Personality Theories

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Personality-This are characteristically patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that makes a person to be unique from other individuals. It mainly consists of who you are, who you have been and what you will become. There are a number of different theories that have emerged to explain different aspects of personality. Some focus on explaining how personality develops while others focus on individual differences in personality. According to Freud, the mind is divided into the conscious mind which is composed of all things we are aware of and the unconscious mind which has things we are not aware of. He also goes on and divides the human personality into: the identity, Ago and the superego. He terms the Identity as the most primitive part and it’s the source of all the basic wants. It is generally unconscious and hence serves as the main source of libidinal energy. Ego component focuses on reality matters and ensures satisfaction of the identity in a realistic manner that is safe and socially accepted. The superego component holds internalized behavior and standards we learn from the surrounding environment like our parents and society. Freud came up with four stages of psychosexuality: Oral, Anal, Phallic and Genital. At each stage different parts of the body are able to produce pleasure hence they serve as the main source of pleasure, frustration and self-expression. If at all a conflict remains unresolved at any particular stage, the individual might remain fixated at that particular point of development. A fixation can involve an overdependence or obsession with something related to that phase of development. When a person is considered to have oral fixation is one who stuck in the oral stage of development him/her posse’s...

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...lso emphasized on healthy human personality where he cited that psychodynamic theories tend to focus on clinical case studies and therefore lack an account of a healthy personality.
These Humanistic theories have had a significant influence on psychology and the pop culture. Many psychologists now accept the idea that when it comes to personality, a person’s subjective experience has more weight than the objective reality. Humanistic psychologists’ today focus on healthy people, rather than troubled people, which has also been a particularly useful contribution. This theories regarding personality have been criticized and a general agreement in regards to some of the qualities involving personality is that almost all theorists can agree that personality should be defined as a unique and individual set of psychological characteristics that each human being possesses.

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