PERSONALITY AND DYNAMICS

This unit includes a brief description

of personality and the dynamics of
adjusting and coping with
frustration, conflict and stress.
 Rationale

It is important for everyone to

have knowledge of personality
and its dynamics so that he/she
becomes fully aware of both
effective and ineffective ways of
coping with problems and
complexities of life.
 What is Personality?
According to Gordon Allport, personality is
the characteristic patterns of behavior and
modes of thinking that determines a
person’s adjustment to the environment.

But in another way, personality may be

regarded as the person’s unique and
enduring behavior patterns. There is an
implication of a core of consistency
regardless of the situation the person finds
himself or herself in.
What happens when
inadequate techniques pose a
threat to adjustment?

This may lead to frustration,

conflict, and stress.
Frustration is an unpleasant
emotion that occurs when
progress towards a desired
goal or wish is blocked. There
are two sources of
frustration, the external
obstacles and the internal
obstacles.
Conflict is a major source of
frustration. It comes having
to decide between
contradictory or incompatible
demands, wishes, desires,
and motives. The satisfaction
of one leads to the frustration
of the other.
 Conflict may take into five forms:
1.Approach-Approach conflict. A conflict
that presents the individual a goal or
situation with two positive or desirable
alternatives
2. Approach-Avoidance conflict. A conflict
that presents the individual with a goal or
situation having both a positive and
negative qualities
3. Avoidance-Avoidance conflict. A conflict
difficult to resolve which comes from
having to choose between two negative
or undesirable qualities
 Forms of Conflict
4. Double Approach-Avoidance conflict.
A conflict involving two alternatives,
each both have the positive and
negative qualities
5. Ambivalence. A major characteristic of
the approach-avoidance conflict
involving mixed positive and negative
feelings in a conflict situation
 DEFENSE MECHANISM

Freud used term defense

mechanism to refer to any
technique used to deny, distort
or avoid sources of anxiety in
order to maintain an idealized
self-image so that we can live
comfortably with ourselves
 Compensation. Counteracting a real or
imagined weakness by emphasizing
desirable traits or by seeking to excel in
other areas.
 Denial. Protecting oneself from an
unpleasant reality by refusing to perceive
it.
 Fantasy. Fulfilling frustrated desires in
imaginary achievements or activities.
 Intellectualization. Separating emotion
from hurtful, threatening situation by
talking and thinking about it on formal
“intellectual” terms.
 Projection. Attributing one’s feelings,
shortcomings, or unacceptable impulses to
others.
 Rationalization. Justifying one’s behavior by
giving reasonable and “rational” but false reason
for it.
 Reaction Formation. Preventing dangerous
impulses from being expressed by exaggerating
opposite behavior.
 Regression. Retreating to an earlier level of
development or to an earlier less demanding
habits or situations.
 Repression. Preventing painful or dangerous
thoughts form entering consciousness.
Repression is a form of motivated forgetting.
 Sublimation. Working off frustrated desires or
unacceptable impulses in activities that are
constructive and acceptable by society.
 Coverage for Final Exams
 Consciousness and its Altered States
 Learning
 Memory
 Motivation & Emotion
 Personality
 Health, stress and coping