Theories Of Personality Sullivan

Saw personality as an energy system (tensions and energy transformations)

A potentiality for action that may or may not be experienced in awareness

2 types of tensions

Tensions brought on by biological imbalance between a person and the physiochemical environment both inside and outside of an organism; conjunctive tension

The most basic interpersonal need

Needs: Arise from a particular area of the body

Needs: overall well-being of a person

Excess energy transformed into consistent characteristic behaviors

A type of tension that is disjunctive and have no consistent actions for its relief

The chief disruptive force blocking the development of healthy interpersonal relations

A complete absence of anxiety or tension

Energy transformation become organized as typical behavior patterms that characterize a person throughout a lifetime; akin to traits or habit patterns

The disjunctive dynamism of evil and hatred; a feeling of living amog one’s enemies

The conjunctive dynamism marked by a close personal relationship between 2 ppl of equal status

The isolating dynamism; a self-centered need that can be satisfied in the absence of an intimate interpersonal relationship; powerful during adolescence

A consistent pattern of behaviors that maintains people’s interpersonal security by protecting them from anxiety

The most complex dynamism

The principal stumbling block to favorable changes in personality

Reduce feelings of anxiety or insecurity that result from endangered self-esteem and inconsistency of our experiences with our self-system

2 types of Security operations

Includes all experiences that we block from awareness

Involves blocking only certain experiences from awareness

People acquire certain images of self and others throughout the developmental stages

Personification: infant’s vague representation of not being properly fed

Tender and cooperative behaviors of the mothering one; develop after bad-mother

Building blocks of self-personification

3 Me personifications

Unrealistic traits or imaginary friends that children invent to protect self-esteem

3 levels of cognition

Experiences that are impossible to put into words or to communicate to others

Experiences that are prelogical and nearly impossible to accurately communicate to others; cause and effect relationship between 2 events that occur coincidentally

Illogical conclusion that a cause and effect relationship exists between 2 events in close temporal proximity

Experiences that can be accurately communicated to others

Threshold periods are more crucial than the stages themselves

A time when child receives tenderness from the mothering one while also learning anxiety through an empathic linkage with the mother

Dual personifications of the mother fused into one; have imaginary playmate

Attempts to act like or sound like significant authority figures

Strategies to avoid anxiety and fear-provoking situation by remaining occupied with an acitivity that has earlier been proved useful

Begins with the need for peers of equal status and when one finds a single chum to satisfy need for intimacy

At this time, children should learn how to compete, compromise and to cooperate

A time for intimacy and process of becoming a social being; most crucial stage

Mistakes made during earlier stages can be overcome during this period, but mistakes during this period are difficult to surmount during later stages

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; turning point in personality development

Fusion of intimacy and lust toward the same person happens at this period; self-discovery period

At this stage, a person establishes a love relationship with at least one significant other person

All _ has an interpersonal origin and can only be understood with reference to a person's social environment.