Also another component of the nature-nurture debate is the gene-environment interaction. Environmental inputs affect the expression of genes, that is, the environment infl uences the extent to which a genetic disposition will actually manifest. Individuals with certain genotypes are more likely to fi nd themselves in certain environments. Thus, it appears that genes can shape (the selection or creation of) environments.
Thus, there are the predominantly environmental traits (specifi c language, religion), predominantly genetic (blood type, eye color) and interactional (height, weight, skin color).
THEORIES FROM THE ORGANISMIC WORLDVIEW
through a series of childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the Id become focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behavior (psychology.about.com).
A healthy personality results if the stages are completed successfully. Every stage has a set of developmental tasks which have to be learnt, certain issues which have to be resolved. Each stage is characterized by the erogenous zone that is the source of libidinal drive during that stage. If this fails to happen, fi xation can occur. A fi xation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. It is the state in which an individual becomes obsessed with an attachment to another human, an animal, or an inanimate object. Until this confl ict is resolved, the individual will remain
“stuck” in this stage. For example, an oral (stage) fi xation can later on manifest as overdependence on others, or may seek oral stimulation through smoking, drinking, or eating.
The different stages according to Freud are as follows:
The oral stage
During the oral stage, the rooting and sucking refl ex is especially important. This stage is characterized by the infant deriving pleasure from oral stimulation through gratifying activities, such as tasting and sucking, that is the infant’s primary source of interaction occurs through the mouth. As the infant is entirely dependent upon caretakers (who are responsible for feeding the child) this oral stimulation provides the setting for the development of trust and comfort. The primary confl ict at this stage is the weaning process. Fixation at this stage means the individual would have psychological issues like dependency or aggression, or behavioral problems like the various addictions or nail biting.
The anal stage
During the anal stage, the primary focus of the libido is on controlling bladder and bowel movements. The developmental task for this stage includes toilet training, i.e., the child has to learn to control his or her bodily needs. Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and independence. The approach of the parents’
of major caregivers’ to this training determines the success of this stage. Too much pressure (being too strict) or too much leniency have their own negative outcomes.
Praise and rewards encourage positive outcomes and help children feel capable and productive. This serves as the basis for people to become competent, productive, and creative adults. Negative approaches like the use of punishment, ridicule, or shaming a child for accidents can result in negative outcomes.
If the parents are too lenient the child develops a messy, wasteful, or destructive personality (anal expulsive). If parents are too strict or begin toilet training too early, Freud believed that the child develops an anal-retentive personality in which the individual is stringent, orderly, rigid, and obsessive.
The phallic stage
During the phallic stage, the primary focus of the libido is on the genitals. Children also discover the differences between males and females. This is the stage in which the Oedipus and Electra complexes develop. Boys develop the oedipus complex and view their fathers as rivals for the affections and experience the desire to replace the father. Knowing that these feelings to be inappropriate the child, fears that she/
he would be punished by his/her father. This fear was termed castration anxiety by Freud. The term electra complex has been used to describe a similar set of feelings experienced by young girls. However, Freud posited, girls instead experience penis envy. Eventually, the child begins to identify with the same-sex parent as a means of vicariously possessing the other parent.
The latent period
This stage begins around the time that children enter into school and become more concerned with peer relationships, hobbies, and other interests––the developmental tasks to be acquired during this stage is development of social and communication skills and self-confi dence. During this period, the libido interests are suppressed.
This is a period of calm contributed by the development of the ego and superego.
This is a time of exploration in which the sexual energy is still present, but it is directed into other areas, such as intellectual pursuits and social interactions.
The genital stage
This is the fi nal stage of psychosexual development. The goal of this stage is to establish a balance between the various life areas. During this stage the individual develops a strong sexual interest in the opposite sex. In the earlier stages the focus was solely on individual needs. This stage marks the growth of interest in the welfare of others. If the other stages have been completed successfully, the individual should now be well-balanced, warm, and caring.
2. Levels of Consciousness: States of the Mind
This is Freud’s topographical model of the human personality. According to Freud, the mind can be divided into two main parts:
The conscious mind: The conscious mind includes everything that is in our awareness. This is the aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about in a rational way. The conscious mind holds the present perceptions, feelings, thoughts, memories (which is not always a part of our conscious but can be retrieved easily at any time), and fantasies at any particular moment. It is the part that is cognitively aware. Here, one can communicate about their conscious experiences. It is the realm of constructed, logical thinking.
The preconscious mind: The preconscious mind is related to that data of which one is not conscious but can readily be brought to consciousness; or an area for distant memories to remain until the conscious calls upon them.
The unconscious mind: The unconscious mind is a reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and memories that are outside of our conscious awareness. Freud believed that most of the contents of the unconscious are unacceptable or unpleasant.
Like anxieties, confl icts, and pain, repressed feelings and ideas. This data, though not easily available to the individual’s conscious awareness or scrutiny continues to infl uence our behavior and experience. These feelings fi nd expression through dreams, free association, and parapraxis, (Freudian slips). This is where most of the work of the Id, Ego, and Superego take place.
3. Structure of the Mind: Id, Ego, Superego
This is Freud’s Structural model of Personality. According to the psychoanalytic theory, personality is composed of three elements known as the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, which work together to create complex human behaviors.
The Id: This is that aspect of personality which is entirely unconscious and includes the instinctive and primitive behaviors. It is the only component of personality that is present from birth. It is very important part of the personality as it ensures that the basic needs are met. It is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality. Being the unconscious reservoir of drives, it remains constantly active. It is ruled by the pleasure principle demanding immediate satisfaction of its urges, with no consideration for the reality of the situation or the needs of anyone else. The primary concern is the satisfaction of their needs. If these needs are not satisfi ed immediately, the result is a state anxiety or tension.
The Ego: This part of the personality develops as the child interacts more and more with the world. It is ruled by the reality principle operating mainly in the conscious and preconscious levels. The ego is responsible for dealing with reality.
Developing from the Id the ego ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a realistic and socially appropriate manner. However, the ego also discharges tension created by unmet impulses.
The Superego: According to Freud, the Superego begins to emerge at around age fi ve or the end of the phallic stage of development. This is the last component of personality to develop. This is the moral part of the individual. The Superego provides guidelines for making judgments. Only partially conscious, it serves as a censor on the ego functions.
There are two parts of the Superego: The ego ideal that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society, By obeying these rules one experiences feelings of pride, value, and accomplishment.
The conscience includes information about things that are viewed as bad by parents and society, i.e., our sense of right and wrong, and leads to bad consequences, punishments, or feelings of guilt and remorse.
The Superego is present in the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious working to suppress all unacceptable urges of the Id. It constantly struggles to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles, which of course results in much confl ict among the three competing forces. Ego strength refers to the ego’s ability to effectively manage the pressures from the Id and the Superego.
The balance between the three forces is the key to a healthy personality.
According to Freud the ego is the strongest in the healthy person, wonderfully satisfying the needs of the Id, not upsetting the Superego, while still taking into consideration the reality of the situation.
4. Life Urges or Instincts
Freud believed that all behavior is motivated by drives or instincts. They are life instinct or Eros, and the death instinct or Thanatos.
• Eros: These instincts perpetuate (a) the life of the individual by motivating him or her to seek food and water and (b) the life of the species by motivating him or her to have sex.
• Thanatos: The death instinct. Freud posited that every person has “Under”
and “Beside” the life instincts an unconscious wish to die. Death promises a relief from life’s pain and suffering. People look to escape this struggle by using alcohol and narcotics. One’s desire for peace, escape from stimulation results in having a penchant for escapist activity, such as losing oneself in books or movies, or one’s craving for rest and sleep. Sometimes it presents itself openly as suicide and suicidal wishes.
5. Defense Mechanisms
The ego is pulled on either side, back and forth, with the reality and society represented by the Superego; and biology, which is represented by the Id. This results in the individual feeling overwhelmed and fear that she/he is going to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called anxiety. The individual experiences anxiety when the ego cannot deal with the demands of desire, constraints of reality and moral standards. According to Freud, anxiety is an unpleasant inner state that acts as a signal to the ego that things are not going right. Freud identifi ed three types of anxiety:
1. Neurotic anxiety: This is the fear of being overwhelmed by the Id impulses.
It is the unconscious worry that that the individual will lose control of the Id’s urges and will engage in inappropriate behavior resulting in punishment.
2. Reality anxiety: This is the fear of real world events and is not disproportionate to the threat of the object.
3. Moral anxiety: This involves the fear of violating one’s own moral principles.
The defense mechanisms help shield the ego from the pain and confl ict. When the anxiety experienced is beyond the tolerance of the individual these defenses occur unconsciously and work to distort reality which helps the individual feel safe.
The different defense mechanisms are as follows:
• Denial: An outright refusal to admit or recognize that something has occurred or is currently occurring.
• Repression: Acts to keep information out of conscious awareness. However, these memories don’t just disappear; they continue to infl uence our behavior.
• Suppression: Consciously forcing unwanted information out of awareness.
• Displacement: Involves taking out our frustrations, feelings, and impulses on people or objects that are less threatening.
• Sublimation: Acting out unacceptable impulses by converting these behaviors into a more acceptable form. Freud believed that sublimation was a sign of maturity that allows people to function normally in socially acceptable ways.
• Projection: Involves taking our own unacceptable qualities or feelings and ascribing them to other people.
• Introjections: Sometimes called identifi cation, involves taking into our own personality, characteristics of someone else, because doing so solves some emotional diffi culty.
• Intellectualization: Thinking about the stressful, emotional aspect of the situation and focus only on the intellectual component in a cold clinical way.
• Rationalization: Explaining an unacceptable behavior or feeling in a rational or logical manner, avoiding the true explanation for the behavior.
• Regression: Abandoning coping strategies and revert to patterns of behavior used earlier in development. Behaviors associated with regression can vary greatly depending upon which stage the person is fi xated at:
An individual fi xated at the oral stage might begin eating or smoking excessively, or might become very verbally aggressive.
A fi xation at the anal stage might result in excessive tidiness or mess.
• Reaction formation: Taking up the opposite feeling, impulse, or behavior.
• Compensation: Overachieving in one area to compensate for failures in another.
• Avoidance: Refusing to deal with or encounter unpleasant objects or situations.
• Aim inhibition: The individual accepts a modifi ed form of their original goal.
• Altruism: Satisfying internal needs through helping others.
• Humor: Pointing out the funny or ironic aspects of a situation.
• Passive aggression: Indirectly expressing anger.
• Acting out: Coping with stress by engaging in actions rather than refl ecting upon internal feelings.
• Affi liation: Turning to other people for support.
6. Therapy
Much of Freudian therapy grew directly out of Freud’s work with his psychoanalytic patients. As he tried to understand and explain their symptoms, he grew increasingly interested in the role of the unconscious mind in the development of mental illness.
Some of the major observations are as follows:
• Relaxed atmosphere: Where the client feels free to express thoughts and feelings without feeling judged.
• Free association: The client may talk about anything and everything that he or she is thinking about.
• Resistance: At this stage, the client fi nds some of his thoughts and feelings threatening. Also the client is unable to accept the process of change.
• Dream analysis: Dreams are those threatening thoughts and feelings which creep into the awareness during sleep when resistance is minimal. They are in symbolic form and provide the therapist with a lot of clues about the anxieties of the client.
• Parapraxes: Or a slip of the tongue (Freudian slip!). These are also clues to the unconscious.
• Projective test: The TAT, Rorschach, etc., where the stimulus is vague, the client fi lls it with unconscious themes.
• Transference occurs when a client projects feelings toward the therapist that more legitimately belong with certain important others.
• Catharsis the sudden and dramatic outpouring of emotion that occurs when the trauma is resurrected.
• Insight is being aware of the source of the emotion of the original traumatic event. The major portion of the therapy is completed when catharsis and insight are experienced.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is one of the best known theories of personality in psychology Erikson believed that childhood is very important in personality development. Erikson both agreed as well as disagreed with Freud. He agreed with Freud in that he believed that personality develops in a series of stages.
He accepted many of Freud’s theories, including the id, ego, and superego, and Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality. But he rejected Freud’s attempt to describe personality solely on the basis of sexuality, and, unlike Freud, felt that personality continued to develop beyond fi ve years of age. Unlike Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages which stops at the genital stage, Erikson’s theory describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan.
Erikson posited in his theory that all of the stages are implicitly present at birth (at least in latent form), and these unfold according to both an innate scheme and one’s upbringing in a family that expresses the values of a culture. As with any stage theory, each stage builds on the preceding stages, and paves the way for subsequent stages. Every stage is characterized by a psychosocial crisis, which is based not only on physiological development, but also on environmental demands put on the individual. Ideally, the crisis in each stage should be resolved by the ego in that stage, in order for development to proceed correctly.
While Freud believed that the damages caused by unresolved issues or trauma can be rectifi ed only by long term therapy, Erikson believed that the outcome of one stage is not permanent, and can be altered by later experiences. Every individual is a mixture of the traits attained at each stage, but personality development is considered successful if the individual has more of the “good” traits than the “bad” traits.
Ego Psychology
Erikson’s theory of ego psychology holds certain beliefs that make his theory different from Freud’s. Some of these include:
• One of the main elements of Erikson’s psychosocial stage theory is the development of ego identity. Ego identity is the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction and its development is of utmost importance.
New experiences and information acquired through interactions with others keep it constantly changing.
• Each stage in Erikson’s theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life. Part of the ego is able to operate independently of the id and the superego. If the psychosocial crisis during this stage is handled well, the person will feel a sense of mastery (called ego strength or ego quality); and if managed poorly, the person will emerge with a sense of inadequacy.
• In each stage, Erikson believed people experience a confl ict (which he called the psychosocial crisis) that serves as a turning point in development. These confl icts are centered on either developing a psychological quality or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for personal growth is high, but so also is the potential for failure.
• Then the individual develops a sense of competence which motivates behaviors and actions. The ego is a powerful agent that can adapt to situations, thereby promoting mental health.
• Erikson believed that not only sexual but more importantly social factors, play a role in personality development.
Erikson’s theory was more comprehensive than Freud’s as, in addition to neuroticism, it also included information about “normal” personality. The scope of personality was broadened to incorporate social and cultural factors, not just sexuality.
The stages of psychosocial development are given below.
Psychosocial stage 1: Trust vs. mistrust
The fi rst stage of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development occurs between birth and one year of age and is the most fundamental stage in life. The developmental task during this stage is the development of the capacity to trust. If we notice, the newborn is utterly dependent on the caregiver for almost all his basic needs.
Thus the dependability and quality of the caregiver is instrumental in forming a bond between the infant and the caregiver. This bond results in the infant trusting the caregiver and eventually generalizing this to the others. That is the capacity to trust develops in the child. If during this stage and requirement the caregiver does not prove himself or herself trustworthy, then the child develops a mistrust in his interactions with others which he will carry into the following stages. Thus, it is important for the caregiver to make the child feel safe and secure by being consistent, emotionally available, and accepting of the children they care for as failure to develop trust will result in fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.
Psychosocial stage 2: Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
The second stage of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development takes place during early childhood and is focused on children developing a greater sense of personal control. This is the second and third year of the child during which time the child is experiencing more and more autonomy in terms of movement, communication and physiological functions. This leads to a feeling of control and a sense of independence.
Food choices, toy preferences, and clothing selection can be communicated––what