Psycho-dynamic Approaches to Personality

1. PERSONALITY
Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

2. Psychodynamic Approach
Approaches that assume that personality is motivated
by inner forces and conflicts about which people
have little awareness and over which they have no
control

3. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
Mapping the Unconscious Mind
Freud’s theory that unconscious forces act as
determinants of personality
Unconscious: a part of the personality that
contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs,
feelings, urges, dries, and instincts the
individual is not aware of

4. Freud's Three Levels of Mind
• The conscious mind includes everything that we
are aware of. This is the aspect of our mental
processing that we can think and talk about rationally.
• The preconscious mind is the part of the mind
that represents ordinary memory.
• The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings,
thoughts, urges, and memories that outside of our
conscious awareness. presents ordinary memory.

6. Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and
Superego

7. Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and
Superego
• ID: The raw, unorganized inborn, part of
personality whose sole purpose is to reduce
tension created by primitive drives related to
hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational
impulses

8. Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and
Superego (Cont’d)
• Ego: The part of the personality that
provides a buffer between the id and the
outside world

9. Structuring Personality: ID, Ego and
Superego (Cont’d)
• Superego: according to Freud, the final
personality structure to develop; it represents
the rights and wrongs of society as handed
down by a person’s parents, teachers, and
other important figures.

10. Defense Mechanisms
• In Freudian theory, unconscious strategies
that people use to reduce anxiety by
concealing the source of it from themselves
and others.
• Repression: The primary defense mechanism
in which unacceptable or unpleasant id
impulses are pushed back into the
unconsciousness

11. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Building on Freud
Psychoanalysts who were trained in traditional Freudian
theory but who later rejected some of its major
points
Collective unconscious: according to Jung, a common
set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we
inherit from our ancestors, the whole human race,
and even animal ancestors from the distant past

12. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Building on Freud (Cont’d)
• Archetypes: according to Jung, universal
symbolic representations of a particular
person, object, or experience (such as good
and evil)

13. Neo-Freudian Perspective
• Horney’s Perspective
• Adler and the other Neo-Freudians

14. Trait, Learning, Biological and
Evolutionary and Humanistic
Approaches to Personality

15. Trait Approaches: Placing Labels on
Personality
• Trait theory is a model of personality that
seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to
describe personality
• Traits: consistent personality characteristics
and behavior displayed in different situations.

16. Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying
Basic Characteristics
• Three fundamental categories of traits
• Cardinal trait – is a single characteristic that directs most
of a person’s activities. Example: a totally selfless
woman.
• Central traits – such as honesty and sociability, are an
individual’s major characteristics; they usually number
from five to ten in any one person
• Secondary traits – are characteristics that affect behavior
in fewer situations and are less influential than central or
cardinal traits

17. Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring out
Personality
• Factor analysis Is a statistical method of identifying
associations among a large number of variables to
reveal more general patterns.
• Raymond Cattall suggested that 16 pairs of source
traits represent the basic dimensions of personality
and developed The Sixteen Personality Factor
Questionnaire

18. Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring out
Personality (Cont’d)
• Hans Eysenck described personality’s three major
dimensions:
• Extraversion – relates to the degree of sociability
• Neuroticism – encompasses emotional stability
• Psychoticism – refers to the degree to which reality is
distorted

19. The Big Five Personality Factors and
Dimensions of Sample Traits

20. Learning Approaches: We are What
We have Learned
• Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach
• According to the most influential learning
theorist, B.F.Skinner, personality is a
collection of learned behavior patterns.

21. Learning Approaches: We are What
We have Learned (Cont’d)
• Social Cognitive Approaches to Personality
• Theories that emphasize the influence of
a person's cognitions – thoughts, feelings,
expectations, and values – as well as
observation of others; behavior, in
determining personality.

22. Learning Approaches: We are What
We have Learned (Cont’d)
• Self-efficacy
• Belief in one’s personal abilities . Self
efficacy underlies people’s faith in their
ability to carry out a particular behavior or
produce a desired outcome.

23. How much consistency exists in
Personality?
• Personality cannot be considered without taking the
particular context of the situation into account – a
view known as situations.
• Mischel in his cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS)
argues that the people’s thoughts and emotions about
themselves and the world determine how they view
and then react in particular situation

24. Learning Approaches: We are What
We have Learned (Cont’d)
• Self-Esteem
• The component of personality that
encompasses our positive and negative
self-evaluation.

25. Biological and Evolutionary
Approaches: Are We Born with
Personality
• Approaches to personality – theories that
suggest that important component of
personality are inherited.
• Biological and evolutionary approaches to
personality seek to explain the consistencies
in personality that are found in some families.

26. Humanistic Approaches: The
Uniqueness of You
• Theories that emphasize people’s innate
goodness and desire to achieve higher levels
of functioning
• It is this conscious self motivated ability to
change and improve, along with people’s
unique creative impulses, that humanistic
argue make up the core of personality

27. Rogers and the Need for Self-
actualization
• Self-actualization – A state of self fulfillment
in which people realize their highest potential,
each in a unique way.
• Unconditional positive regard – a attitude of
acceptance and respect on the part of an
observer, no matter what a person says or
does.