists can be led astray if they
do not consider the various combinations of personality
dimensions in conducting their research

PERSONALITY AND DISEASE

 It has been found that people who scored low on
neuroticism on the MPI inventory tended to suppress
their emotion and were much likely than High N
scorers to receive a later diagnosis of lung cancer
 Other studies on the relationship between personality
and disease do not prove that psychological factors
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