There are six important defence mechanisms:
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Repression (responsible for actively keeping threatening or anxiety- provoking memories from our conscious awareness).
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Projection ( involves denial of one’s own unacceptable desires and the discovery of evidence of those desires in the behaviour of other people)
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Reaction Formation (involves replacing anxiety- provoking idea with its opposite).
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Sublimation (is the diversion of psychic energy from an unacceptable drive to an acceptable one).
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Rationalisation (process of inventing an acceptable reason for a behaviour that is rally being performed for another, less acceptable reason).
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Conversion (is the provision of an outlet for intrapsychic conflict in the form of physical symptoms. The conflict is transformed into blindness, deafness, paralysis or numbness).
Freud argued that these defence mechanisms protect the ego and allow the person to cope with the reality. Therefore, different personalities emerge because people differ in the differences they use.
Freud was also interested in looking at psychosexual theory of personality development, which involves passing through several psychosexual stages of development that involve seeking pleasure from specific parts of the body called erogenous zones. Freud believed that person becomes fixated at the particular stage of the development when they become strongly attached to the erogenous zone involved in the stage. Although a normal personality development involves passing successfully through all the psychosexual stages, Freud maintained that most people become more or less fixated at some point in their development.
The first stage is oral stage (0-2 yrs approx) which is characterised by sucking and is passive. Someone whose personality is fixed at the early stage might be excessively passive. The second stage is anal stage which begins during second year; ego starts to develop as the child becomes aware of the self and recognises that it must take account of the demands of reality (most important demand i.e. potty training). People who get fixated at this stage may develop “anal retentive” personality. This means they will hold everything in including their emotions; they are very obsessive about neatness and cleanliness as well as being mean and obstinate. The third stage is phallic stage emerges at three and lasts until five years of age. The boy experiences the Oedipus complex; he sexually desires his mother and wants to kill his father out of jealousy. The girl develops penis envy and begins to hate her mother for not providing a penis. The girl then transfers her love to her father, which is known as the Electra complex. By age 5 when Oedipus complex is resolved, the child’s basic personality patterns are formed. The forth stage is latency stage lasts from phallic stage to the beginning of puberty. Sexuality lies dormant and children want nothing to do with opposite sex. The fifth stage is genital stage marks the beginning of mature adult sexuality. Freud believed that not everyone reached this stage. The defence mechanism of the ego and the displacement of instinctual energy may prevent people from reaching mature genital sexuality and keep them fixed on “immature” forms of sexuality.
Freud’s theory created controversy in the Victorian era, the theory proposed that our thoughts and behaviour as adults steam from unconscious forces as well as from our early childhood experiences. However, there are couple of Neo- Freudians that didn’t agree with Freud’s theory. Carl Jung (1875-1961), argued that libido was a positive creative force that propels people towards personal growth. He also believed that forces other than id, ego, and superego, such as collective unconscious, form the core of personality. To Jung ego was totally conscious and contained the ideas, perceptions, emotions, thoughts and memories of which we are aware. Like Jung, Alfred Adler (1870-1937) felt that Freud overemphasised the role of sexuality in personality development. Adler argued that feelings of inferiority play the key role.
Karen Horney (1885-1952) didn’t believe that sex and aggression are the primary themes of personality. She did however agree with Freud, though, that anxiety is a basic problem that people must address to overcome. Like Adler, Horney though, the environmental variables influenced personality development. According to her view, in order to understand personality one must consider not only psychodynamic forces within the mind, but also the environmental conditions to which those forces are reacting. Erik Erikson (1902-1994) also differed with Freud about the timing of personality development. For Freud, the most important development occurs during early childhood. Erikson emphasised the ongoing process of development throughout the lifespan. He proposed that people’s personality traits developed as a result of a series of crises they encounter in their social relations with other people. Because these crises continue throughout life, psychosocial development does not end when people become adults.
In contrast to Psychoanalytical theory which concentrates on the unconscious process of the mind is a theory of Social Learning. The theory argues that personality consists of learned behaviours. They believe that both the consequences of behaviour and a person’s beliefs about the consequences (expectancy) determine personality. Social learning theory is a mix of various approaches to psychology and because it’s developed out of behaviourism it tends to be highly empirical and dependant on detailed observations. The theory stems partially from Skinner’s experimental analysis of behaviour. However, social learning theorists have modified and applied Skinner’s ideas to their own work. One such researcher is Albert Bandura (1925), who blended Skinner’s ideas with his own, about how cognitive factors may influence behaviour. Cognitive processing, including the individual’s interpretation of the situation is central to social learning theory (Bandura, 1973, 1986). An important aspect of cognition for Bandura is expectancy, the individual’s belief that a specific consequence will follow a specific action. Expectancy refers to how someone perceives the contingencies of reinforcement for their own behaviour. Take for example a young boy, who thinks that he can get anything from his young sister by hitting her. However, on one occasion, his parents may catch him hitting his sister and punish him. His expectancy may now change: he may still get what he wants by behaving aggressively, but if caught, he’ll be punished. This new expectancy may influence how he behaves towards his sister in the future (especially around his parents). Expectancies also permit people to learn actions vicariously. The social learning theory emphasizes the importance of vicarious learning or in other words observational learning (modelling). This is a form of learning in which expectancy about reinforcement is formed merely by observing another’s behaviour and the consequences it produces.
Unlike many personality researchers, Bandura does not believe that either personal characteristics (traits) or the environment alone determines personality (Bandura, 1978). Rather he argues for reciprocal determinism, the idea that behaviour, environmental variables and person variables, such as perception, cognitions and expectations, interact to determine personality. According to Bandura (1982), the concept of self-efficacy is also important as it determines whether individual will attempt to make changes in its environment. Moreover, low self- efficacy not only determines whether we will engage in a particular behaviour, it also determines the extent to which we will maintain that behaviour in the face of adversity. Low self –efficacy can hamper both the frequency and the quality of behaviour-environment interactions, where as high self-efficacy can facilitate both.
Like Bandura, Walter Mischel (b.1930) believes that much of one’s personality is learned through interaction with the environment. Mischel emphasises the role of cognition in determining how one learns the relationship between one’s behaviour and its consequences. In addition, though, Mischel argues that individual differences in a cognition, or person variables account for differences in personality. Mischel (1984) proposed five person variables that figure significantly in social learning:
Competence: where every individual has different skills, abilities and capacities. What we know and the kinds of behaviour that have been reinforced in the past, influence the kind of actions in which we will likely engage in the future.
Encoding strategies and personal constructs: the way we process information determines how we perceive different situations.
Expectancies: On the basis of past behaviours and our knowledge of current situations, we form expectancies about the effects of our behaviour on the environment.
Subjective values: The degree to which we value certain rein forcers over others influences our behaviour. We seek those outcomes that we value most.
Self- regulatory systems and plans: we monitor our progress towards achieving goals and subject ourselves to either self- punishment or self- reinforcement, depending on our progress.
Other social learning theorists, such as Julian Rotter (b.1916), have argued that the extent to which one perceives oneself to be in a control of particular situations is also important element of personality. Locus of Control refers to whether one believes that the consequences of one’s actions are controlled by internal, person variables or by external, environmental variables (Rotter 1954, 1966).A person who expects to control their own fate, or who perceive that reward are dependant upon their own behaviour has an internal locus of control. However, a person who sees their life as being controlled by external forces unaffected by their own behaviour has an external locus of control.
By looking at those two theories, we can argue that they form part of Nature verse Nurture debate. Psychoanalytical theory justifies person’s behaviour from biological point of view, focusing on the particular anatomical regions- mouth, anus, and genitals which makes it difficult to properly understand human development. He also explains behaviour through suppressed motives, conflicts and guilt; emphasize the role of unconscious, instinctual drives in personality development. The theory completely ignores the process of socialisation. Nevertheless, Social learning theorists emphasize the importance of the environment as an influence on individual’s behaviour. The approach avoids examining internal concept such as motivation or traits. Social Learning theorists believe that perception, cognition and expectations play an integral part in determining individual’s personality. They also examine conditions which seam to control behaviour, looking at how these behaviours are learnt and how to modify them.
References
Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and Human Growth. New York: W.W. Norton
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bandura, A. (1978) The self systems in reciprocal determinism. American Psychologist, 33, 344-358t
Bandura, A. (1982). Self- efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 33, 334-358
Mischel, W. (1984). Convergence and challenges in the search for consistency. American Psychologist, 39, 351-364
Rotter, J. B. (1966) Social learning and Clinical Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Practice Hall
Rotter, J.B. (1966) Generalized expectancies for internal verse external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80 (1, Whole No. 609)
Alfred, A. (1927) The practice and theory of individual Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Carlson, R. Neil and Martin, Neil, and Buskit, W. (2004) Psychology (2nd European edition). Essex: Pearson Education Limited
Gross, R (1996).Psychology, The Science of mind and behaviour (3rd Ed). London: Hodder & Stoughton