Now that I have discussed the major events that took place throughout my life until where I am now, I would have to say that the two theorists along with their theories that relate most to my life are Alfred Adler and Karen Horney. I am going to start with Adler; his theory is called individual psychology. “This stresses the wholeness and uniqueness of each person as he or she struggles to overcome feelings or inferiority by aspiring toward some future goal” (Hergenhahn, Olson & Cramer, 2014 p. 123). For Adler’s theory on individual personality the first point I am going to discuss is his view on inferiority. In class I learned that Adler grew up with an older brother, thus leaving him to develop feelings of inferiority and causing him to always …show more content…
be in competition with his older brother. This point about inferiority made by Adler fits into my life completely and still does to date. I have always found myself in competitions with my older sister, if she was allowed to take the training wheels off of her bike, then I was allowed to do the same. This got worse once my little sister came into the picture; I felt that since I was now an older sister I had every right to do what my older sister did. Even at the age I am now I still see inferiority within my family dynamic, not so much for myself but with my younger sister becoming competitive with me. Also, in Adler’s theory he stated that a person could get rid of their feelings of inferiority by developing future goals for themselves. What I feel he means by this is that if a person was to set realistic goals for themselves to meet in the future, this would become a major part of their lives leaving no room to experience their feelings of inferiority any more. This relates to my life personally because growing up I already had feelings of inferiority that I developed and did not know what to do with them. Roughly around the time I decided to make a change in my life was grade elven. During this time I started to tell myself that I needed to change something in my life or I was always just going to drift through life and never feel accomplished or happy, so I created goals for myself. I remember that my first goal was to graduate high school with honors, and my second goal was to apply to the three universities of my choice. Once I accomplished these goals I started to feel better about my life but it was not completely whole yet, I still felt like something was missing. That is when I discovered that even though I applied to my schools of choice it did not men that I was automatically going to be accepted. Shortly after this realization my three acceptance letters came and it finally clicked. I finally felt whole for once. It might seem foolish to some people that getting accepted into university was a life goal for myself but it was. I wanted to be the first female in my family to go to school and actually get my post secondary education, not only make myself feel proud but my family as well. This being said I feel that Adler’s theory on setting goals in life to help accomplish organizing ones life is true and effectively helpful, for myself anyway, and I am still using this theory throughout my time in university. Lastly, I will be discussing Adler’s view on the creative self. Adler believed that people can create their lives any way they want to, and that the creative self allows us to be the people we want to be for ourselves. This goes back to the point in high school where I decided that I wanted to do something more with my life, and I made that change, I overcame what people expected of me and became the person that I wanted myself to be all along. I also feel that my life can coincide with Karen Horney’s personality theory as well. In class I learned that Karen Horney’s theory was mainly about relationships children had with their parents and basic anxiety.
I believe that events in my life can relate to these topics. The first event I will be discussing which is related to Horney is parent-child relationships. As discussed above, my parents got divorced when I was twelve years old leaving me to become emotionally and mentally scarred. During the divorce there was emotional abuse that was mainly directed towards me through my dad, there was also addiction problems where my dad was concerned. Due to the emotional abuse and addiction I found myself developing what Horney would call basic hostility towards my dad. Basic hostility is defined as “a feeling generated in a child if needs for safety and satisfaction are not consistently and lovingly satisfied by the parents” (Hergenhahn, Olson & Cramer, 2014 p. 454). What this means is that I could no longer depend on my dad to take care of me and I no longer looked to him for comfort, in a sense I lost all respect for my dad. Throughout my parent’s divorce and developing basic hostility towards my dad I also found myself developing basic anxiety. What this means is that I no longer trusted anyone but myself because I thought that they would all do the same thing that my own dad did to me, and I still believe that to this day. This left myself moving away from people and creating an invisible bubble around myself, what this means is that I can now only depend on myself. I need to be independent, in control, and everything needs to be perfect. For example, I have a hard time committing in relationships because I do not want to get emotionally attached to someone and them emotional traumatizing me again. It took a toll on me when my dad did it, I do not need it again. Throughout these events I also became somewhat of a perfectionist. What I mean by this is that I have the need to have everything right, and if its not I will sit down wherever I am and
fix it until I deem it perfect. I am also very elusive, I hate failing so why do it when I know I am going to fail? An example of this would be the time I was going for my G2 driving test, I put it off for as long as possible because I did not like the thought of me failing which goes back to me being a perfectionist. I did not feel that I was ready and that my driving skills were perfect so I refused to go and take the test. I know that these are not good qualities to have within myself but I cannot help but have them, no matter how hard I try to over come my perfectionism or fear of failing I cannot. This being said, I still enjoy who I am as a person. In conclusion, I would have to say that my life has been one big rollercoaster ride since the beginning with lots of ups and downs and quark screws along the way and I expect their to be more to come because its life. Everyone has their problems; some people over come them while others do not. Everyone is different, an individual in their own way, and I believe that we can make ourselves have the lives that we want through the creative self as well as through achieving our goals in life and overcoming the obstacles in our way. I ultimately love the person who I am today and that is all that matters and that’s all that should matter to every other individual because if you cannot love yourself how can you expect other people to love you?
With a nod to a psychodynamic approach that recognizes the influence of past events—and more importantly, how those events are interpreted—Adlerian theory postulates that most problems are social in nature, with the dynamic among the family being one of the
Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2013). Theories of personality (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage/Wadsworth.
Sigmund Freud is credited with the establishment of the psychoanalytic theory. At the foundation of Freud's personality theory is that people are basically an energy system through which energy is directed and released through a means of expression that faces the lease resistance. Another aspect of Freud's theory is that the majority of one's development occurs in the early years of life, up until the age of five. There are three main stages: oral, anal and phallic. These may eventually become exemplified as types of adult personalities. Additionally, people's actions are ...
This theory states that we are influenced by our parents but not determined by our early childhood developments or instincts. Most people live with limited self-reflection, they avoid core issues related to humanness and meaninglessness, facing our core issues head on leads to anxiety and dread, not facing our core life issues head on leads to a neurotic existence. It is better to face our core issues, aloneness, death, and living meaningfully, even if there is a price to pay with such awareness. Changing ones way of living requires focused self-discipline. When treating an issue the person has, you have to consider the whole person and how that issues might have contributed to all parts of their
People tend to analyze the personality of someone while meeting new people. This way, they are often unconsciously evaluating how that person reacts of behaves. Out of all the personality theories I chose Freud’s theory, because it was the theory that I could identify myself the most. Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytical theory of personality development. He described that personality is the outcome of the interaction between three mental structure levels: ego, superego and id.
Sigmund Freud is one of the most influential psychologists and had a very significant impact in psychoanalysis techniques. Not only was Freud considered the father of psychoanalytic theory, but he also developed the first comprehensive theory of personality (Burger, 2012).
Psychodynamic theory is a contemporary psychological approach to personality that focuses on the unconscious mind and childhood memories. According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, psychodynamic theory has three main components: the ID, Ego, and Superego. The ID is the instinctive part of personality. It
“People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human beings, and that is what I have lived with, you know, in my career all of my life, is the complexity of human beings” - Daniel Kahneman.
There are many different theorists with several different ideas. I have chosen to focus on Erikson’s theory of Trust vs . Mistrust. I have to strongly agree with his ideas because I believe that experiences that a person might go through as an infant can have a huge impact on their life. I must say that I chose to take in serious consideration his beliefs as I am raising my daughter.
The theory I believe is most relatable is the person-centered theory developed by Carl Rogers. His theory takes a more individualized approach to a person’s personality. Maslow’s theory is similar in that a person’s personality and development is based on stages. Maslow’s idea of a hierarchy that must be reached in a sequential order is too rigid. To arrive at the next level, I have to complete the previous level. I feel that if that were true, I have gone up and down stages several times in my life because of certain traumatic events.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something- your gut, destiny, life, home, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life” (Steve Jobs, 1955). Throughout all of my 25 years blessed on planet earth, my personality have somewhat been compared to that of a roller coaster, filled with many ups and downs, positives and negatives, rewards and punishments. As such, I have frequently embarked on numerous journeys in a dyer attempt to discover and recollect the shattered fragments left of me. With this being said, the term personality however, could be defined as “the patterns of behavior and ways of thinking and feeling that are distinctive for each individual” (Tischler, 2007). At the completion of this paper, I intend to achieve answers to some pertinent questions for instance how has the development of personality affected or impacted on human nature. I also hope to discover the various transitions of my personality starting from infancy to present and the reason or motives behind such changes. Finally, I would like to be able to gain an in-depth understanding of a variety of Personality Theories especially the Psychoanalytical Theory of
The first major theory of personality I will be talking about is the psychodynamic theory. Psychodynamics is an approach to psychology that emphasizes systematic study of the psychological forces that underlie human behavior, feelings, and emotions and how they might relate to early experience. It is especially interested in the dynamic relations
Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychiatrist and former disciple of Freud, acknowledge environmental influences such as social class, geographic origin and relationship with parents as factors in the development of personality. But it was birth order and relationship with siblings that was the single most reliable predictor of human nature (Udall).
Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality was the first and main influence for the development of Psychodynamic perspectives. Freud discussed about instincts, anxiety, and defense mechanism, levels of personality, structure of personality and psycho sexual developments of a child. Freud believed, the childhood experiences will affect to lead the future life. Freud’s psychotherapy is called psychoanalysis. After Freud’s personality theory was developed by neo Freudians like Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, Anna Freud. Carl Jung focused on the ego, the personal unconscious and collective unconscious, extraversion and introversion and archetypes. Alfred Adler presented the ideas on Superiority complex Inferiority complex social interest, psychological types, faulty life styles and the Birth order.
Theorists have expanded our knowledge of psychology, influenced one another to broaden, and built upon each other’s theories to develop their own. One theorist who has built upon previous theorists was Erik Erikson. Erikson developed an eight-stage theory of identity and psychosocial development, which has countless strengths and weaknesses.