Theories of Personality Final Paper (12-27-11)

Three Fundamental Ideas of Theories of Personality

            The three most useful ideas that one can learn from this course is that: we are subject to the influence of unconscious forces, that ideas have power, and that the ego is something we construct based on the stimulus of our social environments.

            Along with our conscious awareness of our existence, there is a larger and greater mental world that influences our perception of reality in the form of the unconscious. Sigmund Freud states that the unconscious mind is “a repository for urges, feelings, and ideas that are tied to anxiety, conflict, and pain” (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 162). This repository is responsible for the “core operations” of our personalities (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 162). These core operations of Freud also contain the Eros, or life instincts, and the Thanatos, or death instincts (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 170). As much as we are able, we can still only express so much in one lifetime, most often we have to “displace” or “sublimate” our unconscious desires and urges (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 172). Displacement is “a change in how energy is used or the object toward which its used”, or directing feelings which we may be uncomfortable expressing in our personal lives into an environment where we are more comfortable (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 172). Sublimation is a shifting “socially unacceptable” actions into actions that are “acceptable or even praiseworthy” (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 172). Along with these urges, feelings, ideas, and instincts that comprise the core operations of our personalities that we can displace and sublimate, we are also subject to unconscious reflexes that we become conditioned to perform when some stimulus from our environment activates these automatic responses. These unconscious reflexes can be changed when we recognize that we are performing these automatic, yet unconscious responses to our detriment in our lives. Upon discovering our conditioned, yet self-sabotaging responses to some environmental stimulus, we can then counter condition ourselves to display “a new response that is incompatible” with our former behavior (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 506). A great deal of our lives is guided and influenced by forces which are largely unconscious, yet nevertheless these forces play an important part in our functioning and participation in the world.

           The world constantly projects upon our minds information that has a power over us, whether or not one recognizes this fact. In the cognitive self-regulation perspective, we are introduced to the idea of schema, or “mental organizations of information” that forms our mental experience, and our personal interpretations of the world (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 373). These schemas “develop over experience” and are adapted to emulating the behavior of successful “prototypes” which are actual or idealized representatives that we respect and admire (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 396). “Problems in behavior can come from information-processing deficits”, according to Carver and Scheier (2008), come from our inability to encode or absorb information from our environment, from “ineffective allocation of attention” to information that would assist us in developing our potentials, and “negative self-schemas” or the beliefs that we create and maintain about ourselves which limit our proper functioning in the world (p. 396). Ideas as powerful information is also reflected in the social-cognitive learning perspective. This perspective recognizes that “thought processes” play an integral part in our behavior, and through observing successful people, one can “learn from one another” to emulate this successful behavior (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 315). In this perspective people can be divided into an “internal” who recognizes the importance of reinforcement on their behavior, or an “external” who is not motivated by “social reinforcers such as acceptance and approval”, and who believes “their outcomes to be unrelated to their actions” (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 316). One can also find in the observational conditioning perspective a basis for the concept of world as powerful information. In the observational conditioning perspective, one observes a model of desired behavior to absorb “huge amounts of information quickly” by “paying attention to the model”, and retaining this observed behavior by mental imaging or “imaginal coding”, or by “verbal coding” which is mentally describing the behavior which has been observed (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 301). Once we recognize the fact that our world is constantly projecting information upon us, it then up to us to best learn how to make use of this information to our own personal advantage.

            The egos with which we use to participate in our social environment is a personal construction with which we can continuously update and modify to improve our functioning in the world. Freud states that the ego is only one part of our conscious, waking mind that is responsible for mitigating and maintaining a balance between the other two components of our minds, the id and the superego. The id “is all the inherited instinctive, primitive aspects” of our personality that largely remains unconscious, coming from basic, biological drives which are constantly looking to our environments for stimulation and satiation (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 163). Our superego is the value system our mind creates to mediate the id desires against the need for control and order within our social environments (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 166). The need for the ego to constantly balance the desires of the id, against the moralizing superego, can result in much stress if a person is unable to construct a strong, yet flexible sense of self. Once one understands that it is crucial to our success in our social environment, and to our own healthy development, we can then create an ego identity with which we can achieve a life of satisfaction. Our “ego identity”, Carver and Scheier (2008) state “is the consciously experienced sense of self”, deriving “from transactions with social reality”, which constantly modifies itself “in response to events in the social world” (p. 244). Our ego identities go through eight “psycho-social stages” in our lifetimes, each of which has its own respective crisis “that dominates each stage” (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 245). The respective eight stages (and their respective crisis) are: infancy (the sense of trust), early childhood (independence), preschool (influence and power in social environment), school age (sense of personal value), adolescence (the consolidation of self), young adulthood (learning intimacy), adulthood (creating something that will outlive oneself, whether it is art or children), and old age (sense of satisfaction). Our highest potential can only be reached by navigating each stage as best as we are able to learn to accomplish. There are various psychological perspectives that we can use to evolve and adapt our personal construction of the ego throughout our lives. One such perspective is known as the personal construct theory, where one attempts to create a structure of personality “through the lens” of an interpretation of reality that is based on predicting and anticipating future events (Carver & Scheier, 2008, p. 351). In this personal construct perspective, a person essentially becomes a scientist of self, measuring their self-created hypotheses against their effect in social environments (Neimeyer and Bridges, 2003, para. 2). Identifying the fact that our egos are of our own creation, we can then learn to construct an ego that can evolve and adapt to place ourselves in the best position that we are capable of, and achieving the highest potential that we are wholly committed to and determined to pursue.

           There are three useful ideas that can be learned from this course. The first is the influence of unconscious forces upon our lives, and once we recognize the effect that these forces have, we can then begin to distinguish what decisions we are making consciously, and what is motivating us without our conscious realization into automatic behavior. The second most useful idea is that ideas have power, and these ideas are merely a reflection of the information that our world is constantly projecting upon our senses. It is up to us to learn to decipher this information and how we can use this knowledge for our own, and for others betterment as well. The third and final most useful idea is that the ego is something we construct based on the stimulus of our social environments. Instead of seeing ourselves as having a fixed and unchanging personality, we should see our egos as a mere tool that can continuously be enhanced for higher functioning within our social environments, modifying and adapting it to our present circumstances, yet attempting to prepare our egos for possible and probable events in the foreseeable future as well.

References

Carver, C. S. & Scheier, M.F. (2008). Perspectives on Personality, 6th ed.   Boston, MA:  

Pearson.

Neimeyer, R.A. & Bridges, S.K. (2003). “Personal Construct Theory”. The Internet

Encyclopaedia of Personal Construct Psychology. Retrieved from

http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/main.html

(Picture)  http://davidwees.com/eportfolio/sites/default/files/WeesD.jpg

An Analysis of “The Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar A. Poe (American Literature 12-23-11).

 An Analysis of “The Philosophy of Composition” by Edgar A. Poe

            Edgar Allen Poe was an accomplished writer, poet, and literary critic who produced many famous works that are still popular in our modern era. Over the span of his literary career he developed a method of writing that he used to create his literary pieces and recorded this method in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition”. In his “The Philosophy of Composition”, Edgar Allan Poe sets out the successful method by which he wrote his popular works and offers it to other hopeful writers as a guideline for creating their own literary masterpieces.  

            Edgar Allen Poe believed that an author of prose or poetry must begin with the end of a literary work, or the denouement, in mind before the work is even begun. “Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before any thing be attempted with the pen” (Poe 905). Poe goes on to state that only with the “denouement” in mind that the author can establish the steps toward the “tone at all points” and the “development of the intention” (905). It is only after the denouement has been clearly established in one’s mind that the writer can then proceed to insert the structures by which the literary work can reach its successful conclusion.

            Once the denouement of a literary work is established, according to Poe the next step to consider is one of “effect”, or the overall framework with which the literary work will occupy and fill. Poe states, “of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?” (906). After deciding upon a narrative, and then the effect he wishes to produce within the reader, Poe then states the writer must then “consider whether” how effect “can best be wrought” (906). Concerning the frame work of effect, Poe gives us gives us two categories: “incident” and “tone” (906). Within these two categories of incident and tone, Poe believes that combinations of “ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity of both incident and tone”, and by searching his environment and within himself for similar combinations of desired incident and tone, “shall best aid me in the construction of the effect” (906). The effect that Poe intends to put across to the reader is the framework that Poe creates from observing incidents, from either himself or his environment, that seem most similar to the incident and tone he has in mind for his literary work.  

            The second step to composing a piece of literature for Poe is of length, or what he calls “extent” (907). According to Poe, “if any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression” (907). Poe believes that if a literary work is too long to be read in one sitting then its “totality is at once destroyed” (907). To deal with this loss of totality, Poe states that the writer must maintain the “excitement or elevation” during whatever length or “brevity” of the piece in proportion to the “intensity of the intended effect” (907). Poe remarks that “a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any effect at all” (907). To Poe, the length, or “extent” of a literary work must maintain a consistent emotional consistency throughout a length of a literary work.

            The third step to completing a work of literature is the impression the writer wants to impart to be popular among many readers. Poe states, “I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable” (907). The three main categories to which Poe believes a literary work is found favorable with the general public is: Beauty, Truth, and Passion (907). Poe goes on to assign Beauty, which most readily appeals to the soul, as the “sole legitimate province of the poem” (907). Truth and Passion, the other two means to appeal to the reader, is the “satisfaction of the intellect” for the former, and a satisfaction to “homeliness” or plainness for the latter (Poe 908). While Beauty is the realm of the poem, Truth and Passion to Poe are “far more readily attainable in prose” (908). Poe concedes that Truth and Passion can be “profitably introduced into a poem” to serve as an “effect” by “contrast”, Beauty is still “the atmosphere and the essence of the poem” (908). Once the effect, or overall framework, and the length of a literary work is established, the third step for the author in creating the literary work is impression, or the actual filler for the structure that the author has already created.

            Poe gives us his poem The Raven as his example by which he intends to demonstrate his philosophy of literary composition. Poe states that after he determined “the length, the province, and the tone” of the work, he then searched for the “pivot upon which the whole structure might turn” (908). Poe decides upon using the refrain, or “a phrase, verse, or group of verses repeated at intervals throughout a song or poem, especially at the end of each stanza”, or a “a repeated utterance or theme” (www.thefreedictionary.com). The refrain being “limited to lyric verse”, depending upon how it sounds and looks, creates the “sense of identity” in its repetition (Poe 908). This refrain to Poe, establishes the effect, or repeated pattern or structure of continued tone or mood, as well as the length of the structure, and the impression or substance with which Poe creates his literary work.

            The particular refrain with which Poe settles upon for his example is the word “nevermore” (909). Poe selected this word “nevermore” to frame each stanza closing, after deciding upon a word that had a “force”, and was a word “sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis” (908). Poe decided upon a word with a “sonorous vowel” in the “long o”, and “in connection with r as the most producible consonant” that would most easily be matched with other rhyming words to achieve the aims with which he could best tell the tale that he intended (908). The use of the word “nevermore” for Poe, encompasses the refrain that could best achieve his intended effect and impression, while also allowing him the most rhyming words as he interspersed “nevermore” throughout the structure of The Raven.

           Edgar Allen Poe developed a method after many years of writing which he sets out in his “The Philosophy of Composition”. In this work he sets out the criteria by which he believes a literary work should be created: its overall effect, the length by which this effect can be maintained, and the impression by which the structure is filled to create the desired effect. Once the denouement, or the conclusion of a literary work is decided upon, Poe gives us in “The Philosophy of Composition”, the guideline in the categories of overall effect, the required length, and general impression by which the reader can most satisfactorily be brought to the denouement that the author had first decided upon.   

Works Cited

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/refrain

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition”. The American Tradition in Literature. 12^th ed. Ed. George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 905-913. Print.

Clint Eastwood and his Evolution in the Western Genre (American Cinema)

           Clint Eastwood is an American actor and director, most identifiable in his roles as the lone gunslinger and avenging angel in his western movies. Clint Eastwood embodied the strong yet silent masculine ideal in these western films which featured him alone in the wasteland, surrounded by corrupt individuals, and with nothing between them other than the speed and accuracy with which he could draw his gun. In A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Pale Rider (1984), and Unforgiven (1992) one can chart the evolution of the masculine ideal with which Clint Eastwood embodied his roles and the development of his persona over time in the genre of Western films.

            As Richard Slotkin writes, the Western myth portrays "the redemption of American spirit or fortune as something to be achieved by playing through a scenario of separation [from 'civilization'], temporary regression to a more primitive or 'natural' state, and regeneration through violence.'" In the Western myth, ritualized violence is purgative because it cleanses society of the "Other" in eliminating the outlaw or "savage" (654). As we see in the three films A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Pale Rider (1985), and Unforgiven (1992), we follow the evolution of the stereotype of the lone gunslinger in the embodiment of Clint Eastwood as he goes into the midst of a savage world, cleansing it of outlaws who terrorize and oppress the innocent.

            In A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Clint Eastwood plays the “Man With No Name”, or Joe as he is sometimes called, which is another name of anonymity. This movie was a western remake of the Kurosawa movie Yojimbo (1961), a samurai who plays two outlaw factions against each other in the attempt to get them to destroy each other, and free an oppressed town from their presence. According to www.clinteastwood.net, “A Fistful of Dollars marked a change in the way western heroes were portrayed” (A Fistful of Dollars page). The stereotypical honest and upright, the “Gary Cooper sheriff type who would never draw first” was replaced by an anonymous character embodied by Clint Eastwood as the “Man With No Name”, with “dubious morals, who emerges as the hero more by comparison with the other characters than by his own merits” (www.clinteastwood.net). According to www.clinteastwood.net, “this change of attitude gave the western a new lease of life in the changing social climate of the sixties” (A Fistful of Dollars page). In the era of chaotic and turbulent societal change of the 1960’s, Clint Eastwood in his role as the “Man With No Name”, becomes one of the first anti-heroes, who embodies “personal power, flint-like resolution, resourcefulness, uncanny endurance, and above all, heroism”, but only a hero because he is less evil than the one’s that are doomed to suffer his punishment. Clint Eastwood in his role of the “Man With No Name”, embodies an American character that had yet to suffer its Vietnam, while still trying to reconcile the horrors of a previous war, in a land that no longer had any clear demarcation between right and wrong, good or evil, only what one could accomplish in the pursuit of one’s goals. 

            In Pale Rider (1985), Clint Eastwood plays another lone gunslinger as avenging angel, but in this instance Eastwood is reinvented as an honest righter of wrongs, and an avatar for good and justice in his character aptly named the Preacher. In this movie, Clint Eastwood is reinvented from the nameless and cunning self-interested manipulator, to the honest hero who delivers a terrified people suffering under the power and whims of evil men, after one of the oppressed prays to God for a savior.

            In Pale Rider (1985) Clint Eastwood evolves not only his stereotypical character, and his role as actor and movie star, but evolves himself into the role of director as well. Clint Eastwood, now a successful and accomplished veteran performer from decades in film, “chose the theme for the film and then commissioned a screenplay” for the story that Mr. Eastwood was compelled to tell (www.clinteastwood.net). In the early nineteen eighties, Clint Eastwood had already become a well known actor with a highly recognizable name, becoming the “established star” that guarantees “a certain return on the high-venture capital invested in a film” (Belton 89). The tale that Mr. Eastwood wanted to tell was one of a moral savior of a fearful people, exploited by the rich and powerful tyrant who ruled with brutality, a theme originating in the stories of religion. In the nineteen eighties as well, America had suffered the war in Vietnam and was still trying to heal from this lingering wound, trying now to define a new sense of morality while fighting a cold war with an enemy that was capable of ending the world in a nuclear war.

            In Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood is now an old widowed farmer named William Munny, who having promised his dead wife that he had retired from violence, and having no great talent at being a farmer, returns the life of a paid gunslinger when prostitutes put a bounty on some cowboys who abused one of them, and they could not receive any satisfactory closure from the legal authorities. William Munny has no choice but to return to a life of violence when his farm suffers from misfortune, and his children’s financial future is now at risk.       

            Unforgiven (1992) was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, as well as featuring him in its starring role. The movie features several other accomplished actors: Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, and Morgan Freeman, each being veterans of decades of Film, and recognizable for their own starring roles in popular films. The movie featured the typical tale of the hero who is searching for “personal redemption in a modern-day world corrupted by selfishness and greed”, a tale told endlessly in film, but in Unforgiven (1992) this timeless theme had been refined to resonate with a modern audience by experienced and professional storytellers (Belton 246). Because of these refinements Unforgiven (1992) won multiple Oscars at the 1993 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Clint Eastwood, and a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for him as well (http://www.imdb.com). Unforgiven (1992) was a polished project created by Clint Eastwood’s decades of experience in film, utilizing familiar faces of other successful A-list actors, telling a refined tale to a modern audience using the most sophisticated techniques available to visual storytellers at the time, and using the western genre of film which at the time had been abandoned as tired and outdated.

            By the time of Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood had become a familiar face to the American audience, not only for his roles in film, but from his introduction on “the TV series "Rawhide" (1959-1965), where he was a supporting cast member for six years” (www.imdb.com). Clint Eastwood had experience in multiple roles, both in and out of the genre of the western, becoming familiar with its strengths as well as the limits of this masculine ideal with which Mr. Eastwood perpetuated throughout his movie career. This masculine ideal with which Mr. Eastwood perpetuated began in the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone who directed Eastwood as the strong yet silent type of protagonist who rides into town to pursue his own self-interests while taking advantage of his skill and cunning at outwitting predators who had made themselves tyrants over a fearful people. This role of the “Man With No Name” made Clint Eastwood a recognizable star overnight but also perpetrated a false and dangerous masculine ideal of a lone thug who manipulates the situation for his own good, and despite whatever lasting good or harm his actions cause, he rides off into the sunset to presumably continue the same cycle of violence upon others, alone and unattached to anyone or anything.  

            It was Unforgiven (1992) that allowed Clint Eastwood his opportunity to dispel this harmful perpetuation of the masculine ideal of the anti-social anti-hero who is only out for his own gain that was becoming a mainstay of our entertainment culture. Clint Eastwood, in this point in his career, had evolved not only in his roles but in his capacity to develop and portray both our American mythology and his own mythology as well. In regards to Unforgiven (1992), Clint Eastwood states, the movie “gave me a chance to sum up what I think violence does to the human soul” (Jardine par. 9). Mr. Eastwood was now an accomplished and experienced actor and director who could now tell his own stories as he saw fit to tell them. “Instead of glorifying masculine violence, Unforgiven (1992) exposes it as a costly masculine endeavor” (Jardine par. 8). Unforgiven (1992) according to Jardine “offers a "hero" alien to American masculine mythology: a celibate, broken-down widower who can no longer mount a horse or shoot straight, a man who expresses genuine remorse over his violent past, a father of two who prays over his deceased wife” (par.8). Unforgiven (1992), according to Jardine, “stands as a culmination of Eastwood's career-long interrogation of American culture, providing an accurate historical expression of women's lives and raising questions about the disturbingly oppositional construction of gender” (par. 9). Up until this point in his career, Clint Eastwood’s characters were lone killers unattached to anyone, and women were just another background character that served to be used and manipulated like all the others.            

           Clint Eastwood, in his three roles in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Pale Rider (1985), and Unforgiven (1992) shows not only an evolution in his characters but in his own personal evolution from character actor to accomplished director and producer of film as well. Clint Eastwood, having gained his start as a supporting character on the television screen of the late 1950’s, had now become in the early 1990’s a major player in the development of our entertainment culture, standing side by side with other accomplished actors in their own right, and featuring himself in the starring role as a criticism of the type of character that had first brought him to the attention of America. Clint Eastwood reflects through his characters in these three films, not only the times that these movies were made in: the turbulence of the sixties, the greed of the nineteen eighties, and the uncertainty of the 1990’s but also his personal evolution from a barely speaking character actor to a man who is capable of show casing his multiple talents in the realm of film. Clint Eastwood, in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Pale Rider (1985), and Unforgiven (1992) shows an evolution in not only his stereotypical character, his personal capacity and abilities in the creation of storytelling, but he also evolved the western genre and the art of film as well.

 Works Cited

A Fistful of Dollars. Dir. Sergio Leone. Perf. Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonté, and Marianne Koch. Constantin Film Produktion. 1964. Film.

Belton, John. American Cinema/American Culture. 3rd ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. 2009. Print.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/awards.

Jardine, Gail. “Clint: Cultural Critic, Cowboy of Cathartic Change.” Art Journal 53.3 (1994): pp. 74-75. Web. 10 Dec. 2011.

McDonald, Archie P. Shooting Stars: Heroes and Heroines of Western Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1987. Print

Pale Rider. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Perf. Clint Eastwood, Michael Moriarty, and Carrie Snodgress. Warner Bros. 1985. Film

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York, NY: HarperCollins. 1993. Print

Unforgiven. Dir. Clint Eastwood. Perf. Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, and Morgan Freeman. Warner Bros. 1992. Film.

Self-Control (12-15-2011)

The man who has erased

and eroded,

eliminated

and extracted,

erupted

and excavated,

exorcised

and enlightened himself of

all fear

must always

maintain his will for

self-control.

The College Student and Various Theories of Personality (Theories of Personality)

The College Student and Various Theories of Personality

            As a college student trying to earn a Bachelor’s degree, many issues and complications arise during the years and the various courses that one must take to successfully meet all the requirements for the degree. Despite the various subjects that a college student must take, and the variety of requirements that each one necessitates for a successful completion, as well as mediating the expectations of one’s personal and professional responsibilities, there is a behavior of the student that determines his or her successful outcome in their educational pursuit. Using the various concepts from cognitive self-regulation perspective, social-cognitive learning, classical, operant, humanistic, and personal construct theories we seek to find which is best for this analysis and why.

            According to Carver and Scheier (2008) the cognitive self-regulation perspective is based on the schema “or mental organizations of information” that forms our mental experience, or our personal interpretation of the world (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 373). Schemas “develop over experience” and evolve by recognizing and emulating the “prototypes” of an actual or idealized representative of a category to which we desire membership (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 396). According to Carver and Scheier (2008) “problems in behavior can come from information-processing deficits” whether they result from difficulty in “encoding” or absorbing information from our social environments, “ineffective allocation of attention” to information that would increase our potentials, and “negative self-schemas” or beliefs that we accrue about ourselves which may hinder and limit our functioning properly in our social environments (p. 396). The college student may have followed the prototypical behavior of college graduates in the hopes of finding the same professional and personal advantage that a degree from a school of higher learning confers. The college student succeeds or fails by how well they utilize skills of absorbing and making use of the information presented within their courses, how well they focus their attention to this information while ignoring or limiting their attention to useless information, and how well they address negative core beliefs which may limit how successful they are in the attainment of a college education. 

            The social-cognitive learning perspective is based on the idea that “thought processes” play an important part in behavior, and that “people often learn from one another”, or adopt other people’s successful behavior by observation (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 315). “Social reinforcers such as acceptance and approval” can motivate the person to become either an “internal” who recognizes the importance of reinforcers on their behavior, or an “external” who believes “their outcomes to be unrelated to their actions” (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 316). The college student pursuing a higher education in this case observes successful people, adopts the behavior which they see successful people be rewarded for, and acknowledge the power of social reinforcement in their successful attainment of a college diploma.   

            The classical conditioning perspective, Myers (2002) states, “associates neutral stimuli with important stimuli that produce responses which are often automatic” (p. 237). In the classical perspective a student observes and follows other students into the expectation of society that a college education is the next logical step after graduating from high school, that going to a university is just a matter of doing a thing that the student believes will bring favorable praise from one’s social environment. Therefore, in regards to classical conditioning, a college education is just an automated task that one pursues as social ritual and social expectation.

            In the operant conditioning perspective a person “associates behaviors with their consequences” or “operates on the environment” in response to “rewarding or punishing stimuli” (Myers, 2002, p. 237). In the operant perspective a student expects that his college education is a stepping stone toward a more “satisfying state of affairs” in one’s later career goals and personal life by attaining a degree for which society will reward you in various forms (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 271).

           The humanistic perspective emphasizes that “the potential for positive, healthy growth expresses itself in everyone if there are no strong opposing influences” (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 322). Carver and Scheier (2008) go on to call this growth "actualization”, or a “tendency to develop capabilities in ways that maintain or enhance the organism” (p. 322). For the college student who is self-actualizing, one recognizes that a college education is one of the few opportunities that life offers towards becoming the most “fully functioning person” that one can become, and broaden one’s ability to “experiencing the world” (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 322).

           The personal construct perspective involves predicting and anticipating future events and then reacting to these events “through the lens of” a personal construction of one’s interpretation of reality rather than actual reality itself (Carver and Scheier, 2008, p. 351). In the personal construct perspective a college student pursuing a higher education, predicts and anticipates how one’s future life will be enhanced by the attainment of a degree, and assumes that one’s reality will be enhanced and improved after earning a diploma.

           Out of all these theories of personality that are available to understanding the college student, the cognitive self-regulation perspective seems the best for our analysis. We are what our minds make of our environments, or how our particular brain organizes and interprets information from the world. The organization of information within our minds is greatly assisted by an education in the proper functioning of various subjects, and in a learned observation of other people. It is the information that a person chooses to pay attention to, or ignores, how well a person utilizes this information in their personal spheres, and how well a person develops their belief of self, or self-schema, to function in the world that helps us best to understand why or why not a college student develops into their own prototype of personal success.

References

           

Carver, C. S. & Scheier, M.F. (2008). Perspectives on Personality, 6th ed.   Boston, MA:  

Pearson.

Myers, David G. (2002). Exploring Psychology, 5^th ed. New York, NY: Worth      

Publishers.

Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico by Matthew Gutmann (Sex and Gender)

            Matthew Gutmann in his book Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico provides some startling facts on AIDS and describes how various forces play a part in its unheeded spread in the Oaxaca state of Mexico, and perhaps the world as a whole. Various forces in the form of cultural misperceptions, global institutions, the economic and political policies of Mexico, the lack of men’s participation in reproductive health, and the health behaviors of men play a part in the spread of this highly contagious and deadly disease. According to Gutmann (2007), these cultural misperceptions of Mexicans toward other Mexicans, the role of global institutions, as well as Mexico’s own political and economic policies, and the behavior of Mexican men allow the spread of AIDS to become a genocide engineered against the poverty stricken people of Mexico.

            In the Oaxaca state of Mexico there is a cultural misperception that takes it for granted that men are sexual animals with very limited self control. In his meetings with doctors at a local health clinic, the medical professionals relate to Gutmann (2007) that migrant men acquire AIDS from their homosexual activity in the United States (p.3). When Gutmann (2007) questions one medical professional about this belief he is told, “that’s what Mexican men do: they have sex with other men” (p. 3). Gutmann (2007) also states that there is a “widespread belief that men have stronger sexual drives than women” which perhaps leads them to engage in more at risk behaviors which puts them in the position of acquiring HIV (p. 202). Gilmore (n.d) states in his study of machismo in Spain, that the three ideals of Spanish masculinity is “virility, valor, and virtue” (Brettell and Sargent, 2009, p. 198). While the valor and virtue of Spanish of masculinity may not be so clearly defined in Spanish culture, the urge to prove one’s virility is encouraged in Spanish culture by the stigmatization of a man being labeled a “flojo” or someone that is “flaccid”, “weak”, “soft”, or “who can’t get it up” (Brettell and Sargent, 2009, p. 199). Perhaps this cultural misperception of Mexican men being sexually out of control is actually a result of a culture that encourages men to be sexually proactive as a means of proving their masculinity?

           Global institutions play an important role in the fight against AIDS in not only Mexico but the entire world. Gutmann (2007) states “the pharmaceutical companies, government health institutions, the Catholic church, and the planned parenthood federations” among other global “influences” effect the sexual and reproductive health practices made by the typical Mexican, whether this is known or not (p. 202). In the governments of the first world there have been measures put into place to “balance the need for social regulation of the population with the rights of parents and of individual women to control their own fertility” to deal with the epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis and HIV (Weeks, Brettell and Sargent, 2009, p. 377). As our first world governments and global organizations are “more concerned with the threat of overpopulation in the Third World”, they create policies which are designed to limit negative sexual activity that encourages the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, especially in the homosexual sector where HIV shows its most prevalent growth (Brettell and Sargent, 2009, p. 378). As the source of much aid to the Third World, these global institutions export their polices to poorer countries to regulate the spread of AIDS by using their influence in shaping and developing sexual and reproductive policies of the countries that they give financial and material assistance to.  

           Mexican economics and politics play an important role in the spread of AIDS in Mexico. “In the 1970’s and 1980’s health care coverage” saw an increased trend which tried to expand and spread services more evenly throughout Mexico (Gutmann, 2007, p. 24). In the late 1990’s though this trend began to diminish and reverse as health care was “shifted away from public to private institutions” (Gutmann, 2007, p. 25). Gutmann (2007) states, “as a result of neoliberal economic reforms, health care spaces, like clinics and hospitals, that had been touted as public became increasingly inaccessible to those without the personal funds to pay for health services” (p. 25). In regards to AIDS and its treatment, Mexico, according to Gutmann (2007), “pays whatever the drug companies demand” rather than negotiating with pharmaceutical companies for lower cost medications that can be used to help the most people as possible (p. 46). This results in what Gutmann (2007) states is “only a fraction of people who need” AIDS medication “are able to receive them”, and that Mexicans are not made aware of existing AIDS clinics, nor encouraged to seek out AIDS testing (p. 48). The economic and political policies of Mexico play a major factor in the spread of AIDS in the Mexican population.   

            The cultural permission for Mexican men not to participate in reproductive health adds to the spread of AIDS in Mexico. Gutmann (2007) asks “how is culture inscribed on male bodies through beliefs and practices associated with their sexuality?” (p. 5). Before the invention of the birth control pill, Gutmann (2007) states, the only options that men had in preventing a woman’s pregnancy was “slipping on a condom prior to sexual intercourse or, more often, withdrawing from the woman prior to ejaculating: coitus interruptus” (p. 11). With the invention of the birth control pill men could now be free to “enjoy sex”, as well as women, without the fear of becoming trapped in a “chronic round of pregnancy and childbirth” (Gutmann, 2007, p. 11). The past few decades of advances in reproductive health have displaced men from reproductive health and focused primarily on the female due to what was seen as an “urgent need” to focus on woman’s biological and reproductive role as mother (Gutmann, 2007, p. 12). Gutmann (2007) states that for men “there was no parallel or complementary demand in men’s health” and in “government and nongovernmental institutions, men were in effect excluded from participation in many health and development programs” (p. 12). By officially omitting men from advances in reproductive health, men are further removed from practices that could hinder the spread of HIV and AIDS.

          The health behavior of Mexican men contributes as an additional factor in the spread of HIV and AIDS. Since health care is often prohibitively expensive to the citizen of Mexico, men search out alternative means to modern health care. Gutmann (2007) speaks about Mexicans taking “Cocos a la Viagra” which are nothing more than “coconuts mixed with octopus and shrimp” to cure their erectile dysfunction (p. 194). Gutmann (2007) talks about citizens going to “boticarios” or community pharmacies that sell all kinds of concoctions for all kinds of illnesses, rather than pursuing modern and proven methods yet expensive treatments for their ailments (p. 174). Gutmann (2007) relates the experience of dirt poor migrant workers who live in such dismal and unsanitary conditions, conditions which often cause “chronic stomach pains and diarrhea” (p. 52). These men “sought to relieve these symptoms by injecting themselves with vitamins and antibiotics”, often times using syringes that were unsterilized and shared (Gutmann, 2007, p. 52). Due to the prohibitive cost of health care in Mexico, men are often forced to seek out alternative means to health problems, rather than modern medicine which could determine whether they are carriers of the HIV/AIDS virus.

          In his book Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico, Matthew Gutmann provides some startling facts on AIDS and how cultural beliefs about sex and gender determine how AIDS is dealt with in Mexico, rather than from a true scientific exploration of the subject. Gutmann describes how the patriarchal hegemony is maintained in Mexico by the social constructionism in the form of global institutions that distance men from their sexual and reproductive health, while placing the responsibility for these concerns solely on women. Due to the need for cheap labor in the United States, Mexican men cross the border every day in search of work that they cannot find at home, enduring stresses and pressures that they naturally seek to relieve through the means they have available, but these men are somehow and in some way acquiring the HIV virus in the United States. And because it is believed that these men are homosexuals in a society that is homophobic, these migrant workers return to their country with a highly contagious disease for which they will likely spread before they themselves die a horrible death, solely for the sin of being poor in a world that needs their cheap labor to build other people’s wealth. 

References

Gilmore, D.D. (2009). My Encounter with Machismo in Spain. In C.B. Brettell & C.F.

Sargent, (Eds.), Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective 5^th ed. (pp. 196-210).

Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

                           

Gutmann, M. (2007) Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control, and AIDS in Mexico. Berkeley and

Los Angeles, C.A: University of California Press.

Weeks, J. (2003). An Unfinished Revolution: Sexuality in the 20^th Century. In LaFont, S.

(Ed). Constructing Sexualities: Readings in Sexuality, Gender, and Culture (pp. 376-386). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.