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often enough, the person may generalize the perception of lack of control to all situations, even when control may actually be possible. This person becomes helpless and depressed.

Tasks

1. Match the definitions with the words given below. a) conflict; b) frustration; c) motive; d) aggression;

e) displaced aggression; f) apathy; g) learned helplessness.

1)The response of indifference or withdrawal when confronted with frustrating situations.

2)Directing impulses toward an innocent person or object rather than toward the actual cause of aggression.

3)Mental struggle resulting from incompatible impulses.

4)A condition which occurs when obstacles block the fulfillment of goals.

5)A reason or purpose of behaviour.

6)A process in which a person or animal stops trying to exert control after experience suggests that no control is possible.

7)An act that is intended to cause harm to another person.

3. Which motivational conflict is it?

1) Lisa, a waitress feels like screaming. One of her customers ordered steak and shrimps, but when she brings the meal to him, he insisted that he ordered steak and lobster. If she tells him that he is wrong, she could lose a big tip.

But if she takes the food back to the cook, he might get angry and delay her orders all night long, which would also jeopardize her tips

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2) Jeff is unsure about what to do. A woman he likes very much has invited him to go with her to the last game of the World Series playoffs. Another woman whom he also cares for has invited him to a concert by his favourite group on the same night.

4. Discuss in pairs or small groups the following topics.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Do the defense mechanisms really exist?

To test it scientifically is difficult at best, impossible at worst. Many studies have tried to demonstrate clearly the existence of variousFreudianconcepts.Theresultshavebeenmixed.Nevertheless, there are some ways in which people reduce anxious feelings without addressing the problem. Freud used the term defense mechanisms to refer to unconscious processes that defend a person against anxiety by distorting reality in some way. These strategies do not alter the objective conditions of danger; they simply change the way the person perceives or thinks about it. Thus, all defense mechanisms involve an element of self-deception.

The word «mechanism» is not the most appropriate because it implies that some sort of mechanical device is involved. Freud was influenced by the nineteenth-century tendency to think of the human being as a complicated machine. Actually, we will be talking about the strategies that people learn to use to minimize anxiety in situations

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they cannot handle effectively. But since «defense mechanism» is still the most commonlv applied term, we will continue­ to use it.

A number of defense mechanisms have been proposed; we will consider only some of them here.

Denial

When an external reality is too unpleasant to face, an individual may deny that it exists. The parents of a fatally ill child may refuse to admit that anything is seriously wrong even though they are fully informed of the diagnosis and expected outcome. Because they cannot toleratethepainthatacknowledgingrealitywouldproduce,theyresort to the defense mechanism of denial, at least for a while. Less extreme forms of denial may be seen in individuals who consistently ignore criticism, fail to perceive that others are angry with them, or disregard allkinds of clues suggesting thata marriagepartneris having an affair.

Sometimes, denying facts may be better than facing them. In a severe crisis, denial may give the person time to face the grim facts at a moregradualpace.Forexample,victimsofastrokeorspinal-cordinjury might give up altogether if they were fully aware of the seriousness of theirconditions.Hopegivestheindividualtheincentivetokeeptrying..

Servicemen facing combat or the uncertainty of imprisonment report that denying the possibility of death helped them to function. In these situations, denial clearly has an adaptive value. On the other hand, the negative aspects of denial are evident in cases where people postpone seeking medical help – for example, women who deny that a lump in the breast may be cancerous and delay going to a physician.

Repression

The denial of reality is a defense against external threat; repression is a defense against internal threat. In repression, impulses or memories that are too threatening­ are excluded from action or consciousawareness.Theseimpulsesarerepressedtoavoidthepainful consequences of acting on them. An individual may repress feelings and memories that would cause anxiety because they are inconsistent with his or her self-concept. Feelings­ of hostility toward a loved one and experiences of failure may be banished from memory.

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Repression must be distinguished from suppression. Suppression is the process of deliberate self-control – of keeping impulses and desires in check (perhaps holding them privately while denying them publicly) or temporarily pushing aside painful memories in order to concentrate on a task. Individuals are aware of suppressed thoughts but are largely unaware of impulses or memories­ that are repressed.

The inability of people to remember the details of catastrophic events (the horrors of combat, a fire, or an earthquake) lend support to Freud’s idea that distressing memories and impulses may be forgotten or somehow kept from awareness. But repression has proved difficult to demonstrate in the laboratory (Holmes, 1974). Researchers cannot expose experimental subjects to events that produce intense anxiety. Nevertheless, there is evidence that momentary lapses of memory tend to be associated more with emotionally charged topics than with neutral ones and that people find it easier to remember neutral words than words that are emotionally arousing for them (Luborsky and Spence, 1978). It is possible that when emotionally charged words are about to be retrieved from memory, they trigger feelings of anxiety that may impede the use of appropriate retrieval cues.

Completely successful repression results in a total forgetting – a totalabsence­ofawarenessofanunacceptablemotiveandthebehavior resulting from such a motive. Usually, however, repression is not completely successful, and impulses find indirect expression. Some of the following defense mechanisms protect the individual from awareness of partially repressed impulses.

Rationalization

WhenthefoxinAesop’sfablerejectedthegrapeshecouldnotreach «becausetheyweresour,»heillustratedadefensemechanismknownas rationalization. Rationalization does not mean «to act rationally»; it is the assignment of logical or socially desirable motives to what we do so that we seem to have acted rationally or properly. Rationalization serves two purposes: (1) it eases our disappointment when we fail to reach a goal («I didn’t want it anyway»), and (2) it provides us with acceptable motives for our behavior. If we act im-pulsively or on the basis of motives we do not wish to acknowledge even to ourselves, we rationalizewhatwehavedonetoplaceourbehaviorinamorefavorable

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light. In the search for the «good» reason rather than the «true» reason, individuals­ make a number of excuses. These excuses are usually plausible; they simply do not tell the whole story.

Reaction formation

Sometimes individuals can conceal a motive from themselves by giving strong expression to the opposite motive. Such a tendency is called reaction formation. A mother who feels guilty about not wanting her child may become over-indulgent and overprotective to assure the child of her love and to assure herself that she is a good mother. In one case, a mother who wished to do everything for her daughter could not understand why the child was so un-appreciative. At great sacrifice, she had the daughter take expensive piano lessons and assisted her in the daily practice sessions. Although the mother thought she was being extremelykind,shewasactuallybeingverydemanding–infact,hostile. She was unaware of her own hostility, but when she was confronted with it, the mother admitted that she had hated piano lessons as a child. Under the conscious guise of being kind, she was unconsciously­ being cruel to her daughter. The daughter vaguely sensed what was going on and developed symptoms that required psychological treatment.

The involvement of some individuals in «anti» activities, such as censoring pornographic literature or preventing cruelty to animals, may be the result of reaction formation. The censoring individuals may actually be fascinated by pornographic literature. They wage a campaign against it to fight their fascination for it and to convince others of their own «purity.»

Projection

All of us have undesirable traits or qualities that we do not acknowledge, even to ourselves. One unconscious mechanism, projection, protects us from recognizing­ our own undesirable qualities by assigning them in exaggerated amounts to other people. Suppose you have a tendency to be critical of or unkind to other people but you would dislike yourself if you admitted this tendency. If you are convinced that the people around you are cruel or unkind, your harsh treatment of them is not based on your bad qualities – you are simply «giving them what they deserve.» If you can assure yourself that

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everybody else cheats on college examinations, your unacknowledged tendency­ to take some academic shortcuts is not so bad. Projection is really a form of rationalization, but it is so pervasive in our culture that it merits discussion in its own right.

Intellectualization is an attempt to gain detachment from an emotionally threatening­ situation by dealing with it in abstract, intellectual terms. This kind of defense is frequently a necessity for people who must deal with life and death matters in their daily job. The doctor who is continually confronted with human suffering cannot afford to become emotionally involved with each patient; in fact, a certain amount of detachment may be essential for the doctor to function competently. Intellectualization can lessen distress when a disturbingsceneisviewed.Thiskindofintel­lectualizationisaproblem only when it becomes such a pervasive life style that individuals cut themselves off front all emotional experiences.

Sublimation

The defense of sublimation is not only normal, but desirable. When people invoke sublimation, they are finding socially acceptable ways of discharging energy that is (according to S.Freud) the result of unconscious forbidden desires. This defense is a necessary part of a productive and healthy life. Someone who has intense aggressive impulses might sublimate them by engaging in contact sports or becoming a surgeon.

Interestingly, Freud believed that all of what we call civilization has been possible through the mechanism of sublimation.

Regressionisdefinedasareturntoimmaturemodesofbehaviour; a defense used by the ego to guard against anxiety by causing the person to retreat to the behaviour of an earlier stage of development­ that was less demanding and safer. Often when a second child is born into a family, the older sibling will regress to using earlier speech patterns, wanting a bottle, and even bed-wetting. Under severe and prolonged stress an adult may regress to infantile behaviour.

A Case of Extreme Regression

A 17-year-old girl found an old photograph of herself taken when she was 5. She then cut her hair and tried to look as much as she could

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like the child in the photograph. She came from a very unstable home and showed her first signs of disturbance at the age of 4, when her parents began to quarrel violently. When the girl was 7, her mother refused sexual relations with the father; the girl, however, slept in her father’s bed until she was 13. The mother, suspecting that her daughter was being incestuously seduced, obtained legal custody and moved with her to a separate home. The girl resented the separation from her father, quarreled­ with her mother, and became a disciplinary­ problem atschool.Onthegirl’sinsis­tence,sheandhermothervisitedthefather after a three-year separation and found him living with a young girl. A violent scene ensued,­ and again the mother refused to let her daughter stay with the father. After this, the girl became sullen and withdrawn and would not attend school. In one of her destructive rampages through the house, she found the early picture of herself. She altered her appearance,­ became infantile and untidy, and no longer controlled her urine. She appeared to have regressed to a more desirable period in life that antedated conflicts and jealousies (After Masserman, 1961).

Displacement

The last defense mechanism we will consider fulfills its function (reduces anxiety) while partially gratifying the unacceptable motive. Through the mechanism­ of displacement, a motive that cannot be gratifies in one form is directed into a new channel. An example of displacementwasprovidedinourdis­cussionofangerthatcouldnotbe expressed toward the source of frustration and was redirected toward a less threatening or more readily available object.

Freudfeltthatdisplacementwasthemostsatisfactorywayofhandling aggressive and sexual impulses. The basic drives cannot be changed, but the object toward which a drive is directed can be changed. For example, sexual impulses toward the parents cannot be safely gratified, but such impulses can be displaced toward a more suitable love object. Erotic impulses that cannot be expressed directly may be expressed indirectly in creative activities such as art, poetry, and music. Hostile impulses may find socially acceptable expression through participation in physicalcontact sports. It seems unlikely that displacement actually eliminates the frustrated impulses,­ but substitute activities do help to reduce tension when a basic drive is thwarted. For example, the activities of mothering,

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being mothered, or seeking companionship may help reduce the tension associated with unsatisfied sexual needs.

Defense mechanisms and adjustment

We all use defense mechanisms at times. The rationalization of failures that would otherwise cause us to despair or the partial justification of conduct that would otherwise make us despise ourselves sustains us until we can work out better solutions to our conflicts. Denial or repression may provide relief from anxiety until a way to solve a personal problem can be found.

But when defense mechanisms become the dominant mode of responding, they indicate personality maladjustment. Although they may provide temporary relief, defense mechanisms usually distort reality and thus prevent effective problem solving. A person who de­ pends on defense mechanisms may never learn more effective ways of coping. For example, individuals who project their hostile feelings onto others may withdraw more and more from social contacts. By refusing to acknowledge the anger as their own, they never learn that most people are kind and that they can develop satisfactory interpersonal relationships.

Tasks

1. Match defense mechanisms with their definitions. a) displacement; b) intellectualization; c) projection; d) reaction formation; e) rationalization; f) denial; g) repression; h) sublimation; i) regression.

1) Attempts to make actions or mistakes seem reasonable. 2) Channeling impulses to a non-threatening object. 3) Refusal to accept that some fact exists.

4) Handling threatening material by removing emotional content. 5) Retreating to the behavior of an earlier stage of development. 6) Unconsciously attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts or

impulses to another person.

7) Defending against unacceptable impulses by acting opposite to them.

8) Unconsciously pushing threatening memories from awareness. 9) Channeling negative impulses into socially acceptable actions.

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2. Which defense mechanism is it?

1)Instead of recognizing that «I hate him» a person may feel that he «He hates me».

2)Anger at one boss is expressed through hostility toward a family member or even a dog.

3)«That I spank my child is not a mistake. I do it because it’s good for him».

4)A person experiences loss of memory for an unpleasant event.

5)A person insists that something is not true despite all evidence to the contrary.

6)A husband who unconsciously desires other women becomes obsessively devoted to his wife.

7)A married adult «Goes home to mother» whenever there is a problem in the marriage.

a) reaction formation; b) regression; c) rationalization; d) denial; e) displacement; f) projection; g) repression.

3. Mike feels that his wife is dull and sexually unattractive, but he doesn’t consciously experience these attitudes. Instead, he criticizes his secretary for making mistakes and insults her appearance. This example illustrates which defense mechanism?

5. Discuss in pairs or in small groups defense mechanisms and their functions.

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Literature

1. Sharp, D. Personality Types. Inner city books. Canada, Toronto, 1987.

2. Hock, R. R. Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. Prentice

Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1994.

3. Burger, J. M. Personality. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997.

4.The Penguin English Dictionary. Penguin Books, 2003.

Оглавление

PERSONALITY 3 I. Defining Personality 3 II.Approaches to Understanding Personality 4 III. Personality by S. FREUD 8

NATURE, NURTURE, and INTELLIGENCE 12 I. Externality vs. Internality 12 II. Nature / Nurture Controversy 15 III. Understanding Intelligence 17

EMOTION 18

I. The Nature of Emotion 18

II. Shaver’s Theory of Emotion 20

III.Anxiety 22

CONFLICTAND REACTIONS TO FRUSTRATIONS 26 I. Which motives move us 26 II. Reactions to frustration 29

DEFENSE MECHANISMS 32 Do the defense mechanisms really exist? 32 Literature 40

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