Text 17

Read the text and point out key phrases according to this kind of psychology.

Read the text and prove that Alfred Adler made an important contribution to the development of individual psychology.

Individual psychology

The term individual psychology can be used to refer to what is more commonly known as differential psychology or the psychology of individual differences. Usage of this term is likely to imply a more individualistic focus than is found in mainstream psychology of individual differences, where there is frequently a bias towards nomothetic research. However, more commonly the term is used to refer to the psychology of Alfred Adler. Although after breaking with Freud, Adler did call his work "free psychoanalysis" for a time, he later rejected the label of "psychoanalyst" and his work became known as "Individual Psychology". In the context of Adlerian psychology, this term denotes the sense that a person is "indivisible", meaning that people should be treated holistically.

Adlerian psychology shares parallels with the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow, who wrote of Adler's influence on his own theories. Both individual psychology and humanistic psychology hold that the individual human being is the best determinant of his or her own needs, desires, interests, and growth.

2. Answer the following questions:

1. How can be used the term of individual psychology?

2. How did Adler explain the term of "Individual Psychology"?

3. With what psychology does Adlerian psychology share parallels?

4. Both individual psychology and humanistic psychology hold that the individual human being is the best determinant of his or her own needs, desires, interests, and growth, don’t they?

TEXT 16

Personality psychology

Personality psychology studies personality based on theories of individual differences. One emphasis in this area is to construct a coherent picture of a person and his or her major psychological processes. Another emphasis views personality as the study of individual differences, in other words, how people differ from each other. A third area of emphasis examines human nature and how all people are similar to one other. These three viewpoints merge together in the study of personality.

Personality can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. Significantly, in the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise the identity of a character, but rather was a convention employed to represent or typify that character.

The pioneering American psychologist, Gordon Allport (1937) described two major ways to study personality, the nomothetic and the idiographic. Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization, or the trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual. The study of personality has a rich and varied history in psychology, with an abundance of theoretical traditions. Some psychologists have taken a highly scientific approach, whereas others have focused their attention on theory development. There is also a substantial emphasis on the applied field of personality testing with people.

Personality psychology studies enduring psychological patterns of behavior, thought and emotion, commonly called an individual's personality. Theories of personality vary between different psychological schools. Trait theories attempts to break personality down into a number of traits, by use of factor analysis. The number of traits have varied between theories. One of the first, and smallest, models was that of Hans Eysenck, which had three dimensions: extroversion—introversion, neuroticism—emotional stability, and psychoticism. Raymond Cattell proposed a theory of 16 personality factors. The theory that has most empirical evidence behind it today may be the "Big Five" theory, proposed by Lewis Goldberg, and others.

A different, but well known approach to personality is that of Sigmund Freud, whose structural theory of personality divided personality into the ego, superego, and id. He utilized the principles of thermodynamics metaphorically to explain these three distinctive and interacting tripartite divisions. In 1923 Freud published the ground-breaking book: "The Ego and the Id" in which he named and identified the functioning psychodynamics of human personality. This theory has been used in modern psychology paradigms such as Transactional Analysis. However, Freud's theory of personality has been criticized by many, including many mainstream psychologists.

2. Answer the following questions:

1. What does personality psychology study?

2. What sides does personality psychology pay attention to?

3. How can be personality defined?

4. The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means face, does not it?

5. What are two major ways to study personality? What are they about?

6. What dimensions does the model of Hans Eysenck have?

7. What theory did Raymond Cattell propose?

8. What is approach of Sigmund Freud about?

9. When did Sigmund Freud publish "The Ego and the Id"? What is it about?

3.What information about personality psychology was new for you?

1. Read the text and formulate the title more exactly.

Humanistic psychology

Humanistic psychology is a school of psychology that emerged in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. It is explicitly concerned with the human dimension of psychology and the human context for the development of psychological theory.

There are several factors which distinguish the humanistic approach from other approaches within psychology, including the emphasis on subjective meaning, a rejection of determinism, and a concern for positive growth rather than pathology. While one might argue that some psychodynamic theories provide a vision of healthy growth (including Jung's concept of individuation), the other characteristics distinguish the humanistic approach from every other approach within psychology (and sometimes lead theorists from other approaches to say the humanistic approach is not a science at all). Most psychologists believe that behavior can only be understood objectively (by an impartial observer), but the humanists argue that these results in concluding that an individual is incapable of understanding their own behavior — a view which they see as both paradoxical and dangerous to well-being. Instead, humanists like Rogers argue that the meaning of behavior is essentially personal and subjective; they further argue that accepting this idea is not unscientific, because ultimately all individuals are subjective: what makes science reliable is not that scientists are purely objective, but that the nature of observed events can be agreed upon by different observers.

1. Answer the following questions:

1. When did humanistic psychology emerge?

2. What is humanistic psychology concerned with?

3. Do most psychologists believe that behavior can only be understood objectively? What do humanists think about it?

4. Rogers argue that the meaning of behavior is essentially personal and subjective, does not he?

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