The Psychodynamic, Humanistic, And Social-Cognitive

In this essay I will be discussing the four major theories of personality; the psychodynamic, trait or five-factor model, humanistic, and social-cognitive. Personality is the unique way in which each individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life. Personality is a very fluid concept that is not quantifiable, that is why it is difficult to measure precisely and scientifically and led to the rise of different perspectives on personality. In this essay will focus on the big four perspectives. The psychodynamic perspective of personality began in the works of Sigmund Freud and Erikson. It focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in the development of personality. This perspective is also heavily focused on biological causes of personality differences. Freud believed that the three largest components of personality can be divided into: id, the ego, and the superego. The id is responsible for needs and urges, super ego is responsible for ideals and morals and ego moderates between the id and the super ego. Erikson however thought that personality went through stages. The advantage of psychodynamic is that it represents the person as a whole, and reflects their whole life. The disadvantage of psychodynamic is that the theory cannot be tested ergo there isn’t much

The five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The five factor model is the most popular trait theory of personality. While these five traits should be adequate on their own to describe the factors of personality, there also should be no correlation between the main factors. The main advantage of the five factor model is that it is supported by numerous research studies. The disadvantage is that the theory is very restrictive in its categories and doesn’t allow for much flexibility. It is very specific at looking at the individual at the moment and how he developed to that