Tuesday 22 March 2011

P.E.R.S.O.N.A.L.I.T.Y



Why study personality?
          Personality is a central topic in psychology.
          Aims to understand causes of behavior in ourselves and others by attributing unique individual characteristics.

What is Personality?
“An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.”

What is Personality?

          A person’s general style of interacting with the world.
          Differences between people which are  relatively consistent over time and place.
          Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that is organized and relatively enduring and that influences his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the environment (including the intrapsychic, physical, and social environment).
          Individuals can be studied in two ways: 
              Nomothetically: As individual instances of general characteristics that are distributed in the population  
           Idiographically: As single and unique cases

Current Issues in Personality
          Appropriate Units of Personality
        Traits
        Motives
        Cognitions
        Which traits, motives, cognitions, etc.
   Current Issues in Personality
          Nomothetic:  scientific, analytic, common units
                                                                vs.
          Idiographic:  individual level, study individual lives in depth

Major theoretical perspectives
          Psychoanalytic
          Trait
          Humanistic
          Social-Cognitive
          Biological (not covered)

Psychodynamic Perspective

          Developed by Sigmund Freud
          Psychoanalysis is both:
         an approach to therapy and
         a theory of personality
          Emphasises unconscious motivation
          Conscious: Information in your immediate awareness; all things we are aware of at any given moment
          Pre-conscious: Information which can easily be made conscious; everything that can, with a little effort, be brought into consciousness; stores temporary memories
          Unconscious: Thoughts, feelings, urges, wishes, and other information of which we are unaware and that is difficult to bring to conscious awareness; inaccessible warehouse of anxiety-producing thoughts and drives

Psychodynamic Personality Structure

Personality arises from one’s efforts to resolve conflicts between 3 interacting systems of the mind:
          Id (Biological – aggression & pleasure-seeking)
Instinctual drives present at birth
Seeks to satisfy basic biological urges
Operates on the ‘pleasure principle’, unconstrained by logic or reality
Does not distinguish between reality and fantasy

          Ego (Rationality)
Develops ~ 6-8 months, out of the Id
Operates on the ‘reality principle’
Seeks to satisfy urges in a realistic way
Understands reality and logic
Mediates between Id and Superego

          Superego (Social)
Develops ~ 5 years
Represents internalised societal and parental morals, values, ideals
Strives for the ideal
Responsible for guilt
Its sole focus is on how one ought to think and behave

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