Video Transcript: Personality Part 2

Hi, Dr Mark, back with you again, talking about personality. In this video, we're  talking about the origins of personality. In the last video, we talked about  extroversion, introversion, outside to the in, the inside to the out, and also all the extremes between cautious to adventurous, and also looking at energy level and being task oriented, as opposed to being relationally oriented, meaning a lot of  people around you, as opposed to just needing solitude, because people stress  you out. Think about what you resonate with to get us going into the study of  personality. There's the origins. There's a wonderful tool that psychologists and  psychiatrists have been using for many years. That tool is the multi basic  Personality Inventory, or the MMPI. The full version is called the Minnesota multi basic Personality Inventory, and it was a test. It is a test used around the world  to identify personality and psychological psychological disorders. When I was in  seminary, they administered this test to me. Fortunately, I came out okay. Now  with some people, they take the test the inventory, and they come out with some very serious issues, but then they now know and are able to work on them. Well, the MMPI is a great tool, and Dr Freud, of course, gives us more tools.  Remember him? We talked about him earlier in the course, the sort of the  history of psychology and the study of it, he again gives us the concepts of the  id and the superego and the ego. Let's take a look as we go from the MMPI to  the psychodynamic approach, which is an approach to understanding human  behavior that focuses on the role of unconscious thoughts, feelings and  memories, this great image of the iceberg gives A great analogy of what our  personalities are like, there's a lot in the surface, so we think, but there's even  more underneath, just like an iceberg. As of the ID ego and superego, and  overall, looking at the conscious mind, you see, Freud gave us these concepts.  This is right in your textbook, so it's a great way to track here. The ID says it's  the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive  impulses. And you can relate this to the fact of how we then look at how we  understand sin, and how sin, of course, is inherent in here, and just kind of put  the put things together, from from Freud to the theology of humanity and sin can  be related to the ID. Then there's the ego, and the ego is the largely conscious  controller of decision, or decision maker of personality, which of course, involves the pleasure principle here in between the desire for immediate gratification or of our sexual and aggressive urges. Yes, your urges. And of course, comparatively  in Scripture, we know that we are created above the animals. We are made in  God's image. Freud, unfortunately, did not have a biblical worldview, but he was  able to give a system to help us understand what he observed and what we can  understand about the human being and the patterns of behavior, hence  personality. So we go back and look at the part the id, the ego, the pleasure  principle. We're also looking at the reality principle, which is the idea that we  must delay gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with  the appropriate outlet and the function of the ego so that we can make informed 

decisions, good decisions, as opposed to bad ones. Now the superego, in  contrast, is our sense of morality and oughts. You can almost make an argument that this is kind of like, you know, again, how Freud was begin to see about  conscience and and again, what, how a person had a center of morality? Well,  that goes right back the fact that that the heart of God, the Spirit of God, is in  each person. I mean, God created us in His image. And so we look at the  dynamic here, we have the ID that says, I want that right now, kind of like  addiction. I want what I want, when I want it. And then the ego says, well, let's  figure out a way to work together here. I mean, you can't have it now. But, and  the superego, of course, is saying good people don't think about those things.  We don't think about wanting everything all the time, right now and so on. That's  insanity, and there needs to be a balance. So Freud saw this, and he also saw  that we have a set of defense mechanisms. So okay, we have a general  overview here of our general pattern of behavior, our general pattern of urges,  how I want, what I want, when I want now, kind of like for those of you who  smoke, or you smoke before you maybe remember, you know you want the  cigarette right now. Or if you had a problem with alcohol, you I need a drink now. And we all know, I would assume that that wanting that next hit of the cigarette  or the next drink has to again the addiction of that relates to the addiction cycle  with frustration leading to needing to cure the pain, to set to medicate the pain,  and then you find the substance that would then satisfy that it's not just about  drugs and alcohol. It's about people, places and things. And I think what Freud  began to see was a lot of the origins, or a lot of the foundations, rather, of  addiction, how addiction works, as we put labels on this, the ID and the ego and  superego, and of course, we all know as believers, it goes back to Scripture as it talks about what sin is about, and also redemption. So I'm glad that Freud does  give us an a good impression of hope when it comes to the superego. He does  see redemption in the human experience, but he does a lot with the id and ego  as well. And then the battle, of course, we can relate it to the battle we have  every day with sin so defense mechanisms, Id, ego, superego. How do we make our choices? But of course, as stimuli hits us, which we talked about in previous  sessions, stimuli and then responses, reactions, or thinking first and then  responding, trying to reframe our situation. I would liken this concept that Freud  gives us as our ability, our God given ability to reframe things, to be able to  protect ourselves, to set some boundaries, to be able to rethink and then  respond. Take a look defense mechanisms. I like this cartoon here. My constant  joking is a defense mechanism. My excessive laughing is a defense  mechanism. Then the other says our defense mechanisms were made. Our  defense mechanisms were made for each other. Unconscious psychological  strategies used to cope with anxiety and maintain a positive self image is what  we call a defense mechanism. And so what I referred to earlier about being able  to reframe things and so on, or being able to stop pause, it's also involving how 

we deflect others who tend to invade our space, or we may use dry humor to  deflect someone entering our space, and also trying to engage us when we  don't want to, or we're just tired. We want to go away. We need some solitude  defense mechanisms is they are active and alive in the human experience, and  Freud gives us the definition of what they are. But upon looking more at defense mechanisms, we also look at conflict and conflict resolution briefly. That could be a whole other course defense mechanisms in the context of conflict resolution is like this. We look at first the issue of projection. Projection is disguising  threatening impulses by attributing them to others. In other words, we try to  throw or try to project then or place things we don't like about ourselves or our  struggles onto someone else's shoulders and then pass it off. Kind of like  someone, if you preach often, or you speak and teach, and someone may come to you say, great sermon, pastor or great lesson. Mr, so and so or, MS, so and  so or Dr, so and so. Really appreciate your input, but, but, you know, I really  didn't like this about what, what you said about this, that really was, was a  disturb. And then you just went over the top here, and they go on and on, whoa,  if they go into that kind of talk, then they're not really talking about boy these are  rules. This is what I learned. This is what I benefited from your lesson or your  sermon. Rather, they are then focusing on struggles, and they're throwing it on  you and blaming you and projecting on you, therefore they don't like about what  they're dealing with and make it your fault. And you could, of course, put other  examples here, as far as projection, other defense mechanisms, projection is  one of them. And so we're we can go and really to the negative side of it, and  and as opposed to the positive side, to it that was trying to refer to earlier. And  this is also involved in the positive, in where we deal the negative and get to the  the place of reframing our situations first is projection, then displacement.  Displacement is diverting threatening impulses away from the source of the  anxiety and toward a more acceptable source. So in other words, as we divert  threatening impulses away, it could be a negative way of doing this. Also, you  could say it's a positive way of doing this, because you're trying to be in survival  mode and trying to Again, step back, pause, divert threatening impulses away,  and also trying to go to a more acceptable source of support, and also input and connection, where this defense mechanism can be actually a positive way of  taking care of yourself, setting a boundary and so on displacement, but it also  can stay in the negative area too, where you just kind of stay stuck in your  resentment or stay stuck in depression anger, and you really don't get to a more  acceptable source. Now, rationalization is another defense mechanism, as it  talks about in the book, by definition, it's defined as generating self justifying  explanations for our negative behaviors. For instance, oh, I didn't it was okay for  me to be rude to those people because they had it coming. Did they when? As  we look at, well, how am I the problem for the biblical worldview? How am I the  problem because I chose to sin in that moment, to use my big mouth to then, of 

course, accost, be rude and try to control that group of people in that situation,  whatever. That was rationalization, and we're just trying to rationalize, oh yeah,  there was just they understand it's okay, and I don't have to worry about it. Well,  then we get into the other self defense mechanism, or defense mechanism  justification. Justification is also about that too, just as if I didn't do that. But also  another defense mechanism is reaction formation, making unacceptable  motivations appear as your exact opposite. I'll say it again. Reaction formation is making unacceptable motivations appear as your exact opposite. And so this is  what we have to deal with when we deal with ourselves, when we're in denial of  the wrong things we've done, trying to rationalize things. And that's, again, the  negative and sinful side of defense mechanisms or the projection to that also  gets into that, that yucky area, and we realize that we're just plain wrong after  the fact, as opposed to having defense mechanisms to make sure someone  doesn't hurt me or get into my space. Because in a bad way, it can be in a  positive sense, where we can hopefully tend to. Reframe the situation, but more  often than not, as what Freud was trying to make a point here. He was trying to  say, hey, most of the time we're just trying to save our own skins, because we're  selfish people, and as we all say as believers, we're sinners. We need help. We  need Jesus. But this is again giving us more labels and understanding of what is going on, how we understand it when it comes to projection, displacement,  rationalization and reaction formation. So other labels, other understandings of  defense mechanisms, repression and denial, which I referred to earlier, pushing  anxiety, arousing thoughts into the unconscious. I liken it to stuffing into a bottle  and not not getting it out a case of stuff. It's stuffing it into our our minds and our  unconscious. As again, Freud has been able to help us articulate what that is  inside of here, inside our brains and the mind as the Bible, of course, identifies it really comes out of Scripture. Mind you, all these definitions are not new. The  Bible has it all in there, as the exegete out of Scripture, the concepts of  psychology, sociology, all the disciplines here, again, denial is explained,  especially in Proverbs and other places. Denial is just pretending everything is  fine. Really, we're freaked out, F-I-N-E, freaked out, insecure, neurotic and  emotional, and we just don't get to the issues. We pretend that they just will go  away. Well, Freud saw that, and he called it repression, denial, good terms to  use so we understand and know how to attack it, confront it. Sublimation is  another one. He called it, channeling unacceptable or aggressive desires into  acceptable activities. Sublimation, again, channeling unacceptable or  aggressive desires into acceptable activities. In other words, as I interpret this,  it's most likely taking unacceptable to make it into the acceptable sounds like  sin, again, again, sublimation, regression, retreating to an earlier, more childlike  and safer stage of development. And this label has helped many people  understand why they go back to family of origin, places in their minds, go back  to old behaviors that they had when you're age five or nine or 10 because 

they're trying to protect, they're trying to safeguard what's going on in the mind,  in their be, in their well being. Thanks to Freud, we can use this term to better  help someone else as look at regression, regression and and to touch on a few  other, a couple of other items about personality and introducing the area of  personality disorders, not getting into in this video, but in the next video we will  and our video or two, I As we keep going and when it comes to personality  disorders, here's a bit of a preview. The first one relates to hysteria. Now  hysteria is defined as a set of personality and physical symptoms that include  chronic pain, fainting, seizures and paralysis. Again, hysteria is a set of  personality and physical symptoms that included chronic pain, fainting, seizures  and paralysis. Now, this is not mental illness, per se, as is not to say this is a  mental health disorder. No, this just has to do with, again, chronic pain and so  on, things that happen because of physical and mental happening together.  However, this can lead to other issues as we look at the disorders of the mind,  disorders of the brain having to do with chemical disorders and so forth. So  hysteria is a good example to get us started for the next topic on psychological  disorders. But also another important term that the book does talk about is  catharsis. And catharsis is an out pouring of emotion. You probably have often  said, Oh, that was very cathartic. This is exactly what it means. It's an  outpouring of emotion. It felt good to get it out. I was I had the tears coming  down. I had the passion come out. I I sometimes have to apologize. Oh, it just  felt so good. Thank you for understanding. I'm so sorry it was so intense.  Personality origins, expressions, behavioral patterns. Now we look at the  behavioral disorders, personality disorders, to be exact, in the next lesson. Good to be with you right now, and I'm glad you're enjoying the course. God bless you. See you next video you.