Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality

Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality

Michael Mousaw

University of Phoenix

PSY/250

Sarah Jenkins

February 25, 2010

Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality

The authors' first question is, "What is a psychoanalytic approach to personality?" Sigmund Freud describes it as (1) a theory of the mind or personality, (2) a method of investigation of unconscious process, and (3) a method of treatment (Westen, 1999 pg57). With this thought process in mind the authors' first progression would be to describe this approach to personality as kind of a ghost hunt. The authors' intention here is to bring to light the differences between psychoanalytic and trait approaches to personality test.

Understanding Psychoanalytic Personality

How is anyone supposed to understand what a person's mind is doing in an unconscious state? If that person, themselves, does not have a clue as to what is going on inside his or her mind how is the psychologist going to come to a conclusion that it is an unconscious thought? Freud's thinking was a simple assumption: if there is something the person is doing that they cannot explain or report, then the relevant mental process must be unconscious if they are to fill in the gaps (Westen, 1999 pg59).

Freud himself did not fully look into this. He based his theory on test that was done on his more important research, understanding psychopathology. In these test he wrote and studied patients on what they did through free association test and transference phenomena. These test revealed patterns of interpersonal cognitive-affective behaviors of the person being tested. Freud's theory is based on three types of thought: (1) the conscious, what a person is immediately aware of, (2) the preconscious, what a person is not currently aware of but can bring to the conscious thought and (3) the unconscious, what a person is not aware of and kept hidden due to content (Westen, 1999 pg59).

Fritz Riemann concluded in his theory of personality that was published in his work entitled Grundformen der Angst (Basic Forms of Anxiety in 1952 that human beings come into this world with basically four needs or impulses; (1) the need for self-preservation, (2) the need for belonging, (3) the need for security, and (4) the need for personal transformation (Drooker, 1999). For Riemann, the greatest influence is the significant loss, either imaginary or actual; of an object or a person and that this loss has the ability to affect that person subconsciously for their entire life time.

The Psychoanalytic Personality Test

The psychoanalytic tests are designed to interpret a person's subconscious thoughts. By this means these tests should give the person or company an ideal into how that person sees things. This author does not agree with this train of thought. The reason being is that the subconscious is exactly that subconscious. It has no real bearing into what a person may do in a given situation. This author believes that if one person passes this test in a clinical setting and one person