Chapter 13: Personality

Michael Cova

Introduction to Psychology

11/12/14

Chapter 13: Personality

        Personality is one of the most important things that humans possess because it makes us who we are, individuals.  Our personalities make us different from everyone else.  They also help to shape everything we do in life; How we go about doing things, how we respond to specific things, how we act in certain situations are all effected by our individual and unique personalities.  Personality also has a lot to do with a person’s feelings of self-esteem and self-importance, or better known as their ego.

        One of the people at the forefront of the conversation about personality and its application to our lives was Sigmund Freud, a renowned psychologist who under-went countless studies to help get us to the point in understanding that we are at now with psychology.  Through Freud’s Psychodynamic Theories we learned many things about human personalities.  In the Psychodynamic Theory, Freud talks about where our personality comes from.  He believed that our personality stems from the “conflict between impulse and restraint- between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges”(Chapter 13, Page 15).  This quote is important because it shows that our personality isn’t as simple as it may seem, personalities have many factors that go into determining the kind of personality that a personality will have.

        Three Factors that affect a person’s personality that were described by Freud in his Psychodynamic Theories were the id, the ego and the superego.  The “id” is the unconscious part of a person’s personality that seeks to receive immediate gratification.  The id’s three main goals in gratification are survival, reproduction and to aggress.  The second of the three factors for personality is superego. Superego is the part of your personality that represents your conscience and helps to stand up for internal beliefs.  The superego is basically a polar opposite from the id and does not give into impulses.  The third and final area of personality that Freud brings up is the ego.  Ego, unlike the id, is the conscious part of our personality that operates in a more realistic sense and attempts to balance out both the id and the superego.  Even though the ego tries to balance out these two, it still tries to satisfy the needs of the id.  Freud often refers to the ego as the “Executive” branch of the three factors because it is has some percentage of control and has to moderate between the two others.

        In the next section of Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory he goes on to talk about the development of a person’s personality.  The process by which someone’s personality develops is called the psychosexual stages.  These stages include the Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and the Genital stage.  The psychosexual stages represent the pleasure-sensitive area of a person’s body during any given point in time.  Each Psychosexual stage has one sensitive area of pleasure.  The oral stage (0-18 months) refers to the sensitivity of the mouth, the anal stage (18-36 months) refers to the sensitivity of bowel and bladder elimination, the phallic stage (3-6 years) refers to the sensitivity of the genitals and coping with incestuous sexual feelings, the latency stage (6 to puberty) refers to the period with dormant sexual feelings, and finally the genital stage (puberty and on) which refers to the period where sexual interests have become mature (Chapter 13, Page 516).   Freud also came up with many interesting smaller theories about some of the individual stages within the psychosexual stages. He came up with a theory called the Oedipus complex, which explains a son’s feelings when going through the phallic stage (3-6 years).  He described this period in time as being the time when “boys seek genital stimulation, and they develop both unconscious sexual desires for their mother and jealousy and hatred for their father, whom they consider a rival. Given these feelings, he thought boys also experience guilt and a lurking fear of punishment, perhaps by castration, from their father” (Chapter 13, Page 516).  This shows how there really are connections what Freud says about our personality and the psychosexual stages.

        During the late 60’s humanistic psychologists began to appear. Humanistic psychologists would study normal people and try to figure out “the ways that ‘healthy’ people strive for self-determination and self-realization” (Chapter 13, Page 523). Two of the major humanistic psychologists are Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Abraham Maslow had the idea of the self-actualizing person. He believed that every person has a hierarchy of needs. This meant that every person has a list of needs, one more important than the previous need. His explanation of this belief was that “If our physiological needs are met, we become concerned with personal safety; if we achieve a sense of security, we then seek to love, to be loved, and to love ourselves; with our love needs satisfied, we seek self-esteem. Having achieved self-esteem, we ultimately seek self-actualization (the process of fulfilling our potential) and self-transcendence (meaning, purpose, and communion beyond the self)” (Chapter 13, Page 524).  Going along with Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers had a very similar idea of Person-Centered Perspective. Carl Rogers believed that humans only needed three things: Genuineness, Acceptance, and Empathy. Rogers’ explanation for why these three are needed is that “Genuineness: when people are genuine, they are open with their own feelings, drop their facades, and are transparent and self-disclosing.  Acceptance: When people are accepting, they offer unconditional positive regard, an attitude of grace that values us even knowing our failures. It is profound relief to drop our pretenses, confess our worst feelings, and discover that we are still accepted.  In a good marriage, a close family, or an intimate friendship, we are free to be spontaneous without fearing the loss of others’ esteem.  Empathy:  When people are empathetic, they share and mirror other’s feelings and reflect their meanings” (Chapter 13, Page 524). Rogers is talking about how these three aspects make up your personality and makes you self-actualized.