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The Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

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Personality Theories

Introduction In psychology, personality can be described as the "the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion unique to an individual, and the ways they interact to help or hinder the adjustment of a person to other people and situations" ("personality," 2012). Psychologists may make use of idiographic or nomothetic techniques in order to study personality of an individual. Many characteristics of human behavior can be examined while studying one's personality. To put in simple words, personality theories are utilized for organizing what is known, stimulating new research, and specifying a view of personality in a formal way. Trait, psychoanalytic, social learning, and humanistic views are the 4 groups of such theories which have been developed in the precedent century (Kasschau, 1985).
Psychoanalytic Theory The Psychoanalytic Theory was put forwarded by Sigmund Freud in which he considered the human personality as a whole by dividing it into 3 functional parts namely id, ego, and superego. Freud regarded the id as the unfathomable stage of the unconscious, subjugated by the gratification principle. He viewed it as having an object to gratify the instinctual drives. He saw the superego to have been originated in an infant through identification with parents. The supergo, according to him, has a purpose of functioning as an inner repressor of the urges of the id in response to social pressures. In contrast, ego was seen by him as a part of the

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