Psychodynamic Approaches To Human Identity

Identity is defined as “the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is” (Oxforddictionaries.com, 2015). Identity is who we are how we define ourselves. Throughout this essay I will be discussing different approaches and their impact on human identity. These approaches are known as traditional scientific and postmodern psychology approaches. These approaches will be used to account the role of race, culture and ethnicity on human identity. Academic literature and journal articles will be used to back up the point that have been made.

Race is defined as a “category or group of people having hereditary traits that set them apart” (Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology, 2010). Moving on ethnicity is defined as a term that describes “shared culture—the practices, values, and beliefs of a group” (Giddens, 1996). This could include things like language, and traditions. Culture is the different customs and rules different groups follow.

These approaches use quantitative, mathematics data that validates scientific assumption they use this because they attempt to describe the data and come up with a common factor that can generalize the whole research. The different Traditional approaches are; social identity theories, personality trait theories, Eugenics and many more theories.

Whereas the Postmodern approach is not about general law but about individual experience that affect identity. These theories are Qualitative based because they are about viewing the individual speaking to individual. They investigate all cultural factors, they try to deconstruct reality, investigating different aspects of