What type of personality does Myra display according to Freudian theory (e.g., oral, anal, phallic, etc)? Provide evidence for your answer.

Every time Sarah calls her mother, Myra, the conversation is very similar. Myra essentially describes that she is in the midst of cleaning her house. Sarah is well acquainted with this behaviour. Myra takes great pride in the appearance of her house and yard and loves it when someone compliments either. As a child, Sarah remembers Myra continuously cleaning on weekends when she was not working outside her home. She would clean the entire house room by room, making beds, dusting furniture and woodwork, shaking out rugs. The entire process took a day and a half. When company visited, the living room furniture, which was normally covered with plastic, was uncovered, and the sheet that was laid down on the rug in the living room entrance was picked up and put away. The plastic and the sheet helped to maintain the furniture and rug beyond the usual life span. This helped the family to save money. ​Everything had a place in Myra’s house, and she frequently would become angry if there were too many things out of place. “Family conferences” would be called to discuss ways to help keep the house clean and how hard Myra worked at keeping the house clean while everyone else did so little. Actually, this was a common theme. Myra frequently portrayed herself as a martyr who did so much for others and asked so little for herself. She sees herself as continuously doing for others, when in reality she usually told others what to do.

​The yard is also very tidy. The grass is beautifully trimmed and resembles a rug. It is often mowed, even though it does not appear to need it. The garden is well tended and it would be difficult to find a single weed in it. Once when a neighbour cut his grass without a catcher attached to the lawn mower and grass went flying into her garden, Myra threw a fit. After that, she did not talk to the neighbour for two years.

​Now that Myra is retired, the cleaning continues. She always thought it was her job to care for the house. She was always the one who oversaw the cleaning, although her children or husband would help. Myra’s mother always took care of their house and thought that it was the woman’s responsibility to do so.

​Myra learned how to clean “correctly” from her mother. Both Myra’s parents believed in physical punishment, and Myra and her brother were hit if they did something wrong. Myra was punished if she did not clean something thoroughly enough.

​Myra made sure that her family saved money. Some of the activities that she engaged in to save money revolved around cleaning issues, such as plastic and sheets used to save the furniture and rugs, but Myra would wash and reuse aluminum foil. Leftovers were eaten even if they were unappetizing and no one felt like eating them. There was always a concern for money even though the family really was not poor, nor lacking in any of the essentials. This was so extreme that Myra would become agitated when someone borrowed 50 cents for a soda and did not return it. Myra would tell stories about relatives who would accept invitations at her house but did not return the invitations. The primary complaint about this was that she was tired of spending money on these occasions without ever getting something in return. In fact, Myra displayed a disturbing pattern of establishing relationships and then ending them by being rude. She would have an intense relationship with someone she had just started a friendship with, often having that person over for lavish meals, and then complain about some aspect of that person’s personality to Sarah. Myra would sometimes even criticize people to their faces, or she would just stop calling them. Often, these complaints were based on the idea that Myra was superior to them in some way. For example, someone was too loud and Myra wasn’t, Myra’s house was cleaner, Myra’s cooking was better, and so on. When these people no longer wanted to interact with her, Myra did not understand why.

​The family very rarely spent money on anything except the necessities even though they were middle class and could afford it. They rarely engaged in activities such as going to the movies, and the children felt as though asking for a new toy was totally unreasonable.

​Although Myra is still healthy and she could participate in a number of other productive activities such as volunteer work, she does not, preferring to spend all her time and energy working on her house and yard. When she visits her grown children, she is dismayed by how messy their homes are, and she begins to clean them. She frequently complains about how other people don’t know how to clean anymore and that her nieghbours don’t take care of their property as well as she does.

In a 5-7 page essay-style paper, with an introduction and conclusion, answer the following questions to help understand Myra’s behaviour. Be sure to provide both theoretical and behavioral evidence to justify your conclusions.

1. What type of personality does Myra display according to Freudian theory (e.g., oral, anal, phallic, etc)? Provide evidence for your answer. What might have caused it? (4 marks)

2. Why does Myra feel that cleaning the house if her responsibility? How would Jungian theory explain Myra adopting this traditional role? (3 marks)

3. Which of Horney’s interaction style does Myra demonstrate? Provide evidence for your answer. (3 marks)

4. Explain whether Myra would score high or low on each of McCrae and Costa’s Big Five dimensions. Provide evidence from the case study for your answer. (5 marks)

5. How would Rogers explain Myra’s behaviour? In your answer, discuss Myra’s conditions of worth and their influence on her behavior, including her experience of anxiety and her use of defenses. Provide evidence to support your answer. (4 marks)

6. How would Behaviourism explain Myra’s cleaning behaviour? Find examples of reinforcement or punishment that might have influenced Myra’s cleaning behaviour. (2 marks)

7. How could Bandura’s social cognitive theory explain Myra’s traditionally feminine cleaning behaviour? (2 marks)

Proper spelling, grammar and citing of sources in the paper (2 marks)

Total = 25 marks

Your grade will be based on: – Thoughtfully and accurately addressing each of the questions; – Demonstrating a clear understanding of the concepts in question by providing relevant examples; – Presenting coherent, well-reasoned and sound arguments, appropriately supported by evidence from the case history – Citing all sources appropriately, in the body of the paper and on a separate Reference Page