personality theories · 2014-07-01 · karen horney horney disagreed with freud’s account of...
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PERSONALITY THEORIES
Psychoanalytic approach
‘Iceberg’ analogy
psychosexual development
Freud posits that there is a sequence of development of ‘erogenous fixation’ in the infant corresponding to the bodily centre of pleasure …
stages of psychosexual development …
infants move from an ‘oral’ to an ‘anal’ to a ‘phallic’
and then ‘latent’ and finally pubescent ‘genital’ stage … ‘disturbances’, ‘anxiety’ at
any stage may result in ‘neuroses’, whether overtly sexual or not, later in life
…
Oral: nourishment, give & take …
Anal: control, organisation …
Phallic: goalorientation, identity …
Highlevel issues …
oral
0 – 1 year …
orally aggressive: signs include chewing gum or
ends of pens …
oral
orally passive: signs include smoking/
eating/ kissing/ fellatio/ cunnilingus …
fixation at this stage may result in passivity,
gullibility, immaturity and manipulative personality …
anal (and organs of elimination)
1 – 3 years
anal retentive: obsession with organization or excessive neatness …
anal
anal expulsive: reckless, careless, defiant, disorganized, coprophiliac …
‘phallic’
3 – 6 years
centred on genitals as erogenous zone …
oedipus complex (in boys)electra complex (in girls) …
parents as complex ‘objects’ of gratification …
competition for the ‘love’ of one parent with the other … threat … unresolved libidinal
tensions … fear of ‘castration’ …
‘Oedipal’ issues ...
latent
from around 6 to puberty, children display little by way of ‘sexual’ activity …
genital
at puberty, but often with unresolved patterns of
‘cathexis’ due to disturbances at stages of psychosexual development … including oedipal/ electra
complications …
‘Motivation’ & personality
Thinkers such as Karen Horney, Henry Murray,
David Mclelland, Albert Bandura posited relations
between needs, motivation, &
personality …
Karen Horney
Horney disagreed with Freud’s account of female
psychological development that emphasised ‘penis envy’
& ‘masochism’ (father seduction) …
In ‘Feminine Psychology’ (1922), she developed an influential theory of
neurosis …
Karen Horney
If the environment in which a child is brought up induces
anxiety in the child, through not fulfilling basic needs, neuroses arise as the child (later, adult) attempts to defend themselves against
anxiety through ‘compensatory’ strategies …
Karen Horney
both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ strategies may be used to offset underlying
anxieties … the main strategies are …
‘compliance’, ‘aggression’, ‘withdrawal’ …
Karen Horney
‘compliance’ …
trying to ‘please’ others, or ‘over dependence’ …
Karen Horney
‘aggression’ …
seeking power over others, exploiting others,
‘status’ seeking, seeking ‘admiration’, over
achieving …
Karen Horney
‘withdrawal’, ‘detachment’ …
‘selfsufficiency’, ‘perfectionism’, ‘self
restriction’ …
in a balanced individual these would be needs for
sociability, achievement & recognition, and autonomy
…
Henry Murray, developed an extensive list of motivating needs …
See HANDOUT ‘Motivation & Personality’ …
Kelly’s ‘Personal Construct’
theory
George Kelly developed ‘Personal Construct
Psychology’ (1955; 1963), based on a constructivist,
cognitive approach …
he proposed that the anticipation of events
(expectations) plays a key role in the development of
one’s worldview
his proposal that a small set of binary concepts
such as
good\bad, clever\notclever,
rich\poor, beautiful\ugly,
secure\insecure …
are used, in diverse combinations, by people to
order their worldsincluding themselves within those worlds …
“Man looks at his world through transparent
templets which he creates and then attempts to fit over the realities of which the world is composed.” (pp.89)
“Constructs are used for predictions of things to come, and the world keeps
on rolling on and revealing these
predictions to be either correct or misleading.
“This fact provides the basis for the revision of
constructs and, eventually, of whole
construct systems.” (p.14) George Kelly, ‘The Psychology of Personal Constructs’
(1955)
The upshot here is that personalities are
cognitive constructs, ‘who we are’ depending on who
is constructing us and how (by what means) they are
constructing us …