Theories of Personality

• Psychoanalytic Approach The first of the three major schools of psychology. Freud was the creator of psychodynamic approach.Structure of PersonalityID – original system of personality. The primary source of psychic energy. The seat of instinct. It lacks organization , it is blind, demanding, and insistent. Ruled by pleasure principle and avoiding pain. The ID is illogical and amoral.

EGO - has a contact with reality. The executive of personality that governs, controls, and regulates. Its principal job is to mediate between the instinct and the surrounding. The traffic for the ID , SUPEREGO and external world.

SUPEREGO – is the moral or judicial branch of personality. The person’s moral code. The main concern whether action is good or bad.

• View of Human Nature• 1. Human beings are determined by irrational forces,

unconscious motivations.• 2. Humans are viewed as energy system. The psychic energy is

distributed to the ID, EGO,SUPEREGO. Since the amount of energy is limited , one system gains control over the available energy at the expense of the other two.

• 3. All instinct are innate and biological . The sexual instinct and aggressive impulses.

• Consciousness and Unconsciousness• The levels of consciousness are the keys to understanding behavior and the problems

of personality.• Consciousness is a thin slice of total mind.• Unconscious which is out of awareness, stores up all

experiences, memories and repressed materials.

• Freud: believed the most psychological functioning exist in the out of awareness realm. The unconscious even though out of awareness does influence behavior. It is the root of all forms of neurotic symptoms and behavior.

• ANXIETY – is a state of tension that motivates us to do something.

• Function: To warn of impending danger, that signal to the

EGO that unless appropriate measures are taken the danger may increase until the EGO is overthrown.

When the EGO cannot control anxiety by rational and direct methods, it relies on unrealistic ones. ( Ego defense oriented behavior.)

• Carl Jung• The role of Purpose in Human Development• 1. People live by aims as well as causes.

Stressing the goal of self actualization.• 2. The present is determined not only by the

past but also the future.

• Personal Unconscious. Consists of experiences that were once conscious but have been repressed and forgotten.

• Collective Unconscious – the storehouse of buried memories inherited from the ancestral past. Contains wisdom of the ages and serves as guide for human development.

• The PERSONA – mask worn in response to social situations and the demands of social convention.

• The role assigned by society, the part society expects one to play.

• The public self. The social façade. The side one displays to the world.

• Animus - masculine side of women.• Women can understand men.

• Anima – feminine side of men.

• Men can understand women. 2 Attitudes: 1.Extraversion – orients the person toward the external and objective world.

2. Introversion – orients the person toward the internal and subjective world.

• Alfred Adler

• View of Human Nature: 1. Men and Women are social being.

2.Each person develops a unique style of life. 3. Humans are the master not the victims of fate. 4. He stresses the social determinants of personality not the sexual determinants.

• Basic Inferiority and Compensation• 1. Humans are pushed by the need to overcome

inherent inferiority and pulled by striving for superiority.

• 2. Perfection not pleasure is the goal in life.• 3. All of us have inferiority feelings.• 4. The individual attempts to overcome this

helplessness by compensating it ( developing a life style where success is possible).

• Striving for superiority• 1. A person copes with basic inferiority by

seeking POWER.• 2. A person seeks to change weakness into

strength to excel in one area of concentration to compensate for defects in other areas.

• HUMANISTIC APPROACH• Basic goal is to enable the individual to act and

to accept the awesome freedom and responsibility for action.

• Human cannot escape from freedom and freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

• View of HUMAN NATURE - (SELF – AWARENESS)• 1. Humans are capable of self awareness.• 2. The unique and distinctive capacity that allows them

to think and decide.• 3. The more awareness the more possibilities for

freedom.• 4. To decide freely within the framework of limitations.• 5. With freedom to choose comes a RESPONSIBILITY.

• BEHAVIORISTIC MODEL• The principles of learning to change behavior

towards more adaptive ways.

• View of Human Nature• 1. Behavior is orderly and carefully controlled

experiments will reveal the laws that control behavior.

• 2. The individual is seen as having an equal potential for positive and negative tendencies.

• 3. Human beings are essentially shaped and determined by their sociocultural environment.

• 4. All human behavior is learned.

• TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS• Developed by ERIC BERNE• It is rooted in a philosophy that human beings are capable of transcending

their conditioning and early programming.• The theory rests on the assumptions that persons are capable of

understanding their past decisions and that they can choose to redecide.• The faith in the person’s capacity to rise above habit patterns and to select

new goals.• The early decisions were made at a time in life when we are highly

dependent on others can be reviewed and can be made again if an early decision are no longer appropriate.

• 3 distinct patterns of behavior and ego states.• 1. Parent – ego state – personality that is an

introject of the parents and parental substitute. The parent ego state contains the should and oughts.

• 2. Adult ego state – processor of data and information. The objective part of personality and the part of personality that knows what is going on. It produces the best solution to a particular problem.

• 3. Child – ego state – consists of feelings, impulses, spontaneous acts.

• A. Natural child – impulsive untrained expressive infant of us.

• B. Little professor – unschooled wisdom of a child. It is manipulative and very creative.

• C. Adapted child – exhibits a modification and modifications are the result of traumatic experiences, demands and training.

• Life Script – the early parental teachings that we learn and early decisions that we make as children and continue to carry around us as adult.

• 4 basic positons:• 1. I’m OK – You’re OK• 2. I’m OK – You’re not OK• 3. I’m not OK- You ‘re OK• 4. I’m not OK – You’re not OK