Personality Theory

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Personality Theory

• Chapter 6The Neo-Freudians Harry Stack
  Sullivan and Karen Horney

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Harry Stack Sullivan

• Sullivan was born in 1892 in Norwich, New York
• the son of a poor working man and farmer
• He grew up isolated, and was a loner
• Obtained his MD at 25 from a small Chicago
  medical school, then was a psychiatrist at a
  mental hospital in Maryland
• He moved from obscurity to fame in 8 years

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• Inventive treatment of schizophrenia
• The psychiatric hospital ward
• Psychotherapy
• Participant observer
• Great influence on colleagues and in psychiatry
• Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, the only book
  published in his lifetime

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Emphases

• As a clinical psychiatrist, his main source of
  data was the schizophrenic patient
• At first a psychoanalyst, then influenced by
  pragmatic American ideas in psychiatry and in
  sociology/anthropology
• Personality can only be observed in interpersonal
  interaction.
• A true situation-person interactionist.

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• Implications
• The doctor-patient relationship the patients
  misperception of the analyst is parataxic
  distortion, Sullivans view of transference
• A concept of self the self-dynamism
• Needs
• The pursuit of security
• The pursuit of satisfactions

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Major Concepts of the Interpersonal Theory

• Tension in a physical energy system
• The extremes of tension euphoria versus absolute
  terror from great threat to security
• 2 sources of tension
• Needs of the body
• Anxiety from threatened security

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• Anxiety extreme fear of disapproval
• Communicated by empathy to infant
• Bad mother to Bad me
• Beyond infancy, anxiety mobilizes efforts to
  reduce it.
• This is the job of the self-system
  (self-dynamism).

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• Dynamisms
• A configuration of energy manifested in
  processes of interpersonal relations
• Many dynamisms involve the pursuit of
  satisfactions (e.g., the oral dynamism).
• The self-dynamism and the pursuit of security
• Warding off anxiety
• Dissociation
• Selective inattention

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• Other dynamisms include
• Hate dynamism
• Paranoid dynamism
• Genital lust dynamism

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• Cognitive processes the 3 cognitive modes
• Prototaxic moment-to-moment experience
• Parataxic the illogical connection of events
• Syntaxic consensual validation
• Personifications interpretations of the self and
  others

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• Communication
• Empathy, especially in infancy
• All communication is not verbal, and not all
  verbal communication is consensual.
• Parataxic communication in adults
• Parataxic communication in schizophrenia

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Sullivans Epochs of Personality Development

• Infancy to the maturation of the capacity for
  language behaviour.
• Childhood to the maturation of the capacity for
  living with compeers.
• Juvenile Era to the maturation of the capacity
  for isophilic intimacy (to like equals).

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• Preadolescence to the maturation of the genital
  lust dynamism.
• Early Adolescence to the patterning of lustful
  behaviour.
• Late Adolescence to maturity.

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Research

• Sullivan was committed to research, mostly social
  research in a psychiatric setting.
• His experimental ward for young schizophrenic
  males.
• Schizophrenia can be treated
• The importance of trust

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• The psychiatric (or psychological) interview
• The interviewer as participant observer and
  expert
• Stages of the interview
• Formal inception
• Reconnaissance
• Detailed inquiry
• Termination

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• A socio-psychiatric study of a ward in a
  psychiatric hospital (Stanton and Schwartz)
• Sullivan anticipated findings of research on
  infant attachment and maternal bonding and also
  research on preadolescent intimacy.

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Sullivan in Perspective

• A transforming influence on psychiatric practice
• The schizophrenic person can be treated.
• Influence of the hospital milieu
• Development of psychoanalytic techniques
• A question how does psychological treatment of
  the schizophrenic person work?

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• Strengths of the Interpersonal Theory of
  Psychiatry
• The theory of personality development, both
  normal and abnormal
• Cognitive processes
• The self-dynamism and security

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• Weaknesses of the Interpersonal Theory of
  Psychiatry
• Better development of processes is needed (e.g.,
  how the self-dynamism works)

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Karen Horney

• Horney was born near Hamburg, Germany in 1885
• An emotionally difficult childhood
• Medical school at Freiburg, then Berlin
• Training in psychiatry and training in
  psychoanalysis (Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute)
• She was analyzed by the famous Freudians Karl
  Abraham and Hanns Sachs

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• A highly respected psychoanalyst, supervisor, and
  teacher, she immigrated to the United States in
  1932
• Member of psychoanalytic institutes at Chicago
  and later New York
• Her ideas diverged from classical psychoanalysis.
• Rejection of infantile sexuality, Oedipus
  Complex, penis envy in women, important revisions
  of psychoanalytic technique

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Emphases

• Neurotic solutions to life and their origins
• Her main source of data was neurotic patients in
  psychoanalysis.
• Culture, society, and family shape personality
  development.
• These make women envious of men (sometimes
  neurotically so), not their genitalia.

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• The role of anxiety in development
• An ego-as-self concept
• Real self
• Idealized self
• Despised self
• Rejection of the conflict among the id, ego, and
  superego

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• A focus on the immediate in psychoanalysis
• Neurotic needs

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Major Concepts

• The core concept is basic anxiety.
• It stems from a lack of warmth and affection
  basic evil, making the child feel alone and
  helpless in a hostile world.
• Basic anxiety arouses basic hostility, which the
  anxious, insecure, angry child cant express (or
  acknowledge).

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The Vicious Circle
Repression of hostility
Basic anxiety and basic hostility
Extreme need for affection
Resentment and hostility
Great apprehension and tension
Hurt/anger when love not forthcoming
Bad parenting basic evil
Repression of hostility to preserve security
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Horneys Classification of Needs

• Moving towards people
• Affection and approval
• Partner to take ones life over
• Restriction of life within narrow borders
• Moving against people
• Power
• Exploiting others
• Prestige
• Personal admiration
• Personal achievement

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• Moving away from people
• Self-sufficiency
• Perfection, unassailability
• Also, restriction of life within narrow borders
• The basic nature of needs
• The need for security, aroused when security is
  threatened
• Safety devices ? neurotic needs

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• The ego as self
• Real self healthy, positive, realistic (requires
  warmth and affection)
• Idealized self defensive, unattainable
  self-image
• The tyranny of the shoulds
• Despised self self-hatred because we cannot live
  up to expectations

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Personality Development

• No formal theory of personality development
• Although a psychoanalyst, she rejected infantile
  sexuality and the Oedipus Complex
• The Oedipus Complex arises out of family dynamics
  and the childs seeking affection and choosing
  sides.

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A Psychology of Women

• Horney rejected Freuds arrogant and offensive
  view of women and their development.
• She proposed that male-dominated culture and
  society give women their inferior role and
  apparent penis envy.

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Research

• Horney was not a research psychiatrist (although
  she would have thought of herself as a
  scientist).
• Her evidence was clinical.
• Remember the problems of the clinical method.

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Horney in Perspective

• Deservedly recognized for her contributions to
  understanding neurosis and its development
• A major contribution to the social psychology of
  personality development
• especially the psychology of women
• An exceptional picture of neurotic needs

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• An advocate of self-analysis
• Belief in human growth

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Take-Home Messages

• Harry Stack Sullivan
• Personal history
• Influences on theory from pragmatic American
  ideas
• Emphases in theory
• Clinical observation of schizophrenic patients,
  treatment of them, and research on them

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• Personality is only observed in interpersonal
  interactions
• An implication of this view in the doctor-patient
  relationship
• Parataxic distortion, not transference
• The participant observer
• The self-dynamism and the pursuit of security

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• Needs
• Pursuit of satisfactions
• Pursuit of security
• Major concepts
• Tension
• 2 sources
• bodily needs
• anxiety

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• Anxiety, the dread of disapproval
• The energy concept of the dynamism
• Most important dynamism is self-dynamism
• Modes of cognitive activity
• Interpersonal communication
• Empathy in infancy

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• An exceptional stage analysis of personality
  development from infancy to maturity
• Research in a psychiatric setting

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Sullivan in Perspective

• Strengths
• Transforming schizophrenic treatment
• Impressive theory of personality development,
  normal and abnormal
• Cognitive processes
• The self-dynamism and security
• Weaknesses
• Needs fuller development of processes

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• Karen Horney
• Personal history
• Influences on theory
• Emphases
• The triad of culture, society, and family
• Three selves
• The psychoanalytic situation
• A characterization of neurotic needs

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• Major concepts
• From basic evil to basic anxiety to basic
  hostility
• The vicious circle
• A complex picture of neurotic needs
• The self real, idealized, and despised

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• Personality development
• Rejection of infantile sexuality and the Oedipus
  Complex
• Revised view of female psychosexual development
  and female personality

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Horney in Perspective

• Significant contributions to the understanding of
  neurosis and the psychology of women