Psychodynamic Theory Of Personality Essay

Personality is the unique way of how an individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life. The four major theories of personality include psychodynamic, trait or five-factor model, humanistic, and social cognitive. Although all of these theories are relevant they provide immense amounts of advantages and disadvantages in determining personality. The psychodynamic perspective focuses on the inner workings of the unconscious mind as well as biological causes of personality differences. Thea advantages of this theory is the suggestion that personality develops through stages. These stages suggested by Freud are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Individuals are not always consciously aware of reasons behind their behavior, but this theory helps to exhibit that early life influence’s who we are later. The neo-freudians modified this theory to better fit in with society. Neo-Freudians include: Jung, who proposed archetypes, Adler, who focused on inferiority and birth order, Horney, who focused on basic anxiety, and Erikson, who emphasized social relationships at every stage of life. The disadvantages of this theory is Freud’s results of personality and the unconscious mind are based on his own observations instead of facts. Freud also based most of his work on

The trait theory also does not assume whether traits are biologically determined or not. Several researches have agreed upon five trait dimensions that fit every culture: openness, conscientious, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The advantage of this theory is that cross-cultural research supports the five traits for personality. The disadvantage of this theory is that it is not fully developed yet. Future research is still necessary to determine if there are other factors that could also influence personality. This theory is not that most developed or supported, but it is still