Personality is defined as an individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking1. In psychology, personality is utilized to sum up all the ways of an individual’s thinking, feeling and acting that based on the environment and experience. Various personality theories exist and are categorized into four major perspectives—Psychoanalytic, Humanistic, Social Cognitive and trait perspective. These four major perspectives on personality help to describe the numerous patterns in each individual’s personality.
The first major theory in psychology is Psychoanalytic perspective which focuses on the importance of the unconscious mental process; the importance of sexual and aggressive instincts and the early childhood experiences on a personality. The psychoanalytic perspective was created by the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who believed that things hidden in the unconscious part of the brain could be revealed in a number of different ways: through dreams, free association and slips of the tongue also referred to as “Freudian slips”.
Second is Humanistic perspective, it emphasizes on psychological growth, free will and self-awareness. This perspective takes more of a “holistic” approach having a positive outlook on human nature and is centered on how an individual can attain their own potential and opposed the “negative” view of the psychoanalytic perspective which focused on the sexual unconscious and destructive instincts1. Carl Rogers was one of the most influential
Rogers believed that humans are always striving to fulfill their innate capacities thus leading to self-concept and self-actualization. Self concept is based on and individual’s view of his or her real self and ideal self and is one of the main focuses in the humanistic theory. Other focuses in this theory are the consideration of a person as a whole, and the potential for positive life. Advantages to the humanistic theory include bringing attention to the positive aspects of humans and focusing on growth. Disadvantage to this theory consist of being too optimistic, having excessive self-love, and being too simplistic.
Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from
In this approach it is mainly based on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis which was the original psychodynamic theory; however many psychologists based their theories from his theory.
This perspective assumes that we all thrive for personality growth, through mental processes and behaviors.. This perspective is different in its methodology compare to the biological approach, and the psychodynamic approach. Both these perspectives assume that human beings are controlled by internal or external forces. There are deterministic in nature. The humanistic perspective, promotes free will, and people can be, whatever, they envision themselves. This perspective was influence by humanists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, who emphasizes on the importance of individual potentials.
Carl Rogers, born in 1902, was the originator of the Person Centred Approach or Humanistic Theory. His work was influenced by his experience of being a client and a counsellor (Casemore, 2006) and he believed a trusting
“Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving” (American Psychological Association, 2017) and is both socially and culturally constructed. The psychology of personality deals with how and why people differ. There is no unifying theory to describe personality, although many descriptions and structures have been proposed. Theories of personality specify the central elements of personality and these are the characteristics by which people differ. Such theories include the psychodynamic, humanistic and trait perspectives.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is responsible for developing the Psychoanalytic Theoretical Perspective; Freud argued that our early life experiences are essentially the base to our subconscious mind and in turn heavily influence our current behavior. Freud believed that people could be treated and healed by articulating their dreams and childhood memories allowing an individual to gain insight into these unconscious thoughts and ultimately motivate them to resolve the repressed conflicts within. This technique was developed into a therapy used today known as Psychoanalysis, similar to hypnosis, it was founded in 1896 (“Freud's Psychoanalytic Theories.”). Just like any other psychological theory, there are many interesting concepts to Freud's Psychoanalytic Theoretical Perspective. The theory says that your personality is determined by the manner in which your behaviors have been depicted to the unconscious mind, this theory tells us that our behavior is completely
The psychodynamic view states that personality is the primary unconscious behavior. Freud believed that our mind is mainly unconscious rather than being conscious. There are ego's, superego's, and the ID. The psychodynamic theory is based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory and includes the idea that people have defense mechanism. There are also impluses such as sexual and aggressive and play a role in our personality. Most of our signication parts of our personality occurs during the unconscious stage. The past is greatly important and impacts our future.
The psychoanalytic perspective, is the outlook that behavior and personality are effected by the conflict between one’s inner dreams n and expectation of society. Most of this conflict occurs in unconscious, which is outside the knowledge of an individual. Renowned psychologist, Freud established the psychoanalytic theory as an explanation for perplexed phenomena such as the meaning behind dreams, slips of the tongue, and behavioral reflex reactions to stressful situations. The unconscious is a primary focus in psychoanalytic theory due to its typical development in childhood and the ways in which it influences nearly every detail of an individual’s life. The unconscious mind also holds unvented memories and unexpressed urges that make their process into the conscious mind through a variety of different means. However, topographical theory of the mind states that conscious, preconscious, and unconscious serve as motivating forces in human behavior. Corsin & Wedding (2011) define the conscious as mental activity which individuals are fully aware of, preconscious as thoughts and feelings that could be easily brought to mind and unconscious as thoughts, feelings, and desires of which one is unaware of.
During the 1950s the humanistic approach was established, this was because of the growing panic therapists started to experience due to the limitations of psychoanalysis. The man who started this approach was Carl Rogers; he had no faith in psychoanalysis due to his belief that psychoanalysis had fallen short in handling the nature of healthy growth in the individual. Rather than just looking at behaviour from an observer’s point of view, Humanism looks at behaviour from the eyes of the person in question. Due to the fact that this approach centres on personal experiences and subjective concepts, humanists do not deem scientific practices as justified or acceptable. This perspective proposes that each and every one of us is liable for our own euphoria. In modern day psychotherapy an extensive field of efficient methods are at our disposal due to the impact of humanistic
Personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that gives both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior (Feist & Feist, 2008).
Freud 's psychoanalysis is the best known of all personality theories because it (1) postulated the primacy of sex and aggressiontwo universally popular themes; (2) attracted a group of followers who were dedicated to spreading psychoanalytic doctrine; and (3) advanced the notion of unconscious motives, which permit varying explanations for the same observations.
According to Eysenck the personality is the sum total of actual or potential behavior patterns of organism as determined by heredity and environment; it originates and develops through the functional interaction of four main sectors into which these behavior patterns are organized; the cognitive sector(intelligence), the cognitive sector(character), the affective sector(temperament) and somatic structure(constitution).
Personality does not have one final definition, but can be thought of as the combination of behaviour, emotion, motivation and thought patterns that define an individual. The field of personality psychology attempts to study similarities and differences among these
Personality denotes a person’s distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to various stimuli.