2130 Personality Psychology“Know Thyself”

Week 1

Professor Ian McGregor

Why Greeks, Freud? Western Bias in Personality Psychology

Powers and Perils of Independent Selfhood Normative Personality Processes

Development and self-actualizationWays of managing conflicts and obstaclesWisdom and virtue are difficult

Individual DifferencesNature/Nurture of traits

East: Interdependent Self-Construal and Collectivistic Culture

Selfx

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Mother Father

Sibling

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West: Independent Self-Construal and Individualistic Culture that Shaped Personality Psychology

Self

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Crete’s: Minoan Civilization(About 3000-1450 BCE)

Mycenaean Civilization: Achilles and the Siege of Troy

(1600-1100—BCE; Iliad by Homer during Archaic Greece, 800-500 BCE)

Homer’s Odyssey: Long Strange Trip(Homer in Archaic Greece 800-500 BCE)

John William Waterhouse; Ulysses and the Sirens, 1892

Labyrinth and Minotaur

Theseus’ Heroism

Icarus’ Melted Wings:Nothing in ExcessJacob Peter Gowy; The Fall of Icarus; 1650

Aesop620-560 BCE

Help with Self-Knowledge: Circe and the Delphic Oracle

Highest Happiness from Contemplating Perfect Ideals and Abstract, Absolute Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM

Greek Idealism

Pythagoras Ideals and perfection of math abstractions Ideals for living (his commune)

Socrates/PlatoAllegory of the Cave

Plato’s ideals and phenomena Aristotle essence and matter

Rational animal—highest happiness from contemplating essential truth

Virtue as Harmony: “Nothing to excess” Cool Odysseus vs. passionate Achilles Icarus

Fly the middle course

Pythagoras Harmony—proper proportion

Socrates’ golden mean "choose the mean and avoid the extremes on

either side, as far as possible"

Aristotle Virtue falls between two vices

Virtue from Self-Knowledge is Difficult Circe and Delphic Oracle at Apollo’s temple

“Know Thyself” Aesop

self-deception and rationalization Pythagoras

Silence for 2 years Socrates

Recognize ignorance; unexamined life not worth living” Plato

Allegory of cave, Charioteer Aristotle

Like taming a wild horse Balancing ideal, pragmatic, mysterious and

unconscious elements

Summary: Greek Influence on Western Theories of Personality Process

Independent, empowered, idealistic selves Psychological sophistication and pragmatism (trade) Virtue and happiness from self-knowledge and inner

harmony among competing impulses Especially in the face of obstacles and inner conflicts

Self-knowledge and harmony (virtue) are difficult and sometimes require consultation with unconscious and intuitive reality

Greeks also contributed to theory about Individual Differences Beyond Plato’s gold, silver, iron, and bronze souls

Galen’s Synthesis 495-435 BCE: Empedocles (Greek Philosopher)

—4 Elements

450-380 BCE: Hippocrates (Greek Physician)—4 Humours and Health

130-200 CE: Galen (Greek Physician)

Fire, Yellow Bile = Choleric (disagreeable) Air, Blood = Sanguine (extraverted) Water, Phlegm = Phlegmatic (conscientious) Earth, Black Bile = Melancholic (neurotic)