Strengths And Weaknesses Of Personality Theory

The personality of the human brain can be a very curious thing to most. Over years of study, psychologists still debate and question how personality actually works. However, the theories of personality have been boiled down to just four major theories. Psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, and social-cognitive. While none of these are perfect, they all have certain distinguishing characteristics, advantages, and drawbacks, that differ them from each other.

The first personality theory covered is psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic. The perspective of psychoanalysis is one of the more famous and historical ways of thinking about psychology, finding its roots with Sigmund Freud, and was mostly agreed upon by theorists such as Carl Jung and Erik Erikson. Freud put a strong emphasis on childhood having a strong impact on one’s unconscious, and that most of one’s personality is formed during childhood. Freud divided the personality into three parts. The id, ego, and superego. The id is very basic, and is developed during childhood, and consists of animal-like instincts, and what Freud called the “pleasure principle”. The id tends to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and not much else. The ego is the conscious part, and the smallest, but is the manager of the rest of the personality. The

Hans Eysneck suggested that personality had three dimensions: extraversion-introversion, emotional stability - neuroticism, and psychoticism. Today, after the findings of Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, that theory has been expanded to include openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The positives of this theory are in its clarity. Being able to pinpoint traits and tie a personality to it are very advantageous. The big disadvantage is that trait theory fails to address the development of traits, and gives no theories into personality