Personality Case Study

Personalities differ greatly from one person to another and there are many theorists with different theories of why people act the way they do. The first few stages of a person’s shape their entire personality and how they are going to be for the rest of their life and that is very important. The development of a person has to do with who their parents are, how they are rasied, their environment, etc. and that is very crucial. Every person acts the way they do for a certain reason and that it showed by many theories throughout time.
Kaitlyn a girl that was raised by an abusive father and was made to be the woman of the house. She has been out of the household for 6 years now but because of how she was raised, she is very mistrusting, too mature for her age, and extremely controlling. She is mostly mistrusting to boys or adults in result of being abused by the adult male figure in her life. Being too mature results from her having to take care of the house, the pets, and most importantly, her younger sister and brother. But the biggest problem that Kaitlyn has it that she is controlling. Her father was extremely controlling over her and her siblings in literally everything that they did. She took that unfortunate trait from her father and still carries it along with her.
One of the biggest things that she struggles with is her anxiety which is all caused by her father and it has now turned into a disease. In addition to those three other characteristics, Kaitlyn is also very shy, insecure, a perfectionist, and over analytical. She keeps to herself majority of the time but when she does talk, she tells them all about herself and her accomplishments hoping for someone to show acknowledgement because that is what she la...

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...hood so Freud’s theories aren’t so much based towards Kaitlyn. Of course Freud had great psychoanalytical theories but that doesn’t mean they are pointed at everyone’s personality and past.
Erikson’s eight stages are much more on track to explain Kaitlyn’s personality. It was a lot easier for me to point out certain theories of Erikson’s to explain why her personality is the way it is. Erikson has many more stages then Freud and they are a lot more specific. They focus more on the parent-child development. That’s more of what shaped Kaitlyn’s personality, even though ironically, that’s what she lacked. Erikson’s theories explained mistrust, autonomy, initiative, inferiority, role confusion, isolation, self-absorption, and despair. All of those characteristics I can easily describe Kaitlyn with. I believe that Erikson best explains Kaitlyn’s personality.