Sigmund Freud

Biography

Sigmund Freud was born on 6th May 1856 in Moravia’s town Freiberg. He lived the most of his life in Vienna. Freud was always a brilliant student in his classes. He went to a medical school and became involved in man researches lead by a professor of psychology named Ernst Brucke. Freud was a very good researcher and made new discoveries about his topics. From there he went on with many great psychiatrists like Charcot in Paris and Bernheim in Nancy. He found out a lot about hypnosis and hysterics. After studying abroad in Berlin, he cam back to Vienna and married Martha Bernays. Freud gained fame by writing many books and giving lectures about topics of psychology. During World War II, Freud came to England as Vienna was not a safe place for Jews. Soon after, he died from a mouth cancer disease. But by now Freud had discovered a lot about psychology and today people read his theories and believe in it.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Freud introduced many theories of personality. Some of the main theories include:

1. The idea of conscious versus the unconscious.

2. The id, the ego, and the superego.

3. Life and Death instincts

4. Anxiety

5. The defense mechanisms

6. The stages

7. The Oedipal crisis

8. Character

The first theory is the idea of conscious versus the unconscious. Freud defines the conscious mind as what one is aware of at any given moment, one’s present ideas and views, fantasies, thoughts, memories, and feelings. However Freud suggests that the conscious part of our brain is smaller than the unconscious. The unconscious part is the largest and it includes the things that one is not aware of, for example our instincts, memories, emotions, and things that we can’t bear to look at. Freud also says that the unconscious is what gives us motivation for desires of food or sex.

The id, ego, and the superego is one of the famous theories introduced by Freud. The first of these is the id. The id works just to keep us pleased and happy. The id demands to take care of our immediate needs, for example if there is someone else’s food kept somewhere then the id forces the hungry person to take the food and don’t care about the consequences. The ego works with the reality principle. The ego takes care of a need by finding rational solutions that might not have harsh consequences, for example if there is someone else’s food kept somewhere then the ego forces the hungry person to take some of it and leave some. The superego works with the respect principle. So if there is food the superego will not take the food because it respects other people’s property.

Sigmund Freud also introduced the theories on life and death instincts. The life instinct is referred to as the life of an individual motivated to seek food and water. The life of the species is motivated to have sex. As Freud believes that the goal of life is death. Freud thinks that near the life instincts there is a death instinct and that everyone is this world has a wish to die. Freud believes that although this wish might even be unconscious but it is present in everyone’s mind.

Freud mentions three different kinds of anxieties in his anxiety theory. The first one is called realistic anxiety, which means that if one person is faced with something fearful, like a snake, they would experience fear in their minds. The second kind of anxiety is known as the moral anxiety which means that the threat comes form the social world of the superego. With this threat the person feels guilt, shame, and fear. The last one is the neurotic anxiety which means that the threat comes from within a person. For example the person would fear if he or she is about to lose temper.

Freud also contributed to the introduction of the defense mechanism theory. This theory includes the ways a person can use to defend his or her actions. There are many ways a person can defend, here is a list, Denial, Repression, Asceticism, Isolation, Displacement, Turning against the self, Projection, Altruistic surrender, Reaction formation, Undoing, Introjection, Identification with the aggressor, Regression, Rationalization, and Sublimation.

Sigmund Freud also introduced a theory on the development of humans through various stages. In the oral stage the source of pleasure is the mouth. In the anal stage the source of pleasure is the anus. In the phallic stage the pleasure is gained from the genitalia. In the latent stage the pleasure is to learn new thing and gather knowledge. In the final stage, the genital stage, the pleasure is gained from having sex drives.

Freud also introduced the theory of Oedipal crisis. In this theory Freud mentions that a young boy has sex drives for his mother and a young girl has sex drives for her father.

Freud introduced the character theory. In this theory Freud says that one’s experiences contribute to the development of their personality and character. These experiences help a young adolescence become an adult and take responsibilities and contribute to the society.

Alfred Adler

Biography

Alfred Adler was born on 7th February in Vienna. He was born to Jewish parents and when he was five he almost died because of pneumonia. However the disease was cured and from there on Alfred decided that he would become a physician. Alfred was not a very intelligent student in his school but he more popular and outgoing. However he still managed to gain a medical degree from the University of Vienna. During his college studies he also found a girl for himself. He and Raissa Epstein got married in 1897 and had four children. To start his medical career he became an ophthalmologist but soon his interests turned towards general practice and then he opened a small office in Vienna. Then soon afterwards Alfred turned towards psychology and joined the group of Sigmund Freud. He and Freud had many debates over several things related to psychology. During World War I, Alfred was a physician in the Austrian Army and after the war he was involved in many social projects. Eventually, Alfred Adler died of a heart attack on 28th May 1937.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

Some of the main theories introduced by Alfred Adler are listed below.

1. Life style

2. Teleology

3. Social interests

4. Inferiority

5. Psychological types

6. Childhood

7. Birth Order

The first of these theories is related to life style. According to Adler Life style refers to how one lives, tackle problems, and handle personal relationships. He looked at people as a whole and not as parts. According to Adler the style of life of a tree is the individuality of a tree trying to show itself in an environment. This basically means that every one of us tries to fit in the society and alter our behaviors. This theory is very simple in its meaning and it just says that we change our life styles for fitting with others.

Alfred Adler described a new idea in this theory called Teleology. Adler sees motivation as a reason to move closer towards things a person wants to achieve instead of being driven by the past. Adler thinks that we are all drawn towards our goals in life. He thinks that we always try to go closer to what purpose or ideas we want to achieve. Adler calls this theory Teleology.

Alfred Adler also introduced the theory of Social interest. For Adler striving for perfection is the priority but the second most important thing is the idea of social interest or social feeling. He thinks that one cannot achieve his or her goals without having a social community to compete in. It is the social environment of person that thrives him to do something, to get to his goal.

The theory of Inferiority mainly means that a person feels under the pressure of other people. If things are going well for a person, he is getting closer to his goals, competing in the society, and then everything is fine. But is the person is not having any of these things then he looks to himself and starts to feel inferior to other people. Adler believes that every one of us have a stronger and a weaker side. In this theory a person shoes and represents his weaker side. In this theory Adler also describes the inferiority complex and the superiority complex.

Adler introduced many types of psychological types. The first is the ruling type, form childhood a person feels dominant over others and is aggressive. The second is the learning type, sensitive person who forms a shell around himself for protection and relies on others for facing life’s difficulties. The third type is the avoiding type, a person who has the lowest levels of energy and avoids facing others in life. The final and fourth type is the socially useful type, this is a person who is both socially active and participating and has high levels of energy. Adler also believed that each person is a unique individual so he or she may be a mixture of these personality types.

Adler’s theories on Childhood are also very interesting. Alder like Freud believed that lifestyle and personality is developed in the early years of a person’s life. In fact he thinks that when a person is five then their attitude is fixed for life. Adler feels there are three basic childhood situations that contribute to a lifestyle. The first one is organ inferiorities, the second is pampering, and the third is neglect.

Adler also has some interesting views about the birth order. There are four situations in which a person’s character is affected. If parents have an only child then the child is likely to be pampered. If it’s the first child then he gets all the attention from his parents and when the second child arrives then that first child fights for his lost attention form parents. The second child is usually competitive, and tries to become more superior to the first child. The youngest child is the most pampered in the family, he feels inferior to all and every one is always ahead of him.

Carl Jung

Biography

Carl Gustav Jung was born on 26th July 1875 in a Swiss village of Kessewil. He was always surrounded by educated and intelligent family relatives. Jung studied many languages in the early years of his life like Latin, Sanskrit, and many other European languages. In his teenage years Carl didn’t care much about school, he went to a boarding school in Basel, Switzerland. Although he choose to study archeology, he still went on to study medicine. Then after working under the famous neurologist Krafft-Ebing, he went on to pursue his career as a psychiatrist. Jung also met Freud in Vienna in 1907 where they talked a lot about psychology and its concepts. They analyzed each other’s dreams and they always had an interesting conversation. But then came World War I, and Jung traveled to Africa, America, and India. He retired in 1946 and began to stay away from the public and press as much as possible. His wife died in 1955 and eventually he died on 6th June of 1961.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Jung introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. Archetypes

2. The mother archetype

3. Mana

4. The shadow

5. The persona

6. Anima and animus

7. The dynamics of psyche

8. The self

9. Synchronicity

10. Introversion and Extroversion

11. The functions

12. Assessment

The first of these theories is related to archetypes. The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung also called them dominants, images, mythological or primordial images, and a few other names, but archetypes seems to be the most appealing over these. An archetype is an unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way. The archetype is like a black hole in space. You only know its there by how it draws matter and light to itself.

The mother archetype is a very good example of a theory. All of our ancestors had mothers. We have developed in an environment that included a mother or mother-substitute. We would never have survived without our connection with a nurturing-one during our times as helpless infants. So the mother archetype is our ability to recognize a certain relationship, that of mothering. Jung says that this is rather different, we are likely to show the archetype out into the world and onto a particular person, usually our own mothers.

The mana theory is also interesting. One must understand that these archetypes are not really biological things. Unlike Freud's instincts they are more spiritual demands. For example, if you dreamt about long things, Freud might say these things represent sex. But Jung might have a very different interpretation. Even dreaming about a penis might not have much to do with sex according to Jung. The mana usually symbolizes this kind of spiritual power.

The shadow theory is also introduced by Jung. Sex and the life instincts in are of course represented somewhere in Jung's psychological system. They are a part of an archetype called the shadow. It derives or comes from our past, when our concerns were limited to survival and reproduction, and when we weren't very self-conscious. Meaning we didn’t car much about many other things except food and sex.

The other theory is related to the persona. The persona represents a person’s public image. The word, persona, is obviously related to the word person and personality, and it comes from a Latin word for mask. So the persona is the mask you put on before you show yourself to the outside world. According to Jung it is all a part of collective unconscious.

Another theory is related to Anima and Animus. A part of our persona is the role of male or female we must play and for most people that role is determined by their physical gender. The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. The anima may be represented as a young girl, a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotions. The animus may be represented as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or a number of males.

Jung gives us three types of dynamics of the psyche. The first one is the principle of opposites. In this every wish immediately suggests its opposite. If a person had a good thought then he cannot help but have in him somewhere the opposite bad thought. The second is the principle of equivalence. In this the energy created from the opposition is given to both sides equally. The third is the principle of entropy. This is the capability for oppositions to come together, and energy to decrease, over a person's lifetime.

The next theory is all about the self. The goal of life is to realize the self, as described by Jung. The self is an archetype that represents the things of all opposites, so that every aspect of your personality is expressed equally. You are then neither and both male and female, neither and both conscious and unconscious.

Jung gives us theories on synchronicity also. Among the people discussed in many books, behaviorists tend to be mechanists, while the humanists tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part in the development of a person’s personality. But he also adds a third alternative called synchronicity. Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked causally or teleologically but they are related.

Jung also introduces the introversion and the extroversion. Jung developed a personality theory that has become so popular that some people don't realize he did anything else. It begins with the difference between introversion and extroversion. Introverts are people who prefer their internal world of thoughts, feelings, fantasies, dreams, whereas extroverts chose the external world of things and people and activities, they are more social.

Jung says that there are four basic functions. The first is senses, getting information from senses. The second is thinking. Thinking means evaluating information or ideas logically. The third is intuiting. Intuiting is a kind of perception that works outside of the usual conscious processes. The fourth is feeling. Feeling is a matter of evaluating information.

Jung also introduced the Assessment. This is a test that has four scales. The first one is Extroversion-Introversion, the second one is Sensing-Intuiting, the third is Thinking-Feeling, and the fourth is Judging-Perceiving.

Erich Fromm

Biography

Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was a moody person and a successful businessman. His childhood wasn’t very happy. Erich was a very religious person. When he was 14, World War I came, and he experienced something new in his life. There was a lot of nationalism around him and where he lives. However, with all this media pressure, Fromm hated war and it frightened him. This event made him curious about several things. Now he wanted to find out many things as to why people react the way they do. Fromm received a PhD from Heidelberg in 1922 and began his career as a psychotherapist. Then he moved to the US and settled in New York. There he met great psychological experts like Karen Horney, with whom he had an affair for sometime. Nearing the end of his career, he moved to Mexico City for teaching. Eventually he died in Switzerland in 1980. By now he had collected a lot of information about psychology and made many new theories.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Fromm introduced many theories of personality. Some of the famous one’s are:

1. Escape from freedom

2. Families

3. The social unconscious

4. Evil

5. Human needs

Erich Fromm describes three ways in which a person can escape from freedom. The first one is Authoritarianism. In this we seek to avoid freedom by keeping ourselves away from others, by becoming a part of an authoritarian system like the society of the Middle Ages. The second one is Destructiveness. In this authoritarians respond to a painful existence by eliminating themselves: If there is no me, how can anything hurt me. It is basically a concept of keeping away from others. The third one is Automaton conformity. In this authoritarians escape by hiding within an authoritarian hierarchy. Even though our society puts pressure for equality, people usually ignore these.

Fromm introduces two kinds of unproductive families. One of them is the Symbiotic families. Symbiosis is the relationship two organisms have who cannot live without each other. In a symbiotic family, some members of the family are ignored by other members, so that they do not fully develop personalities of their own. The second one is called the Withdrawing families. The main alternative is most notable for its cool indifference, if not cold hatefulness. Although withdrawal as a family style has always been around, it has come to dominate some societies only in the last few hundred years, that is, since the merchant class arrived on the scene.

The social unconscious theory is also very interesting. Fromm believes that our social unconscious is best understood by examining our economic systems. He defines, and names, five personality types, which he calls orientations, in economic terms. Here is a table:

Orientation Society Family Escape from Freedom

Receptive Peasant society Symbiotic (passive) Authoritarian (masochistic)

Exploitative Aristocratic society Symbiotic (active) Authoritarian (sadistic)

Hoarding Bourgeois society Withdrawing (puritanical) Perfectionist to destructive

Marketing Modern society Withdrawing (infantile) Automaton conformist

Productive Humanistic communitarian

socialism Loving and reasoning Freedom and responsibility acknowledged and accepted

The evil theory is also very interesting. Fromm was always interested in trying to understand the really evil people of this world and not just one's who were confused or mislead or stupid or sick, but the one's who, with full consciousness of the evil of their acts, performed them anyway: Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and so on, large and small. All these people had plans to become evil. Here is a table describing two kinds of evil in a person:

Biophilous Necrophilous

Having Mode Receptive

Exploitative

Hoarding

Marketing

Being Mode Productive

Like many other psychologists, Fromm also believes that we have human needs, so he introduced a theory about it. He lists five main human needs. In Relatedness, as human beings, we are aware of our separateness from each other, and seek to overcome it. In Creativity, Fromm believes that we all desire to overcome another fact of our being. We want to be creators. In Rootedness, we need to feel at home in the universe, even though, as human beings, we are somewhat different from the natural world. In “A sense of Identity”, this need is so powerful that we are sometimes driven to find it, for example by doing anything. In a “Frame of Orientation”, we need to understand the world and our place in it. We need to understand our culture.

Karen Danielssen Horney

Biography

Karen Horney was born on 16th September in 1885. Her father worked as a ship’s captain who was also a religious man and an authoritarian. Karen Horney’s childhood was filled with misperceptions. When she was nine her approach to life, Karen became rather ambitious and rebellious. In her early adulthood, she was very stressed at most times. In 1906 she entered a medical school without the permission of her parents. There she also met a law student called Oscar whom she married in 1909. They had three daughters and in 1911 Karen’s mother died. After this Horney entered the field of psychoanalysis. Due to the harsh attitude of Oscar towards his children, Karen and the three daughters left the house in 1923. They eventually settled in Brooklyn, USA. It was there where she met other psychoanalysts like Erich Fromm, Harry Sullivan. She wrote and taught at various institutions and Karen eventually died in 1952.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Horney introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. The neurotic needs

2. Development

3. Self theory

According to Horney we have about ten neurotic needs.

1. The neurotic need for affection and approval, the indiscriminate need to please others and be liked by them.

2. The neurotic need for a partner, for someone who will take over one's life.

3. The neurotic need to restrict one's life to narrow borders, to be undemanding, satisfied with little.

4. The neurotic need for power, for control over others.

5. The neurotic need to exploit others and get the better of them

6. The neurotic need for social recognition or prestige.

7. The neurotic need for personal admiration.

8. The neurotic need for personal achievement.

9. The neurotic need for self-sufficiency and independence.

10. The neurotic need for perfection and unassailability.

Horney also introduced the theory on development. It is true that some people who are abused or neglected as children suffer from neuroses as adults. What we often forget is that most do not. Horney's says parental indifference is a lack of warmth and affection in childhood. Even occasional beatings or an early sexual experience can be overcome, if the child feels wanted and loved. Most children, however, find themselves overwhelmed by basic anxiety, which in children is mostly a matter of fear of helplessness and abandonment. These children are completely ignored.

Horney also has a theory on Self. . For Horney, the self is the core of your being, your potential and ability. If you were healthy, you would have an accurate conception of who you are, and you would then be free to realize that potential. Here is a diagram that describes it:

Albert Bandura

Biography

Albert Bandura was born on 4th December 1925 in a small town of Mundare in Alberta, Canada. Although he studied in a local and rather cheap and inexpensive school, he was remarkably successful. After high school, he worked as a construction worker, silling holes in an Alaska Highway. He got his bachelor’s degree from the University of British Columbia. He got his degree in 1949and then he went on to do his PhD in 1952 in the University of Iowa. It was this place where he became more aware of several things like the learning theory. He also met Virginia Varns who was an instructor in a nursing school. Then they married and had two children. After that Bandura took a job of a teacher at the Wichita Guidance Center in Kansas. In 1953 he started the teaching job at Stanford University. He also wrote his first book called Adolescent Aggression. Bandura was also the president of the APA in 1973 and received an award for his contributions. He is still working at the Stanford University in the present day.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Bandura introduced many theories of personality. Some of these theories are:

1. Observational learning or modeling

2. Self regulation

Bandura believed that there were some certain step that were involved in Modeling.

1. Attention. So if you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying attention. Likewise, anything that puts a damper on attention is going to decrease learning, including observational learning. Some of the things that influence attention involve characteristics of the model. If the model is colorful and dramatic, for example, we pay more attention. If the model is attractive, or prestigious, or appears to be particularly competent, you will pay more attention.

2. Retention. One must be able to retain and keep what you have paid attention to. This is where imagery and language come in: we store what we have seen the model doing in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions. .

3. Reproduction. You’re just sitting there daydreaming. You have to translate the images or descriptions into actual behavior. So you have to have the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first place. I can watch Olympic ice skaters all day long, yet not be able to reproduce their jumps, because I can’t ice skate at all. Many athletes, for example, imagine their performance in their mind’s eye prior to actually performing.

4. Motivation. With all this, you’re still not going to do anything unless you are motivated to imitate, that is. until you have some reason for doing it. Bandura mentions a number of motives can make a person do something.

The self-regulation theory is also introduced by Bandura. If you did well in comparison with your standard, you give yourself rewarding self-responses. If you did poorly, you give yourself punishing self-responses. These self-responses can range from the obvious (treating yourself to a sundae or working late) to the more covert (feelings of pride or shame). A very important concept in psychology that can be understood well with self-regulation is self-concept (better known as self-esteem). If, over the years, you find yourself meeting your standards and life loaded with self-praise and self-reward, you will have a pleasant self-concept (high self-esteem). If, on the other hand, you find yourself forever failing to meet your standards and punishing yourself, you will have a poor self-concept (low self-esteem).

Harry Stack Sullivan

Biography

Harry Sullivan was born in 1892. He was an American psychiatrist, noted for his theory of interpersonal relations. Sullivan was born in Norwich, New York, and studiedd at the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery. In 1919 he began psychiatric work at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., and, from 1923 to 1930 he was involved in clinic research at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland. He taught psychiatry at the medical schools of the University of Maryland and Georgetown University. He also worked as director of the William Alanson White Foundation from 1934 to 1943 and the Washington School of Psychiatry from 1936 to 1947. He was influenced by the American psychiatrist William Alanson White. Sullivan. Sullivan wrote many books about psychology some of these are, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry in 1953 and Clinical Studies in Psychiatry in 1956. After contributing so much to psychology Harry eventually died in 1949.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Sullivan introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. Heuristic Stages of Development

2. Beginnings of Self-System

3. Heterosexual Intimacy and Lust

There are several stages of Heuristic Stages Development

1. Infancy. It extends from a few minutes after birth to the appearance of articulate speech, however uncommunicative or meaningless.

2.Childhood. It extends from the ability to utter articulate sounds of or pertaining to speech, to the appearance of the need for playmates, that is, companions. cooperative beings of approximately one's own status in all sorts of respects.

3.Juvenile Era. It xtends through most of the grammar-school years to the eruption, due to maturation, of a need for an intimate relation with another person of comparable status.

4.Preadolescence. It is exceedingly important but chronologically rather brief period that ordinarily ends with the eruption of genital sexuality and puberty, but psychologically or psychiatrically ends with the movement of strong interest from a person of one's own sex to a person of the other sex.

5.Adolescence. In this culture (it varies, however, from culture to culture) continues until one has patterned some type of performance which satisfies one's lust, one's genital drives.

6.Late Adolescence. Turn continues as an era of personality until any partially developed aspects of personality fall into their proper relationship to their time partition.

7.Adulthood. This age is to establish relationships of love for some other person, in which relationship the other person is as significant, or nearly as significant, as one's self. This really highly developed intimacy with another person is not the principal business of life, but is, perhaps, the principal source of satisfaction in life.

Sullivan also introduced the theory of Beginnings of self system. Successful training of the functional activity of the anal zone of interaction accentuates a new aspect of tenderness -- namely, the additive role of tenderness as a sequel to what the mothering one regards as good behavior. Now this is, in effect -- however it may be apprehended by the infant -- a reward, which, once the approved social ritual connected with defecating has worked out well, is added to the satisfaction of the anal zone.

Sullivan also introduces the theory on Heterosexual Intimacy and Lust. Women undergo the puberty change somewhat in advance of men [and this] leads to a sort of stutter in developmental progress between the boys and the girls in an age community [like the school] so that by the time most of the boys have gotten really around to an interest in girls, most of the girls are already fairly wound up in their problems about boys

Abraham Maslow

Biography

Abraham Maslow was born in 1908. He was an American psychologist and leading person of humanistic psychology. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at the City College of New York and the University of Wisconsin. Maslow spent most of his teaching career at Brandeis University. He also worked on judging orthodox behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Maslow's writings include Toward a Psychology of Being, which he wrote in1962 and Farther Reaches of Human Nature which he wrote in 1971. In 1951, Maslow served as the chairperson of the psychology department at Brandeis for 10 years. It was there where he met Kurt Goldstein, who introduced him to the idea of self-actualization, and then Maslow began his own work. It was also here that he began his theories for a humanistic psychology. He eventually died of a heart attack in California on 8th June 1970.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Maslow introduced many theories of personality. Some of these theories include:

1. Human needs

2. Self actualization

3. Metaneeds and metapathologies

Maslow’s most famous theory is about Human needs.

1. The physiological needs. These include the needs we have for oxygen, water, protein, salt, sugar, calcium, and other minerals and vitamins. They also include the need to maintain a pH balance (getting too acidic or base will kill you) and temperature (98.6 or near to it). Also, there’s the needs to be active, to rest, to sleep, to get rid of wastes (CO2, sweat, urine, and feces), to avoid pain, and to have sex.

2. The safety and security needs. When the physiological needs are largely taken care of, this second layer of needs comes into play. You will become increasingly interested in finding safe circumstances, stability, protection. You might develop a need for structure, for order, some limits.

3. The love and belonging needs. When physiological needs and safety needs are, by and large, taken care of, a third layer starts to show up. You begin to feel the need for friends, a sweetheart, children, affectionate relationships in general, even a sense of community. Looked at negatively, you become increasing susceptible to loneliness and social disturbances.

4. The esteem needs. Next, we begin to look for a little self-esteem. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The lower one is the need for the respect of others, the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence, and freedom.

Abraham Maslow also introduced a theory on Self actualization. The last level is a bit different. Maslow has used a variety of terms to refer to this level: He has called it growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation), being needs, and self-actualization. These are needs that do not involve balance or homeostasis. Once engaged, they continue to be felt. In fact, they are likely to become stronger as we “feed” them! They involve the continuous desire to fulfill potentials, to “be all that you can be.” They are a matter of becoming the most complete, the fullest, “you” -- hence the term, self-actualization. Now, in keeping with his theory up to this point, if you want to be truly self-actualizing, you need to have your lower needs taken care of, at least to a considerable extent. This makes sense: If you are hungry, you are scrambling to get food; If you are unsafe, you have to be continuously on guard; If you are isolated and unloved, you have to satisfy that need; If you have a low sense of self-esteem, you have to be defensive or compensate. When lower needs are unmet, you can’t fully devote yourself to fulfilling your potentials.

Malsow was also responsible for the theories of Metaneeds and Metapathologies. He believes that the people need the following things to be happy.

Truth, rather than dishonesty.

Goodness, rather than evil.

Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity.

Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not arbitrariness or forced choices.

Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life.

Uniqueness, not bland uniformity.

Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or accident.

Completion, rather than incompleteness.

Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness.

Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity.

Richness, not environmental impoverishment.

Effortlessness, not strain.

Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery.

Self-sufficiency, not dependency.

Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness.

Carl Rogers

Biography

Carl Rogers was born in 1902. He was an American psychologist, who was known for his development of new methods of therapy. Carl Rogers got his PhD from Columbia University in 1931. By that time Rogers was already involved in work with abused children. He also taught at Ohio State University from 1941 to 45 and the universities of Chicago from 1945 to 57 and Wisconsin university from 1957 to 61. Unfortunately now was the time of conflict within the psychology department of the institution. Carl Rogers became very disappointed with this kind of education. In 1964, he was happy to accept a research position in La Jolla, California. He taught there for a while and also worked on his new theories. It was the time when he introduced most of his theories about personality. He also provided therapy, gave speeches, and wrote several interesting psychology books. After contributing all this to the psychological world Carl Rogers eventually died in 1987.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Rogers introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. Details

2. Incongruity

3. Defenses

4. The fully-functioning person

Roger introduced the theory of Details. Rogers tells us that organisms know what is good for them. Evolution has provided us with the senses, the tastes, the discriminations we need: When we hunger, we find food -- not just any food, but food that tastes good. Food that tastes bad is likely to be spoiled, rotten, unhealthy. That what good and bad tastes are -- our evolutionary lessons made clear! This is called organismic valuing. Among the many things that we instinctively value is positive regard, Rogers umbrella term for things like love, affection, attention, nurturance, and so on. It is clear that babies need love and attention. In fact, it may well be that they die without it. They certainly fail to thrive -- i.e. become all they can be.

Roger was also involved in the theory of Incongruity. The aspect of your being that is founded in the actualizing tendency, follows organismic values, needs and receives positive regard and self-regard, Rogers calls the real self. It is the “you” that, if all goes well, you will become. On the other hand, to the extent that our society is out of system with the actualizing tendency, and we are forced to live with conditions of worth that are out of step with organismic values, and receive only conditional positive regard and self-regard, we develop instead an ideal self. By ideal, Rogers is suggesting something not real, something that is always out of our reach, the standard we can’t meet. This gap between the real self and the ideal self, the “I am” and the “I should” is called incongruity.

Defenses was also a work by Roger. When you are in a situation where there is an incongruity between your image of yourself and your immediate experience of yourself (i.e. between the ideal and the real self), you are in a threatening situation. For example, if you have been taught to feel unworthy if you do not get A's on all your tests, and yet you aren't really all that great a student, then situations such as tests are going to bring that incongruity to light -- tests will be very threatening. When you are expecting a threatening situation, you will feel anxiety. Anxiety is a signal indicating that there is trouble ahead, that you should avoid the situation! One way to avoid the situation, of course, is to pick yourself up and run for the hills. Since that is not usually an option in life, instead of running physically, we run psychologically, by using defenses.

The fully-functioning person is also a very interesting theory. Rogers thought a person like this would have these values.

1. Openness to experience. This is the opposite of defensiveness. It is the accurate perception of one's experiences in the world, including one's feelings. It also means being able to accept reality, again including one's feelings.

2. Existential living. This is living in the here-and-now. Rogers, as a part of getting in touch with reality, insists that we not live in the past or the future -- the one is gone, and the other isn't anything at all, yet! The present is the only reality we have. .

3. Organismic trusting. We should allow ourselves to be guided by the organismic value process. We should trust ourselves, do what feels right, what comes natural. This, as I'm sure you realize, has become a major sticking point in Rogers' theory.

5. Creativity. If you feel free and responsible, you will act accordingly, and participate in the world. A fully-functioning person, in touch with actualization, will feel obliged by their nature to contribute to the actualization of others, even life itself. .

Gordon Allport

Biography

Gordon Allport was born in 1897. He was an American psychologist. Allport is known for his studies in personality appraisal and in social psychology. Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana and he was educated at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He also studies at the German universities in Berlin and Hamburg, and the University of Cambridge, England. He also taught at Robert College in Constantinople, Harvard, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Allport returned to Harvard as assistant professor and in 1942 he was made professor of psychology there. He later became the editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology from 1937 to 1949. He was also author and co-author of many books like Expressive Movement, The Psychology of Radio, Trait Names, Personality, Psychology of Rumor, The Individual, and His Religion. He eventually died in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1967.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Allport introduced many theories of personality. Some of these theories are:

1. The proprium

2. Traits or disposition

3. Psychological maturity

4. Functional anatomy

The proprium is a work by Allport. Putting so much emphasis on the self or proprium, Allport wanted to define it as carefully as possible. He came at that task from two directions, phenomenological and functionally. First, phenomenological, that is, . the self as experienced: He suggested that the self is composed of the aspects of your experiencing that you see as most essential (as opposed to incidental or accidental), warm (or “precious,” as opposed to emotionally cool), and central (as opposed to peripheral). His functional definition became a developmental theory all by itself. The self has seven functions, which tend to arise at certain times of one’s life:

1. Sense of body

2. Self-identity

3. Self-esteem

4. Self-extension

5. Self-image

6. Rational coping

7. Propriate striving

Traits or Disposition is also introduced by Allport. Now, as the proprium is developing in this way, we are also developing personal traits, or personal dispositions. Allport originally used the word traits, but found that so many people assumed he meant traits as perceived by someone looking at another person or measured by personality tests, rather than as unique, individual characteristics within a person, that he changed it to dispositions. A personal disposition is defined as “a generalized neuropsychic structure (peculiar to the individual), with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and stylistic behavior.”

Allport also introduced psychological maturity. If you have a well-developed proprium and a rich, adaptive set of dispositions, you have attained psychological maturity, Allport’s term for mental health. He lists seven characteristics:

1. Specific, enduring extensions of self, i.e. involvement.

2. Dependable techniques for warm relating to others (e.g. trust, empathy, genuineness, tolerance...).

3. Emotional security and self-acceptance.

4. Habits of realistic perception (as opposed to defensiveness).

5. Problem-centeredness, and the development of problem-solving skills.

6. Self-objectification -- insight into one’s own behavior, the ability to laugh at oneself, etc.

7. A unifying philosophy of life, including a particular value orientation, differentiated religious sentiment, and a personalized conscience.

Allport also contributed to the functional anatomy theory. Allport didn’t believe in looking too much into a person’s past in order to understand his present. This belief is most strongly evident in the concept of functional autonomy: Your motives today are independent (autonomous) of their origins. It doesn’t matter, for example, why you wanted to become a doctor, or why you developed a taste for olives or for kinky sex, the fact is that this is the way you are now! Functional autonomy comes in two flavors: The first is preservative functional autonomy. This refers essentially to habits -- behaviors that no longer serve their original purpose, but still continue. You may have started smoking as a symbol of adolescent rebellion, for example, but now you smoke because you can’t quit! Social rituals such as saying “bless you” when someone sneezes had a reason once upon a time (during the plague, a sneeze was a far more serious symptom than it is today!), but now continues because it is seen as polite.

Hans Eysenck

Biography

Hans Eysenck was born in Germany on March 4, 1916. He was an active Jewish sympathizer, his life was in danger in Germany. Then he moved to England, there he continued his education, and received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of London in 1940. During World War II, he worked as a psychologist at an emergency hospital. There he did research on the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses. After the war was over, he started teaching at the University of London. He also worked as the director of the psychology department of the Institute of Psychiatry. He was also related with Bethlehem Royal Hospital. He wrote almost about seventy five books and wrote over seven hundred articles. This all makes him one of the most interesting writers in psychology. Eysenck eventually retired from work in 1983 and continued to write. He eventually died on 4th September 1997.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Eysenck introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. Neuroticism

2. Extraversion-introversion

3. Neuroticism and extraversion-introversion

4. Psychoticism

Neuroticism is introduced by Eysenck. Neuroticism is the name Eysenck gave to a dimension that ranges from normal, fairly calm and collected people to one’s that tend to be quite “nervous.” His research showed that these nervous people tended to suffer more frequently from a variety of “nervous disorders” we call neuroses, hence the name of the dimension. But understand that he was not saying that people who score high on the neuroticism scale are necessarily neurotics -- only that they are more susceptible to neurotic problems. Eysenck was convinced that, since everyone in his data-pool fit somewhere on this dimension of normality-to-neuroticism, this was a true temperament, i.e. that this was a genetically-based, physiologically-supported dimension of personality. He therefore went to the physiological research to find possible explanations.

Extraverson-introversion is also a work by Eysenck. His second dimension is extraversion-introversion. By this he means something very similar to what Jung meant by the same terms, and something very similar to our common-sense understanding of them: Shy, quiet people “versus” out-going, even loud people. This dimension, too, is found in everyone, but the physiological explanation is a bit more complex. Eysenck hypothesized that extraversion-introversion is a matter of the balance of “inhibition” and “excitation” in the brain itself. These are ideas that Pavlov came up with to explain some of the differences he found in the reactions of his various dogs to stress. Excitation is the brain waking itself up, getting into an alert, learning state. Inhibition is the brain calming itself down, either in the usual sense of relaxing and going to sleep, or in the sense of protecting itself in the case of overwhelming stimulation.

Eyseck also introduced the Neuroticism and extraversion-introversion. Another thing Eysenck looked into was the interaction of the two dimensions and what that might mean in regard to various psychological problems. He found, for example, that people with phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder tended to be quite introverted, whereas people with conversion disorders (e.g. hysterical paralysis) or dissociate disorders (e.g. amnesia) tended to be more extraverted. Here’s his explanation: Highly neuroticistic people over-respond to fearful stimuli; If they are introverts, they will learn to avoid the situations that cause panic very quickly and very thoroughly, even to the point of becoming panicky at small symbols of those situations -- they will develop phobias. Other introverts will learn (quickly and thoroughly) particular behaviors that hold off their panic -- such as checking things many times over or washing their hands again and again.

Psychoticism is also a work by Eysenck. Eysenck came to recognize that, although he was using large populations for his research, there were some populations he was not tapping. He began to take his studies into the mental institutions of England. When these masses of data were factor analyzed, a third significant factor began to emerge, which he labeled psychoticism. Like neuroticism, high psychoticism does not mean you are psychotic or doomed to become so -- only that you exhibit some qualities commonly found among psychotics, and that you may be more susceptible, given certain environments, to becoming psychotic. As you might imagine, the kinds of qualities found in high psychoticistic people include certain recklessness, a disregard for common sense or conventions, and a degree of inappropriate emotional expression. It is the dimension that separates those people who end up institutions from the rest of humanity.

B.F. Skinner

Biography

B.F. Skinner was born in 1904. He was an American psychologist. He was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and educated at Harvard University. From this university he received a Ph.D. degree in 1931. He joined the Harvard teaching staff in 1948. Skinner became the most important person in the U.S. for the behaviorist school of psychology. He also organized programmed instruction, a teaching technique in which the student is presented with a series of information. He also designed a variety of teaching machines. One of the famous machines is the Skinner box. He also wrote a lot of books like, Behavior of Organisms, Walden Two, and The Technology of Teaching. All these books included important information about his famous experiments. On August 18, 1990, B. F. Skinner died of leukemia after becoming the most famous and well-known psychologist after Sigmund Freud.

Contribution to the Theories of Personality

In his life Skinner introduced many theories of personality. These theories include:

1. Schedules of reinforcement

2. Shaping

3. Aversive stimuli

4. Behavior modification

Schedules of reinforcement is a famous work by Skinner. Skinner likes to tell about how he “accidentally -- i.e. operantly -- came across his various discoveries. For example, he talks about running low on food pellets in the middle of a study. Now, these were the days before “Purina rat chow” and the like, so Skinner had to make his own rat pellets, a slow and tedious task. So he decided to reduce the number of reinforcements he gave his rats for whatever behavior he was trying to condition, and, lo and behold, the rats kept up their operant behaviors, and at a stable rate, no less. This is how Skinner discovered schedules of reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement is the original scenario: Every time that the rat does the behavior (such as pedal-pushing), he gets a rat goodie. The fixed ratio schedule was the first one Skinner discovered: If the rat presses the pedal three times, say, he gets a good one. Or five times. Or twenty times. There is a fixed ratio between behaviors and reinforcers: 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 20 to 1, etc. This is a little like “piece rate” in the clothing manufacturing industry: You get paid so much for so many shirts. The fixed interval schedule uses a timing device of some sort. If the rat presses the bar at least once during a particular stretch of time (say 20 seconds), then he gets a goodie. If he fails to do so, he doesn’t get a goodie. But even if he hits that bar a hundred times during that 20 seconds, he still only gets one goodie! One strange thing that happens is that the rats tend to “pace” themselves: They slow down the rate of their behavior right after the reinforcer, and speed up when the time for it gets close.

Skinner also worked on the Shaping theory. A question Skinner had to deal with was how we get to more complex sorts of behaviors. He responded with the idea of shaping, or “the method of successive approximations.” Basically, it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have the animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. My favorite is teaching pigeons to bowl! I used shaping on one of my daughters once. She was about three or four years old, and was afraid to go down a particular slide. So I picked her up, put her at the end of the slide, asked if she was okay and if she could jump down. She did, of course, and I showered her with praise. I then picked her up and put her a foot or so up the slide, asked her if she was okay, and asked her to slide down and jump off. So far so good. I repeated this again and again, each time moving her a little up the slide, and backing off if she got nervous. Eventually, I could put her at the top of the slide and she could slide all the way down and jump off. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t climb up the ladder, so I was a very busy father for a while.

Skinner introduced the Aversive Stimuli theory. An aversive stimulus is the opposite of a reinforcing stimulus, something we might find unpleasant or painful. This both defines an aversive stimulus and describes the form of conditioning known as punishment. If you shock a rat for doing x, it’ll do a lot less of x. If you spank Johnny for throwing his toys he will throw his toys less and less (maybe). On the other hand, if you remove an already active aversive stimulus after a rat or Johnny performs a certain behavior, you are doing negative reinforcement. If you turn off the electricity when the rat stands on his hind legs, he’ll do a lot more standing. If you stop your perpetually nagging when I finally take out the garbage, I’ll be more likely to take out the garbage (perhaps). You could say it “feels so good” when the aversive stimulus stops, that this serves as a reinforcer!

Skinner was also involved in the introduction of Behavior modification. Behavior modification -- often referred to as b-mod -- is the therapy technique based on Skinner’s work. It is very straight-forward: Extinguish an undesirable behavior (by removing the reinforcer) and replace it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems -- addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia -- and works particularly well with children. There are examples of back-ward psychotics who haven’t communicated with others for years who have been conditioning to behave themselves in fairly normal ways, such as eating with a knife and fork, taking care of their own hygiene needs, dressing themselves, and so on. There is an offshoot of b-mod called the token economy. This is used primarily in institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, juvenile halls, and prisons. Certain rules are made explicit in the institution, and behaving yourself appropriately is rewarded with tokens -- poker chips, tickets, funny money, recorded notes, etc. Certain poor behavior is also often followed by a withdrawal of these tokens. The tokens can be traded in for desirable things such as candy, cigarettes, games, movies, time out of the institution, and so on. This has been found to be very effective in maintaining order in these often difficult institutions.