Contents

1. Are Leaders Born? The Search for Leadership Traits
   1. Research on Leadership Traits
   2. Limitations of the Trait Approach
2. Lessons from Emergent Leadership
3. Behaviour of Assigned Leaders
   1. Consideration
   2. The consequences of consideration and structure
   3. Leader reward and punishment behaviours
4. Situational Theories of Leadership
   1. Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
   2. Leadership Orientation
   3. Situational Favourableness (the “contingency” part of the contingency theory)
   4. House’s Path-Goal Theory
5. Participative Leadership: Involving Employees in Decisions
6. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory
7. Transformational and Transactional Leadership
8. Strategic leadership
9. Culture and Global Leadership
10. Global Leadership
11. Ethical Leadership

Leadership

• Leadership: The influence that particular individuals exert on the goal achievement of others in an organizational context.

Are Leaders Born? The Search for Leadership Traits

• Research on Leadership Traits

  • Traits: individual characteristics such as physical attributes, intellectual ability, and personality. Traits associated with leadership effectiveness include: intelligence, energy, self-confidence, dominance, motivation to lead, emotional stability, honesty and integrity, need for achievement.
  • The “Big Five” (agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience) personality assessments resulted from these research interests with traits.

• Limitations of the Trait Approach

  • It is difficult to determine whether traits make the leader or whether the opportunity for leadership produces the traits.
  • We have few clues about what dominant or tall or intelligent people do to influence others successfully
  • The most crucial problem of the trait approach to leadership is its failure to take into account the situation in which leadership occurs.

Lessons from Emergent Leadership

• Task Leader: a leader who is concerned with accomplishing a task by organizing others, planning strategy, and dividing labour.
• Social-emotional leader: a leader who is concerned with reducing tension, patching up disagreements, settling arguments, and maintaining morale.
• In many cases, the two leadership roles are performed by the same person

Behaviour of Assigned Leaders

• Consideration

  • Consideration: the extent to which a leader is approachable and shows personal concern and respect for employees.
  • Initiating structure: the degree to which a leader concentrates on group goal attainment.

• The consequences of consideration and structure

  • In general, research shows that consideration and initiating structure both contribute positively to employees’ motivation, job satisfaction, and leader effectiveness. However, consideration tends to be more strongly related to follower satisfaction (leader satisfaction and job satisfaction), motivation, and leader effectiveness, while initiating structure is slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group performance.

• Leader reward and punishment behaviours

  • Leader reward behaviour: the leader’s use of complements, tangible benefits, and deserved special treatment. When such rewards are made contingent on performance, employees should perform at high level and experience job satisfaction. Very positively related to behavioural changes.
  • Leader punishment behaviour: the leader’s use of reprimands or unfavourable task assignments and the active withholding of rewards.

Situational Theories of Leadership

• Fiedler’s Contingency Theory

  • Contingency Theory: Fred Fiedler’s theory that states that the association between leadership orientation and group effectiveness is contingent on how favourable the situation is for exerting influence. In other words, some situations are more favourable for leadership than others, and these situations require different orientations on the part of the leader.

• Leadership Orientation

  • Least Preferred Co-worker: a current or past co-worker with whom a leader has had a difficult time accomplishing a task.
  • LPC reveals a personality trait that reflects the leader’s motivational structure.

• Situational Favourableness (the “contingency” part of the contingency theory)

  • According to Fiedler, a favourable leadership situation exists when the leader has a high degree of control and when the results of this control are very predictable
    • Leader-member relations: when the leadership between the leader and the group members is good, the leader is in a favourable situation to exert influence.
    • Task structure: When the task at hand is highly structured, the leader should be able to exert considerable influence on the group.
    • Position power: position power is the formal authority granted to the leader by the organization to tell others what to do.

• House’s Path-Goal Theory

  • Path-Goal Theory: Robert House’s theory concerned with the situations under which various leader behaviours (directive, supportive, participative, achievement oriented) are most effective.
  • To provide job satisfaction and leader acceptance, leader behaviour must be perceived as immediately satisfying or as leading to future satisfaction
  • Situational Factors: Path-Goal Theory has concerned itself with two primary classes of situational factors – employee characteristics and environmental factors

Participative Leadership: Involving Employees in Decisions

• What is Participation?
  • Participative leadership: involving employees in making work-related decisions.
• Potential Advantages of Participative Leadership
  • Motivation: participation can increase the motivation of employees. Participation permits them to contribute to the establishment of work goals and to decide how they can accomplish these tasks.
  • Quality: participation can enhance quality in two ways: 1) people working together usually results in a higher-quality decisions than the leader could make alone.
  • Acceptance: Even when participation does not promote motivation or increase the quality of decisions, it can increase the employee’s acceptance of decisions. This is especially likely when issues of fairness are involved.
• Potential Problems of Participative Leadership
  • Time & Energy: Participation is not a state of mind. It involves specific behaviours on the part of the leader and these behaviours use time and energy.
  • Loss of power: Some leaders feel that a participative style will reduce their power and influence.
  • Lack of receptivity of knowledge è Employees might not be receptive to participation. When the leader is distrusted, or when a poor labour climate exists, they might resent “having to do management’s work.”

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory

• LMX Theory: A theory of leadership that focuses on the quality of the relationship that develops between a leader and an employee.

Transformational and Transactional Leadership

• Transactional Leadership: leadership based on a fairly straight-forward exchange between the leader and the followers—employees perform well, and the leader rewards them.
• Management by exception: The leader takes corrective action on the basis of results of leader-follower transactions. They monitor follower behaviour, anticipate problems, and take corrective actions before the behaviour creates serious problems.
• Transformational Leadership: providing followers with a new vision that instills true commitment.
  • Intellectual Stimulation
    • Intellectual stimulation contributes, in part, to the “new vision” aspect of transformational leadership. People are stimulated to think about problems, issues, and strategies in new ways.
  • Individualized Consideration
    • Individualized consideration involves treating employees as distinct individuals, indicating concern for their needs and personal development, and serving as a mentor or coach when appropriate. The emphasis is a one-on-one attempt to meet the concerns and needs of the individual in question in the context of the overall goal or mission.
  • Inspirational Motivation
    • Inspirational motivation involves the communication of visions that are appealing and inspiring to followers.
  • Charisma(i.e. idealized influence)
    • Charisma: the ability to command strong loyalty and devotion from followers and thus have the potential for strong influence among them. Charisma provides the emotional aspect of transformational leadership
  • Transformational leadership strongly related to follower motivation and satisfaction (satisfaction w/ leader performance), leader effectiveness, group & organizational effectiveness. Transformational behaviours are instrumental in developing high-quality LMX relationships and for enhancing employee’s perceptions of their work atmosphere.

Strategic leadership

• In today’s rapidly changing and uncertain environment, leaders must be much more strategic than in the past when the environment was more certain and stable.
• Strategic leadership: leadership that involves the ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to initiate changes that will create a viable future for the organization

Culture and Global Leadership

• Implicit leadership theory: individuals hold a set of beliefs about the kinds of attributes, personality characteristics, skills, and behaviours that contribute to or impede outstanding leadership. Cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Project outlined 21 primary and 6 global leadership dimensions that are contributors or inhibitors of outstanding leadership.

Global Leadership

• Global Leadership: a set of leadership capabilities required to function effectively in different cultures and the ability to cross language, social, economic, and political borders. Global leaders have the following characteristics: unbridled inquisitiveness, personal character, duality (manage uncertainty & balance global and local tensions), savvy (must be aware of new business trends)

Ethical Leadership

• Ethical Leadership: the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making.
• Ethical leaders model what is acceptable and normal behaviour (honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, & care)
• Laissez-faire leadership: a style of leadership that involves the avoidance or absence of leadership.

Leadership Styles and Organizational Influence is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Values: a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others. Values have to do with what we consider good or bad. Broad tendency means that values are very general, and that they do not predict behaviour in specific situations very well.
• Values across cultures
  • Power distance: the extent to which an unequal distribution of power is accepted by society members.
  • Uncertainty avoidance: the extent to which people are uncomfortable with uncertain and ambiguous situations.
  • Individualistic vs. collective: individualistic societies stress independence, individual initiative and privacy. Collective cultures favour interdependence and loyalty to family or clan
  • Masculinity/Femininity
  • Long-term/short-term orientation
• Implications of cultural Variation
  • Exporting OB Theories: OB theories, research, and practises from north America might not translate well to other societies.

What are Attitudes?

• Attitudes: a fairly stable evaluative tendency to respond consistently to some specific object, situation, person, or category of people.
• BELIEF + VALUE = Attitude = Behaviour

What is Job Satisfaction?

• Job satisfaction: a collection of attitudes that workers have about their jobs.

What Determines Job Satisfaction?

• Discrepency theory: A theory that job satisfaction stems from the discrepancy between the job outcomes wanted and the outcomes that are perceived to be obtained.
• Fairness
  • Issues of fairness affect both what people want from their jobs and how they react to the inevitable discrepancies of organizational life. There are three kinds of fairness:
  • Distributive fairnesshas to do with the outcomes we receive
    • Equity theory: a theory that job satisfaction stems from a comparison of the inputs one invests in a job and the outcomes one receives in comparison with the inputs and outcomes of another person or group.
    • Inputs: Anything that people give up, offer, or trade to their organization in exchange for outcomes
    • Outcomes: factors that an organization distributes to employees in exchange for their inputs.
  • Procedural fairness (procedural justice) concerns the process that led to those outcomes
  • Interactional fairness concerns how these matters were communicated to us.
• Mood and Emotion
  • Emotion: intense, often short-lived feelings caused by a particular event.
  • Moods: less intense, longer-lived, and more diffuse feelings.
  • Emotional contagion: tendency for moods and emotions to spread between people or throughout a group.
  • Emotional regulation: requirement for people to conform to certain “display rules” in their job behaviour in spite of their true mood or emotions. Takes a toll on job satisfaction and increases stress.
• Key Contributors to Job Satisfaction
  • Mentally challenging work, adequate compensation, career opportunities, people

Consequences of Job Satisfaction

• Absence from work
• Turnover: refers to resignation from an organization, and it can be incredibly expensive.
• Less satisfied workers being more likely to quit.
• Performance: Job satisfaction is related to enhanced work performance.
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB): Voluntary, informal behaviour that contributes to organizational effectiveness. OCB is courtesy and cooperation. Fairness is the key to high OCB.

What is Organizational Commitment

• Organizational commitment:an attitude that reflects the strength of the linkage between an employee and an organization.
  • Affective commitment: Commitment based on identification and involvement with an organization.
  • Continuance commitment: commitment based on the costs that would be incurred in leaving an organization.
  • Normative commitment: Commitment based on ideology or a feeling of obligation to an organization.

Values, Attitudes and Work Behaviour is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Many people have it comorbid with another illness and it’s therefore not often found

Major Depressive disorder:

• DSM 4 criteria: people feel sad and helpless every day for weeks at a time, have little energy, feel worthless, contemplate suicide, have trouble sleeping, cannot concentrate, get little pleasure from sex/food, can hardly imagine being happy again
• Absence of happiness is a more reliable symptom than sadness
• Occurs at any age, approximately 2x more in women than men

Genetics and Life Events:

• Moderate degree of heritability
• Close relatives of people with depression are more likely to get many disorders, not just depression, and mostly with women who have an early onset
• It’s related to many different genes
• One specific gene controls the serotonin transporter protein, that protein controls the ability of an axon to reabsorb serotonin after release, the effect has to do with peoples experiences: stressful experiences AND the gene together is dangerous

Hormones:

• It occurs in episodes, not constantly: lasts for month, goes away for years and then comes back
• One trigger could be stress, which releases cortisol, prolonged high levels can exhaust the body’s energies, impair sleep, impair the immune system and set the stage for depression
• 20% of women experience postpartum depression (after giving birth)
• For vulnerable women hormonal changes can trigger an episode of depression
• Estradiol was shown to relieve it in menopausal women
• Childhood depression is equally as common in boys and girls, then beginning puberty it’s 2x as common in women than men, they don’t know why yet

Abnormalities of Hemispheric Dominance:

• They found a strong relationship between happy mood and increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex
• Most depressed people have decreased activity in the left and increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex
• Many people become seriously depressed after left-hemisphere damage, fewer after damage to the right one

Viruses

• Brona disease: priods of frantic activity alternating with periods of inactivity (only for farm animals)
• It predisposes people to psychiatric difficulties in general, not specifically depression

Subscribe to the Mailing List Today!

[wpmlsubscribe type="list" id="4"]

Major Depressive Mood Disorder is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Decision Making: The process of developing a commitment to some course of action. Decision making involves three aspects: choices, process, and resources
• Problem: a perceived gap between an existing state and a desired state.
• Well-Structured Problems
  • Well-structured problem: A problem for which the existing state is clear, the desired state is clear, and how to get from one state to the other is fairly obvious.
  • The solutions to these problems follow programs: a standardized way of solving a problem. Programs usually go under labels such as rules, standard operating procedures/rule of thumb.
• Ill-Structured Problem
  • Ill-structured problem: a problem for which the existing and desired states are unclear, and the method of getting to the desired state is unknown. They are unique and unusual, problems like these are not encountered frequently

The Complete Decision Maker—A Rational Decision-Making Model

• The Perfect vs. Bounded Rationality
  • Perfect rationality: a decision strategy that is completely informed, perfectly logical, and oriented toward economic gain.
  • Bounded rationality: a decision strategy that relies on limited information and that reflects time constraints and political considerations.
  • Framing: aspects of the presentation of information about a problem that are assumed by decision makers.
  • Cognitive biases: tendencies to acquire and process information in an error-prone way.
• Problem Identification and Framing
  • Perceptual defense è Perceptual system may act to defend the perceiver against unpleasant perceptions.
  • Problem defined in terms of functional specialty è selective perception can cause decision makers to view a problem as being in the domain of their own specialty, even when some other perspective might be warranted.
  • Problem defined in terms of solution è this form of jumping to conclusions effectively short-circuits the rational decision-making process.
  • Problem diagnosed in terms of symptoms è Concentration on surface symptoms will provide the decision maker will few clues about an adequate solution.
• Information Search
  • Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out information that conforms to one’s own definition of or solution to a problem (too little information)
  • Information overload: the reception of more information than is necessary to make effective decisions (too much information).
  • Alternative Development, Evaluation, & Choice
  • Maximization: the choice of the decision alternative with the greatest unexpected value.
  • The decision maker working under bounded rationality frequently “satisfices” rather than maximizes.
  • Satisficing: establishing an adequate level of acceptability for a solution to a problem and then screening solutions until one that exceeds this level is found.
• Solution Evaluation
  • People tend to be overconfident about the adequacy of their decisions; thus, substantial dissonance can be aroused when a decision turns out to be faulty.
  • Sunk costs: Permanent losses of resources incurred as the result of a decision.
  • Escalation of commitment: the tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently failing course of action.
  • Hindsight: the tendency to review the decision-making process to find what was done right or wrong. While hindsight can prove useful, it often reflects a cognitive bias (the I-knew-it-all-along effect)
• How Emotion and Mood Affect Decision Making
  • Decision makers in a good mood can overestimate the likelihood of good events and use shortcut decision strategies.

Group Decision Making

• Why use Groups?
  • Groups are: 1) more vigilant than individuals are (more people looking at same problem), 2) generate more ideas than individuals can, 3) evaluate ideas better than individuals can.
  • Decision acceptance and commitment: Decisions made in this way will be more acceptable to those involved.
  • Diffusion of responsibility: the ability of group members to share the burden of the negative consequences of a poor decision.
• Do groups actually make higher-quality decisions than individuals?
  • Groups usually produce more and better solutions to problems than do individuals working alone. Group members differ in skills & abilities, division of labour can occur, individual judgments can be combined and weighted based on the problem at hand.
• Disadvantages of Group Decision Making
  • Time: Groups seldom work quickly or efficiently compared with individuals.
  • Conflict: Participants in group decisions have their own personal axes to grind or their own resources to protect.
  • Domination: The advantages will seldom be realized if meetings are dominated by a single individual or a small coalition.
  • Groupthink: The capacity for group pressure to damage the mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment of decision-making groups (Illusion of invulnerability, Rationalization, Illusion of morality, Stereotypes of outsiders, Pressure for conformity, self-censorsip, illusion of unanimity, mindguards)
• How do groups handle risk?
  • Risk shift: the tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the average risk initially advocated by their individual members.
  • Conservative shift: the tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the average risk initially advocated by their individual members.

Improving Decision Making in Organizations

• Training Decision Leaders
• Stimulating and Managing Controversy
  • Devil’s advocate: a person appointed to identify and challenge the weaknesses of a proposed plan or strategy
  • Managing controversy must come in an organized debate-like format
• Traditional and Electronic Brainstorming
  • Brainstorming: an attempt to increase the number of creative solution alternatives to problems by focusing on idea generation rather than evaluation (was originally conceived as a group technique. Individuals are more able to come up with more decisions than groups because of group disadvantages listed above)
  • Electronic brainstorming: the use of computer-mediated technology to improve traditional brainstorming practises.
• Nominal Group Technique
  • Nominal Group Technique: a structured group decision-making technique in which ideas are generated without group interaction and then systematically evaluated by the group. Ideas are generated separately to prevent group inhibition and conformity.
• The Delphi Technique

The Delphi Technique: a method of pooling a large number of expert judgments by using a series of increasingly refined questionnaires.

Decision Making is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Although Sullivan had a lonely and isolated childhood, he evolved a theory of personality that emphasized the importance of interpersonal relations. He insisted that personality is shaped almost entirely by the relationships we have with other people. Sullivan’s principal contribution to personality theory was his conception of developmental stages.

Biography of Harry Stack Sullivan

Harry Stack Sullivan, the first American to develop a comprehensive personality theory, was born in a small farming community in upper New York State in 1892. A socially immature and isolated child, Sullivan nevertheless formed one close interpersonal relationship with a boy 5 years older than himself. In his interpersonal theory, Sullivan believed that such a relationship has the power to transform an immature preadolescent into a psychologically healthy individual.

After an unhappy public school experience, Sullivan enrolled in medical school and eventually became a physician. Six years after receiving his medical diploma and with no training in psychiatry, Sullivan gained a position at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, as a psychiatrist. There, his ability to work with schizophrenic patients won for him a reputation as a therapeutic wizard. However, despite achieving much respect from an influential group of associates, Sullivan had few close interpersonal relations with any of his peers. In 1949, at age 56, he died while alone in a hotel room in Paris.

Tensions & Harry Stack Sullivan

Sullivan conceptualized personality as an energy system, with energy existing either as tension (potentiality for action) or as energy transformations (the actions themselves). He further divided tensions into needs and anxiety.

• Needs
  • Needs can relate either to the general well-being of a person or to specific zones, such as the mouth or genitals. General needs can be either physiological, such as food or oxygen, or they can be interpersonal, such as tenderness and intimacy.
• Anxiety
  • Unlike needs—which are conjunctive and call for specific actions to reduce them—anxiety is disjunctive and calls for no consistent actions for its relief. All infants learn to be anxious through the empathic relationship that they have with their mothering one. Sullivan called anxiety the chief disruptive force in interpersonal relations. A complete absence of anxiety and other tensions is called euphoria.

Dynamisms of Harry Sullivan

Sullivan used the term dynamism to refer to a typical pattern of behavior. Dynamisms may relate either to specific zones of the body or to tensions.

• Malevolence
  • The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred is called malevolence, defined by Sullivan as a feeling of living among one’s enemies. Those children who become malevolent have much difficulty giving and receiving tenderness or being intimate with other people.
• Intimacy
  • The conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between two people of equal status is called intimacy. Intimacy facilitates interpersonal development while decreasing both anxiety and loneliness.
• Lust
  • In contrast to both malevolence and intimacy, lust is an isolating dynamism. That is, lust is a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship. In other words, although intimacy presupposes tenderness or love, lust is based solely on sexual gratification and requires no other person for its satisfaction.
• Self-System
  • The most inclusive of all dynamisms is the self-system, or that pattern of behaviors that protects us against anxiety and maintains our interpersonal security. The self system is a conjunctive dynamism, but because its primary job is to protect the self from anxiety, it tends to stifle personality change. Experiences that are inconsistent with our self-system threaten our security and necessitate our use of security operations, which consist of behaviors designed to reduce interpersonal tensions. One such security operation is dissociation, which includes all those experiences that we block from awareness. Another is selective inattention, which involves blocking only certain experiences from awareness.

Personifications in Interpersonal Theory

Sullivan believed that people acquire certain images of self and others throughout the developmental stages, and he referred to these subjective perceptions as personifications.

• Bad-Mother, Good-Mother
  • The bad-mother personification grows out of infants‘ experiences with a nipple that does not satisfy their hunger needs. All infants experience the bad-mother personification, even though their real mothers may be loving and nurturing. Later, infants acquire a good-mother personification as they become mature enough to recognize the tender and cooperative behavior of their mothering one. Still later, these two personifications combine to form a complex and contrasting image of the real mother.
• Me Personifications
  • During infancy children acquire three “me” personifications: (1) the bad-me, which grows from experiences of punishment and disapproval, (2) the good-me, which results from experiences with reward and approval, and (3) the not-me, which allows a person to dissociate or selectively not attend to the experiences related to anxiety.
• Eidetic Personifications
  • One of Sullivan’s most interesting observations was that people often create imaginary traits that they project onto others. Included in these eidetic personifications are the imaginary playmates that preschool-aged children often have. These imaginary friends enable children to have a safe, secure relationship with another person, even though that person is imaginary.

Levels of Cognition in Interpersonal Theory

Sullivan recognized three levels of cognition, or ways of perceiving things—prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic.

• Prototaxic Level
  • Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others are called prototaxic. Newborn infants experience images mostly on a prototaxic level, but adults, too, frequently have preverbal experiences that are momentary and incapable of being communicated.
• Parataxic Level
  • Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others are called parataxic. Included in these are erroneous assumptions about cause and effect, which Sullivan termed parataxic distortions.
• Syntaxic Level
  • Experiences that can be accurately communicated to others are called syntaxic. Children become capable of syntaxic language at about 12 to 18 months of age when words begin to have the same meaning for them that they do for others.

Stages of Development in Interpersonal Theory

Sullivan saw interpersonal development as taking place over seven stages, from infancy to mature adulthood. Personality changes are most likely during transitions between stages.

• Infancy
  • The period from birth until the emergence of syntaxic language is called infancy, a time when the child receives tenderness from the mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic linkage with the mother. Anxiety may increase to the point of terror, but such terror is controlled by the built-in protections of apathy and somnolent detachment that allow the baby to go to sleep. During infancy children use autistic language, which takes place on a prototaxic or parataxic level.
• Childhood
  • The stage that lasts from the beginning of syntaxic language until the need for playmates of equal status is called childhood. The child’s primary interpersonal relationship continues to be with the mother, who is now differentiated from other persons who nurture the child.
• Juvenile Era
  • The juvenile stage begins with the need for peers of equal status and continues until the child develops a need for an intimate relationship with a chum. At this time children should learn how to compete, to compromise, and to cooperate. These three abilities, as well as an orientation toward living, help a child develop intimacy, the chief dynamism of the next developmental stage.
• Preadolescence
  • Perhaps the most crucial stage is preadolescence, because mistakes made earlier can be corrected during preadolescence, but errors made during preadolescence are nearly impossible to overcome in later life. Preadolescence spans the time from the need for a single best friend until puberty. Children who do not learn intimacy during preadolescence have added difficulties relating to potential sexual partners during later stages.
• Early Adolescence
  • With puberty comes the lust dynamism and the beginning of early adolescence. Development during this stage is ordinarily marked by a coexistence of intimacy with a single friend of the same gender and sexual interest in many persons of the opposite gender. However, if children have no preexisting capacity for intimacy, they may confuse lust with love and develop sexual relationships that are devoid of true intimacy.
• Late Adolescence
  • Chronologically, late adolescence may start at any time after about age 16, but psychologically, it begins when a person is able to feel both intimacy and lust toward the same person. Late adolescence is characterized by a stable pattern of sexual activity and the growth of the syntaxic mode, as young people learn how to live in the adult world.
• Adulthood
  • Late adolescence flows into adulthood, a time when a person establishes a stable relationship with a significant other person and develops a consistent pattern of viewing the world.

Psychological Disorders

Sullivan believed that disordered behavior has an interpersonal origin and can only be understood with reference to a person’s social environment.

Psychotherapy

Sullivan pioneered the notion of the therapist as a participant observer, who establishes an interpersonal relationship with the patient. He was primarily concerned with understanding patients and helping them develop foresight, improve interpersonal relations, and restore their ability to operate mostly on a syntaxic level.

Critique of Interpersonal Theory

Despite Sullivan’s insights into the importance of interpersonal relations, his theory of personality and his approach to psychotherapy have lost popularity in recent years. In summary, his theory rates very low in falsifiability, low in its ability to generate research, and average in its capacity to organize knowledge and to guide action. In addition, it is only average in self-consistency and low in parsimony.

Concept of Humanity

Because Sullivan saw human personality as largely being formed from interpersonal relations, his theory rates very high on social influences and very low on biological ones. In addition, it rates high on unconscious determinants; average on free choice, optimism, and causality; and low on uniqueness.

Cool Related Links:

The Tao of Sullivan

Harry Stack Sullivan

Sullivan & Interpersonal Theory is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Steroid hormones: 4 carbon rings, derived from cholesterol. They work in 3 ways:
  • Bind to membrane receptors like neurotransmitters
  • Enter cells and activate certain kinds of proteins in the cytoplasm
  • Bind to chromosomes where they activate/inactivate specific genes
  • Sex hormones are a specific type of steroids released by gonads and adrenal glands: estrogens, progesterone, androgens
  • Androgens: a group including testosterone and other “male hormones” (men have higher levels of them)
  • Estrogens: including estradiol, are “female hormones” (higher lvls in females)
  • Progesterone: mostly female hormone, prepares uterus for implantation of a fertilized ovum and promotes maintenance of pregnancy
  • Sex hormones affect brain, genitals and other organs
  • At first they thought men and women were different because of the sex-linked genes (= genes that androgens/estrogens activate), they activate the differences one sees (bodily differences, ex. breasts). Sex hormones increase/decrease apoptosis (cell death) in different parts of  the brain in men and women. Genes are also responsible for differences (ex. Y-chromosome)

Organizing effects of sex hormones:

• Organizing effects of sex hormones: occur mostly at a sensitive stage of development (shortly before birth) and determine whether the brain and body will develop female/male characteristics
• Activating effects: occur at any time in life, when a hormone temporarily activates a particular response

Sex differences in the gonads:

• Male Y chromosome includes the SRY (= sex-determining region on the Y chromosome) gene, which causes the primitive gonads (Muellerian ducts and Wolffian ducts) to develop into testes
• Testosterone increases the growth of testes, and turns Wolffian ducts into seminal vesicles (stores semen) and vas deferens (duct from testis into penis)
• Muellerian inhibiting hormone: causes degeneration of Muellerian ducts (= precursers to female oviducts, uterus and upper vagina)
• Female gonads develop into ovaries, their Wolffian ducts degerate and Muellerian ducts develop and mature.
• Sexual difference depends mainly on the level of testosterone during a sensitive period -> for humans: 3^rd and 4^th month of pregnancy
• Nature’s default: every mammal is female, add testosterone and the individual becomes male (but estradiol is necessary too for behavior or some brain differentiation.

Sex differences in the Hypothalamus:

• Sex hormones bind to receptors in specific areas of the hypothalamus, amygdala and other brain areas.
• Sexually dimorphic nucleus: larger in men than in women -> controls male sexual behavior
• Testosterone is aromatized into estradiol in early development after entering a neuron in the hypothalamus (they are chemically similar). In sensitive period many mammals have alpha-fetoprotein in their bloodstream (not present in adults), it binds with estrogen and blocks it from leaving the bloodstream and entering the cells that are developing in this early period. Testosterone isn’t blocked by it, enter the cells freely and are converted to estradiol there. -> a large amount of estradiol masculanize rodents (they over power the alpha fetoprotein)

Sex differences in the Cerebral Cortex and Cognition:

• Men tend to have more white matter than women
• Women have a greater density of neurons in the part of the temporal lobe which is for language
• Men and women tend to perform better in certain subject, it is more likely to be linked to the organizational aspect than the activating aspect of hormones
• Those differences are not limited to our species, the difference however is more HOW they do it
• Little is known why there are such differences

Activating Effects of Sex Hormones:

Hormones don’t CAUSE external behavior, they alter the activity in various brain areas to change the way the brain responds to various stimuli, they also change sensitivity in the genital areas

-       Rodents:

• Sex hormones activate sexual behavior partly by enhancing sensations
• Estrogens increase the sensitivity of the pudendal nerve (transmits tactile stimulation from the pubic area to the brain)
• Sex hormones also bind to receptors that increase responses of certain areas of the hypothalamus (ex. ventromedial nucleus, medial preoptic area (MPOA), anterior hypothalamus)
• The sexually dimorphic nucleus (part of the anterior hypothalamic area) is larger in males than in females, importance of it is still unclear
• Testosterone and estradiol prepare the MPOA and other areas to release dopamine (mostly during sexual activity, the more they release the more likely is the male to copulate)
• A moderate amount of dopamine stimulates type D1 and D5 receptors, which facilitate erection of the penis in the male and sexually receptive postures in the female, a high amount stimulates type D2 receptors which leads to an orgasm (it’s the same burst of dopamine like the “rush” people get from drugs)
• Serotonin inhibits sexual activity partly by blocking dopamine release

-       Humans:

• Sex hormones don’t only effect sexual behavior (ex. testosterone can decrease pain and anxiety, estrogen stimulates growth of dendritic spines in the hippocampus)
• Men:
  • Excitement is highest when testosterone levels are highest (about age 15-25)
  • Hormone oxytocin is realeased in large amounts during orgasm (more than 3x the normal amount)
  • Low testosterone usually mean low sexual activity, however it isn’t the basis for impotence, its most common cause is impaired blood circulation, or neurological problems
  • Erections: testosterone increases the release of nitric oxide (NO), which facilitates the hypothalamic neurons important for sexual behavior, and also increases blood flow to the penis
• Women:
  • The hypothalamus and pituitary interact with the ovaries to produce the menstrual cycle
  • At the end of the menstrual period the anterior pituitary releases follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH, promoted the growth of a follicle in the ovary)
  • The follicle nurtures the ovum and produces several types of estrogen, including estradiol
  • Toward the middle of the menstrual cycle the follice builds up more and more receptors for FSH -> it produces more estradiol -> increased release of FSH and luteinizing hormone (LH, from anterior pituitary), combines, they cause the follicle to release an ovum
  • Corpus luteum (the remnant of the follicle) releases progesterone -> prepares the uterus for the implantation of a fertilized ovum, it also inhibits the release of LH
  • Toward the end of the cycle the levels of LH, FSH, estradiol and progesterone decline
  • Menstruation -> linings of the uterus is cast off and cycle begins again
    • Pregnancy: levels of estradiol and progesterone increase gradually throughout pregnancy, those high levels cause fluctuating activity at the serotonin 3 receptor (responsible of nausea)
    • Birth control pills: interfere with the usual feedback cycle between the ovaries and the pituitary
    • Changes in hormones alter sexual interest: at the periovulatory period (midway point, when ovulation occurs, maximum fertility, increased estrogen levels), women initiate more sexual activity

Parental Behavior:

• Late in pregnancy the female secretes large amounts of estradiol, prolactin (for milk production and behavior like retreaving the young back to the nest, if fathers raise the children too it’s important for them too) and oxytocin (for maternal behavior, sexual arousal, social attachment, enhancement of learning)
• In addition to changing hormones, the female also changes her pattern of hormone receptors
• Hormones increase the mothers’ attention to their young after delivery, they act by increasing activity in the medial preoptic are and anterior hypothalamus
• Hormone vasopressin is synthesized by the hypothalamus and secreted by the posterior pituitary gland (animals who have a lot of it stay together as a couple to raise their young)
• Animals are sensitive to their young’s odor: the infants release some chemicals that stimulate the mother’s vomeronasal organ (responds to pheromones), it stimulates aggressive behavior, but since the mother went through pregnancy it doesn’t effect her, if the female hasn’t gone through pregnancy she rejects the young until she’s used to their smell
• In humans hormones aren’t necessary to prepare the mother for the baby, except for milk

Sex and Hormones is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Karen Horney’s psychoanalytic social theory, assumes that social and cultural conditions, especially during childhood, have a powerful effect on later personality. Like Melanie Klein, Horney accepted many of Freud’s observations, but she objected to most of his interpretations, including his notions on feminine psychology.

Biography of Karen Horney

Karen Horney, who was born in Germany in 1885, was one of the first women in that country admitted to medical school. There, she became acquainted with Freudian theory and eventually became a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist. In her mid-40s, Horney left Germany to settle in the United States, first in Chicago and then in New York. She soon abandoned orthodox psychoanalysis in favor of a more socially oriented theory—one that had a more positive view of feminine development. She died in 1952 at age 67.

Introduction to Horney’s Psychoanalytic Social Theory

Although Horney’s writings deal mostly with what she called neuroses and neurotic personalities, her theories are also appropriate to normal development. She agreed with Freud that early childhood traumas are important, but she placed far more emphasis on social factors.

Horney and Freud Compared

Horney criticized Freudian theory on at least three accounts: (1) its rigidity toward new ideas, (2) its skewed view of feminine psychology, and (3) its overemphasis on biology and the pleasure principle.

The Impact of Culture

Horney insisted that modern culture is too competitive and that competition leads to hostility and feelings of isolation. These conditions lead to exaggerated needs for affection and cause people to overvalue love.

The Importance of Childhood Experiences

Neurotic conflict stems largely from childhood traumas, most of which are traced to a lack of genuine love. Children who do not receive genuine affection feel threatened and adopt rigid behavioral patterns in an attempt to gain love.

Basic Hostility and Basic Anxiety

All children need feelings of safety and security, but these can be gained only by love from parents. Unfortunately, parents often neglect, dominate, reject, or overindulge their children, conditions that lead to the child’s feelings of basic hostility toward parents. If children repress basic hostility, they will develop feelings of insecurity and a pervasive sense of apprehension called basic anxiety. People can protect themselves from basic anxiety by (1) affection, (2) submissiveness, (3) power or prestige, and (4) withdrawal. Normal people have the flexibility to use any or all of these approaches, but neurotics are compelled to rely rigidly on only one.

Compulsive Drives

Neurotic individuals are frequently trapped in a vicious circle in which their compulsive need to reduce basic anxiety leads to a variety of self-defeating behaviors; these behaviors then produce more basic anxiety, and the circle continues.

• Neurotic Needs
  • Horney identified 10 neurotic needs that mark neurotic people in their attempt to reduce basic anxiety. These include (1) needs for affection and approval, (2) needs for a partner (3) needs to restrict one’s life within narrow borders, (4) needs for power, (5) needs to exploit others, (6) needs for social recognition or prestige, (7) needs for personal admiration, (8) needs for ambition and personal achievement, (9) needs for self-sufficiency and independence, and (10) needs for perfection and unassailability.
• Neurotic Trends
  • Later, Horney grouped these 10 neurotic needs into three basic neurotic trends; (1) moving toward people, (2) moving against people, and (3) moving away from people. Each of these trends can apply to both normal and neurotic individuals in their attempt to solve basic conflict. However, whereas neurotic people are compelled to follow only one neurotic trend, normal individuals are sufficiently flexible to adopt all three. People who move neurotically toward others adopt a compliant attitude in order to protect themselves against feelings of helplessness; people who move against others do so through aggressive behaviors that protect them against perceived hostility from others; and people who move away from others do so in a detached manner that protects them against feelings of isolation by appearing arrogant and aloof.

Intrapsychic Conflicts

People also experience inner tensions or intrapsychic conflicts that become part of their belief systems and take on lives of their own, separate from the interpersonal conflicts that created them.

• The Idealized Self-Image
  • People who do not receive love and affection during childhood are blocked in heir attempt to acquire a stable sense of identity. Feeling alienated from self, they create an idealized self-image, or an extravagantly positive picture of themselves. Horney recognized three aspects of the idealized self-image 1) the neurotic search for glory, or a comprehensive drive toward actualizing the ideal self; (2) neurotic claims, or a belief that they are entitled to special privileges; and (3) neurotic pride, or a false pride based not on reality but on a distorted and idealized view of self.
• Self-Hatred
  • Neurotic individuals dislike themselves because reality always falls short of their idealized view of self. Therefore, they learn self-hatred, which can be expressed as: (1) relentless demands on self, (2) merciless self-accusation, (3) self-contempt, (4) self-frustration, (5) self-torment or self-torture, and (6) self-destructive actions and impulses.

Feminine Psychology

Horney believed that psychological differences between men and women are not due to anatomy but to culture and social expectations. Her view of the Oedipus complex differed markedly from Freud’s in that she insisted that any sexual attraction or hostility the child feels for the parent would be the result of learning and not biology.

Psychotherapy

The goal of Horney’s psychotherapy was to help patients grow toward self-realization, give up their idealized self-image, relinquish their neurotic search for glory, and change self-hatred to self-acceptance. Horney believed that successful therapy is built on self-analysis and self-understanding.

Critique of Horney

Although Horney painted a vivid portrait of the neurotic personality, her theory rates very low in generating research, low on its ability to be falsified, to organize data, and to serve as a useful guide to action. Her theory is rated about average on internal consistency and parsimony.

Concept of Humanity

Horney’s concept of humanity is rated very high on social factors, high on free choice, optimism, and unconscious influences, and about average on causality versus teleology and on the uniqueness of the individual.

Cool Related Sites:

• Top 10 Most Influential Psychiatrists – Top 10 Lists | Listverse
• International Psychoanalysis » Blog Archive » Mother-Infant ..
• Psychoanalysis | Sigmund Freud
• Karen Horney | Both Brains and Beauty
• PsyDir » Psychoanalysis
• 10 Women Who Influenced Me Most l Influence By Design
• Summary of Freud and his successors who made major modifications to his the..
• FateAnalysis.com » Basic Conflict- You have it-They have it-Neurotic&..
• Wilhelm Reich and His Influence « Peoples Health
• Narcissism: Having a God complex
• Relationship « Family Entertaintment
• Abraham Maslow – Strengths Academy
• what are the competing current theories of child development and play? | Pl..
• PsyDir » Page not found

Karen Horney and Psychoanalytic Social Theory is a post from: The Glaring Facts

Substance Abuse and Alcoholism

Substance Abuse and Addictions:

• DSM 4: Substance abuse: a maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or stress
• People don’t even like it anymore but they can’t stop

Synapses, Reinforcement and Addiction:

• Most addictive substances increase activity at the dopamine synapses in certain brain areas

Reinforcement and the Nucleus Accumbens

• James Olds and Peter Milner: placed electrodes in a rat’s brain where it would receive a favorable stimulus, then placed the rat in a Skinner box, the rat could self-stimulate its brain by pressing a levrt, which it did A LOT! Most species will do it in many brain areas.
• Those areas directly/indirectly stimulate axons that release dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, many other reinforcing experiences do the same (ex. sexual excitement, gambling, video games)

Addiction as Increased “Wanting”

• Many things that people do that stimulates the nucleus accumbens isn’t necessarily pleasureable
• Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson: distinguished between “liking” and “wanting”: activity in the nucleus accumbens relates to “wanting”
• Decresasing addiction is to decrease how much you want something

Sensitization of the Nucleus Accumbens:

• The addictions dominates peoples attention and their nucleus accumbens responds more strongly to it -> it becomes sensitized
• Repeated use of a drug increases the nucleus accumbens ability to release dopamine and activate part of the right prefrontal cortex -> increases the individual’s tendency to seek the drug
• But, while that happens the person responds less to other incentives (ex. sex), repeated drug use can increase background inhibition in the prefrontal cortex so that only the strongest stimuli can get through, everything else is filtered out

Alcohol and Alcoholism:

• Alcoholism/ alcohol dependence: continues use of alcohol despite medical/social harm, even after people have decided to quit/decrease  their drinking
• Alcohol inhibits the flow of sodium across the membrane, expands the surface of membranes, decreases response by GABA_A receptor, blocks glutamate receptors and increases dopamine activity

Genetics and Substance Addiction:

• Genetic basis is strong for early-onset alcoholism, especially in men
• 2 types of alcoholism: Type I/A (later, gradual onset, fewer genetic relatives, men and women equally, generally less severe), Type II/B (earlier, rapid onset, more genetic relatives, more men than women, often severe and associated with criminality
• Evidence for type II: monozygotic twins have greater concordance than dizygotic twins, biological children of alcoholics have an increased risk of getting it, even if they are adopted by non-alcoholics
• If mothers drink there is also an increased risk
• Genes that increase impulsive, risk-taking behavior increase the probability of trying alcohol/drugs at an early age
• Genes that increase stress make people more likely to relapse
• Genes that increase adenosine production tend to decrease alcohol intake

Risk Factors for Alcoholism:

• Alcoholism is more likely in people were impulsive, risk-taking, easily bored, sensation-seeking and outgoing in childhood
• Children of alcoholics are less sensitive to alcohol and have a 60% chance of becoming alcoholics
• Alcohol decreases stress for sons of alcoholics more
• Sons of alcoholics have brain peculiarities (ex. smaller than normal amygdala in the right hemisphere

Medications to Combat Substance Abuse:

Antabuse:

• After drinking ethyl alcohol, enzymes in the liver metabolize it to acetaldehyde (poisenous substance), then an enzyme (acetaldehyde dehydrogenase) converts it to acetic acid (a chemical that the body can use as a source of energy)
• People with a weaker gene for acetaldehyde dehydrogenase metabolize acetaldehyde more slowly -> if they drink a lot of alcohol it builds up which can produce flushing of the face, increased heart rate, nausea, headache, abdominal pain, impaired breathing and damage to internal organs -> they are unlikely to drink much alcohol
• The drug dislfiram (Antabuse) antagonizes the effects of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase -> so alcoholics will associate alcohol with illness and stop drinking
• But it’s only moderately effective

Methadone:

• It is similar to heroin and morphine but has the advantage that it can be taken in pill form
• It’s effect is slow, avoiding the “rush” experience, it is metabolizes slowly and the withdrawal symptoms are also gradual

Substance Abuse and Alcoholism Decoded is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Electrical gradient: a difference in electrical charge between the inside and outside of a cell
• The membrane has two layers of phospholipid molecules, embedded in those are cylindrical protein molecules. The structure is firm and flexible retards the flow of chemicals between the inside and outside of the cell.
• In rest the membrane maintains an electrical polarization (=a difference in electrical charge), the neuron inside the membrane has a slightly more negative electrical potential (=resting potential)(it is usually -70mV inside of the neuron)
• Membrane is selectively permeable (=some chemicals can pass through it more freely than others)
• The gates are sometimes open for ions like sodium, potassium, calcium and chloride. Sodium channels are closed when the membrane is at rest, potassium channles are nearly closed.
• Sodium-potassium pump: a protein complex that repeatedly transports three sodium ion out of the cell and two potassium ions into it -> sodium ions are more than 10x more concentrated outside the membrane than inside. It is an active transport requiring energy
• 2 Forces act on a resting neuron: the electrical gradient (outside of the cell is positively charged and inside is negative->sodium is pulled into the cell), concentration gradient (sodium is more concentrated outside than inside)-> but the sodium being pulled can’t enter
• For potassium: the inside is more negative so it pulls potassium in, but the outside is more concentrated so it pushes it out
• The resting potential is there to prepare the neuron to respond rapidly to a stimulus

Action potential:

• Happens when neuron is stimulated, which takes place at the synapses
• Hyperpolarization –> increased polarization, get more negative;  happens when the neuron is stimulated
• Depolarization –> reduction of polarization toward;  gets more positive
• Threshold of excitation: any stimulation beyond a certain point causes this, it produces a sudden massive depolarization of the membrane -> at the threshold the membrane suddenly opens ist sodium channels and permits a rapid, massive flow of ions across the membrane -> far beyond the strength of the stimulus
• Action potential: rapid depolarization and slight reversal of the usual polarization
• The membrane protein controlling the sodium entry are voltage-activated channels (=membrane channels whose permeability depends on the voltage difference across the membrane), as the membrane becomes slightly depolarized the sodium channels begin to open, if depolarization is less than threshold, only a little bit of sodium crosses.
• After the peak of action potential, sodium gates quickly close and potassium gates open, so much potassium flows in that it causes a temporary hyperpolarization
• At the end the membrane returns to its resting potential, but it sttill has slightly more sodium and less potassium, but the sodium-potassium pump takes care of that
• Local anesthetic drugs (Novocain, Xylocaine) attach to sodium channels of the membrane and prevent sodium from entering

The All-Or-None Law:

• Action potentials only occur in cell bodies and axons
• Dendrites can be depolarized but don’t have voltage-activated sodium channels, so their sodium channels don’t open a lot after reaching a threshold -> they don’t have action potentials
• All the neuron’s action potentials are equal in intensity and velocity and therefore independent of the intensity of the stimulus = all-or-none law
• To signal weaker/stronger stimuli it just changes the timint, not the intensity -> greater frequency of action potentials persecond indicates a stronger stimulus, sometime a different rhythm also carries information

The Refractory period:

• Immediately after an action potential the cell is in a refractory period: it resists the production of further action potentials
• First part of refractory period: absolute refractory period: the membrane cannot produce an action potential, regardless of the stimulation
• Second part: relative refractory period: a stronger than usual stimulus is necessary to initiate an action potential
• Refractory period is based on the sodium channel being closed and potassium flowing out of the cell at a faster than usual rate

Propagation of the action potential

• The action potential begins in the axon hillock of the neuron
• During the action potential sodium ions enter a point on the axon, temporarily that point is positively charged compared to the neighboring areas.
• The positive ions flow down the axon and across the membrane.
• The positive charge inside the membrane slightly depolarizes the adjacent areas of the membrane causin the next area to reach ist thresholt and regenerate the action potential.
• Propagation of action potential: transmission of an action potential down the axon
• They travel at less than 1m/s

Myelin Sheath and Saltatory Conduction

• Increasing diameters of axons increase conduction velocity up to 10m/s
• In some vertebrate axons sheaths of myelin increase speed to about 100m/s
• Myelinated axons are only in the vertebrate
• After an action potential occurs at a node, sodium ions that enter the axon diffuse within it, repelling positive ions that were already present and thus push a chain of positive ions along the axon to the next node where they regenerate the action potential-> saltatory conduction
• Saltatory conduction conserves energy and is faster
• Multiple sclerosis: destroys myelin sheath, the axons that had the myelin sheath then have no sodium channels, so most action potential die out between the nodes

Local Neurons (without long axons):

• Local neurons exchange information only with their closest neighbors
• They don’t produce action potentials, instead they get information from other neurons in immediate vicinity and produce graded potentials (= membrane potentials that vary in magnitude and do not follow the all-or-none law)
• The local neuron depolarizes/hyperpolarizes in proportion to the intensity of the stimulus.
• The change in membrane potential is conducted to adjacent areas of the cell in all direction and gradually decays. (direct contact, no axon)

Characteristics of Neurons, Part 2 is a post from: The Glaring Facts

• Carl Jung believed that people are extremely complex beings who possess a variety of opposing qualities, such as introversion and extraversion, masculinity and femininity, and rational and irrational drives.

Biography of Carl Jung

• Carl Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875, the oldest by about 9 years of two surviving children. Jung’s father was an idealistic Protestant minister and his mother was a strict believer in mysticism and the occult. Jung’s early experience with parents who were quite opposite of each other probably influenced his own theory of personality, including his fanciful No. 1 and Number 2 personalities. Soon after receiving his medical degree he became acquainted with Freud’s writings and eventually with Freud himself. Not long after he traveled with Freud to the United States, Jung became disenchanted with Freud’s pansexual theories, broke with Freud, and began his own approach to theory and therapy, which he called analytical psychology. From a critical midlife crisis during which he nearly lost contact with reality, Jung emerged to become one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. He died in 1961 at age 85.

Levels of the Psyche

• Jung saw the human psyche as being divided into a conscious and an unconscious level, with the latter further subdivided into a personal unconscious and a collective unconscious.
• Conscious
  • Images sensed by the ego are said to be conscious. The ego thus represents the conscious side of personality, and in the psychologically mature individual, the ego is secondary to the self.
• Personal Unconscious
  • The unconscious refers to those psychic images not sensed by the ego. Some unconscious processes flow from our personal experiences, but others stem from our ancestors’ experiences with universal themes. Jung divided the unconscious into the personal unconscious, which contains the complexes (emotionally toned groups of related ideas) and the collective unconscious, which includes various archetypes.
• Collective Unconscious
  • Collective unconscious images are those that are beyond our personal experiences and that originate from the repeated experiences of our ancestors. Collective unconscious images are not inherited ideas, but rather they refer to our innate tendency to react in a particular way whenever our personal experiences stimulate an inherited predisposition toward action.
• Archetypes
  • Contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes. Jung believed that archetypes originate through the repeated experiences of our ancestors and that they are expressed in certain types of dreams, fantasies, delusions, and hallucinations. Several archetypes acquire their own personality, and Jung identified these by name. One is the persona—the side of our personality that we show to others. Another is the shadow—the dark side of personality. In order for people to reach full psychological maturity, they must first realize or accept their shadow. A second hurdle in achieving maturity is for men to accept their anima—their feminine side—and for women to embrace their animu—their masculine side. Other archetypes include the great mother (the archetype of nourishment and destruction); the wise old man (the archetype of wisdom and meaning); and the hero, (the image we have of a conqueror who vanquishes evil but who has a single fatal flaw). The most comprehensive archetype is the self; that is, the image we have of fulfillment, completion, or perfection. The ultimate in psychological maturity is self-realization, which is symbolized by the mandala, or perfect geometric figure.

Dynamics of the Psyche

• Jung believed that the dynamic principles that apply to physical energy also apply to psychic energy. These forces include causality and teleology as well as progression and regression.
• Causality and Teleology
  • Jung accepted a middle position between the philosophical issues of causality and teleology. In other words, humans are motivated both by their past experiences and by their expectations of the future.
• Progression and Regression
  • To achieve self-realization people must adapt to both their external and their internal worlds. Progression involves adaptation to the outside world and the forward flow of psychic energy, whereas regression refers to adaptation to the inner world and the backward flow of psychic energy. Jung believed that the backward step is essential to a person’s forward movement toward self-realization.

Psychological Types

• Eight basic psychological types emerge from the union of two attitudes and four functions.
• Attitudes
  • Attitudes are predispositions to act or react in a characteristic manner. The two basic attitudes are introversion—which refers to people’s subjective perceptions—and extraversion—which indicates an orientation toward the objective world. Extraverts are influenced more by the real world than by their subjective perception, whereas introverts rely on their individualized view of things. Introverts and extraverts often mistrust and misunderstand one another, but neither attitude is superior to the other.
• Functions
  • These two attitudes can combine with four basic functions to form eight general personality types. The four functions are: (1) thinking, or recognizing the meaning of stimuli; (2) feeling, or placing a value on something; (3) sensation, or taking in sensory stimuli; and (4) intuition, or perceiving elementary data that are beyond our awareness. Jung referred to thinking and feeling as rational functions and to sensation and intuition as irrational functions.

Development of Personality

• Nearly unique among personality theorists was Jung’s emphasis on the second half of life. Jung saw middle and old age as times when people may acquire the ability to attain self-realization.
• Stages of Development
  • Jung divided development into four broad stages: (1) childhood, which lasts from birth until adolescence; (2) youth, the period from puberty until middle life, which is a time for extraverted development and for being grounded to the real world of schooling, occupation, courtship, marriage, and family; (3) middle life, from about 35 or 40 until old age and a time when people should be adopting an introverted, or subjective attitude; and (4) old age, which is a time for psychological rebirth, self-realization, and preparation for death.
• Self-Realization
  • Self-realization, or individuation, involves a psychological rebirth and an integration of various parts of the psyche into a unified or whole individual. Self-realization represents the highest level of human development.

Jung’s Methods of Investigation

• Jung used the word association test, dreams, and active imagination during the process of psychotherapy, and all these methods contributed to his theory of personality.
• Word Association Test
  • Jung used the word association test early in his career to uncover complexes embedded in the personal unconscious. The technique requires a patient to utter the first word that comes to mind after the examiner reads a stimulus word. Unusual responses indicate a complex; that, an element from the personal unconscious.
• Dream Analysis
  • Jung believed that dreams may have both a cause and a purpose and thus can be useful in explaining past events and in making decisions about the future. “Big dreams” and “typical dreams,” both of which come from the collective unconscious, have meanings that lie beyond the experiences of a single individual.
• Active Imagination
  • Jung also used active imagination to arrive at collective images. This technique requires the patient to concentrate on a single image until that image begins to appear in a different form. Eventually, the patient should see figures that represent archetypes and other collective unconscious images.
• Psychotherapy
  • The goal of Jungian therapy is help neurotic patients become healthy and to move healthy people in the direction of self-realization. Jung was eclectic in his choice of therapeutic techniques and treated old people differently than the young.

Critique of Jung

• Although Jung considered himself a scientist, many of his writings have more of a philosophical than a psychological flavor. As a scientific theory, it rates below average on its ability to generate research, but very low on its ability to withstand falsification. It is about average on its ability to organize knowledge but low on each of the other criteria of a useful theory.

Concept of Humanity

• Jung saw people as extremely complex beings who are a product of both conscious and unconscious personal experiences. However, people are also motivated by inherited remnants that spring from the collective experiences of their early ancestors. Because Jungian theory is a psychology of opposites, it receives a moderate rating on the issues of free will versus determinism, optimism versus pessimism, and causality versus teleology. It rates very high on unconscious influences, low on uniqueness, and low on social influences.

Cool Related Links

• Carl Jung – Wisdom of The Dream
• Jungian Symbols Carl | A-Pakistan News
• JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND VIOLENCE Objective: | Forensic Psychology
• Carl Jung’s Psychology – Dreams and Archetypes | Sigmund Freud
• Carl Jung’s Dream Theories | Dream Semantics
• Soul is the engine « The daily meadanerings of a teacher
• Six Global Theories of Mythology: Part Six – Myths express the Uncons..
• Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI « Edhird’s Blog
• The Red Book by Carl G. Jung~ Jung’s Inner Universe Writ Large | Through Yo..
• Jungian Symbols | Video, Torrent, Downloads | Poodlesnatcher
• Jung and the restless: Son of two shrinks analyzes his boyhoodnuggest.baske..
• Inner Vision and Synchronicity 9 – Jungian Religion – Russell Heiland
• Carl Jung | The Magician
• Inner Vision and Synchronicity 7 – Psychology and Religion – Russell ..
• The Ministry of Sound & C. G. Jung’s Transcendent Function « I..

Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology is a post from: The Glaring Facts