Personality

A person’s general style of interacting with the world.

People differ from one another in ways that are relatively consistent over time and place.

Psychoanalytic Approach: Freudian Psychoanalysis and Post-Freudian Theories.

Psychoanalytic Approach

1)   Developed by Sigmund Freud

2)   Psychoanalysis is both an approach to therapy and a theory of personality

3)   Emphasizes unconscious motivation - the main causes of behavior lie buried in the unconscious mind

Ego

Rational mediating dimension of personality

Superego

Moralistic, judgmental, perfectionist dimension of personality

Id

Irrational, illogical, impulsive dimension of personality

Conscious

1.   Information in your immediate awareness.

2.   all things we are aware of at any given moment

 Preconscious

1.   Information which can easily be made conscious.

2.   everything that can, with a little effort, be brought into consciousness

Unconscious

1.   Thoughts, feelings, urges and other information that is difficult to bring to conscious awareness.

2.   inaccessible warehouse of anxiety-producing thoughts and drives

Psychoanalytic Divisions of the Mind

Id - instinctual drives present at birth

1.   does not distinguish between reality and fantasy

2.   operates according to the pleasure principle

Ego - develops out of the id in infancy

1.   understands reality and logic

2.   mediator between id and superego

Superego

1.   internalization of society’s moral standards

2.   responsible for guilt

Defense Mechanisms

1.   Unconscious mental processes employed by the ego to reduce anxiety

2.   Repression - keeping anxiety-producing thoughts out of the conscious mind

3.   Reaction formation - replacing an unacceptable wish with its opposite

4.   Displacement - when a drive directed to one activity by the id is redirected to a more acceptable activity by the ego

5.   Sublimation - displacement to activities that are valued by society

6.   Projection - reducing anxiety by attributing unacceptable impulses to someone else

7.   Rationalization - reasoning away anxiety-producing thoughts

8.   Regression - retreating to a mode of behavior characteristic of an earlier stage of development

Personality Assessment

Clinical Interview

Objective Tests

1.   MMPI

2.   Myers-Briggs

Projective Tests

1.   Rorschach Ink Blots

2.      Thematic Apperception Test