Hans J. Eysenck

Hans J. Eysenck (1916 -1997)

Biological Typology

            Eysenck’s research studies ranged from personality and intelligence to behavioral genetics, from social attitudes to behavior therapy. He also worked on such topics as the health hazards of smoking, the prophylactic effects of behavior therapy on cancer and coronary heart disease and parapsychology, among others. He wrote 75 books and some 700 articles, making him one of the most prolific writers in psychology.

                He focused on personality types. He used factor analysis to determine the basic structure of human personality. He believed that psychology has two major orientations, namely: personality psychology and experimental psychology.

                Eysenck’s followed a hierarchial model of personality: the type/super traits; trait level; habitual responses and specific response level. He defined personality as more or less stable and enduring organization of a person’s character (will), temperament (emotion), intellect(enduring system of cognitive behavior), and physique(enduring system of bodily configuration and neuroendocrine endowment), which determines his or her unique adjustment to the environment.

                He created the basic dimensions of temperament. These are:extroversion-introversion, stability-instability and psychoticism.

                Eysenck believed that extroversion-introversion that this is a matter of balance of inhibition and exertion in the brain itself. Extrovert characteristics manifest impulsive,  outgoing behavior, tendency to seek out highly arousal state while introvert characteristics include reserved, introspective, generally avoids highly arousing situation.

               Neuroticism ranges from normal, fairly calm but tends to be quite nervous; high scores in this dimension are indicative of emotional over-reaction and have difficulties adjusting to normal state after emotional experiences.

                Psychoticism has been called the opposite of Freudian “super ego strength.” An individual at the extreme end of his dimension would be solitary, troublesome, insensitive, hostile and aggressive. The high psychoticism person has a certain degree of recklessness, disregard for social convention, and a high degree of inappropriate emotional expression.

His theory of personality compares two central factors, extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N), from which four basic personality types flow. His personality types are based on Hippocrates's personality formulation:

• High N, High E results in a choleric personality—an assertive, leader-like person.
• High N, Low E results in a melancholic personality—a cautious and introverted type.
• Low N, High E results in a sanguine personality—the sociable and charismatic type.
• Low N, Low E results in a phlegmatic personality—a consistent, calm person.

Eysenck held controversial views on the nature of intelligence, arguing that intelligence was at least partially genetic and that different racial groups had different levels of intelligence. These views remained controversial for his entire life, and he was once punched in the nose by a protester while giving a lecture. Eysenck did not shy away from controversy, and several interviews with him were published in the far-right press, leading to claims of racism and bigotry. He also published a piece in Penthouse. 

Eysenck responded to many of his critics by arguing that there is a distinction between biological equality and equality of treatment under the law. The former, he emphasized, was impossible, while the latter was an important goal.

He worked on behalf of tobacco companies to conduct research on the effects of smoking. When asked about the ethics of this practice, he argued that what mattered was that the research was done correctly, not that the research was funded by the right, or wrong, group. 

Gordon Allport

Gordon Allport (1897 – 1967)

                                                         Psychology of Individual 

                Gordon Allport’s theory is known as the trait theory because he emphasized the nature and  evolution of personality traits. His theory is also called the psychology of individuals because it emphasizes a person’s uniqueness.

                Allport defined and developed the concept of individual traits, later called personal dispositions (1961). He divided this into three kinds: Cardinal disposition includes traits that dominate the personality, influencing almost everything a person does. Central disposition on the other hand, are characteristics which typify a person’s behavior. Lastly, the secondary disposition are responses to particular stimuli which may occur on rare occasions.

                There are also eight criteria of traits.  He saw elements in traits that can be used as accurate and meaningful units of study for personality. He also  used the idiographic and nomathetic approaches in studying personality. The idiograph method is the intensive study of simple case. It emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual. The nomothetic method, on the other hand, studies a group of individuals and analyzes them. He emphasized common traits or generalized patterns that could be used to make comparisons among groups of people.

                Allport also created the concept of functional autonomy. The functional autonomy represents the present “go” of interests and tendencies that initiates and sustains current behavior. It helps to express the unique motives that confer distinctiveness to a person’s characteristic adjustment. It also indicates that a behavioral pattern originally instrumental to the satisfaction of a biological need remains an independent aspect of living even after the biological need is no longer an important force. The maturity of personality is indicated by the degree of functional autonomy of its motives.

                He is also found that learning is an important mode of motivation. Self-actualization helps one to advance towards his or her goals. People learn to do things and create a personality because of mechanical determinism and self-actualization – “becoming” even if they appear to be contradictory. “Becoming” means an advance towards goals. One learns how to have a personality through differentiation and integration.

                He also believed that adult personality matures slowly through stages of the propium that means the main source of learning about the self and finding the personality. It includes: bodily-sense, self-identity, self-esteem, self-extension, self-image, self as a rational coper and propionate striving.

                He was interested in healthy human adults who have the following characteristics: self-extension, warm human interaction, emotional security and self acceptance, realistic perceptions, self-objectification and a unifying philosophy in life.

                Allport believed that there is no relationship between early experiences and adult personality, that motivation for present behavior is in the present, not in the past.

Henry Murray

Henry Murray ( 1893 – 1988 )

Personology

                Henry Murray’s theory was strongly influenced by Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. However, for Murray, the id includes impulses that are acceptable to the self and society. The super-ego is an internalized subsystem that acts within the idealized picture of the self. It is a set of personal ambitions that the individual aspires for.

                The first principle in Murray’s personology, which is the study of personality, is that personality is rooted in the brain. The individual’s cerebral physiology guides and governs every aspect of the personality. Everything on which personality depends exists in the brain, including feeling states, conscious and unconscious memories, beliefs, attitudes, fears and values.

                The second principle involves the idea of tension reduction. Murray agreed with Freud and other theorists that people act to reduce physiological personology and psychological tension, but this does not mean we strive for a tension-free state. It is the process of acting to reduce tension that is satisfying, according to Murray, rather than the attainment of a condition free of all tension. Murray believed  that a tension-free existence is itself a source of distress. We need excitement, activity and movement, of all which involve increasing, not decreasing, tension. We generate tension in order to have the satisfaction of reducing it. Murray believed the ideal state of human nature involves always having a certain level of tension to reduce.

                A third principle is that an individual’s personality continues to develop over time and is constructed of all the events that occur during the course of that person’s life. Therefore, the study of a person’s past is of great importance. Murray emphasized the uniqueness of each person while recognizing similarities among all people. As he saw it, an individual human being is like no other person, like some other people, and like every other person.

                He also theorized different stages of personality. These are 1.) childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, 2) middle years, 3) senescence (final era). During the first stage, new structural compositions emerge and multiply.  The middle years are marked by conservative recompositions of the already emerged structures and functions. During the final stage, senescence, the capacity to form new compositions and recompositions decreases while the atrophy of existing forms and functions increases. Within each period, there are numerous smaller programs of behavioral and experiential events that run under the guidance of genetically controlled maturational processes.

                When the effects of infantile experiences upon later behavior are clear and extensive, the individual is said to have a complex. Murray mentioned five complexes: Claustral complexes which represent residuals of the uterine or prenatal experience of the individual; oral complexes represent derivatives of early feeding experiences; anal complexes are derived from events associated with the act of defecating and bowel training; urethral complexes are associated with excessive ambition and distorted sense of self-esteem; lastly, genital or castration complex that is when fear grows out of masturbation and parental punishment.

                He also categorized different types of needs: Primary and secondary needs; Overt and convert needs; Focal and diffused needs; Proactive and reactive needs; and lastly Modal and effect needs. These are the characteristics of the following:

1.       Primary needs – physical satisfaction

Secondary needs – characterized by a lack of focal connection with physical satisfaction.

2.       Overt needs – manifest needs

Covert needs – latent needs

3.       Focal needs – linked to specific classes of environmental objects

Diffused needs – so generalized that they apply to almost every environmental setting.

4.       Proactive needs – are those from within as a result of something in the person

Reactive needs – are activated as a result of some environmental event

5.       Modal need – involve doing something with a certain degree of excellence or quality.

Effect needs – are those that lead to a desired state or end.

                Murray also used the word “press”. The press is an environmental force that interacts with needs to determine behavior. Press is linked to persons or objects that have direct implications on an individuals effort to satisfy his or her striving. There are two kinds: alpha press wherein environmental objects are seen as they exist in reality while beta press are environmental objects that are perceived and interpreted by an individual.

                He also talked about “thema”and “needs”. Thema is an interactive behavioral unit. It involves the interaction between the press and the need that is operating. The needs explain the motivation and direction of behavior. He created 20 needs of people. He also made the Thematic Apperception Test.

                Murray believed that human behavior may be understood through the processes of satisfying motives and needs. Personality can be described generally in terms of these needs and the ways they interact with environmental forces.

Harry Stack Sullivan

HARRY STACK SULLIVAN (1892-1949)

Interpersonal Theory

            Harry Stack Sullivan is a US psychiatrist who developed a theory of psychiatry based on interpersonal relationships. He believed that anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms arise in fundamental conflicts between the individual and his human environment and that personality development also takes place by a series of interactions with other people. He said that personality is a pure entity, “an illusion,” which cannot be observed or studied apart from interpersonal situations; it is not the person. The organization of personality consists of interpersonal rather than intraphysic events. Personality manifests itself in the person’s behavior in relation to other individuals. People do not need to be present. They may be illusionary or non-existent figures. Perceiving, recalling, thinking, imagining and all other psychological processes are interpersonal in nature.

                Sullivan emphasized that society is the actual creator of people’s personalities. The human being does not exist as a simple personality; its personality can only exist in relation to others. A person’s formative period of development is important to the personality.  If one lives in an unstable environment, his or her  personality will be maladjusted. Life consists of interwoven tensions from the beginning up to the later stage of existence. As a person matures, he or she learns through dynamism to reduce tensions using the self-system, personification and cognitive experiences.

                Dynamism is used by Sullivan to refer to a typical pattern of behavior. It may relate to either to specific zones of the body or to tensions and how it interacts with the environment. Most dynamisms serve the purpose of satisfying the basic needs of the organisms. There are different types of dynamisms: Malevolence, Intimacy,  Lust and Self-System.

                Malevolence is the disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred, defined as a feeling of living among one’s enemies. Those children who become malevolent have much difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being intimate with other people. Intimacy, on the other hand, is the conjunctive dynamism marked by a closed personal relationship between two people of equal status. It facilitates interpersonal development while decreasing both anxiety and loneliness. In contrast to both malevolence and intimacy, lust is an isolating dynamism. It is a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship. Lust is based solely on sexual gratification and requires no other person for its satisfaction. Lastly is the self-system. It is the most  inclusive of all dynamisms is the self-system or the pattern  of behaviors that protects us against anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. The self-system is a conjunctive dynamism but because its primary purpose is to protect the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle the personality change. One security operation is the dissociation which inlcudes all those experiences that we block from awareness.

                Another concept introduced by Sullivan is personification. One of the structures of personality. He believed that people acquire certain images of self and other throughout the developmental stages. Subjective perceptions are referred to as personifications. There are three categories: Bad-mother, good-mother; Me personifications and eidetic personifications.

                The bad-mother personification grows out of infant’s experiences with a nipple that does not satisfy their hunger needs. Later on, infants acquire a good-mother personification as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of the mothering one. Later on, these two personifications combine to form a complex and contrasting image of a real mother.

                The me personification is acquired by children during infancy. There are three types: bad-me which grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval; the good-me results from experiences with reward and approval and the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate the experiences related to anxiety.

                The last type is the eidetic personification which talks about imaginary playmates that the preschool-aged children often have. These imaginary friends enable children to have a safe, secure relationship with another person, even though that person is imaginary.

                Sullivan also recognized three levels of cognition or ways of perceiving things: prototaxic, parataxic and syntaxic. It refers to the experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others. Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level. Parataxic level includes experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others. Lastly, syntaxic consists of experiences that can be accurately communicated to others. Children become capable of syntaxic language at about 12-18 months of age when words begin to have the same meaning for them that they do for others.

                He also saw interpersonal Development as taking place over seven stages from infancy to mature adulthood. Personality changes can take place at any time but are more likely to occur during transitions between stages. These are infancy, Childhood, Juvenile era, Preadolescence, Early adolescence, late adolescence and adulthood.

                Sullivan asserted the importance of society and its effect on human development. His personality theory emphasized that interaction is the foundation of personality. From birth to the later stages, one is always in contact with other personalities; the  interaction may take place with a living person or a fictional character and can even operate in dreams and images.

Karen Horney

KAREN HORNEY

          Karen Horney opposed the biological determinism of Freud.  She also questioned the libido theory, offering in its place the state of anxiety during early childhood. She stressed the two basic needs in childhood: security and satisfaction and not libido. She felt that the condition of helplessness, hostility or indifference could be prevented if parents provide genuine affect toward the child. In order to combat basic anxiety, individuals adopt one of the adjustment techniques. For neurotics, the real self is displaced by the ideal self and their lives are governed by a list of unrealistic should instead of goals based upon their own experiences. Before I discuss further on the contributions of Horney to psychology, let me give a brief biography.

                Karen Danielsen Horney was born in Germany on September 6, 1885 to Clotilde abd Berndt Wackels Danielsen. When she was nine years old, Karen became ambitious and even rebellious. She also developed something of a crush on  her own brother, but was embarrassed when he harshly pushed her away. This led to her first depression that plagued her throughout her life. She died in 1952 at the age of 67.

                Her interest in feminine psychology was stimulated by two factors: Psychoanalysis was created by a man who spoke almost entirely of men and boys. Second, certain clinical observations appeared contradictory to Freud’s theory of libido. She contradicted the hypothesis of penis envy as the primary determining factory in the psychology of women. She said that both men and women might develop fantasies about castration in their effort to cope with the Oedipal situation. She further observed that men and boys express jealousy over women’s ability to bear and nurse children or called as womb envy. She suggested womb envy and penis envy may be complementary.

                Since basic anxiety causes feelings of helplessness and fear, people must find ways to keep it to a minimum. Horney called the different forms of basic anxiety Neurotic Trends or Needs and listed ten strategies form minimizing these. The ten neurotic needs are as follows:

1.    1..   Need for affection and  approval – this means that individual lives to be loved and admired by others.

2.   2.  Need for a partner who will run one’s life – this means that the individual needs to be affiliated with someone who will protect him or her from danger and fulfill all his or her needs.

3.      3.  Need to live one’s life within narrow limits – the individual is very conservative and avoids defeat by attempting very little.

4.      4.  Need for power – the individual tends to glorify strength and despise weakness.

5.    5.    Need to exploit others – the individual being taken advantage of by others and yet thinks constantly about how to take advantage of other people.

6.     6.   Need  for social recognition – the individual lives to be recognized; his or her highest goal is to gain prestige.

7.       7. Need for personal admiration – the individual likes to be flattered and complimented and wants to be seen as the idealized image they have of themselves.

8.       8. Need for ambition and personal achievement – the individual has an intense desire to become famous, rich or important, regardless of the means.

9.       9. Need for self sufficiency and independence – the individual goes to great extremes to avoid being obligated to anyone and does not want to be tied down to anything or anyone.

10.    Need for perfection and unavailability – the individual attempts to be flawless because of hypersensitivity to criticism.

Karen Horney made significant contributions to humanism, self-psychology, psychoanalysis and feminine psychology. Her refutation of Freud’s theories about women generated more their  own therapists, emphasizing the personal role each person has in their own mental health and encouraging self – analysis and self – help.