Bibliography

LInks to Pictures:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Structural-Iceberg.svg/280px-Structural-Iceberg.svg.png

http://www.tamilnation.org/images/art/penn/a22.JPG

http://www.thepsychfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/defensemechanismsdn.jpg

http://fac.hsu.edu/langlet/lectures/dev/Erikson/Erikson8.gif

http://modoathii.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/zi070815.gif

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Karen_Horney_1938.jpg

http://staff.gc.maricopa.edu/~jpell/blackboard/MASLOW.JPG

http://www.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0/28/4/AAAAAhdeyzoAAAAAAChL4A.jpg

http://c.myspace.com/Groups/00000/96/08/208069_m.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HXXM0JGCL._AA240_.jpg


Information for Context Sources, as well as helpful links:::

http://allpsych.com/psychology101/ego.html

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9041087/Karen-Horney

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/hierarchyneeds.htm

Approaches to Psychology Textbook -- William E. Glassman and Marilyn Hadad

http://www.freudfile.org/

Entry #11: Bonus – Reflection on Writing the Psychology Blogs:

To me, these psychology blogs had two benefits: First, it helped me learn more about the actual concepts – people can listen to lectures all day long everyday and the information still won’t sink in until they can reiterate it and apply it to their own lives. One of the things that I love about psychology is that it is extremely important in my everyday life and that I can apply it in my interactions. The other way that I benefited from this blog assignment is that because it asked for personal experiences and examples, not only did I have to relate it to myself, hence making it more likely that I will remember it, but also it helped me begin self reflection. I have always been a “thinker” – I like to contemplate decisions before I make them, and I always think about the outcomes of things. But this made me think in a different way – it made me contemplate how I fit into all of these theories. The one that I think I benefited from the most was the last one, the self case study. I think this because this once gave me more freedom to explore my past and present without constraints of a theory, and it helped me think about my behavior and sources of motivation as a whole instead of as within each theorist’s ideas. This blog was a lot of work – all in all, I wrote almost 9,000 words! But I definitely see the benefits of this work, and for that I am glad.

Entry #10 – A self case study:

One of the most useful ways of examining different aspects of psychology is through the use of case studies. A case study is a detailed description of a single individual. A good case study “captures the essence” of a particular individual’s behavior. The value of this research method is that it provides good contextual detail for the behavior of the individual. Case studies originally rose out of medical practice, where developing a clear picture of a person’s medical history would help reach a correct diagnosis. Many basic advances have come from the use of case studies, particularly in the area of brain function. However, there are some limitations to case studies. One important one is representative ness – a case study is a sample of one and so a researcher must be careful not to generalize about general populations. However, in many cases important aspects of a case may in fact be applicable to a broader group.

A self case study is taking yourself as a case study – or in other words writing a psychological autobiography, which is a reflection on who you are and where you are going in the context of psychology. To do my psychological case study, I am going break it up by answering a series of questions that will together form my self case study.
Who are you?
Wow – this is a question that I think is hard for ANYONE to answer. (In all honesty, I’m not sure why I set myself up to attempt to answer this one!) I think the best way for me to describe who I am is in a series of words and phrases: typical teenager, inquisitive, Jewish culturally but not religiously, questioning, curious, easily captivated, likes to try new things, American living in India, an optimist in life but a pessimist in love, in love, appreciative of the little things, open, interested. In my mind, I think my superego is often dominating the conflict, although often in situations, especially since I have become a teenager, my id seems to have more power, but my ego also maintains my good grades and good relations with my family, friends and significant other (at least for the most part).
What incidents seem especially important in shaping who you are?
There are many incidents that seem important to me in shaping who I am – the first, I think, is my relationship with my sister. While we were very close from the time we were little babies until I was about 11, we grew apart – probably because of our age difference. But when I turned 14 we became so much closer, and by the time I left for India right before I turned 16, she was one of my best friends. While I used to feel extremely inadequate in her shadow, I have learned that we are different people with different ambitions and personalities and that while we may fight for some of the same things, such as our parents attention, there is no need to. I used to try to reflect her actions, but after being away from her I realize that what she did was open me up to new things and help me gain independence, once I came to terms with the fact that I am not supposed to be like her in every sense. Another extremely important incident that has shaped who I am is coming to India – being thrown into a situation where you don’t know anyone and you are expected to live with all these people from different cultures for a year, and work with them every day, with no safety net is a scary but life changing thing. I have changed my views on a lot of things and become much more open to experimenting with things in life – I have chosen to try to live life to the fullest, although my studies are still a top priority.
Another extremely important event in my life that has changed the way that I feel about things and they way I think about things, as well as I behave is when I found out that my mother has Huntington’s disease. It’s a genetic disease that both my sister and I tested negative for, but ever since my more has been diagnosed the dynamics of the relationship have changed – I take care of her instead of the other way around. It’s been as if I have grown up without a mother from the time I was around 10 years and her disease has only gotten worse and worse. At first it was extremely hard for me to cope – I thought that if I ignored it or neglected it it would just disappear – it took me about two years from the time I found out to tell all of my close friends. But I have definitely developed as a person since then and I am comfortable talking about it and telling new people --- it’s a part of my life and if they aren’t going to accept it, that’s their problem. I try to help people understand how it has changed me – it made me grow up faster, confront my inner strength, and mature differently. I think that it follows those sayings: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. While this disease may be killing my mother, I am not going to let it kill me – I will bend my life to this disease, but in no way will I compromise my life for it. It has added responsibility and different dynamics within my family, but once you learn how to deal with it and you come to terms with it, I think that it has only made me a better person.
What is your heart’s longing?
I have never wanted anything more than to be happy. I don’t care if am successful or fulfill my parents expectations of me, because I have come to find that if you are happy, the people who truly care about you will support you because everyone knows that all we can ask for from life is happiness.
Describe your spiritual life and development.
I grew up in a very Jewish household – my mom is a Rabbi! As I grew up a big part of my life was the Jewish community, although I have never completely shared their beliefs in many respects, I think that the morals that come with the religion are respectful and good. The Jewish lifestyle was always important to me but since coming to India, where I have pretty much had to sacrifice that lifestyle. But, since coming here I have been thinking more and more about organized religion and realizing all of it’s negative aspects, and I have grown to think about and question the existence of god more. If I had to describe my personal religious status, I would call myself a Agnostic Culturally Jewish Theoretically Quaker because while I have not decided about the existence of god, I am very strongly culturally Jewish but as a form of worship I like the Quaker style, as well as what they stand for. My school in the states is a Quaker school and so I have a lot of interaction with Quakerism and worship in the Quaker way once a week with the rest of the school.

Entry #10 – A self case study

Entry #9 - The phenomenological perspective

The humanistic approach as a variety of theorists, and many of them applied different labels such as existential or phenomenological to their psychology. In the phenomenological viewpoint, there are two basic assumptions. The first is that behavior must be understood in terms of the subjective experience of the individual. Basically, if you want to understand behavior, you must first understand the person producing the behavior and how they see the world. The second assumption is that behavior is not constrained by either past experiences nor current circumstances. 

Rogers is one of the theorists involved in the phenomenal field. According to him we all live in a world of our own creation formed by our processes of perception. He referred to each individuals perception of reality as his or her phenomenal field. He also said that we have perceptual processes that structure our experiences of the world according to "highly individual realities". In many cases our personal perceptions (subjective reality) are in accordance with the "objective reality" or external world. According to Rogers we each live in our own subjective realities that can only be known completely by ourselves. It is this individual (or phenomenological) perception of reality rather than the objective reality that ultimately determines behavior. 

I think that this is a very interesting view of psychology and how our behavior is determined, and I agree with it to a certain extent. I definitely have a subjective reality that is sometimes quite different from the objective reality. One good example of this is how I see myself in my mind's eye - when I think of myself (physically) in my mind, I look different than I do in real life. It's not very different, but it's little things, and usually things that change on a daily basis - like how my hair is. While this probably does not affect my life much, as I am not particularly concerned about how I look, nor do I view myself in my mind's eye very often, it does show the gap between our personal subjective realities and the objective reality. 

The famous image that I attached to this post depicts someone at odds with the relation between their subjective reality and the external world or objective reality. 

Entry #8 - Rogers conditional and unconditional positive regard

Rogers saw the need for positive regard, in the form of approval and love as universal. He said that we would ideally receive this type of regard on a free and open basis as both children and adults. He believed in unconditional positive regard, which is acceptance and caring extended simply because the person is a human being. Many religions have urged people to accept this attitude but it is a very difficult thing to adopt all of the time and always put into practice. Roger called regard that is given only for meeting certain standards of behaviour conditional positive regard. As children, we are rewarded for doing little things like sharing or cleaning up our rooms and in later life this trend continues- positive regard is given for good preformance at school or work. We also find that our friends will encourage some actions and scorn others (otherwise known as the phenomenon "peer pressure"). The problem with conditional positive regard is that it often leaves the person feeling that it is their self, not their behaviour that is unacceptable. Ideally it should be possible to value a person as a human being without implying that you accept all of their actions (basically regard for the person would be unconditional but regard for their actions would be conditional). In practice however, this does not work out quite so well because both the person giving regard and the person receiving regard find the distinction between the person and the action hard to maintain. When one's actions are criticized, it is hard to not take it as one's general competence and worth as a human. 

I think that Rogers brings up an interesting point in conditional and unconditional positive regard. I can think of times when i have felt conditional positive regard from family and friends. One example that is a fairly prevailing things is that I feel as if I will only get positive regard and love from my parents if I do well in school and get into a good college, and perhaps more importantly, live up to the standards that my sister set for me, even though I know that they will love me no matter what. I know that they have unconditional positive regard to me, even though they have conditional positive regard towards my actions. It is sometimes hard to seperate these two though, and I think this becomes more difficult with people that are not quite as stable in life as your family -- like your friends or someone you are in a relationship with. While your family (hopefully!) will always be there, through the good and the bad, it is harder to take conditional positive regard from people who are not as accountable in the future. 

The picture attached to this post is of Carl Rogers, the theorist attached to unconditional and conditional positive regard. 

Entry #7 - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow was a humanistic theorist who recognized the complexity of motivation and so sought to describe it in terms of a hierarchy of needs - which is a model of basic human needs, structured in a hierarchical way. The most basic needs are those which are linked to our survival - our physiological needs for food, air, sleep, etc. When these needs go unfulfilled, nothing else matters, but once these needs are fulfilled, other types of needs are experienced. The next level of our needs are our safety needs which relate to both physical and psychological safety. The next level of needs are related to love and belongingness - giving and receiving acceptance and affection. These needs are usually fulfilled by our interactions with family and friends. There are many phenomena that reflect the human need for this level, such as dating clubs and personal ads. The next level up on the hierarchy is esteem needs - this means that the individual feels a need to feel self respect and the sense of being competent at what one does and receiving regard from others. 

Maslow believes that the more basic the need the more powerfully it is experienced and the more difficult it is to suppress or ignore. For this reason, the most basic needs are universally experienced, where as the higher needs are less commonly experienced. Maslow did believe, however, that the hierarchy is not completely rigid - this qualifies many special situations such as parental sacrifice. The highest level of the hierarchy of needs is self actualization, but Maslow believes that most people will rarely experience a strong need for self actualization because the lower needs are rarely ever completely satisfied.  A self actualized person, according to Maslow, has most or all of these characteristics: accurate perception of reality, enjoyment of new experiences, tendency to have peak experiences, clear moral standards, sense of humour, feeling of kinship with all people, close friendships, democratic character accepting others, need for privacy, independence from culture and environment,  creativity, spontaneity, problem centred rather than self centred, acceptance of human nature and resistance to conformity.  

Maslow's hierarchy of needs are very interesting theory as to our needs and how and in what order they need to be fulfilled. I think that both my physiological and safety needs are completely fulfilled -- I am not going hungary or being deprived of water (although sometimes I could use a little more sleep!) and I always feel safe, both physically and physiologically. An example of someone whose physiological needs are not being met is someone who is experiencing malnutrition from hunger. A friend of mine was anorexic last year, and she is currently recovering, but at the time she was not having her physiological needs met. I also have another friend that is not having his safety needs met - he has an extreme phobia of falling down the stairs to his death, and this causes him a lot of anxiety, which stops his safety needs from being met. I think that while my love and belonging needs are being met fairly well, I don't think that anyone's can ever be fully met because there is always some degree of uncertainty, especially concerning the future fulfillment of that need, when there are other people involved. But for the most part I think this level is being fulfilled for me - I have a loving family and great friends and am in a relationship, and even if these things are not constant everyday - I live far away from my family and many of my friends - this needs is primarily filled. The next level of need fulfillment is esteem - I think that this level is generally well fulfilled in my case, although because I have not have a very stable living situation in the recent past, and I have changed in personality significantly in recent years, this is a much more fluctuating one, and I have had higher or lower self esteem depending on my friendship/family situation. Currently I have medium level self esteem - while I believe and have faith in myself, my self esteem is definitely not as high as it could be - I am more easily swayed by other people's opinions than I would like and I am more sensitive towards and dependent on other people than I would like. 

While I think I have some of the qualities of a self actualized person, I think that in realizing that goal I still have a long way to go. 

The attached picture is pyramid displaying the hierarchy of needs.