Personality: the Nature of Human Nature

Personality: The Nature of Human Nature

●        What is personality?

         ☐        In popular usage, personality refers to our impressions of someone -- i.e., social stimulus value

         ☐        Problem: This defines personality by subjective impressions

         ☐        A psychological definition

                   ■        Personality is concerned with the uniqueness of individual persons -- with the abilities, attributes, and motives that make each person different.

         ☐        Personality is concerned with potentialities for action and with the ways they are organized and integrated.

         ☐        Personality is also concerned with situations in which behaviour takes place -- with how we interpret and categorize different situations.

●        Personality theories are general behaviour theories that develop a model of human nature. They began as clinical theories of personality disorder (neurosis) and its treatment.

         ☐        The original research method was the clinical method.

                   ■        Be sure you can define the clinical method.

         ☐        The experimental method has an important place in the study of personality.

                   ■        How would personality theories have developed if they had originated in

experimental research?

●        Freud and the Beginnings of Personality Theory

         ☐        Some influences on Freud's thinking

                   ■        Training in medicine and neurology

                   ■        Study with Charcot and exposure to hysteria and hypnosis

                   ■        Medical practice with Josef Breuer and Studies in Hysteria

                   ■        The discovery of abreaction

                   ■        The case of Anna O. and catharsis

                   ■        The method of free association

         ☐        The concept of the unconscious; evidence

                   ■        Symptom irrationality...