Personality Wider Reading (L2)

Personality - Wider Reading (L2)

Aspect 1 - The Assumptions

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• Psychic Determinism - apparently idea comes from Brenner (1974) - idea that everything happens for a reason, and that anything we think or do has a cause. No miracles, free will or random accidents. Suggestion that many important mental processes are unconscious BUT STILL DECIDED. Modern research still supports this assumption,
• Shaver and Mikulincer (2005) found that a very small percentage of what the mind does is conscious and Weiss, Sampson and the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group (1986) suggests that a person may "unconsciously plan and carry out a variety of behaviours" and suggests that these plans are governed by "considerations of safety." However they note that the majority of film viewers will be moved by the same happy ending, and cannot stop their tears when they cry at a happy ending - challenges the theory because they have no control over their tears even when they feel happy.
• (Good piece of research as both supports and criticises Freud's assumptions.)
• (only real research I could find was this, everything else was mostly just theory)

Aspect 2 -The Topographic (Iceberg) Model

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• From: Handbook of Personality (John, Robins and Pervin, 2008)
• Id is for sexual and aggressive energy and operates from 'primary' process thinking (wishful)
• Superego is conscience
• Ego has to balance desire with reality and morals.(Secondary process thinking, controlled)
• This model is thought to be given strength by that fact that it is similar to modern, dual-process models of memory and thought.
• However Brenner (2003) suggests this model is now too old to explain things in modern light, given everything we now know, but acknowledge that it is still important in teaching the basis of personality.
• Brenner developed on Freud's theory of compromise. Freud said it was between Id, Ego and Superego, but Brenner extended that all psychological events are compromises that include wishes, anxiety, depressive affect, defence and superego prohibitions.

Aspect 3 - Drives

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• Rosenfeld (2008)
• Many objected to this theory of death instinct, but clinicians started to recognise its clinical importance.
• Freud said the death instinct drives people towards death, appearing as 'destructive impulses.' e.g. drinking a lot, jumping from heights, 'thrill' activities.

Aspect 4 - Psychosexual Stages

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• Cameron (1967)
• 2,336 pps between 3 and 17 chose one from 12 pairs of Freudian inspired shapes representing masculinity or femininity. Choices supported psychoanalytic prediction that the phallic, latency and genital stages are revealed in shape preference and also that males and females aged 13+ would prefer masculine shapes due to living in a male-oriented culture, whereas children in phallic stage chose objects representing opposite-sex attraction (and due to their age were assumed to be unaware that they live in a male-oriented society).

Aspect 5 - Stages and Fixations

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• Really interesting stuff on sex crime -
• Evidence that homosexual offenders failed to achieve "gradual transference of interest to the opposite sex" (Hartwell, 1947, in Citizen's Handbook). This immaturity results from fixation and results in focus on desires according to that level of development (e.g phallic).
• Pollens (1938) says sexual psychopaths traits are in line with immaturity that is linked to an impulse from a certain stage - "psychosexually immature". Sex perversion in adults indicates fixation at lower stage of psychosexual development - described as 'they started climbing the psychosexual stage ladder but did not progress to the end"

Aspect 6 - Ego Defence Mechanisms

• Valliant (1994) says that clinicians need to understand a persons defences to understand their psychopathplogy, e.g. what defence do they use too much etc. The clinician can then suggest what is the most unreasonable about the patients behaviour and appreciate what is adaptive and maladaptive about their defensive distortions. Suggested that finding the immature defences is particularly useful in classifying and caring for individuals with personality disorders.
• ^ clearly supports the idea if we use it to treat people.
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References

• Weiss, Sampson and the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group (1986) - https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ETE2ZQeTKL4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=modern+support+for+psych...
• Handbook of Personality (John, Robins and Pervin, 2008) - https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8r4KlgerjcUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA61&dq=the+topographic+model+o...
• Brenner (2003) - Is the structural model still useful? International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84, 1093-1103.
• Rosenfeld (2008) - https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=vkOPAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA116&dq=life+and+death+drives+...
• Cameron (1967) - http://prx.sagepub.com/content/21/1/33.short
• Hartwell (1947) - https://muse.jhu.edu/article/15232
• Pollens (1938) - The Sex Criminal. For similar arguments in other popular writing by psychologists and psychiatrists, see Hartwell, (n. 17) Citizens’ Handbook, p. 36; Philip Piker, “A psychiatrist looks at sex offenses,” 1947. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/15232#FOOT26
• Valliant (1994) - http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/103/1/44/