What is Personality Psychology

Chapter 9 Psychosocial Theories

Modified: 2022-07-24 11:52 am

Psychosocial theories focus on narrative descriptions of the personality over the entire lifespan. Erikson's theory is the main one to emphasize how personality develops and changes from birth to death. These theories have strong linkages to attachment theory but the links to trait theories and biological ones is less clear at this point.

Learning Objectives:
- •9.1 Recognize separation-individuation as a core issue in object relations theories
  
  •9.2 Identify the basic elements of attachment
  
  •9.3 Summarize Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development
  
  •9.4 Identify the two main focuses of assessment from the psychosocial viewpoint
  
  •9.5 Explain how psychosocial theorists see problems of narcissism and depression as reflecting difficulties in relationships
  
  •9.6 Identify the main strength of psychosocial theories as compared to other viewpoints
9.1 Object Relations Theories (p. 125)
- Do your child relations with your parents shape your personality for the rest of your life?
  - Self-Psychology says that it does
- Object relations theories focus on how people relate to other people
- In Object Relations the focus is on the ego not the id
- Themes
  - Pattern of relating to others is laid down in early childhood
  - Those childhood patterns recur throughout life
- Margaret Mahler
  - Mother and infant are psychologically fused
    - Termed "symbiosis"
  - Conflict
    - Separation-Individuation
      - Gradual movement toward infant's independence
  - Mother should combine emotional stability along with a nudge to independence
  - By age three, the child has internalized a symbolic object relation that will be generalized to others
  - Childhood experiences are important: stresses, rejetion, or smothering
  - The pattern learned early persists throughout life
- 9.1.1 Self Psychology
  - Narcissism: a pattern of self centered needs
  - All children are narcissistic
  - Selfobjects are the people who satisfy child's needs
  - Parents engage in mirroring
    - Responding in a empathetic, accepting way
    - For a while parents place their child in the center of the universe
    - Child develops grandiosity
    - As child ages and matures grandiosity is modified and channeled into realistic activities
    - However, failure to do so may lead to adult narcissism and immature development
    - Mirroring in adulthood leads to transferance (from parents) to other selfobjects
      - Other people become parent substitutes
Box 9.1 Ego Psychology
- Ego psychologists stress the importance of the ego moreso than did Freud
- Robert White introduced:
  - Effectance motivation
    - Desire to impact one's environment
  - Competence motivation
    - Learning to become adept in a nearly infinite variety of skills
- Alfred Adler
  - Broke with Freud early
  - Introduced
    - Feelings of inferiority
    - Feelings of superiority
  - Ego Control
    - Learning to restrain impulses
    - Being flexible
    - Varies from undercontrol to overcontrol
9.2 Attachment Theory and Personality (p. 127)
- Attachment is an emotional connection
- John Bowlby
  - Discovered attachment in English hospitals
    - Children were isolated from parents prior to and after illness or surgery
    - Mothers and others (and objects) create secure bases for children
    - That, in turn, allows children to develop working models for self, others, and nature of relationships
- Mary Ainsworth
  - Developed the strange situation
  - Categorized attachment (see Table 9.1 below)
    - Secure
    - Insecure
      - Ambivalent/Resistant
      - Avoidant
    - Attachment patterns persist
    - Timing is important
- Hazan and Shaver
  - Can I count on my attachment figure to be available and responsive when needed?
    - Securely attached: YES
    - Avoidant: NO
    - Ambivalent: MAYBE
- Attachment is stable pattern into adulthood, most believe

9.2.1 Attachment Patterns in Adults
Relationships and Adult Attachment
Secure adults:
- Happy
- Friendly
- Trusting
- More interdependent
- Committed
- Turn to familty and friends following a break up
Avoidant adults
- Less likely to accept partner's imperfections
- More cynical
- Say love does not last
- Least likely to admit being in love
- Stress about lost loves
- Insensitive to partner's intimate thoughts and feelings
- Least likely to be comfortable with sex
- Cope with breakups in a self reliant manner
Ambivalent Adults
- See love obssesively
- Desire reciprocation and union
- Have extremes of emotions
- Show attraction and jealousy
- Have dependent relationships
9.2.2 How Many Patterns?
- Horowitz created a two-dimensional approach to adult attachment using: (See Figure 9.3 below)
  - Anxiety
  - Avoidance
  - Notice how Horowitz's model relates to the three factor model
  - Horowitz's model is more commonly used now

9.2.3 Stability and Specificity
- In terms of both, adult behavior is more complex and variable
  - Stability
    - Short term and long term stability have been observed
    - Moderate stability is common
  - Specificity
    - Many patterns observed
      - Infants alter their patterns to particular people
      - Adults may use all three attachment patterns simultaneously
      - Forming new relationships may be a more specific pattern
9.2.4 Other Reflections of Adult Attachment
At Work
- Ambivalents
  - Feel unrecognized
  - Worry about job security
- Avoidants
  - Keep busy
  - Socialize less
  - May use work to compensate for lack of other relationships
Comfort Seeking and Caregiving
- Simpson, Rhodes, and Nelligan (1992) made women anxious in a lab situation
  - Secure
    - Sought support from their partners
    - Talked about feeling nervous
    - Secure partners reassured them as anxiety increased
  - Avoidant
    - Sought less support
    - Avoidant partners showed less reassurance as anxiety increased
    - Avoiddant parrtners often got angry as distress increased
    - Both male and female less likely to give support
- At airport departures
  - Avoidants
    - Less contact, caregiving than secure women showed
- With sham cancer patient
  - Avoidants less supportive
- New Parents
  - Avoidants more stress and less parental satisfaction
- Death of a child
- Avoidants and Ambivalents showed elevated grief levels
Attachment Security
- More compassion
- More responsive to other's needs
- Altruism
Motivations
- Avoidants
  - Report helping because:
    - Want something in return
    - Feel obligated
    - Avoid negative consequences of not helpin
    - Not likely to enjoy helping for its own sake
    - Exaggerate partners failure to help
    - Anxious attachment at PTSD positively correlated
- Secures
  - Have autonomous reasons for helping in family contexts
  - Find benefits in caregiving
  - Explain away partner's unsupportive behavior
- Missile Attacks in Israe
  - Avoidants
    - Tried not to think of situation
  - Ambivalents
    - Used ineffective emotion-focused reactions
- Sense of Secure Base
  - Improves exploration
  - Increases self esteem
  - Reduces negative reactions to outgroups
- Types of Relationships
- Secure male-Secure female
  - Seek each other out
  - Stable and satisfying
- Avoideant male-Ambivalent Female
  - Unsatisfying but stable
- Avoidant-Avoidant and Ambivalent-Ambivalent are rare
9.2.5 Attachment Patterns and the Five-Factor Model
- The fit between the two is inccomplete (partial overlap)
  - Avoidants are introverted
  - Secures are extraverted
  - Ambivalents high in neuroticism
  - Attachment avoidance and Attachment anxiety resemble:
    - Introversion-Extraversion
    - Neuroticism
  - Avoidance associated with:
    - Extraversion
    - Agreeableness
- History of interpersonal trauma or parental depression is associated with insecure adult attachment
- Genetic influences may also play a role

Box 9.2 How Do You Measure Adult Attachment?
- Two methods are used to measure adult attachment
- A self-report
  - It asks adults about their current close relationships
  - It looks for:
    - Items that reflect greater or lesser attachment ambivalence
    - Items that reflect greater or lesser attachment avoidance
- The Adult Attachment interview
  - It asks about early attachment and caregivers
  - Signs of avoidance include:
    - Lack of childhood memories
    - Idealizing caregivesrs
  - Signs of anxiouis attachment include:
    - Preoccupations of unresolved loss
    - Memories of abuse
  - Scores on both measures do not overlap
Box 9.3 How Impactful Is Early Childhood Adversity?
- Childhood adversity predicts a wide variety of adult problems and influences personality
  - Childhood trauma is more common that expected
  - Adversity has been linked to:
    - Higher neuroticism
    - Lower agreeableness
    - Materialism
    - Depression
    - PTSD
    - Alcohol and substance abuse
    - Physical health problems
    - Mental and physical problems
9.3 Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
- Erikson expanded Freud's stages to the entire lifespan
- He couched his 8 stages in psychosocial contexts
- He was the founder of the lifespan view of development
  - 9.3.1 Ego Identity, Competence, and the Experience of Crisis
    - His concept of ego identity is the consciously experienced sense of self derived from transactions from social reality
    - Competence and Personal Adequacy
      - Competence comes from successfully emerging from the crisis
      - Inadequacy comes from failing the test of the crisis
    - Each stage contains:
      - Psychosocial crisis or conflict (these terms are interchangeable)
        
        The crisis is a turning point
        
        The length of each crisis is unique but most are long (one year to 30 years)
        
        The crisis is a neverending struggle to attain a psychological quality
      - Eight Stages
        
        Erikson posited eight stages (see below)
        
        Each stage has its own conflict
        
        Ideally, people will achieve a biased balance (towards the positive side) for each stage:
        
        Ego quality, ego strength, or virtue are his terms for successful completion of the stage
        
        Note that the age norms are approximate and individualized
      - One stage leads to the next
  - 9.3.2 Infancy (Trust vs Mistrust)
    - Fundamental stage
    - Successful resolution yield ego strength of hope (because world is perceived as predictable)
    - Trust comes from attentive, affectionate, and responsive parents or caretakers who:
      - feed regularly
    - Mistrust comes from parents or caretakers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or rejecting
      - Their children:
        
        Sleep fitfully
        
        Eat fussily
        
        Are proned to constipation
        
        Are more distressed when left alone
  - 9.3.3 Early Childhood (Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt)
    - Successful resolution leads to ego strength of will
    - Toilet training is one facet of autonomy
    - Autonomy emerges via interactions with others (See Figure 9.5 below)
    - Hazen and Durett (1982) coded for autonomous vs non-autonomous activities in a laboratory situation
    - Children who were securely attached initiated more autonomous activity

9.3.4 Preschool (Initiative vs Guilt)
- Successful resolution leads to the ego strength of purpose
- Child begins first encounters with power
- They:
  - Act on their curiousity
  - Seek to impose their new sense of will on their surroundings
  - Explore and manipulate objects
  - Ask questions
- But, they may encounter resistance from adult and other children, if so:
  - They might cause pain
  - Ask too many questions
  - Encounter disapproval to their behaviors
  - All of the above could lead to guilt
- Successfully meeting this crisis requires learning restraint
9.3.5 School Age (Industry vs Inferiority)
- Successful resolution leads to ego strength of competence
  - In this stage most children spend time in schools
  - Schools:
    - Teach children to become productive and responsible members of society
    - Evaluate children's intellectual capacity
    - Teach social roles
    - Teach the nature of adult work (mostly computerized now)
    - Citezenship
  - Children who successfully meet the crisis of this stage:
    - Prefer reality based activities over fantasy
    - Can distinguish between effort and ability
    - Get better grades
    - Are more likely to agree with socially desirable statements
  - Children who develop inferiority:
    - Tend to have their performance judged as inadequate
    - Exhibit morally wrong behaviors
9.3.6 Adolescence (Identity vs Role Confusion)
- Successful completion of this stage leads to the ego strength of fidelity
- Begins at puberty (but that is unique to each person)
- Large physical changes during this stage
- Identity:
  - Integrated sense of self
  - Asks big questions: Who am I? What is my future?
  - Think of college students who find their life's work
  - Erikson believed that gaining a sense of identity was one of life's major tasks
- Confusion
  - Must integrate many facets of personality
  - Many of those may be incompatible, leading to confusion
  - Might even discover NO role fits identity
  - Think of undecided college students
  - Often, many identify with popular heroes because they cannot or did not form their own identity
- Springsteen's "Growing up" demonstrates how he did nearly everything wrong during his adolescence
  - Many of his songs reflect the conflict between himself and his father
  - Unlike many, Springsteen persisted in his desire to be a rocker
  - Eventually and before his father died, they reconciled
  - (Understand that I'm a Springsteen fan...)
9.3.7 Young Adulthood (Intimacy vs Isolation)
- Succssful completion of this stage leads to the ego strenght of love. Also see: Markstrom and Marshall (2007) (not on test)
- Developing Identity is important to developing Intimacy and to avoiding Isolation
- Intimacy:
  - Requires sharing of oneself with another
  - Being open and receptive other's disclosures
  - Living up to commitments
  - Sacrifice
  - Men with high intimacy more likely to marry
  - Women with high intimacy less likely to divorce
- Isolation
  - Feeling apart from others
  - Feeling that a relationship would negatively affect one's sense of identity
  - Being self-absorbed
  - Being lonely
  - Less responsive to others
9.3.8 Adulthood (Generativity vs Stagnation)
- Longest stage
- Successful completion of this stage leads to the ego strenght of care.
  - Generativity includes: (See Table 9.2 below)
    - Having children
    - Being a role model for them
    - Influencing others in a positive way
    - Having a concern for society
    - Having a sense of agency
      - "Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations."

Stagnation:
- Unwillingness to move from concern over self to concern for future
- Preoccupied with own concerns
- Self-indulgent
- Self- centered
- Shallower involvement with world
9.3.9 Old Age (Ego Integrity vs Dispair)
- Successful completion of this stage leads to the ego strenght of wisdom. Review life choices and accept or reject life's path
- Integrity
  - Life has had order and meaning
  - Choices made during life were acceptable
  - Feeling of satisfaction with one's life
- Despair
  - Life was wasted
  - Too late to change
  - Bitterness over life choices
9.3.10 The Epigenetic Principle
- For Erikson, the life crises are never fully solved
- Instead, there is a blueprint, an epigenetic principle where one crisis leads to the next
  - Earlier solutions to crises lay the groundwork for solutions to later ones
9.3.11 Identity as Life Story
- McAdams and his colleagues have used the life story narrative using Erikson's stages
- They see people's lives as stories that include:
  - Opening chapters
  - Foreshadowing
  - Reinterpretation
  - A final draft revealing a full and integrated whole
  - Themes from highly generative midlife adults inclued:
    - Early advantages in life
    - Becoming aware of the suffering of others
    - Establishing a personal belief system with prosocial values
    - Committing themselves to improving society
    - Often, their narratives include redemption themes (in contrast to those low in generativity whose themes often include contamination themes.
9.3.12 Linking Erikson's Theory to Other Psychosocial Theories
- The main linkage relates the Erikson's first stage: Trust vs Mistrust
- That correlates strongly with attachment
- Those whose early lives led to mistrust may live distorted and damaged lives

Box 9.4 The Theorist and the Theory: Erikson's Lifelong Search for Identity
- Erikson's own life story led him to emphasize the importance of identity within a cultural context
- His life was marked by:
  - Father abandonment
  - Made to believe his stepfather was his father
  - Raised as a Jew
  - Unaccepted by Jewish or Christian communities
  - Told of his real father while in his adolescence
  - Experienced identity confusion
  - Became a psychoanalyst
  - Emigrated to the United States
  - Worked with personality theorist Henry Murray
  - Studied First People's groups in USA
  - Developed his theory
9.4 Assessment from the Psychosocial Perspective (p. 140)
- 9.4.1 Object Relations, Attachment, and the Focus of Assessment
  - Assessment takes many forms
    - Open-ended
    - Structured self-reports
    - Examining issues in relationships
    - Looking at the people in relationships
  - Bell et al. (1986) looked at:
    - Alienation
    - Insecure attachment
    - Egocentricity
    - Social incompetence
  - Blatt et al. (1979) examined:
    - Maturity of perceptions of social actions
      - Low mature
        
        Focus on how parents answered your needs
      - Higher mature
        
        Focus on parent's values, thoughts, and feelings irrespective of your own needs
      - Highest mature
        
        Focus on parent's internal contradictions and changes over time
- 9.4.2 Play in Assessment
  - Erikson used child play to assess children
  - He used a structured situation using props and asked children to put them together into a story akin to a movie
  - Similar methods also are used but most still include props such as dolls
  - Theses tests are projective but focus of face value of the behavior and not any hidden meanings
9.5 Problems in Behavior, and Behavior Change, from the Psychosocial Perspective (p. 141)
- 9.5.1 Narcissism as a Disorder of Personality
  - Pathological narcissism:
    - Recall all infants are grandiose narcissists at first
    - Some remain so
    - They only trust themselves
    - They inflate their own performances
    - Criticize or ridicule others
    - Take credit for their successes
    - Get angry when criticised
    - May erupt in rage when desires are thwarted or experience social rejection
    - View themselves as victims
- 9.5.2 Attachment and Depression
  - Adults with avoidant attachment may (unwittingly) raise children using an avoidant strategy
  - This is behavioral, not genetic
    - Depressed avoidantly attached parents are especially prone
    - They may be emotionally unavailable to their children and raise them in an avoidant way
- 9.5.3 Behavior Change
  - Many use play therapy because:
    - It gives children the opportunity to act as they wish
    - Gives them distance from others
    - They may act out angry scenarios in the playroom
  - Other therapies:
    - Focus on relationships
    - May use therapist to "re-parent" the child
    - Restore a sense of connectedness
9.6 Problems and Prospects for the Psychosocial Perspective (p. 142)
- Many theorists contribute to this view
- Human relationships and their management are central
- Health requires a balance between autonomy and sociality
- These theories provide a different view of personality than others
  - e.g., attachment patterns, social relations, and more complex theories
- Current concerns are:
  - How do trait theories and genetically based theories mesh with psychosocial ones?
Points to Remember
- Psychosocial theories emphasize the idea that personality is intrinsically social and that the important issues of personality concern how people relate to others.
- Several psychosocial theories focus on early life.
- Mahler’s object relations theory proposes that infants are psychologically merged with their mothers and that they separate and individuate during the first three years of life. How this takes place influences later adjustment.
- Kohut’s self psychology resembles object relations theory. He said humans have narcissistic needs that are satisfied by other people, represented as selfobjects. If the child receives enough mirroring (positive attention) from selfobjects (chiefly the mother), the sense of self develops appropriately. If there’s too much mirroring, the child won’t be able to deal with frustrations. If there’s too little, the development of the self will be stunted.
- Some of these ideas are echoed in the work of attachment theorists such as Bowlby and Ainsworth.
- Secure attachment provides a solid base for exploration.
- There are also patterns of insecure attachment (ambivalent and avoidant), which stem from inconsistent treatment, neglect, or rejection.
- There’s increasing interest in the idea that infant attachment patterns persist and influence adult personality. There is now a great deal of work on this topic, assessing adult attachment in several ways. Although people do display diverse ways of relating across their social connections, a core tendency seems to exist.
- Adult attachment patterns influence many aspects of behavior, including how people relate to work activities and how they seek and give emotional support, as well as how they relate to romantic partners.
- Another important theory of the psychosocial group is Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development.
- Erikson postulated a series of crises from infancy to late adulthood, giving rise to ego strengths that influence one’s ego identity: the consciously experienced sense of self. Erikson assumed that each crisis becomes focal at one stage, but that each is present in a less obvious form throughout life.
- The first crisis concerns the development of a sense of basic trust. The child then becomes concerned with control over its body and the sense of autonomy that comes with it.
- The next issue is initiative, as the child seeks to exercise its power.
- As children enter the school years, they begin to realize the social environment demands being industrious.
- With adolescence, the child enters a new stage of life and has a crisis over identity.
- In young adulthood, identity issues give way to concern over intimacy.
- In adulthood, the person’s concern is over generativity.
- Finally, in the last stage of life, people confront the integrity of their lives as a whole.
- Assessment techniques from the psychosocial view are similar to those of ego psychology but focus more on relationships.
- This approach also leads to use of play for assessment with children.
- The psychosocial view of problems focuses on the idea that problems are rooted in relationship issues.
- Kohut suggested that pathological narcissism stems from inadequate childhood mirroring. Insecure attachment seems to create a risk for depression.
- These theories approach therapy in ways similar to those of ego psychology, but there are additional variations.
- One of them is play therapy for children.
- Object relations and attachment theories also suggest that a relationship with a therapist is critical in permitting reintegration of the sense of self or establishing a sense of secure attachment.

KEY TERMS

Attachment: An emotional connection to someone else.
Competence motivation: The need to be effective or successful in dealing with the environment.
Effectance motivation: The need to have an impact on the environment.
Ego control: The extent to which a person controls or inhibits impulses.
Ego identity: The overall sense of self that emerges from transactions with social reality.
Ego quality (ego strength or virtue): The quality that becomes part of one’s personality through successful management of a crisis.
Ego resiliency: The ability to flexibly modify one’s typical level of ego control to adapt to new contexts.
Epigenesis: The idea (adopted from embryology) that an internal plan for future development is present at the beginning of life.
Feelings of inferiority: The feeling that one is deficient in some way.
Life-span development: The idea that developmental processes continue throughout life.
Mirroring: The giving of positive attention and supportiveness to someone.
Narcissism: A sense of grandiose self-importance and entitlement.
Narrative: A story you compose for yourself about life to create a coherent sense of identity.
Object relations: An individual’s symbolized relations to other persons (such as parents).
Play therapy: The use of play as a procedure for conducting therapy with children.
Psychosocial crisis (or conflict): A turning point in a developmental period when some interpersonal issue is being dealt with and growth potential and vulnerability are both high.
Self psychology: Kohut’s theory that relationships create the structure of the self.
Self object: The mental representation of another person who functions to satisfy your needs.
Separation–individuation: The process of acquiring a distinct identity; separating from fusion with the mother.
Strange situation: A procedure used to assess the attachment pattern of infant to mother.
Symbiosis: A period in which an infant experiences fusion with the mother.
Transference: The viewing of other people through selfobject representations originally developed for parents.

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