Personality Psychology, Lecture 8 SelfEsteem, Narcissism, Attachment Style, and Repression

1
Personality Psychology, Lecture 8Self-Esteem,
Narcissism, Attachment Style, and Repression

• Professor Ian McGregor

2
Lecture 8 Outline

• Eriksons Final Stages
• The Learning Assumption (and video)
• Adult Attachment Styles and Repression
• Genetics and Parenting
• Borderline and Narcissistic Personalities
• Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem

3
Quiz Next Week

• How is insecure attachment learned and how might
  it relate to the developmental theories of
  Rogers, Maslow, Freud, Erikson, Adler, and
  Horney? (5 marks)
• How are emotion and goal regulation related to
  optimal and stunted psychosocial development? (3
  marks)
• (total of four double spaced pages for both
  answers)

4
Erikson Psychosocial Development

• 1. Basic Trust
• 2. Autonomy
• 3. Initiative
• 4. Industry
• 5. Identity
• 6. Intimacy
• 7. Generativity
• 8. Integrity

5
5. Identity vs. Role Confusion

• Adolescents and young adults try to figure out
  Who am I? They establish sexual, ethnic, and
  career identities, or are confused about what
  future roles to play.
• Finding self, Piaget, genital, E, O, C, N
• Eriksons life
• Marcias identity statuses
• From success to integritythe integrity shift
• Related to self-realization and
  self-actualization of Horney, Rogers, and Maslow

6
Rogers Client Centered Therapy

• Reality and congruence
• Responsibility Non-directive (autonomy support).
  
• Client growth motivepeople want to be good!
• Organismic valuing process
• Actualizing tendency
• Permission to explore and express feelings
• Unconditional, non-evaluative positive regard
• Compassionate perspective-takingactive listening
• Fully functioning person
• Open to wide experience and feelings
• Present in the here and now (not remote or
  preoccupied)
• Organismic trusting
• Accepts freedom and responsibility for
  self-direction

7
Lady of Shalott (Tennyson, 1843, Waterhouse,
1888, 1894)http//charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/TENNLA
DY.HTML
8
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation

• Young adults seek companionship and love with
  another person or become isolated from others.
• Caring for another relatedness widening circle
  of concern, coping with the hell is others,
  altruism, N, E, A,O,C
• B-love, D-love, I-Thou, perspective-taking,
  therapeutic climate vs. Horneys neurotic needs
  and self-absorption
• Relationships and the dialogical self (values and
  worth). Identity negotiation. Positive illusions.

9
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation

• Middle-age adults are productive, performing
  meaningful work and raising a family, or become
  stagnant and inactive.
• Caring for society and future relatedness still
  wider circle of concern, A, E, C (familylow O)
• Goals beyond death, communal goals and shared
  reality, disidentification with personal goals
  (Eastern and Western wisdom traditions)
• McAdams redemption narratives
• Promotes Integrity vs. Despair (final stage)

10
Neoanalytic theories Related to Intimacy and
Generativity

• Horneys Neurotic Needs and Coping Strategies
• Basic anxiety and hostility
• Moving toward, against, and away
• Splitting and neurotic striving for glory
• Either way, self-absorbed and unable to love
  others or be generative
• Adlers social interest
• Socially useful types (versus ruling, leaning,
  avoiding)
• Fromms productive mode (not required for
  quiz)
• Versus receptive, exploitive, hoarding,
  manipulating
• Escapes authoritarian, destructive, conformist

11
8. Integrity vs. Despair

• Older adults try to make sense out of their
  lives, either seeing life as a meaningful whole
  or despairing at goals never reached and
  questions never answered.
• Maturity self-actualization, integrated meaning
• Must have capacity to care about and integrate
  with other people and society as well as within
  oneself
• Consensus and shared reality

12
Despair
value
possible-self
role
goal
attitude
defining-memory
role
attitude
group
relationship
value
goal
culture
trait
defining-memory
trait
possible-self
culture
group
relationship
13
Integrity
traits
groups
values
goals
roles
relationships
defining
possible
memories
selves
14
Bowlby and Ainsworth Attachment Theory
15
(No Transcript)
16
The Learning Assumption

• Contingencies learned in childhood persist into
  adulthood
• Harlows cloth and metalic mommies
• Harlow was a colleague of Maslow for a time at
  Wisconsin-Madison
• Low exploration, clingy, socially stunted, poor
  mothers
• Motivation and Reward in Learning (Video by Neal
  Millersearch by keyword under streaming video on
  library search site)
• http//theta.library.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/video.cgi?nu
  m5498

17
Adult Attachment Style

• I want to get closer to others than they seem to
  want to get to methis sometimes seems to scare
  them away. I often worry about whether my partner
  truly cares for me. My relations are
  characterized by obsession, desire for union,
  emotional highs and lows, extreme sexual
  attraction, and jealousy. (Anxious)
• I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others
  and find it difficult to trust others completely.
  Others seem to want to get closer to me than I
  want to get to them. (Dismissive)
• I find it relatively easy to get close to others
  and am comfortable depending on others and having
  others depend on me. I don't worry too much about
  others' getting too close to me. My most
  important love experiences have been happy,
  friendly, and trusting. I am able to accept and
  support my partner despite my partners'
  faults.(Secure)
• Dismissive (approach-motivation) Anxious
  (avoidance-motivation)

18
Adult Attachment Style Continued

• Insecurity and distortion of reality after threat
• Normally ok (i.e., first date) but under stress
• Anxious move toward others (35)
• Introjection, Altruistic Surrender, Turning
  Against the Self
• Oral personalitysecurity seeking
• Exaggerated distress and intrusive thoughts
• Dismissive move away from others under stress
  (15)
• Isolation (Intellectualization), Reaction
  Formation, Denial in Fantasy
• Anal personalitycontrol, power, superiority
  seeking
• Repression and no apparent distress, denial of
  past traumas
• Work groups both disliked and ineffective over
  time
• Preoccupied, lack of perspective-taking,
  compassion
• Anxious x Dismissive relationships dont work
• Only one longitudinal study r .2. Bias? Traits?

19
Twin Studies on Attachment Style
Shared Environment (parents)
Non- Shared Environment (other relations)
Heredity (genetics)
20
Hope for Change, for Hope?

• Attachment style affected by previous partner
• 5 years with a secure ?security (choose
  carefully)
• Practice noticing bids for emotional connection
• Psychological therapy insight and client
  centered
• Notice feelings and body sensations (upside of
  N?)
• Gut feelings vs. rational thought (Jordans ISE
  research)

21
Borderline and Narcissistic Personality

• Neoanalytic origins object relations
• Inappropriate parental mirroring and validation
• Insecure or grandiose self-preoccupation
• Compromised ability to relate to others

22
Clinical Diagnosis of Borderline Personality

• Unstable relationships, self-image, and mood, and
  five or more of
• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined
  abandonment.
• Unstable, intense relationships characterized by
  extremes of idealization and devaluation.
• Unstable self-image or sense of self
• Dangerous impulsivity (e.g., sex, eating,
  substances, driving)
• Suicidal behavior, gestures, threats and
  self-mutilation
• Mood reactivity and instability
• Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
• Difficulty controlling anger
• Stress, paranoia, dissociative symptoms

23
Clinical Diagnosis of Narcissism

• Five or more of the following
• grandiose sense of self-importance
• preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success,
  power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
• believes that he or she is "special" and unique
• requires excessive admiration
• sense of entitlement
• interpersonally exploitative
• lacks empathy
• often envious of others or believes others are
  envious of him or her
• arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

24
Narcissism Scale Sample Items

• I am going to be a great person
• I am an extraordinary person
• I know Im good because everyone keeps telling me
  that I am
• Everybody likes to listen to my stories
• I insist on getting the respect that is due me
• The world would be a better place if I ruled it
• Is Narcissism and addiction to self-esteem?

25
Action Identification Theory
SHIELDING THE SELF WITH GRANDIOSE IDEALS
System Concepts,
Ideal Self-Guides
Principles
Programs
Concrete Goals, Behavioral Acts
ESCAPING THE SELF WITH DISTRACTING CONCRETE
EXPERIENCES
26
Your Gut Feeling What are the Most Beautiful
Letters?
http//selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca/
27
Implicit Self-Esteem (ISE)

• Name-Letter Effect
• Implicit Associations Test
• http//www.yorku.ca/ianmc/iat/iat.htm
• Maternal over-protectiveness and unresponsiveness
• Adult self-reports and parental reports
  associated with low implicit self-esteem
• Narcissism, HESE/LISE, Dissmissive
• Approach-motivationself-idealization