Strengths And Weaknesses Of A Psychodynamic Approach To Personality

Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these

Every single individual has a personality; it is the very quintessence of human existence. Personality drives our interactions with others, our desires – conscious and unconscious, our perceived needs, and to a certain extent, even our actions. Psychodynamic approaches to personality are focused on the belief that we have virtually no control over our own personality, that it is primarily controlled by unconscious powers. Social cognitive approaches to personality centers around the belief that we still have

Burton, western & Kowaslki (2015) describes Personality as the enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour that are expressed in different circumstances. In other words it can be defined as differences in characteristics in a person, including their way of thinking, likes, dislikes, sociability, openness, feelings and behaviour, which make them the person they are and differentiates them from others. All these traits when brought together is known to be the personality of that particular person.

Dispositional personality theories are quite different from biological personality theories. The two will be compared and dissected in this article. The Big Five Personality Test will also be analyzed and how it is used to study personality will be examined.

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

The psychodynamic approach was proposed by Freud. This approach towards personality is based on the notion of underlying forces such as the id, ego and superego which are either present from birth or develop during childhood shape our behaviour and personality as such. Experiences in childhood are proposed to be the basis of human personality, according to Freud and as such Psychodynamic theory proposes that some undesirable unbalances between the id and superego can create the arising of ego defence mechanisms which explain individual differences in behaviour. Freudian theory has been adapted by neo-Freudians, however while psychodynamic

The nature vs nurture issue has been a controversial argument among psychologist for decades. This argument exposes two different views. One of them emphasizes that our personality depends solely on genetics (nature). On the other hand, the second view suggests that humans “develop through experience” (Myers 2013, SG 6) (nurture).

Everybody has his or her own type of personality. We all act in a certain way that makes us who we are. It is believed that our parents, peers and, the environment we grow up in, shape us. Personality is describes as a combination of emotions, attitude, and behavioral patterns of an individual. There is a reason that we are the way we are and there are many theories that go along with that. Different theorist present their own definitions of the word personality based on their own theoretical positions. Which brings us to discussing Carl Jung’s theory of analytical psychology and Harry

Funder discusses on how personality psychology formulates around numerous basic approaches. One approach Funder talks about is the biological approach, which addresses the mental process on our behavior including anatomy, physiology, genetics, and evolution. This approach analyses our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through our mind. Another approach that Funder discusses is the trait approach, which is basically the study of human personality; the trait approach concentrates on the way an individual differs in emotion, thought, and behavior and how those differences are measured. These two approaches complement each other because the trait approach focuses on routine patterns of an individual that are behaviors, feelings, and thoughts which those

As the Behaviourist approach differs so greatly in comparison to the Psychodynamic approach, people have mixed opinions on both approaches. As no one can ever fully understand the complexity of the human mind, neither the behaviourist nor psychodynamic approach will ever be completely correct. As both approaches vary, we can conclude they have both been successful and incorrect in many cases. Psychologists have studied the mind for decades and these approaches give us a foundation in understanding the human

Respond to the following questions in your own words. Your responses should include specific examples and should incorporate concepts and terms from Chapters 9 and 10 in your textbook. Your final submission should be a minimum of 3-4 page in APA format.

Personality is the enduring and unique cluster of characteristics that may change in response to different situations. It can be asses via different approaches such as Self-report or objective inventories, projective techniques, clinical interviews, behavioural assessment procedures and thought and experience-sampling procedures. In the study of personality ideographic research and nomothetic research are used and the major methods that the clinical method, the experimental method and the correlational method.

This paper is a comparison of three different viewpoints on the subject of personality. Carl Jung, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers all had very different outlooks on what defined someone’s personality. As an added feature I have included myself as a theorist because my views are also different from the previous mentioned theorists. This paper will also look briefly into the background of each theorist because their views on life began in their childhood. Amazingly you will notice the all had similar backgrounds, but came up with completely different ways of looking at life.

This essay will give a description of Personality before critically analysing the biological basis of personality approach. The biological basis approach tries to account for the mechanisms between genes and personality by looking at various different brain structures whilst the biochemical approach looks at the impact of hormones and neurotransmitters. The majority of our understanding of personality from a biological perspective focuses on the three main behavioural systems; the reward system, the motivation system and the punishment system. Within this essay I will be discussing the three main theories that have come from these ideas, Eyenck’s three-factor model, Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) and Cloningers model of personality.

Personality takes many shapes and forms and is affected by many factors. My understanding of personality is simply a genetic and environmentally determined set of psychological traits that influence our reactions in the world around us. Genetic because our parents possess a certain set of psychological personality traits that we tend to have in common with them so therefore in my opinion there are heritable personality traits. Personality is environmental because we each have our own separate experiences in the world and these experiences help form our unique personality. Neo-Freudians such as Jung have given us a wide array of ideas of how they believe personality is developed and formatted. Jung in particular has a very interesting take on personality. It is this theory that I can most resonate with and apply to myself and even friends and family of mine.