Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionBack Matter Glossary © The McGraw−Hill^615
Companies, 2009reliability The extent to which a test or other
measuring instrument yields consistent results.
repetition compulsion (Freud) The tendency of an
instinct, especially the death instinct, to repeat or
recreate an earlier condition, particularly one that was
frightening or anxiety arousing.
repression (Freud) The forcing of unwanted, anxiety-
laden experiences into the unconscious as a defense
against the pain of that anxiety.
resacralization (Maslow) The process of returning
respect, joy, awe, and rapture to an experience in order to
make that experience more subjective and personal.
resistance A variety of unconscious responses by
patients, designed to block therapeutic progress.
role (Kelly) A pattern of behavior that results from
people’s understanding of the constructs of others with
whom they are engaged in some task.
role repudiation (Erikson) The inability to synthesize
different self-images and values into a workable identity.
rootedness (Fromm) The human need to establish
roots, that is, to find a home again in the world.
S
sadism A condition in which a person receives sexual
pleasure by inflicting pain or humiliation on another
person.
safeguarding tendencies (Adler) Protective
mechanisms such as aggression, withdrawal, and the
like that maintain exaggerated feelings of superiority.
safety needs The second level on Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs; they include physical security, protection, and
freedom from danger.
school age (Erikson) The fourth stage of psychosocial
development; covers the period from about ages 6 to 12
or 13 and is characterized by psychosexual latency and
the psychosocial crisis of industry versus inferiority.
science A branch of study concerned with observation
and classification of data and with the verification of
general laws through the testing of hypotheses.
secondary narcissism (Freud) Self-love or autoerotic
behavior in an adolescent (Seenarcissism)
secondary process (Freud) A reference to the ego,
which chronologically is the second region of the mind
(after the id or primary process). Secondary process
thinking is in contact with reality.
secondary dispositions (Allport) The least
characteristic and reliable personal dispositions that
appear with some regularity in a person’s life.
security operations (Sullivan) Behaviors aimed at
reducing interpersonal tension.
selective activation Bandura’s belief that self-
regulatory influences are not automatic but rather
operate only if they are activated.
selective inattention (Sullivan) The control of focal
awareness, which involves a refusal to see those things
that one does not wish to see.
self (Jung) The most comprehensive of all archetypes,
the self includes the whole of personality, although it is
mostly unconscious. The self is often symbolized by the
mandala motif.
self-accusation Adlerian safeguarding tendency
whereby a person aggresses indirectly against others
through self-torture and guilt.
self-actualization needs (Maslow) The highest level
of human motivation; they include the need to fully
develop all of one’s psychological capacities.
self-actualization (Rogers) A subsystem of the
actualizing tendency; the tendency to actualize the self
as perceived.
self-concept (McCrae and Costa) The knowledge,
views, and evaluations of the self.
self-concept (Rogers) Aspects of one’s being and
experiences that an individual is consciously aware of.
self-efficacy (Bandura) People’s expectation that
they are capable of performing those behaviors that
will produce desired outcomes in any particular
situation.
self-hatred (Horney) The powerful tendency for
neurotics to despise their real self.
selfobjects (Kohut) Parents or other significant adults
in a child’s life who eventually become incorporated into
the child’s sense of self.
self-realization (Jung) The highest possible level of
psychic maturation; necessitates a balance between
conscious and unconscious, ego and self, masculine and
feminine, and introversion and extraversion. All four
functions (thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting)
would be fully developed by self-realized people.
self-regulatory strategies (Mischel) Techniques used
to control one’s own behavior through self-imposed
goals and self-produced consequences.
self-system (Sullivan) Complex of dynamisms that
protect a person from anxiety and maintain interpersonal
security.
sensation (Jung) An irrational function that receives
physical stimuli and transmits them to perceptual
consciousness. People may rely on either extraverted
sensing (outside perceptions) or on introverted sensing
(internal perceptions).
sense of identity (Fromm) The distinctively human
need to develop a feeling of “I.”Glossary G-13