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The Unconscious Theories Of Personality Development

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The Unconscious There are as many theories of the effects of unconscious motivations to behavior as there are general theories of personality. Some theorists, such as Freud, consider the unconscious at the very least highly influential, if not the sole motivating force behind personality development. Unconscious motivations have been linked to genetic predispositions, and up to 50% of variances can be linked to genetics (Bleidorn et al., 2014). Psychodynamic theories are often considered to hold intellectual rights to the idea of the unconscious mind (Kihlstrom, 2008). Though he did not discover the unconscious, Sigmund Freud originally hypothesized three systems that he referred to as the conscious mind, the preconscious mind, and the unconscious mind; consciousness s linked to the senses, preconscious contains information that is in hibernation but can be accessed by the conscious in certain situations, and the unconscious is always unavailable to the conscious mind (Kihlstrom, 2008). Freud referred to these portions of the mind as the id (unconscious), ego (conscious), and superego (preconscious); the id working independently of the others, and the superego attempting to filter the wants of the id before the information reached the ego (Kihlstrom, 2008). Much research has taken place to reconcile the idea of the unconscious, and while unconscious influence has been shown to exist, there has been no empirical evidence to suggest that the unconscious is exclusively

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