Ego Integrity

The Institute for Personality and Ability Testing has certified Robert Fettgather as a Stress Management Trainer, and Medical Hypnosis Seminars of the Los Gatos Institute has certified him in Clinical Hypnotherapy.  At Santa Clara University, Graduate Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, Robert Fettgather's studies included Health Education and Behavioral Medicine. Robert Fettgather has completed Hospice Training with Hospice of the Valley.

Here is a quote to reflect upon: "Any span of the cycle lived without vigorous meaning, at the beginning, in the middle or at the end, endangers the sense of life and meaning of death ..." Erik Erikson

How do we experience the last years of the lifespan? For Erikson, the fruition of his seven previous stages is a sense of ego integrity or closure in a meaningful life. Alternatively, to come to a meaningless end is to die in despair. 

Social connection is also important to our last years. No matter how long an older couple has been together, the emotional support that most elders derive from an intimate partnership helps them cope. As you will learn in this Module, changes in roles and relationships are perhaps just as significant as physical ones. And for many older adults, these changes are perceived not as losses but as opportunities to create new roles and to make old age a time of personal and social gains. Moreover, the place where we grow old has importance and many older adults prefer to "age in place",  continuing to reside in their own home or apartment. 

Erikson termed the last of his eight life crises the ego integrity versus despair stage. He thought that the task of achieving ego integrity, the sense that one has lived a successful life that mattered, began in middle adulthood but was most central in late adulthood.

Research suggests Erikson's view that ego integrity is essential to mental health in old age may not be absolute for all elders. And contrary to the stereotype, most older adults are not disengaged from the social world and seem to benefit from social involvement as much as those who are younger.

 

Testing Of Personality

 

Holding a doctorate in psychology and master’s degrees in psychology and education, Robert Fettgather, PhD, has taught extensively. A member of the Mission College faculty for nearly four decades, Dr. Robert Fettgather has taught topics such as Abnormal Psychology.

The idea that personality influences perception is the premise of projective personality tests. These are assessments that present stimuli without a specific meaning to test takers, whose responses can then be interpreted to uncover underlying personality characteristics. Projective personality tests assume that people carry around anxiety and unresolved conflicts beneath conscious awareness.

The most well-known test was developed by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in 1921. In the Rorschach test, cards covered in odd-looking ink blotches are presented one by one. The participant describes what he sees on each card, and his answers (along with the details on which he focuses) give insight into his personality. Infographic 10.3 shows examples of the types of cards used in this test.

Henry Murray developed another test known as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), which is a projective test consisting of 20 cards containing ambiguous scenes in black and white. When shown a card, the test taker is asked to tell a story about it. The assumption is that the test taker will project underlying conflicts onto the ambiguous stimuli of the picture.

Objective personality tests are tools used by clinicians that are made up of a standard set of questions with previously established answers, such as true/false or multiple choice questions. They have clear scoring instructions that are the same for anyone taking the test. Some of these tests have a solid base of evidence supporting them, and they are convenient and purport to be unbiased.

The most commonly used of the personality tests is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, or MMPI-2-RF. This self-report questionnaire includes more than 338 statements to which individuals respond “true,” “false,” or “cannot say.” It includes 10 clinical scales and validity scales to assess the degree to which the results are useful.

The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, or 16PF, was originally created by Cattell and was based on his trait theory of personality. In this one, the test taker must select one of three choices in response to 185 questions. From that information, a profile is constructed to indicate where the person falls along the continuum of each of the 16 dimensions.

Meditation For These Times

 

Robert Fettgather has a bachelor's degree in psychology from San Jose State University, as well as a master's degree in education and a Ph.D. in psychology. With an interest in psychology, spirituality and religion, Robert Fettgather practices meditation. Robert Fettgather is passionate about Buddhism and spirituality and served as a co-founder and discussion leader at the Tashi Lhunpo Sangha group.

Meditation can help practitioners unwind from the stress of their daily lives. Anyone can use spiritual meditation at home or in a house of worship. Various forms of meditation exist. Focused attention meditation may be the easiest form for beginners. It entails focusing on a particular thing, sound, or sensation. A common stimulus is breath awareness, in which practitioners gently dismiss all other thoughts and focus on their breathing. Primordial Sound Meditation (PSM) or mantra-based meditation uses a mantra unique to each practitioner. Individuals silently repeat the mantra, which helps them focus. Transcendental meditation is also a mantra-based meditation. It uses mantras and promotes inner calmness, creativity, energy, mind clarity, and happiness.

With a focus on education and psychology, Robert Fettgather teaches at Mission College. Alongside teaching psychology, Robert Fettgather served as a co-founder and discussion leader at the Tashi Lhunpo Sangha. The Tashi Lhunpo Sangha is a Buddhist meditation group in Palo Alto, California that offers a haven for individuals looking for peace of mind and connection. It aims to create a community of friends who practice the dharma together and mutually foster and enjoy awareness, love, harmony, and acceptance.

Gatherings are free and open to everyone.

On Dying And Death

The Institute for Personality and Ability Testing has certified Robert Fettgather as a Stress Management Trainer, and Medical Hypnosis Seminars of the Los Gatos Institute has certified him in Clinical Hypnotherapy.  At Santa Clara University, Graduate Department of Education and Counseling Psychology, his studies included Health Education and Behavioral Medicine. Robert Fettgather  has completed Hospice Training with Hospice of the Valley.

Even though every individual’s life story ends with death, there is a great deal of variation from one person to another in how that event manifests itself. The circumstances of an individual’s death influence how both the dying individual herself and the bereaved cope with the emotional turmoil and sense of loss that typically accompany death. The age of the bereaved matters as well because beliefs, attitudes, and responses to death and loss unfold over the lifespan.

Medical personnel distinguish between several types of death.  The term clinical death refers to the few minutes after the heart has stopped pumping, when breathing has stopped, and there is no evident brain function, but during which resuscitation is still possible. Presumably those who report near-death experiences were in a state of clinical death

Besides clinical death, Brain death describes a state in which the person no longer has reflexes or any response to vigorous external stimuli and no electrical activity in the brain. Social death occurs at the point when other people treat the deceased person like a corpse.

Reflection Point: Most people state they would prefer to die at home-yet as the following data shows, that is often not the case. 

In the industrialized world, death most often occurs in hospitals-37%. That's followed by Decedent’s Home- 30%. Hospice Facility-8%. Nursing Home/Long-Term Care-19%. Other-6%.  Note the large numbers of people who die in hospitals and nursing homes. Not so long ago, birth and death were treated as very natural and normal aspects of the lifespan. In The Medicalization of Birth and Death, political scientist Lauren K. Hall argues that medicalization decreases competition, suppresses innovation, and, most importantly, prevents individuals from accessing the most appropriate care.

For the terminally ill, hospice workers and facilities provide an alternative form of care. An obsession with using technology to prolong life has changed how Americans cope with death (part of medicalization). Hospice care provides physical and emotional comfort to patients nearing the end of their lives.