psy405 assignment # 3 2016

Your task is to describe a hypothetical case of a child suffering from Separation Anxiety in detail. After that, you will identify the psychogenic needs given by Murray, e.g. need of affiliation. You are required to relate each given need with your hypothetical case. Marking scheme: 5 marks for each hypothetical case and 10 marks for description of needs). Note: Each case will be marked on the description of features of separation anxiety and well identification of needs related to it.

Idea Solution By Tahir Siddiqui(Mani)

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Separation anxiety refers to a developmental stage in which a child experiences anxiety due to separation from the primary care giver (usually the mother). This phase is fairly standard at around 8 months of age and can last until the child is 14 months old.

In young children, unwillingness to leave a parent or a caregiver is a sign that attachments have developed between the caregiver and child. The child is beginning to understand that each object (including people) in the environment is different and permanent. Young children do not yet understand time, therefore they do not know when or even if a parent will ever come back. Children at this stage struggle between the desire to strike out on their own and the need to stay safe by a parent or caregiver's side.

American psychologist Henry Murray (1893-1988) developed a theory of personalitythat was organized in terms of motives, presses and needs. Murray described a needs as a "potentiality or readiness to respond in a certain way under certain given circumstances" (1938).

Theories of personality based upon needs and motives suggest that our personalitiesare a reflection of behaviors controlled by needs.

While some needs are temporary and changing, other needs are more deeply seated in our nature. According to Murray, these psychogenic needs function mostly on the unconscious level but play a major role in our personality

Murray's Types of Needs

Murray identified needs as one of two types:

1. Primary Needs
   Primary needs are basic needs that are based upon biological demands, such as the need for oxygen, food and water.
2. Secondary Needs
   Secondary needs are generally psychological, such as the need for nurturing, independence and achievement. While these needs might not be fundamental for basic survival, they are essential for psychological well-being.

List of Psychogenic Needs

The following is a partial list of 24 needs identified by Murray and his colleagues. According to Murray, all people have these needs, but each individual tends to have a certain level of each need. Each person's unique levels of needs plays a role in shaping his or her individual personality.

1. Ambition Needs

The ambition needs are related to the need for achievement and recognition. The need for achievement is often expressed by succeeding, achieving goals and overcoming obstacles. The need for recognition is met by gaining social status and displaying achievements. Sometimes the ambition needs even involve a need for exhibition, or the desire to shock and thrill other people.

2. Materialistic Needs

The materialistic needs center on acquisition, construction, order and retention. These needs often involve obtaining items, such as buying material objects that we desire. In other instances, these needs compel us to create new things. Obtaining and creating items are an important part of the materialistic needs, but keeping objects and organizing them are also important.

3. Power Needs

The power needs tend to center on our own independence as well as our need to control others. Murray believed that autonomy was a powerful need involving the desire for independence and resistance. Other key power needs that he identified include abasement (confessing and apologizing), aggression (attacking or ridiculing others), blame avoidance (following the rules and avoiding blame), deference (obeying and cooperating with others) and dominance (controlling others).

4. Affection Needs

The affection needs are centered on our desire to love and be loved. We have a need for affiliation and seek out the company of other people.

Nurturance, or taking care of other people, is also important for psychological well-being. The need for succorance involves being help or protected by others. Murray also suggested that play and having fun with other people was also a critical affection needs.

While most of the affection needs center on building relationships and connections, Murray also recognized that rejection could also be a need. Sometimes, turning people away is an important part of maitaining mental wellness. Unhealthy relationships can be a major detriment to an individual's well-being, so sometimes knowing when to walk away can be important.

5. Information Needs

The information needs center around both gaining knowledge and sharing it with others. According to Murray, people have an innate need to learn more about the world around them. He referred to cognizance as the need seek knowledge and ask questions. In addition to gaining knowledge, he also believed that people have a need for what he referred to as exposition, or the desire to share what they have learned with other people.

Influences on Psychogenic Needs

Each need is important in and of itself, but Murray also believed that needs can be interrelated, can support other needs, and can conflict with other needs. For example, the need for dominance may conflict with the need for affiliation when overly controlling behavior drives away friends, family, and romantic partners. Murray also believed that environmental factors play a role in how these psychogenic needs are displayed in behavior. Murray called these environmental forces "presses."

Research on Psychogenic Needs

Other psychologists have subjected Murray's psychogenic needs to considerable research. For example, research on the need for achievement has revealed that people with a high need for achievement tend to select more challenging tasks. Studies on the need for affiliation have found that people who rate high on affiliation needs tend to have larger social groups, spend more time in social interaction, and more likely to suffer loneliness when faced with little social contact.

            Causes

Though the cause of separation anxiety disorder is unknown, some risk factors have been identified. Affected children tend to come from families that are very close-knit. The disorder might develop after a stress such as moving or a death in the family, or in certain, cases, a trauma (such as physical or sexual assault) might bring on the disorder. It sometimes runs in families, but the precise role of genetic and environmental factors has not been established.

To resolve the feelings of separation anxiety, a child must develop an adequate sense of safety in the environment, as well as trust in people other than their parents, and trust in the parent's return.

Even after children have successfully mastered this developmental stage, separation anxiety may return during periods of stress. Most children will experience some degree of separation anxiety when in unfamiliar situations, for example if the child is in a hospital without parents, these symptoms are likely to return.

Psy405 2nd question answer

Preservative functional autonomy
Preservative functional autonomy is concerned with such behaviors as addictions and repetitive physical actions such as habitual ways of performing some everyday task. The behaviors continue or persevere on their own without any external reward. For example; When a rat that has been trained to run a maze for food is given more than enough food, it may still run the maze, but obviously for some purpose other than the food.

Propriety functional autonomy
Propriety functional autonomy is the level of functional autonomy that relates to our values, self-image, and lifestyle. Allport considered propriety functional autonomy more important than perseverative functional autonomy and is essential to the understanding of adult motivation. Out appropriate functioning is an organizing process that maintains our sense of self. This determines how we perceive our world, what we remember from our experiences, and how our thoughts are directed. This is an organizing process that includes organizing, mastery and competence, and patterning which describes a striving for consistency and integration of the personality.