Personality Theory And William James's Theory Of Psychology

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Personality theories consists of several perspectives which are, the trait psychodynamic, humanistic, biological,behaviorist, evolutionary and social learning perspective: and each perspective thrives off the notions of free will and determinism. Free will is defined as the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one 's own discretion (cite).Determinism is defined as the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will(cite) The two ideals are on complete opposites of the personality spectrum. There are many theories who proves to be essential in determining personality and what it entails. Some of there agree on issues and some
Introspection is defined as the examination or observation of one 's own mental and emotional processes (Hunt, 1993).The label applied to his psychology is functionalism. He was not a theorist that you could just place into what one box , his theories crossed over into other branches of psychology. His theories were heavily influenced from philosophy, and he introduced psychology to America (Hunt, 1993)With James it really matter what people did what their lives and he wanted psychology to be helpful to others. One of the highlights of his theories is that there is not individual consciousness independent of its owner.(Hunt, 1993). Introspection was a major part of James 's theory. He developed the term the stream of thought using his introspective analysis. James strongly believed that the reality most perceives by that method is the unbroken flow of complex conscious thought(cite). James discusses the composition of what makes the Self, and breaks it down into "I" and "Me" and explaining the differences and importance of each. The "Me" is explained as being the material, social, and spiritual components of the ego. The theory also details self esteem describing it as the ratio of an individual 's actual behavior in contrast to their pretensions(Hunt, 1993). James understood the sense of “I” was itself being constantly created by thought. James felt that there could not be a “self” in the sense of some separate observing being that existed outside of our experience who was watching us have our experience because there was no place for that being to exist.(Hunt, 1993) Another big theory he had was his theory of emotion, which was that the emotion we fell is not what causes such bodily symptoms as a racing heart or sweaty palms, rather our nervous system, reacting to an external stimulus , produces these physical symptoms, and our perception